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diff --git a/old/4460.txt b/old/4460.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..feebf57 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/4460.txt @@ -0,0 +1,22365 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Beauchamp's Career, Complete, by George Meredith + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Beauchamp's Career, Complete + +Author: George Meredith + +Last Updated: March 7, 2009 +Release Date: October 13, 2006 [EBook #4460] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER, COMPLETE *** + + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + + +BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER + +By George Meredith + + +1897 + + + + +CONTENTS + + + BOOK 1. + I. THE CHAMPION OF HIS COUNTRY + II. UNCLE, NEPHEW, AND ANOTHER + III. CONTAINS BARONIAL VIEWS OF THE PRESENT + IV. A GLIMPSE OF NEVIL IN ACTION + V. RENEE + VI. LOVE IN VENICE + VII. AN AWAKENING FOR BOTH + VIII. A NIGHT ON THE ADRIATIC + IX. MORNING AT SEA UNDER THE ALPS + X. A SINGULAR COUNCIL + + BOOK 2. + XI. CAPTAIN BASKELETT + XII. AN INTERVIEW WITH THE INFAMOUS Dr. SHRAPNEL + XIII. A SUPERFINE CONSCIENCE + XIV. THE LEADING ARTICLE AND MR. TIMOTHY TURBOT + XV. CECILIA HALKETT + XVI. A PARTIAL DISPLAY OF BEAUCHAMP IN HIS COLOURS + XVII. HIS FRIEND AND FOE + XVIII. CONCERNING THE ACT OF CANVASSING + + BOOK 3. + XIX. LORD PALMET, AND CERTAIN ELECTORS + XX. A DAY AT ITCHINCOPE + XXI. THE QUESTION AS TO THE EXAMINATION OF THE WHIGS, + AND THE FINE BLOW STRUCK BY MR. EVERARD ROMFREY + XXII. THE DRIVE INTO BEVISHAM + XXIII. TOURDESTELLE + XXIV. HIS HOLIDAY + XXV. THE ADVENTURE OF THE BOAT. + + BOOK 4. + XXVI. MR. BLACKBURN TUCKHAM + XXVII. A SHORT SIDELOOK AT THE ELECTION + XXVIII. TOUCHING A YOUNG LADY'S HEART AND HER INTELLECT + XXIX. THE EPISTLE OF DR. SHRAPNEL TO COMMANDER BEAUCHAMP + XXX. THE BAITING OF DR. SHRAPNEL + XXXI. SHOWING A CHIVALROUS GENTLEMAN SET IN MOTION + XXXII. AN EFFORT TO CONQUER CECILIA IN BEAUCHAMP'S FASHION + XXXIII. THE FIRST ENCOUNTER AT STEYNHAM + + BOOK 5. + XXXIV. THE FACE OF RENEE + XXXV. THE RIDE IN THE WRONG DIRECTION + XXXVI. PURSUIT OF THE APOLOGY OF MR. ROMFREY TO DR. SHRAPNEL + XXXVII. CECILIA CONQUERED + XXXVIII. LORD AVONLEY + XXXIX. BETWEEN BEAUCHAMP AND CECILIA + XL. A TRIAL OF HIM + XLI. A LAME VICTORY + + BOOK 6. + XLII. THE TWO PASSIONS + XLIII. THE EARL OF ROMFREY AND THE COUNTESS + XLIV. THE NEPHEWS OF THE EARL, AND ANOTHER EXHIBITION OF THE TWO + PASSIONS IN BEAUCHAMP. + XLV. A LITTLE PLOT AGAINST CECILIA + XLVI. AS IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN FORESEEN + XLVII. THE REFUSAL OF HIM + XLVIII. OF THE TRIAL AWAITING THE EARL OF ROMFREY + XLIX. A FABRIC OF BARONIAL DESPOTISM CRUMBLES + + BOOK 7. + L. AT THE COTTAGE ON THE COMMON + LI. IN THE NIGHT + LII. QUESTION OF A PILGRIMAGE AND AN ACT OF PENANCE + LIII. THE APOLOGY TO DR. SHRAPNEL + LIV. THE FRUITS OF THE APOLOGY + LV. WITHOUT LOVE + LVI. THE LAST OF NEVIL BEAUCHAMP + + + + +CHAPTER I. THE CHAMPION OF HIS COUNTRY + +When young Nevil Beauchamp was throwing off his midshipman's jacket for +a holiday in the garb of peace, we had across Channel a host of dreadful +military officers flashing swords at us for some critical observations +of ours upon their sovereign, threatening Afric's fires and savagery. +The case occurred in old days now and again, sometimes, upon imagined +provocation, more furiously than at others. We were unarmed, and the +spectacle was distressing. We had done nothing except to speak our minds +according to the habit of the free, and such an explosion appeared +as irrational and excessive as that of a powder-magazine in reply to +nothing more than the light of a spark. It was known that a valorous +General of the Algerian wars proposed to make a clean march to the +capital of the British Empire at the head of ten thousand men; which +seems a small quantity to think much about, but they wore wide red +breeches blown out by Fame, big as her cheeks, and a ten thousand of +that sort would never think of retreating. Their spectral advance on +quaking London through Kentish hopgardens, Sussex corn-fields, or by the +pleasant hills of Surrey, after a gymnastic leap over the riband of salt +water, haunted many pillows. And now those horrid shouts of the legions +of Caesar, crying to the inheritor of an invading name to lead them +against us, as the origin of his title had led the army of Gaul of old +gloriously, scared sweet sleep. We saw them in imagination lining the +opposite shore; eagle and standard-bearers, and gallifers, brandishing +their fowls and their banners in a manner to frighten the decorum of the +universe. Where were our men? + +The returns of the census of our population were oppressively +satisfactory, and so was the condition of our youth. We could row and +ride and fish and shoot, and breed largely: we were athletes with a fine +history and a full purse: we had first-rate sporting guns, unrivalled +park-hacks and hunters, promising babies to carry on the renown +of England to the next generation, and a wonderful Press, and a +Constitution the highest reach of practical human sagacity. But +where were our armed men? where our great artillery? where our proved +captains, to resist a sudden sharp trial of the national mettle? Where +was the first line of England's defence, her navy? These were questions, +and Ministers were called upon to answer them. The Press answered them +boldly, with the appalling statement that we had no navy and no army. +At the most we could muster a few old ships, a couple of experimental +vessels of war, and twenty-five thousand soldiers indifferently +weaponed. + +We were in fact as naked to the Imperial foe as the merely painted +Britons. + +This being apprehended, by the aid of our own shortness of figures and +the agitated images of the red-breeched only waiting the signal to jump +and be at us, there ensued a curious exhibition that would be termed, in +simple language, writing to the newspapers, for it took the outward form +of letters: in reality, it was the deliberate saddling of our ancient +nightmare of Invasion, putting the postillion on her, and trotting her +along the high-road with a winding horn to rouse old Panic. Panic we +will, for the sake of convenience, assume to be of the feminine gender, +and a spinster, though properly she should be classed with the large +mixed race of mental and moral neuters which are the bulk of comfortable +nations. She turned in her bed at first like the sluggard of the +venerable hymnist: but once fairly awakened, she directed a stare toward +the terrific foreign contortionists, and became in an instant all stormy +nightcap and fingers starving for the bell-rope. Forthwith she burst +into a series of shrieks, howls, and high piercing notes that caused +even the parliamentary Opposition, in the heat of an assault on a +parsimonious Government, to abandon its temporary advantage and be still +awhile. Yet she likewise performed her part with a certain deliberation +and method, as if aware that it was a part she had to play in the +composition of a singular people. She did a little mischief by dropping +on the stock-markets; in other respects she was harmless, and, inasmuch +as she established a subject for conversation, useful. + +Then, lest she should have been taken too seriously, the Press, which +had kindled, proceeded to extinguish her with the formidable engines +called leading articles, which fling fire or water, as the occasion +may require. It turned out that we had ships ready for launching, and +certain regiments coming home from India; hedges we had, and a spirited +body of yeomanry; and we had pluck and patriotism, the father and mother +of volunteers innumerable. Things were not so bad. + +Panic, however, sent up a plaintive whine. What country had anything +like our treasures to defend? countless riches, beautiful women, +an inviolate soil! True, and it must be done. Ministers were +authoritatively summoned to set to work immediately. They replied that +they had been at work all the time, and were at work now. They could +assure the country, that though they flourished no trumpets, they +positively guaranteed the safety of our virgins and coffers. + +Then the people, rather ashamed, abused the Press for unreasonably +disturbing them. The Press attacked old Panic and stripped her naked. +Panic, with a desolate scream, arraigned the parliamentary Opposition +for having inflated her to serve base party purposes. The Opposition +challenged the allegations of Government, pointed to the trimness of +army and navy during its term of office, and proclaimed itself watch-dog +of the country, which is at all events an office of a kind. Hereupon +the ambassador of yonder ireful soldiery let fall a word, saying, by the +faith of his Master, there was no necessity for watch-dogs to bark; +an ardent and a reverent army had but fancied its beloved chosen Chief +insulted; the Chief and chosen held them in; he, despite obloquy, +discerned our merits and esteemed us. + +So, then, Panic, or what remained of her, was put to bed again. The +Opposition retired into its kennel growling. The People coughed like a +man of two minds, doubting whether he has been divinely inspired or has +cut a ridiculous figure. The Press interpreted the cough as a warning to +Government; and Government launched a big ship with hurrahs, and ordered +the recruiting-sergeant to be seen conspicuously. + +And thus we obtained a moderate reinforcement of our arms. + +It was not arrived at by connivance all round, though there was a look +of it. Certainly it did not come of accident, though there was a look of +that as well. Nor do we explain much of the secret by attributing it +to the working of a complex machinery. The housewife's remedy of a good +shaking for the invalid who will not arise and dance away his gout, +partly illustrates the action of the Press upon the country: and perhaps +the country shaken may suffer a comparison with the family chariot +of the last century, built in a previous one, commodious, furnished +agreeably, being all that the inside occupants could require of a +conveyance, until the report of horsemen crossing the heath at a gallop +sets it dishonourably creaking and complaining in rapid motion, and the +squire curses his miserly purse that would not hire a guard, and his +dame says, I told you so!--Foolhardy man, to suppose, because we +have constables in the streets of big cities, we have dismissed the +highwayman to limbo. And here he is, and he will cost you fifty times +the sum you would have laid out to keep him at a mile's respectful +distance! But see, the wretch is bowing: he smiles at our carriage, and +tells the coachman that he remembers he has been our guest, and really +thinks we need not go so fast. He leaves word for you, sir, on your +peril to denounce him on another occasion from the magisterial Bench, +for that albeit he is a gentleman of the road, he has a mission to right +society, and succeeds legitimately to that bold Good Robin Hood who fed +the poor.--Fresh from this polite encounter, the squire vows money +for his personal protection: and he determines to speak his opinion of +Sherwood's latest captain as loudly as ever. That he will, I do not say. +It might involve a large sum per annum. + +Similes are very well in their way. None can be sufficient in this case +without levelling a finger at the taxpayer--nay, directly mentioning +him. He is the key of our ingenuity. He pays his dues; he will not pay +the additional penny or two wanted of him, that we may be a step or +two ahead of the day we live in, unless he is frightened. But scarcely +anything less than the wild alarum of a tocsin will frighten him. +Consequently the tocsin has to be sounded; and the effect is woeful past +measure: his hugging of his army, his kneeling on the shore to his navy, +his implorations of his yeomanry and his hedges, are sad to note. His +bursts of pot-valiancy (the male side of the maiden Panic within his +bosom) are awful to his friends. Particular care must be taken after he +has begun to cool and calculate his chances of security, that he do not +gather to him a curtain of volunteers and go to sleep again behind them; +for they cost little in proportion to the much they pretend to be to +him. Patriotic taxpayers doubtless exist: prophetic ones, provident +ones, do not. At least we show that we are wanting in them. The taxpayer +of a free land taxes himself, and his disinclination for the bitter +task, save under circumstances of screaming urgency--as when the +night-gear and bed-linen of old convulsed Panic are like the churned +Channel sea in the track of two hundred hostile steamboats, let +me say--is of the kind the gentle schoolboy feels when death or +an expedition has relieved him of his tyrant, and he is entreated +notwithstanding to go to his books. + +Will you not own that the working of the system for scaring him and +bleeding is very ingenious? But whether the ingenuity comes of native +sagacity, as it is averred by some, or whether it shows an instinct +labouring to supply the deficiencies of stupidity, according to others, +I cannot express an opinion. I give you the position of the country +undisturbed by any moralizings of mine. The youth I introduce to you +will rarely let us escape from it; for the reason that he was born with +so extreme and passionate a love for his country, that he thought all +things else of mean importance in comparison: and our union is one in +which, following the counsel of a sage and seer, I must try to paint for +you what is, not that which I imagine. This day, this hour, this life, +and even politics, the centre and throbbing heart of it (enough, when +unburlesqued, to blow the down off the gossamer-stump of fiction at a +single breath, I have heard tell), must be treated of men, and the +ideas of men, which are--it is policy to be emphatic upon truisms--are +actually the motives of men in a greater degree than their appetites: +these are my theme; and may it be my fortune to keep them at bloodheat, +and myself calm as a statue of Memnon in prostrate Egypt! He sits there +waiting for the sunlight; I here, and readier to be musical than you +think. I can at any rate be impartial; and do but fix your eyes on the +sunlight striking him and swallowing the day in rounding him, and you +have an image of the passive receptivity of shine and shade I hold +it good to aim at, if at the same time I may keep my characters at +blood-heat. I shoot my arrows at a mark that is pretty certain to +return them to me. And as to perfect success, I should be like the +panic-stricken shopkeepers in my alarm at it; for I should believe that +genii of the air fly above our tree-tops between us and the incognizable +spheres, catching those ambitious shafts they deem it a promise of fun +to play pranks with. + +Young Mr. Beauchamp at that period of the panic had not the slightest +feeling for the taxpayer. He was therefore unable to penetrate the +mystery of our roundabout way of enlivening him. He pored over the +journals in perplexity, and talked of his indignation nightly to his +pretty partners at balls, who knew not they were lesser Andromedas of +his dear Andromeda country, but danced and chatted and were gay, and +said they were sure he would defend them. The men he addressed were +civil. They listened to him, sometimes with smiles and sometimes with +laughter, but approvingly, liking the lad's quick spirit. They were +accustomed to the machinery employed to give our land a shudder and +to soothe it, and generally remarked that it meant nothing. His uncle +Everard, and his uncle's friend Stukely Culbrett, expounded the nature +of Frenchmen to him, saying that they were uneasy when not periodically +thrashed; it would be cruel to deny them their crow beforehand; and +so the pair of gentlemen pooh-poohed the affair; agreeing with him, +however, that we had no great reason to be proud of our appearance, and +the grounds they assigned for this were the activity and the prevalence +of the ignoble doctrines of Manchester--a power whose very existence was +unknown to Mr. Beauchamp. He would by no means allow the burden of +our national disgrace to be cast on one part of the nation. We were +insulted, and all in a poultry-flutter, yet no one seemed to feel it but +himself! Outside the Press and Parliament, which must necessarily be the +face we show to the foreigner, absolute indifference reigned. Navy +men and red-coats were willing to join him or anybody in sneers at a +clipping and paring miserly Government, but they were insensible to +the insult, the panic, the startled-poultry show, the shame of our +exhibition of ourselves in Europe. It looked as if the blustering French +Guard were to have it all their own way. And what would they, what could +they but, think of us! He sat down to write them a challenge. + +He is not the only Englishman who has been impelled by a youthful +chivalry to do that. He is perhaps the youngest who ever did it, and +consequently there were various difficulties to be overcome. As regards +his qualifications for addressing Frenchmen, a year of his prae-neptunal +time had been spent in their capital city for the purpose of acquiring +French of Paris, its latest refinements of pronunciation and polish, and +the art of conversing. He had read the French tragic poets and Moliere; +he could even relish the Gallic-classic--'Qu'il mourut!' and he spoke +French passably, being quite beyond the Bullish treatment of the tongue. +Writing a letter in French was a different undertaking. The one he +projected bore no resemblance to an ordinary letter. The briefer the +better, of course; but a tone of dignity was imperative, and the tone +must be individual, distinctive, Nevil Beauchamp's, though not in his +native language. First he tried his letter in French, and lost sight +of himself completely. 'Messieurs de la Garde Francaise,' was a good +beginning; the remainder gave him a false air of a masquerader, most +uncomfortable to see; it was Nevil Beauchamp in moustache and imperial, +and bagbreeches badly fitting. He tried English, which was really +himself, and all that heart could desire, supposing he addressed a body +of midshipmen just a little loftily. But the English, when translated, +was bald and blunt to the verge of offensiveness. + + 'GENTLEMEN OF THE FRENCH GUARD, + + 'I take up the glove you have tossed us. I am an Englishman. + That will do for a reason.' + +This might possibly pass with the gentlemen of the English Guard. But +read: + + 'MESSIEURS DE LA GARDE FRANCAISE, + + 'J'accepte votre gant. Je suis Anglais. La raison est suffisante.' + +And imagine French Guardsmen reading it! + +Mr. Beauchamp knew the virtue of punctiliousness in epithets and phrases +of courtesy toward a formal people, and as the officers of the French +Guard were gentlemen of birth, he would have them to perceive in him +their equal at a glance. On the other hand, a bare excess of phrasing +distorted him to a likeness of Mascarille playing Marquis. How to be +English and think French! The business was as laborious as if he had +started on the rough sea of the Channel to get at them in an open boat. + +The lady governing his uncle Everard's house, Mrs. Rosamund Culling, +entered his room and found him writing with knitted brows. She was +young, that is, she was not in her middleage; and they were the dearest +of friends; each had given the other proof of it. Nevil looked up and +beheld her lifted finger. + +'You are composing a love-letter, Nevil!' The accusation sounded like +irony. + +'No,' said he, puffing; 'I wish I were! + +'What can it be, then?' + +He thrust pen and paper a hand's length on the table, and gazed at her. + +'My dear Nevil, is it really anything serious?' said she. + +'I am writing French, ma'am.' + +'Then I may help you. It must be very absorbing, for you did not hear my +knock at your door.' + +Now, could he trust her? The widow of a British officer killed nobly +fighting for his country in India, was a person to be relied on for +active and burning sympathy in a matter that touched the country's +honour. She was a woman, and a woman of spirit. Men had not pleased him +of late. Something might be hoped from a woman. + +He stated his occupation, saying that if she would assist him in his +French she would oblige him; the letter must be written and must go. +This was uttered so positively that she bowed her head, amused by +the funny semi-tone of defiance to the person to whom he confided the +secret. She had humour, and was ravished by his English boyishness, with +the novel blush of the heroical-nonsensical in it. + +Mrs. Culling promised him demurely that she would listen, objecting +nothing to his plan, only to his French. + +'Messieurs de la Garde Francaise!' he commenced. + +Her criticism followed swiftly. + +'I think you are writing to the Garde Imperiale.' + +He admitted his error, and thanked her warmly. + +'Messieurs de la Garde Imperiale!' + +'Does not that,' she said, 'include the non-commissioned officers, the +privates, and the cooks, of all the regiments?' + +He could scarcely think that, but thought it provoking the French had +no distinctive working title corresponding to gentlemen, and suggested +'Messieurs les Officiers': which might, Mrs. Culling assured him, +comprise the barbers. He frowned, and she prescribed his writing, +'Messieurs les Colonels de la Garde Imperiale.' This he set down. The +point was that a stand must be made against the flood of sarcasms and +bullyings to which the country was exposed in increasing degrees, under +a belief that we would fight neither in the mass nor individually. +Possibly, if it became known that the colonels refused to meet a +midshipman, the gentlemen of our Household troops would advance a step. + +Mrs. Calling's adroit efforts to weary him out of his project were +unsuccessful. He was too much on fire to know the taste of absurdity. + +Nevil repeated what he had written in French, and next the English of +what he intended to say. + +The lady conscientiously did her utmost to reconcile the two languages. +She softened his downrightness, passed with approval his compliments to +France and the ancient high reputation of her army, and, seeing that a +loophole was left for them to apologize, asked how many French colonels +he wanted to fight. + +'I do not WANT, ma'am,' said Nevil. + +He had simply taken up the glove they had again flung at our feet: and +he had done it to stop the incessant revilings, little short of positive +contempt, which we in our indolence exposed ourselves to from the +foreigner, particularly from Frenchmen, whom he liked; and precisely +because he liked them he insisted on forcing them to respect us. Let his +challenge be accepted, and he would find backers. He knew the stuff of +Englishmen: they only required an example. + +'French officers are skilful swordsmen,' said Mrs. Culling. 'My husband +has told me they will spend hours of the day thrusting and parrying. +They are used to duelling.' + +'We,' Nevil answered, 'don't get apprenticed to the shambles to learn +our duty on the field. Duelling is, I know, sickening folly. We go too +far in pretending to despise every insult pitched at us. A man may do +for his country what he wouldn't do for himself.' + +Mrs. Culling gravely said she hoped that bloodshed would be avoided, and +Mr. Beauchamp nodded. + +She left him hard at work. + +He was a popular boy, a favourite of women, and therefore full of +engagements to Balls and dinners. And he was a modest boy, though his +uncle encouraged him to deliver his opinions freely and argue with +men. The little drummer attached to wheeling columns thinks not more +of himself because his short legs perform the same strides as the +grenadiers'; he is happy to be able to keep the step; and so was Nevil; +and if ever he contradicted a senior, it was in the interests of the +country. Veneration of heroes, living and dead, kept down his conceit. +He worshipped devotedly. From an early age he exacted of his flattering +ladies that they must love his hero. Not to love his hero was to be +strangely in error, to be in need of conversion, and he proselytized +with the ardour of the Moslem. His uncle Everard was proud of his good +looks, fire, and nonsense, during the boy's extreme youth. He traced him +by cousinships back to the great Earl Beauchamp of Froissart, and would +have it so; and he would have spoilt him had not the young fellow's mind +been possessed by his reverence for men of deeds. How could he think +of himself, who had done nothing, accomplished nothing, so long as he +brooded on the images of signal Englishmen whose names were historic for +daring, and the strong arm, and artfulness, all given to the service of +the country?--men of a magnanimity overcast with simplicity, which +Nevil held to be pure insular English; our type of splendid manhood, not +discoverable elsewhere. A method of enraging him was to distinguish one +or other of them as Irish, Scottish, or Cambrian. He considered it a +dismemberment of the country. And notwithstanding the pleasure he had +in uniting in his person the strong red blood of the chivalrous Lord +Beauchamp with the hard and tenacious Romfrey blood, he hated the title +of Norman. We are English--British, he said. A family resting its pride +on mere ancestry provoked his contempt, if it did not show him one of +his men. He had also a disposition to esteem lightly the family which, +having produced a man, settled down after that effort for generations +to enjoy the country's pay. Boys are unjust; but Nevil thought of the +country mainly, arguing that we should not accept the country's money +for what we do not ourselves perform. These traits of his were regarded +as characteristics hopeful rather than the reverse; none of his friends +and relatives foresaw danger in them. He was a capital boy for his +elders to trot out and banter. + +Mrs. Rosamund Culling usually went to his room to see him and doat on +him before he started on his rounds of an evening. She suspected that +his necessary attention to his toilet would barely have allowed him time +to finish his copy of the letter. Certain phrases had bothered him. +The thrice recurrence of 'ma patrie' jarred on his ear. 'Sentiments' +afflicted his acute sense of the declamatory twice. 'C'est avec les +sentiments du plus profond regret': and again, 'Je suis bien scar +que vous comprendrez mes sentiments, et m'accorderez l'honneur que je +reclame au nom de ma patrie outrage.' The word 'patrie' was broadcast +over the letter, and 'honneur' appeared four times, and a more delicate +word to harp on than the others! + +'Not to Frenchmen,' said his friend Rosamund. 'I would put "Je suis +convaincu": it is not so familiar.' + +'But I have written out the fair copy, ma'am, and that alteration seems +a trifle.' + +'I would copy it again and again, Nevil, to get it right.' + +'No: I'd rather see it off than have it right,' said Nevil, and he +folded the letter. + +How the deuce to address it, and what direction to write on it, were +further difficulties. He had half a mind to remain at home to conquer +them by excogitation. + +Rosamund urged him not to break his engagement to dine at the Halketts', +where perhaps from his friend Colonel Halkett, who would never imagine +the reason for the inquiry, he might learn how a letter to a crack +French regiment should be addressed and directed. + +This proved persuasive, and as the hour was late Nevil had to act on her +advice in a hurry. + +His uncle Everard enjoyed a perusal of the manuscript in his absence. + + + + +CHAPTER II. UNCLE, NEPHEW, AND ANOTHER + +The Honourable Everard Romfrey came of a race of fighting earls, +toughest of men, whose high, stout, Western castle had weathered our +cyclone periods of history without changeing hands more than once, and +then but for a short year or two, as if to teach the original possessors +the wisdom of inclining to the stronger side. They had a queen's chamber +in it, and a king's; and they stood well up against the charge of having +dealt darkly with the king. He died among them--how has not been told. +We will not discuss the conjectures here. A savour of North Sea foam +and ballad pirates hangs about the early chronicles of the family. +Indications of an ancestry that had lived between the wave and the cloud +were discernible in their notions of right and wrong. But a settlement +on solid earth has its influences. They were chivalrous knights +bannerets, and leaders in the tented field, paying and taking fair +ransom for captures; and they were good landlords, good masters blithely +followed to the wars. Sing an old battle of Normandy, Picardy, +Gascony, and you celebrate deeds of theirs. At home they were vexatious +neighbours to a town of burghers claiming privileges: nor was it +unreasonable that the Earl should flout the pretensions of the town to +read things for themselves, documents, titleships, rights, and the rest. +As well might the flat plain boast of seeing as far as the pillar. Earl +and town fought the fight of Barons and Commons in epitome. The Earl +gave way; the Barons gave way. Mighty men may thrash numbers for a time; +in the end the numbers will be thrashed into the art of beating their +teachers. It is bad policy to fight the odds inch by inch. Those +primitive school masters of the million liked it, and took their +pleasure in that way. The Romfreys did not breed warriors for a parade +at Court; wars, though frequent, were not constant, and they wanted +occupation: they may even have felt that they were bound in no common +degree to the pursuit of an answer to what may be called the parent +question of humanity: Am I thy master, or thou mine? They put it to +lords of other castles, to town corporations, and sometimes brother to +brother: and notwithstanding that the answer often unseated and once +discastled them, they swam back to their places, as born warriors, urged +by a passion for land, are almost sure to do; are indeed quite sure, so +long as they multiply sturdily, and will never take no from Fortune. A +family passion for land, that survives a generation, is as effective as +genius in producing the object it conceives; and through marriages +and conflicts, the seizure of lands, and brides bearing land, these +sharp-feeding eagle-eyed earls of Romfrey spied few spots within their +top tower's wide circle of the heavens not their own. + +It is therefore manifest that they had the root qualities, the prime +active elements, of men in perfection, and notably that appetite to +flourish at the cost of the weaker, which is the blessed exemplification +of strength, and has been man's cheerfulest encouragement to fight on +since his comparative subjugation (on the whole, it seems complete) +of the animal world. By-and-by the struggle is transferred to higher +ground, and we begin to perceive how much we are indebted to the +fighting spirit. Strength is the brute form of truth. No conspicuously +great man was born of the Romfreys, who were better served by a +succession of able sons. They sent undistinguished able men to army and +navy--lieutenants given to be critics of their captains, but trustworthy +for their work. In the later life of the family, they preferred the +provincial state of splendid squires to Court and political honours. +They were renowned shots, long-limbed stalking sportsmen in field and +bower, fast friends, intemperate enemies, handsome to feminine eyes, +resembling one another in build, and mostly of the Northern colour, or +betwixt the tints, with an hereditary nose and mouth that cried Romfrey +from faces thrice diluted in cousinships. + +The Hon. Everard (Stephen Denely Craven Romfrey), third son of the +late Earl, had some hopes of the title, and was in person a noticeable +gentleman, in mind a mediaeval baron, in politics a crotchety +unintelligible Whig. He inherited the estate of Holdesbury, on the +borders of Hampshire and Wilts, and espoused that of Steynham in Sussex, +where he generally resided. His favourite in the family had been the +Lady Emily, his eldest sister, who, contrary to the advice of her other +brothers and sisters, had yielded her hand to his not wealthy friend, +Colonel Richard Beauchamp. After the death of Nevil's parents, he +adopted the boy, being himself childless, and a widower. Childlessness +was the affliction of the family. Everard, having no son, could hardly +hope that his brother the Earl, and Craven, Lord Avonley, would have +one, for he loved the prospect of the title. Yet, as there were no +cousins of the male branch extant, the lack of an heir was a serious +omission, and to become the Earl of Romfrey, and be the last Earl of +Romfrey, was a melancholy thought, however brilliant. So sinks the sun: +but he could not desire the end of a great day. At one time he was a hot +Parliamentarian, calling himself a Whig, called by the Whigs a Radical, +called by the Radicals a Tory, and very happy in fighting them all +round. This was during the decay of his party, before the Liberals were +defined. A Liberal deprived him of the seat he had held for fifteen +years, and the clearness of his understanding was obscured by that black +vision of popular ingratitude which afflicts the free fighting man +yet more than the malleable public servant. The latter has a clerkly +humility attached to him like a second nature, from his habit of doing +as others bid him: the former smacks a voluntarily sweating forehead +and throbbing wounds for witness of his claim upon your palpable +thankfulness. It is an insult to tell him that he fought for his own +satisfaction. Mr. Romfrey still called himself a Whig, though it was +Whig mean vengeance on account of his erratic vote and voice on two or +three occasions that denied him a peerage and a seat in haven. Thither +let your good sheep go, your echoes, your wag-tail dogs, your wealthy +pursy manufacturers! He decried the attractions of the sublimer House, +and laughed at the transparent Whiggery of his party in replenishing it +from the upper shoots of the commonalty: 'Dragging it down to prop it +up! swamping it to keep it swimming!' he said. + +He was nevertheless a vehement supporter of that House. He stood for +King, Lords, and Commons, in spite of his personal grievances, harping +the triad as vigorously as bard of old Britain. Commons he added out of +courtesy, or from usage or policy, or for emphasis, or for the sake of +the Constitutional number of the Estates of the realm, or it was because +he had an intuition of the folly of omitting them; the same, to some +extent, that builders have regarding bricks when they plan a fabric. +Thus, although King and Lords prove the existence of Commons in days +of the political deluge almost syllogistically, the example of not +including one of the Estates might be imitated, and Commons and King do +not necessitate the conception of an intermediate third, while Lords +and Commons suggest the decapitation of the leading figure. The united +three, however, no longer cast reflections on one another, and were +an assurance to this acute politician that his birds were safe. He +preserved game rigorously, and the deduction was the work of instinct +with him. To his mind the game-laws were the corner-stone of Law, and +of a man's right to hold his own; and so delicately did he think the +country poised, that an attack on them threatened the structure +of justice. The three conjoined Estates were therefore his head +gamekeepers; their duty was to back him against the poacher, if they +would not see the country tumble. As to his under-gamekeepers, he was +their intimate and their friend, saying, with none of the misanthropy +which proclaims the virtues of the faithful dog to the confusion of +humankind, he liked their company better than that of his equals, +and learnt more from them. They also listened deferentially to their +instructor. + +The conversation he delighted in most might have been going on in any +century since the Conquest. Grant him his not unreasonable argument upon +his property in game, he was a liberal landlord. No tenants were forced +to take his farms. He dragged none by the collar. He gave them liberty +to go to Australia, Canada, the Americas, if they liked. He asked in +return to have the liberty to shoot on his own grounds, and rear the +marks for his shot, treating the question of indemnification as a +gentleman should. Still there were grumbling tenants. He swarmed with +game, and, though he was liberal, his hares and his birds were immensely +destructive: computation could not fix the damage done by them. Probably +the farmers expected them not to eat. 'There are two parties to a +bargain,' said Everard, 'and one gets the worst of it. But if he was +never obliged to make it, where's his right to complain?' Men of sense +rarely obtain satisfactory answers: they are provoked to despise their +kind. But the poacher was another kind of vermin than the stupid tenant. +Everard did him the honour to hate him, and twice in a fray had he +collared his ruffian, and subsequently sat in condemnation of the +wretch: for he who can attest a villany is best qualified to punish it. +Gangs from the metropolis found him too determined and alert for their +sport. It was the factiousness of here and there an unbroken young +scoundrelly colt poacher of the neighbourhood, a born thief, a fellow +damned in an inveterate taste for game, which gave him annoyance. One +night he took Master Nevil out with him, and they hunted down a couple +of sinners that showed fight against odds. Nevil attempted to beg them +off because of their boldness. 'I don't set my traps for nothing,' +said his uncle, silencing him. But the boy reflected that his uncle was +perpetually lamenting the cowed spirit of the common English-formerly +such fresh and merry men! He touched Rosamund Culling's heart with his +description of their attitudes when they stood resisting and bawling +to the keepers, 'Come on we'll die for it.' They did not die. Everard +explained to the boy that he could have killed them, and was contented +to have sent them to gaol for a few weeks. Nevil gaped at the empty +magnanimity which his uncle presented to him as a remarkably big morsel. +At the age of fourteen he was despatched to sea. + +He went unwillingly; not so much from an objection to a naval life as +from a wish, incomprehensible to grown men and boys, and especially to +his cousin, Cecil Baskelett, that he might remain at school and learn. +'The fellow would like to be a parson!' Everard said in disgust. +No parson had ever been known of in the Romfrey family, or in the +Beauchamp. A legend of a parson that had been a tutor in one of the +Romfrey houses, and had talked and sung blandly to a damsel of the +blood--degenerate maid--to receive a handsome trouncing for his pains, +instead of the holy marriage-tie he aimed at, was the only connection +of the Romfreys with the parsonry, as Everard called them. He attributed +the boy's feeling to the influence of his great-aunt Beauchamp, who +would, he said, infallibly have made a parson of him. 'I'd rather enlist +for a soldier,' Nevil said, and he ceased to dream of rebellion, and of +his little property of a few thousand pounds in the funds to aid him in +it. He confessed to his dear friend Rosamund Culling that he thought +the parsons happy in having time to read history. And oh, to feel for +certain which side was the wrong side in our Civil War, so that one +should not hesitate in choosing! Such puzzles are never, he seemed to be +aware, solved in a midshipman's mess. He hated bloodshed, and was guilty +of the 'cotton-spinners' babble,' abhorred of Everard, in alluding to +it. Rosamund liked him for his humanity; but she, too, feared he was a +slack Romfrey when she heard him speak in precocious contempt of glory. +Somewhere, somehow, he had got hold of Manchester sarcasms concerning +glory: a weedy word of the newspapers had been sown in his bosom +perhaps. He said: 'I don't care to win glory; I know all about that; I +'ve seen an old hat in the Louvre.' And he would have had her to suppose +that he had looked on the campaigning head-cover of Napoleon simply as a +shocking bad, bald, brown-rubbed old tricorne rather than as the nod of +extinction to thousands, the great orb of darkness, the still-trembling +gloomy quiver--the brain of the lightnings of battles. + +Now this boy nursed no secret presumptuous belief that he was fitted for +the walks of the higher intellect; he was not having his impudent +boy's fling at superiority over the superior, as here and there a +subtle-minded vain juvenile will; nor was he a parrot repeating a line +from some Lancastrian pamphlet. He really disliked war and the sword; +and scorning the prospect of an idle life, confessing that his abilities +barely adapted him for a sailor's, he was opposed to the career opened +to him almost to the extreme of shrinking and terror. Or that was the +impression conveyed to a not unsympathetic hearer by his forlorn efforts +to make himself understood, which were like the tappings of the stick +of a blind man mystified by his sense of touch at wrong corners. His +bewilderment and speechlessness were a comic display, tragic to him. + +Just as his uncle Everard predicted, he came home from his first voyage +a pleasant sailor lad. His features, more than handsome to a woman, so +mobile they were, shone of sea and spirit, the chance lights of the sea, +and the spirit breathing out of it. As to war and bloodshed, a man's +first thought must be his country, young Jacket remarked, and 'Ich dien' +was the best motto afloat. Rosamund noticed the peculiarity of the books +he selected for his private reading. They were not boys' books, books of +adventure and the like. His favourite author was one writing of Heroes, +in (so she esteemed it) a style resembling either early architecture or +utter dilapidation, so loose and rough it seemed; a wind-in-the-orchard +style, that tumbled down here and there an appreciable fruit with +uncouth bluster; sentences without commencements running to abrupt +endings and smoke, like waves against a sea-wall, learned dictionary +words giving a hand to street-slang, and accents falling on them +haphazard, like slant rays from driving clouds; all the pages in a +breeze, the whole book producing a kind of electrical agitation in +the mind and the joints. This was its effect on the lady. To her the +incomprehensible was the abominable, for she had our country's high +critical feeling; but he, while admitting that he could not quite master +it, liked it. He had dug the book out of a bookseller's shop in Malta, +captivated by its title, and had, since the day of his purchase, gone at +it again and again, getting nibbles of golden meaning by instalments, as +with a solitary pick in a very dark mine, until the illumination of an +idea struck him that there was a great deal more in the book than there +was in himself. This was sufficient to secure the devoted attachment of +young Mr. Beauchamp. Rosamund sighed with apprehension to think of his +unlikeness to boys and men among his countrymen in some things. Why +should he hug a book he owned he could not quite comprehend? He said +he liked a bone in his mouth; and it was natural wisdom, though +unappreciated by women. A bone in a boy's mind for him to gnaw and +worry, corrects the vagrancies and promotes the healthy activities, +whether there be marrow in it or not. Supposing it furnishes only +dramatic entertainment in that usually vacant tenement, or powder-shell, +it will be of service. + +Nevil proposed to her that her next present should be the entire list +of his beloved Incomprehensible's published works, and she promised, and +was not sorry to keep her promise dangling at the skirts of memory, to +drop away in time. For that fire-and-smoke writer dedicated volumes +to the praise of a regicide. Nice reading for her dear boy! Some weeks +after Nevil was off again, she abused herself for her half-hearted love +of him, and would have given him anything--the last word in favour of +the Country versus the royal Martyr, for example, had he insisted on +it. She gathered, bit by bit, that he had dashed at his big blustering +cousin Cecil to vindicate her good name. The direful youths fought in +the Steynham stables, overheard by the grooms. Everard received a fine +account of the tussle from these latter, and Rosamund, knowing him to be +of the order of gentlemen who, whatsoever their sins, will at all costs +protect a woman's delicacy, and a dependant's, man or woman, did not +fear to have her ears shocked in probing him on the subject. + +Everard was led to say that Nevil's cousins were bedevilled with +womanfolk. + +From which Rosamund perceived that women had been at work; and if so, it +was upon the business of the scandal-monger; and if so, Nevil fought his +cousin to protect her good name from a babbler of the family gossip. + +She spoke to Stukely Culbrett, her dead husband's friend, to whose +recommendation she was indebted for her place in Everard Romfrey's +household. + +'Nevil behaved like a knight, I hear.' + +'Your beauty was disputed,' said he, 'and Nevil knocked the blind man +down for not being able to see.' + +She thought, 'Not my beauty! Nevil struck his cousin on behalf of the +only fair thing I have left to me!' + +This was a moment with her when many sensations rush together and form +a knot in sensitive natures. She had been very good-looking. She was +good-looking still, but she remembered the bloom of her looks in her +husband's days (the tragedy of the mirror is one for a woman to write: +I am ashamed to find myself smiling while the poor lady weeps), she +remembered his praises, her pride; his death in battle, her anguish: +then, on her strange entry to this house, her bitter wish to be +older; and then, the oppressive calm of her recognition of her wish's +fulfilment, the heavy drop to dead earth, when she could say, or pretend +to think she could say--I look old enough: will they tattle of me now? +Nevil's championship of her good name brought her history spinning about +her head, and threw a finger of light on her real position. In that she +saw the slenderness of her hold on respect, as well as felt her personal +stainlessness. The boy warmed her chill widowhood. It was written that +her, second love should be of the pattern of mother's love. She loved +him hungrily and jealously, always in fear for him when he was absent, +even anxiously when she had him near. For some cause, born, one may +fancy, of the hour of her love's conception, his image in her heart +was steeped in tears. She was not, happily, one of the women who betray +strong feeling, and humour preserved her from excesses of sentiment. + + + + +CHAPTER III. CONTAINS BARONIAL VIEWS OF THE PRESENT TIME + +Upon the word of honour of Rosamund, the letter to the officers of the +French Guard was posted. + +'Post it, post it,' Everard said, on her consulting him, with the letter +in her hand. 'Let the fellow stand his luck.' It was addressed to +the Colonel of the First Regiment of the Imperial Guard, Paris. That +superscription had been suggested by Colonel Halkett. Rosamund was in +favour of addressing it to Versailles, Nevil to the Tuileries; but Paris +could hardly fail to hit the mark, and Nevil waited for the reply, half +expecting an appointment on the French sands: for the act of posting a +letter, though it be to little short of the Pleiades even, will stamp +an incredible proceeding as a matter of business, so ready is the +ardent mind to take footing on the last thing done. The flight of Mr. +Beauchamp's letter placed it in the common order of occurrences for the +youthful author of it. Jack Wilmore, a messmate, offered to second him, +though he should be dismissed the service for it. Another second would +easily be found somewhere; for, as Nevil observed, you have only to set +these affairs going, and British blood rises: we are not the people you +see on the surface. Wilmore's father was a parson, for instance. What +did he do? He could not help himself: he supplied the army and navy with +recruits! One son was in a marching regiment, the other was Jack, +and three girls had vowed never to quit the rectory save as brides of +officers. Nevil thought that seemed encouraging; we were evidently not +a nation of shopkeepers at heart; and he quoted sayings of Mr. Stukely +Culbrett's, in which neither his ear nor Wilmore's detected the +under-ring Stukely was famous for: as that England had saddled herself +with India for the express purpose of better obeying the Commandments +in Europe; and that it would be a lamentable thing for the Continent +and our doctrines if ever beef should fail the Briton, and such like. +'Depend upon it we're a fighting nation naturally, Jack,' said Nevil. +'How can we submit!... however, I shall not be impatient. I dislike +duelling, and hate war, but I will have the country respected.' They +planned a defence of the country, drawing their strategy from magazine +articles by military pens, reverberations of the extinct voices of the +daily and weekly journals, customary after a panic, and making bloody +stands on spots of extreme pastoral beauty, which they visited by coach +and rail, looking back on unfortified London with particular melancholy. + +Rosamund's word may be trusted that she dropped the letter into a London +post-office in pursuance of her promise to Nevil. The singular fact +was that no answer to it ever arrived. Nevil, without a doubt of her +honesty, proposed an expedition to Paris; he was ordered to join his +ship, and he lay moored across the water in the port of Bevisham, +panting for notice to be taken of him. The slight of the total disregard +of his letter now affected him personally; it took him some time to get +over this indignity put upon him, especially because of his being under +the impression that the country suffered, not he at all. The letter had +served its object: ever since the transmission of it the menaces and +insults had ceased. + +But they might be renewed, and he desired to stop them altogether. +His last feeling was one of genuine regret that Frenchmen should have +behaved unworthily of the high estimation he held them in. With which he +dismissed the affair. + +He was rallied about it when he next sat at his uncle's table, and had +to pardon Rosamund for telling. + +Nevil replied modestly: 'I dare say you think me half a fool, sir. All +I know is, I waited for my betters to speak first. I have no dislike of +Frenchmen.' + +Everard shook his head to signify, 'not half.' But he was gentle enough +in his observations. 'There's a motto, Ex pede Herculem. You stepped out +for the dogs to judge better of us. It's an infernally tripping +motto for a composite structure like the kingdom of Great Britain and +Manchester, boy Nevil. We can fight foreigners when the time comes.' +He directed Nevil to look home, and cast an eye on the cotton-spinners, +with the remark that they were binding us hand and foot to sell us to +the biggest buyer, and were not Englishmen but 'Germans and Jews, and +quakers and hybrids, diligent clerks and speculators, and commercial +travellers, who have raised a fortune from foisting drugged goods on an +idiot population.' + +He loathed them for the curse they were to the country. And he was one +of the few who spoke out. The fashion was to pet them. We stood against +them; were halfhearted, and were beaten; and then we petted them, and +bit by bit our privileges were torn away. We made lords of them to +catch them, and they grocers of us by way of a return. 'Already,' said +Everard, 'they have knocked the nation's head off, and dry-rotted the +bone of the people.' + +'Don't they,' Nevil asked, 'belong to the Liberal party?' + +'I'll tell you,' Everard replied, 'they belong to any party that upsets +the party above them. They belong to the GEORGE FOXE party, and my +poultry-roosts are the mark they aim at. You shall have a glance at the +manufacturing district some day. You shall see the machines they work +with. You shall see the miserable lank-jawed half-stewed pantaloons +they've managed to make of Englishmen there. My blood 's past boiling. +They work young children in their factories from morning to night. Their +manufactories are spreading like the webs of the devil to suck the blood +of the country. In that district of theirs an epidemic levels men like +a disease in sheep. Skeletons can't make a stand. On the top of it all +they sing Sunday tunes!' + +This behaviour of corn-law agitators and protectors of poachers was an +hypocrisy too horrible for comment. Everard sipped claret. Nevil lashed +his head for the clear idea which objurgation insists upon implanting, +but batters to pieces in the act. + +'Manchester's the belly of this country!' Everard continued. 'So long +as Manchester flourishes, we're a country governed and led by the belly. +The head and the legs of the country are sound still; I don't guarantee +it for long, but the middle's rapacious and corrupt. Take it on a +question of foreign affairs, it 's an alderman after a feast. Bring it +upon home politics, you meet a wolf.' + +The faithful Whig veteran spoke with jolly admiration of the speech of a +famous Tory chief. + +'That was the way to talk to them! Denounce them traitors! Up whip, and +set the ruffians capering! Hit them facers! Our men are always for the +too-clever trick. They pluck the sprouts and eat them, as if the loss +of a sprout or two thinned Manchester! Your policy of absorption is good +enough when you're dealing with fragments. It's a devilish unlucky thing +to attempt with a concrete mass. You might as well ask your head to +absorb a wall by running at it like a pugnacious nigger. I don't want +you to go into Parliament ever. You're a fitter man out of it; but if +ever you're bitten--and it's the curse of our country to have politics +as well as the other diseases--don't follow a flag, be independent, +keep a free vote; remember how I've been tied, and hold foot against +Manchester. Do it blindfold; you don't want counselling, you're sure to +be right. I'll lay you a blood-brood mare to a cabstand skeleton, you'll +have an easy conscience and deserve the thanks of the country.' + +Nevil listened gravely. The soundness of the head and legs of the +country he took for granted. The inflated state of the unchivalrous +middle, denominated Manchester, terrified him. Could it be true +that England was betraying signs of decay? and signs how ignoble! +Half-a-dozen crescent lines cunningly turned, sketched her figure before +the world, and the reflection for one ready to die upholding her was +that the portrait was no caricature. Such an emblematic presentation +of the land of his filial affection haunted him with hideous mockeries. +Surely the foreigner hearing our boasts of her must compare us to +showmen bawling the attractions of a Fat Lady at a fair! + +Swoln Manchester bore the blame of it. Everard exulted to hear his young +echo attack the cotton-spinners. But Nevil was for a plan, a system, +immediate action; the descending among the people, and taking an +initiative, LEADING them, insisting on their following, not standing +aloof and shrugging. + +'We lead them in war,' said he; 'why not in peace? There's a front for +peace as well as war, and that's our place rightly. We're pushed aside; +why, it seems to me we're treated like old-fashioned ornaments! The +fault must be ours. Shrugging and sneering is about as honourable as +blazing fireworks over your own defeat. Back we have to go! that's +the point, sir. And as for jeering the cotton-spinners, I can't while +they've the lead of us. We let them have it! And we have thrice the +stake in the country. I don't mean properties and titles.' + +'Deuce you don't,' said his uncle. + +'I mean our names, our histories; I mean our duties. As for titles, the +way to defend them is to be worthy of them.' + +'Damned fine speech,' remarked Everard. 'Now you get out of that trick +of prize-orationing. I call it snuffery, sir; it's all to your own nose! +You're talking to me, not to a gallery. "Worthy of them!" Caesar +wraps his head in his robe: he gets his dig in the ribs for all his +attitudinizing. It's very well for a man to talk like that who owns no +more than his barebodkin life, poor devil. Tall talk's his jewelry: +he must have his dandification in bunkum. You ought to know better. +Property and titles are worth having, whether you are "worthy of them" +or a disgrace to your class. The best way of defending them is to keep a +strong fist, and take care you don't draw your fore-foot back more than +enough.' + +'Please propose something to be done,' said Nevil, depressed by the +recommendation of that attitude. + +Everard proposed a fight for every privilege his class possessed. 'They +say,' he said, 'a nobleman fighting the odds is a sight for the gods: +and I wouldn't yield an inch of ground. It's no use calling things by +fine names--the country's ruined by cowardice. Poursuivez! I cry. Haro! +at them! The biggest hart wins in the end. I haven't a doubt about that. +And I haven't a doubt we carry the tonnage.' + +'There's the people,' sighed Nevil, entangled in his uncle's haziness. + +'What people?' + +'I suppose the people of Great Britain count, sir.' + +'Of course they do; when the battle's done, the fight lost and won.' + +'Do you expect the people to look on, sir?' + +'The people always wait for the winner, boy Nevil.' + +The young fellow exclaimed despondingly, 'If it were a race!' + +'It's like a race, and we're confoundedly out of training,' said +Everard. + +There he rested. A mediaeval gentleman with the docile notions of the +twelfth century, complacently driving them to grass and wattling them in +the nineteenth, could be of no use to a boy trying to think, though he +could set the youngster galloping. Nevil wandered about the woods of +Steynham, disinclined to shoot and lend a hand to country sports. The +popping of the guns of his uncle and guests hung about his ears +much like their speech, which was unobjectionable in itself, but +not sufficient; a little hard, he thought, a little idle. He wanted +something, and wanted them to give their time and energy to something, +that was not to be had in a market. The nobles, he felt sure, might +resume their natural alliance with the people, and lead them, as they +did of old, to the battle-field. How might they? A comely Sussex lass +could not well tell him how. Sarcastic reports of the troublesome +questioner represented him applying to a nymph of the country for +enlightenment. He thrilled surprisingly under the charm of feminine +beauty. 'The fellow's sound at bottom,' his uncle said, hearing of +his having really been seen walking in the complete form proper to his +budding age, that is, in two halves. Nevil showed that he had gained an +acquaintance with the struggles of the neighbouring agricultural poor +to live and rear their children. His uncle's table roared at his +enumeration of the sickly little beings, consumptive or bandy-legged, +within a radius of five miles of Steynham. Action was what he wanted, +Everard said. Nevil perhaps thought the same, for he dashed out of his +mooning with a wave of the Tory standard, delighting the ladies, though +in that conflict of the Lion and the Unicorn (which was a Tory song) he +seemed rather to wish to goad the dear lion than crush the one-horned +intrusive upstart. His calling on the crack corps of Peers to enrol +themselves forthwith in the front ranks, and to anticipate opposition +by initiating measures, and so cut out that funny old crazy old galleon, +the People, from under the batteries of the enemy, highly amused the +gentlemen. + +Before rejoining his ship, Nevil paid his customary short visit of +ceremony to his great-aunt Beauchamp--a venerable lady past eighty, +hitherto divided from him in sympathy by her dislike of his uncle +Everard, who had once been his living hero. That was when he was in +frocks, and still the tenacious fellow could not bear to hear his uncle +spoken ill of. + +'All the men of that family are heartless, and he is a man of wood, my +dear, and a bad man,' the old lady said. 'He should have kept you at +school, and sent you to college. You want reading and teaching and +talking to. Such a house as that is should never be a home for you.' +She hinted at Rosamund. Nevil defended the persecuted woman, but with +no better success than from the attacks of the Romfrey ladies; with this +difference, however, that these decried the woman's vicious arts, and +Mistress Elizabeth Mary Beauchamp put all the sin upon the man. Such a +man! she said. 'Let me hear that he has married her, I will not utter +another word.' Nevil echoed, 'Married!' in a different key. + +'I am as much of an aristocrat as any of you, only I rank morality +higher,' said Mrs. Beauchamp. 'When you were a child I offered to take +you and make you my heir, and I would have educated you. You shall see +a great-nephew of mine that I did educate; he is eating his dinners for +the bar in London, and comes to me every Sunday. I shall marry him to a +good girl, and I shall show your uncle what my kind of man-making is.' + +Nevil had no desire to meet the other great-nephew, especially when +he was aware of the extraordinary circumstance that a Beauchamp +great-niece, having no money, had bestowed her hand on a Manchester man +defunct, whereof this young Blackburn Tuckham, the lawyer, was issue. +He took his leave of Mrs. Elizabeth Beauchamp, respecting her for her +constitutional health and brightness, and regretting for the sake of +the country that she had not married to give England men and women +resembling her. On the whole he considered her wiser in her prescription +for the malady besetting him than his uncle. He knew that action was but +a temporary remedy. College would have been his chronic medicine, and +the old lady's acuteness in seeing it impressed him forcibly. She had +given him a peaceable two days on the Upper Thames, in an atmosphere of +plain good sense and just-mindedness. He wrote to thank her, saying: + +'My England at sea will be your parlour-window looking down the grass +to the river and rushes; and when you do me the honour to write, please +tell me the names of those wildflowers growing along the banks in +Summer.' The old lady replied immediately, enclosing a cheque for fifty +pounds: 'Colonel Halkett informs me you are under a cloud at Steynham, +and I have thought you may be in want of pocket-money. The wild-flowers +are willowherb, meadow-sweet, and loosestrife. I shall be glad when you +are here in Summer to see them.' + +Nevil despatched the following: 'I thank you, but I shall not cash the +cheque. The Steynham tale is this: + +I happened to be out at night, and stopped the keepers in chase of a +young fellow trespassing. I caught him myself, but recognized him as one +of a family I take an interest in, and let him run before they came up. +My uncle heard a gun; I sent the head gamekeeper word in the morning to +out with it all. Uncle E. was annoyed, and we had a rough parting. If +you are rewarding me for this, I have no right to it.' + +Mrs. Beauchamp rejoined: 'Your profession should teach you +subordination, if it does nothing else that is valuable to a Christian +gentleman. You will receive from the publisher the "Life and Letters +of Lord Collingwood," whom I have it in my mind that a young midshipman +should task himself to imitate. Spend the money as you think fit.' + +Nevil's ship, commanded by Captain Robert Hall (a most gallant officer, +one of his heroes, and of Lancashire origin, strangely!), flew to the +South American station, in and about Lord Cochrane's waters; then as +swiftly back. For, like the frail Norwegian bark on the edge of the +maelstrom, liker to a country of conflicting interests and passions, +that is not mentally on a level with its good fortune, England was +drifting into foreign complications. A paralyzed Minister proclaimed it. +The governing people, which is looked to for direction in grave dilemmas +by its representatives and reflectors, shouted that it had been accused +of pusillanimity. No one had any desire for war, only we really had (and +it was perfectly true) been talking gigantic nonsense of peace, and of +the everlastingness of the exchange of fruits for money, with angels +waving raw-groceries of Eden in joy of the commercial picture. +Therefore, to correct the excesses of that fit, we held the standing by +the Moslem, on behalf of the Mediterranean (and the Moslem is one of our +customers, bearing an excellent reputation for the payment of debts), +to be good, granting the necessity. We deplored the necessity. The Press +wept over it. That, however, was not the politic tone for us while the +Imperial berg of Polar ice watched us keenly; and the Press proceeded +to remind us that we had once been bull-dogs. Was there not an animal +within us having a right to a turn now and then? And was it not +(Falstaff, on a calm world, was quoted) for the benefit of our +constitutions now and then to loosen the animal? Granting the necessity, +of course. By dint of incessantly speaking of the necessity we granted +it unknowingly. The lighter hearts regarded our period of monotonously +lyrical prosperity as a man sensible of fresh morning air looks back on +the snoring bolster. Many of the graver were glad of a change. After all +that maundering over the blessed peace which brings the raisin and the +currant for the pudding, and shuts up the cannon with a sheep's head, it +became a principle of popular taste to descant on the vivifying virtues +of war; even as, after ten months of money-mongering in smoky London, +the citizen hails the sea-breeze and an immersion in unruly brine, +despite the cost, that breeze and brine may make a man of him, according +to the doctor's prescription: sweet is home, but health is sweeter! +Then was there another curious exhibition of us. Gentlemen, to the +exact number of the Graces, dressed in drab of an ancient cut, made a +pilgrimage to the icy despot, and besought him to give way for Piety's +sake. He, courteous, colossal, and immoveable, waved them homeward. They +returned and were hooted for belying the bellicose by their mission, and +interpreting too well the peaceful. They were the unparalyzed Ministers +of the occasion, but helpless. + +And now came war, the purifier and the pestilence. + +The cry of the English people for war was pretty general, as far as the +criers went. They put on their Sabbath face concerning the declaration +of war, and told with approval how the Royal hand had trembled in +committing itself to the form of signature to which its action is +limited. If there was money to be paid, there was a bugbear to be +slain for it; and a bugbear is as obnoxious to the repose of commercial +communities as rivals are to kings. + +The cry for war was absolutely unanimous, and a supremely national cry, +Everard Romfrey said, for it excluded the cotton-spinners. + +He smacked his hands, crowing at the vociferations of disgust of those +negrophiles and sweaters of Christians, whose isolated clamour amid the +popular uproar sounded of gagged mouths. + +One of the half-stifled cotton-spinners, a notorious one, a spouter of +rank sedition and hater of aristocracy, a political poacher, managed to +make himself heard. He was tossed to the Press for morsel, and tossed +back to the people in strips. Everard had a sharp return of appetite in +reading the daily and weekly journals. They printed logic, they printed +sense; they abused the treasonable barking cur unmercifully. They +printed almost as much as he would have uttered, excepting the strong +salt of his similes, likening that rascal and his crew to the American +weed in our waters, to the rotting wild bees' nest in our trees, to the +worm in our ships' timbers, and to lamentable afflictions of the human +frame, and of sheep, oxen, honest hounds. Manchester was in eclipse. The +world of England discovered that the peace-party which opposed was the +actual cause of the war: never was indication clearer. But my business +is with Mr. Beauchamp, to know whom, and partly understand his conduct +in after-days, it will be as well to take a bird'seye glance at him +through the war. + +'Now,' said Everard, 'we shall see what staff there is in that fellow +Nevil.' + +He expected, as you may imagine, a true young Beauchamp-Romfrey to be +straining his collar like a leash-hound. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. A GLIMPSE OF NEVIL IN ACTION + +The young gentleman to whom Everard Romfrey transferred his combative +spirit despatched a letter from the Dardanelles, requesting his uncle +not to ask him for a spark of enthusiasm. He despised our Moslem +allies, he said, and thought with pity of the miserable herds of men in +regiments marching across the steppes at the bidding of a despot that we +were helping to popularize. He certainly wrote in the tone of a jejune +politician; pardonable stuff to seniors entertaining similar opinions, +but most exasperating when it runs counter to them: though one question +put by Nevil was not easily answerable. He wished to know whether the +English people would be so anxious to be at it if their man stood on the +opposite shore and talked of trying conclusions on their green fields. +And he suggested that they had become so ready for war because of their +having grown rather ashamed of themselves, and for the special reason +that they could have it at a distance. + +'The rascal's liver's out of order,' Everard said. + +Coming to the sentence: 'Who speaks out in this crisis? There is one, +and I am with him'; Mr. Romfrey's compassionate sentiments veered round +to irate amazement. For the person alluded to was indeed the infamous +miauling cotton-spinner. Nevil admired him. He said so bluntly. He +pointed to that traitorous George-Foxite as the one heroical Englishman +of his day, declaring that he felt bound in honour to make known his +admiration for the man; and he hoped his uncle would excuse him. 'If +we differ, I am sorry, sir; but I should be a coward to withhold what +I think of him when he has all England against him, and he is in the +right, as England will discover. I maintain he speaks wisely--I don't +mind saying, like a prophet; and he speaks on behalf of the poor as well +as of the country. He appears to me the only public man who looks to the +state of the poor--I mean, their interests. They pay for war, and if we +are to have peace at home and strength for a really national war, the +only war we can ever call necessary, the poor must be contented. He sees +that. I shall not run the risk of angering you by writing to defend him, +unless I hear of his being shamefully mishandled, and the bearer of an +old name can be of service to him. I cannot say less, and will say no +more.' + +Everard apostrophized his absent nephew: 'You jackass!' + +I am reminded by Mr. Romfrey's profound disappointment in the youth, +that it will be repeatedly shared by many others: and I am bound to +forewarn readers of this history that there is no plot in it. The hero +is chargeable with the official disqualification of constantly offending +prejudices, never seeking to please; and all the while it is upon him +the narrative hangs. To be a public favourite is his last thought. +Beauchampism, as one confronting him calls it, may be said to stand for +nearly everything which is the obverse of Byronism, and rarely woos your +sympathy, shuns the statuesque pathetic, or any kind of posturing. +For Beauchamp will not even look at happiness to mourn its absence; +melodious lamentations, demoniacal scorn, are quite alien to him. His +faith is in working and fighting. With every inducement to offer himself +for a romantic figure, he despises the pomades and curling-irons of +modern romance, its shears and its labels: in fine, every one of those +positive things by whose aid, and by some adroit flourishing of them, +the nimbus known as a mysterious halo is produced about a gentleman's +head. And a highly alluring adornment it is! We are all given to lose +our solidity and fly at it; although the faithful mirror of fiction +has been showing us latterly that a too superhuman beauty has disturbed +popular belief in the bare beginnings of the existence of heroes: but +this, very likely, is nothing more than a fit of Republicanism in the +nursery, and a deposition of the leading doll for lack of variety in +him. That conqueror of circumstances will, the dullest soul may begin +predicting, return on his cockhorse to favour and authority. Meantime +the exhibition of a hero whom circumstances overcome, and who does not +weep or ask you for a tear, who continually forfeits attractiveness by +declining to better his own fortunes, must run the chances of a novelty +during the interregnum. Nursery Legitimists will be against him to a +man; Republicans likewise, after a queer sniff at his pretensions, it is +to be feared. For me, I have so little command over him, that in spite +of my nursery tastes, he drags me whither he lists. It is artless art +and monstrous innovation to present so wilful a figure, but were I to +create a striking fable for him, and set him off with scenic effects +and contrasts, it would be only a momentary tonic to you, to him instant +death. He could not live in such an atmosphere. The simple truth has to +be told: how he loved his country, and for another and a broader +love, growing out of his first passion, fought it; and being small by +comparison, and finding no giant of the Philistines disposed to receive +a stone in his fore-skull, pummelled the obmutescent mass, to the +confusion of a conceivable epic. His indifferent England refused it to +him. That is all I can say. The greater power of the two, she seems, +with a quiet derision that does not belie her amiable passivity, to have +reduced in Beauchamp's career the boldest readiness for public action, +and some good stout efforts besides, to the flat result of an optically +discernible influence of our hero's character in the domestic circle; +perhaps a faintly-outlined circle or two beyond it. But this does +not forbid him to be ranked as one of the most distinguishing of her +children of the day he lived in. Blame the victrix if you think he +should have been livelier. + +Nevil soon had to turn his telescope from politics. The torch of war +was actually lighting, and he was not fashioned to be heedless of what +surrounded him. Our diplomacy, after dancing with all the suppleness of +stilts, gravely resigned the gift of motion. Our dauntless Lancastrian +thundered like a tempest over a gambling tent, disregarded. Our worthy +people, consenting to the doctrine that war is a scourge, contracted the +habit of thinking it, in this case, the dire necessity which is the +sole excuse for giving way to an irritated pugnacity, and sucked the +comforting caramel of an alliance with their troublesome next-door +neighbour, profuse in comfits as in scorpions. Nevil detected that +politic element of their promptitude for war. His recollections of +dissatisfaction in former days assisted him to perceive the nature of +it, but he was too young to hold his own against the hubbub of a +noisy people, much too young to remain sceptical of a modern people's +enthusiasm for war while journals were testifying to it down the +length of their columns, and letters from home palpitated with it, and +shipmates yawned wearily for the signal, and shiploads of red coats and +blue, infantry, cavalry, artillery, were singing farewell to the girl +at home, and hurrah for anything in foreign waters. He joined the stream +with a cordial spirit. Since it must be so! The wind of that haughty +proceeding of the Great Bear in putting a paw over the neutral brook +brushed his cheek unpleasantly. He clapped hands for the fezzy defenders +of the border fortress, and when the order came for the fleet to enter +the old romantic sea of storms and fables, he wrote home a letter +fit for his uncle Everard to read. Then there was the sailing and the +landing, and the march up the heights, which Nevil was condemned to +look at. To his joy he obtained an appointment on shore, and after that +Everard heard of him from other channels. The two were of a mind when +the savage winter advanced which froze the attack of the city, and might +be imaged as the hoar god of hostile elements pointing a hand to +the line reached, and menacing at one farther step. Both blamed +the Government, but they divided as to the origin of governmental +inefficiency; Nevil accusing the Lords guilty of foulest sloth, Everard +the Quakers of dry-rotting the country. He passed with a shrug Nevil's +puling outcry for the enemy as well as our own poor fellows: 'At his +steppes again!' And he had to be forgiving when reports came of his +nephew's turn for overdoing his duty: 'show-fighting,' as he termed it. + +'Braggadocioing in deeds is only next bad to mouthing it,' he wrote very +rationally. 'Stick to your line. Don't go out of it till you are +ordered out. Remember that we want soldiers and sailors, we don't want +suicides.' He condescended to these italics, considering impressiveness +to be urgent. In his heart, notwithstanding his implacably clear +judgement, he was passably well pleased with the congratulations +encompassing him on account of his nephew's gallantry at a period of +dejection in Britain: for the winter was dreadful; every kind heart that +went to bed with cold feet felt acutely for our soldiers on the frozen +heights, and thoughts of heroes were as good as warming-pans. Heroes we +would have. It happens in war as in wit, that all the birds of wonder +fly to a flaring reputation. He that has done one wild thing must +necessarily have done the other; so Nevil found himself standing in +the thick of a fame that blew rank eulogies on him for acts he had not +performed. The Earl of Romfrey forwarded hampers and a letter of +praise. 'They tell me that while you were facing the enemy, temporarily +attaching yourself to one of the regiments--I forget which, though I +have heard it named--you sprang out under fire on an eagle clawing a +hare. I like that. I hope you had the benefit of the hare. She is our +property, and I have issued an injunction that she shall not go into the +newspapers.' Everard was entirely of a contrary opinion concerning +the episode of eagle and hare, though it was a case of a bird of +prey interfering with an object of the chase. Nevil wrote home most +entreatingly and imperatively, like one wincing, begging him to +contradict that and certain other stories, and prescribing the form of a +public renunciation of his proclaimed part in them. 'The hare,' he sent +word, 'is the property of young Michell of the Rodney, and he is the +humanest and the gallantest fellow in the service. I have written to my +Lord. Pray help to rid me of burdens that make me feel like a robber and +impostor.' + +Everard replied: + +'I have a letter from your captain, informing me that I am unlikely to +see you home unless you learn to hold yourself in. I wish you were in +another battery than Robert Hall's. He forgets the force of example, +however much of a dab he may be at precept. But there you are, and +please clap a hundredweight on your appetite for figuring, will you. Do +you think there is any good in helping to Frenchify our army? I loathe a +fellow who shoots at a medal. I wager he is easy enough to be caught by +circumvention--put me in the open with him. Tom Biggot, the boxer, +went over to Paris, and stood in the ring with one of their dancing +pugilists, and the first round he got a crack on the chin from the +rogue's foot; the second round he caught him by the lifted leg, and +punished him till pec was all he could say of peccavi. Fight the +straightforward fight. Hang flan! Battle is a game of give and take, and +if our men get elanned, we shall see them refusing to come up to time. +This new crossing and medalling is the devil's own notion for upsetting +a solid British line, and tempting fellows to get invalided that they +may blaze it before the shopkeepers and their wives in the city. Give us +an army!--none of your caperers. Here are lots of circusy heroes coming +home to rest after their fatigues. One was spouting at a public +dinner yesterday night. He went into it upright, and he ran out of it +upright--at the head of his men!--and here he is feasted by the citizens +and making a speech upright, and my boy fronting the enemy!' + +Everard's involuntary break-down from his veteran's roughness to a touch +of feeling thrilled Nevil, who began to perceive what his uncle was +driving at when he rebuked the coxcombry of the field, and spoke of the +description of compliment your hero was paying Englishmen in affecting +to give them examples of bravery and preternatural coolness. Nevil sent +home humble confessions of guilt in this respect, with fresh praises of +young Michell: for though Everard, as Nevil recognized it, was perfectly +right in the abstract, and generally right, there are times when an +example is needed by brave men--times when the fiery furnace of death's +dragon-jaw is not inviting even to Englishmen receiving the word that +duty bids them advance, and they require a leader of the way. A national +coxcombry that pretends to an independence of human sensations, and +makes a motto of our dandiacal courage, is more perilous to the armies +of the nation than that of a few heroes. It is this coxcombry which has +too often caused disdain of the wise chief's maxim of calculation for +winners, namely, to have always the odds on your side, and which has +bled, shattered, and occasionally disgraced us. Young Michell's carrying +powder-bags to the assault, and when ordered to retire, bearing them on +his back, and helping a wounded soldier on the way, did surely well; +nor did Mr. Beauchamp himself behave so badly on an occasion when the +sailors of his battery caught him out of a fire of shell that raised +jets of dust and smoke like a range of geysers over the open, and hugged +him as loving women do at a meeting or a parting. He was penitent before +his uncle, admitting, first, that the men were not in want of an example +of the contempt of death, and secondly, that he doubted whether it was +contempt of death on his part so much as pride--a hatred of being seen +running. + +'I don't like the fellow to be drawing it so fine,' said Everard. It +sounded to him a trifle parsonical. But his heart was won by Nevil's +determination to wear out the campaign rather than be invalided or +entrusted with a holiday duty. + +'I see with shame (admiration of them) old infantry captains and +colonels of no position beyond their rank in the army, sticking to their +post,' said Nevil, 'and a lord and a lord and a lord slipping off as +though the stuff of the man in him had melted. I shall go through with +it.' Everard approved him. Colonel Halkett wrote that the youth was a +skeleton. Still Everard encouraged him to persevere, and said of him: + +'I like him for holding to his work after the strain's over. That tells +the man.' + +He observed at his table, in reply to commendations of his nephew: + +'Nevil's leak is his political craze, and that seems to be going: I hope +it is. You can't rear a man on politics. When I was of his age I never +looked at the newspapers, except to read the divorce cases. I came to +politics with a ripe judgement. He shines in action, and he'll find that +out, and leave others the palavering.' + +It was upon the close of the war that Nevil drove his uncle to avow a +downright undisguised indignation with him. He caught a fever in the +French camp, where he was dispensing vivers and provends out of English +hampers. + +'Those French fellows are every man of them trained up to +snapping-point,' said Everard. 'You're sure to have them if you hold out +long against them. And greedy dogs too: they're for half our hampers, +and all the glory. And there's Nevil down on his back in the thick of +them! Will anybody tell me why the devil he must be poking into the +French camp? They were ready enough to run to him and beg potatoes. It +'s all for humanity he does it-mark that. Never was a word fitter for a +quack's mouth than "humanity." Two syllables more, and the parsons would +be riding it to sawdust. Humanity! Humanitomtity! It's the best word of +the two for half the things done in the name of it.' + +A tremendously bracing epistle, excellent for an access of fever, +was despatched to humanity's curate, and Everard sat expecting a hot +rejoinder, or else a black sealed letter, but neither one nor the other +arrived. + +Suddenly, to his disgust, came rumours of peace between the mighty +belligerents. + +The silver trumpets of peace were nowhere hearkened to with satisfaction +by the bull-dogs, though triumph rang sonorously through the music, for +they had been severely mangled, as usual at the outset, and they had at +last got their grip, and were in high condition for fighting. + +The most expansive panegyrists of our deeds did not dare affirm of the +most famous of them, that England had embarked her costly cavalry to +offer it for a mark of artillery-balls on three sides of a square: and +the belief was universal that we could do more business-like deeds and +play the great game of blunders with an ability refined by experience. +Everard Romfrey was one of those who thought themselves justified in +insisting upon the continuation of the war, in contempt of our allies. +His favourite saying that constitution beats the world, was being +splendidly manifested by our bearing. He was very uneasy; he would +not hear of peace; and not only that, the imperial gentleman soberly +committed the naivete of sending word to Nevil to let him know +immediately the opinion of the camp concerning it, as perchance an +old Roman knight may have written to some young aquilifer of the +Praetorians. + +Allies, however, are of the description of twins joined by a membrane, +and supposing that one of them determines to sit down, the other will +act wisely in bending his knees at once, and doing the same: he cannot +but be extremely uncomfortable left standing. Besides, there was the +Ottoman cleverly poised again; the Muscovite was battered; fresh guilt +was added to the military glory of the Gaul. English grumblers might +well be asked what they had fought for, if they were not contented. + +Colonel Halkett mentioned a report that Nevil had received a slight +thigh-wound of small importance. At any rate, something was the matter +with him, and it was naturally imagined that he would have double cause +to write home; and still more so for the reason, his uncle +confessed, that he had foreseen the folly of a war conducted by milky +cotton-spinners and their adjuncts, in partnership with a throned +gambler, who had won his stake, and now snapped his fingers at +them. Everard expected, he had prepared himself for, the young naval +politician's crow, and he meant to admit frankly that he had been wrong +in wishing to fight anybody without having first crushed the cotton +faction. But Nevil continued silent. + +'Dead in hospital or a Turk hotel!' sighed Everard; 'and no more to the +scoundrels over there than a body to be shovelled into slack lime.' + +Rosamund Culling was the only witness of his remarkable betrayal of +grief. + + + + +CHAPTER V. RENEE + +At last, one morning, arrived a letter from a French gentleman signing +himself Comte Cresnes de Croisnel, in which Everard was informed that +his nephew had accompanied the son of the writer, Captain de Croisnel, +on board an Austrian boat out of the East, and was lying in Venice under +a return-attack of fever,--not, the count stated pointedly, in the hands +of an Italian physician. He had brought his own with him to meet his +son, who was likewise disabled. + +Everard was assured by M. de Croisnel that every attention and +affectionate care were being rendered to his gallant and adored +nephew--'vrai type de tout ce qu'il y a de noble et de chevaleresque +dans la vieille Angleterre'--from a family bound to him by the tenderest +obligations, personal and national; one as dear to every member of it as +the brother, the son, they welcomed with thankful hearts to the Divine +interposition restoring him to them. In conclusion, the count proposed +something like the embrace of a fraternal friendship should Everard +think fit to act upon the spontaneous sentiments of a loving relative, +and join them in Venice to watch over his nephew's recovery. Already +M. Nevil was stronger. The gondola was a medicine in itself, the count +said. + +Everard knitted his mouth to intensify a peculiar subdued form of +laughter through the nose, in hopeless ridicule of a Frenchman's notions +of an Englishman's occupations--presumed across Channel to allow of his +breaking loose from shooting engagements at a minute's notice, to +rush off to a fetid foreign city notorious for mud and mosquitoes, and +commence capering and grimacing, pouring forth a jugful of ready-made +extravagances, with 'mon fils! mon cher neveu! Dieu!' and similar +fiddlededee. These were matters for women to do, if they chose: women +and Frenchmen were much of a pattern. Moreover, he knew the hotel this +Comte de Croisnel was staying at. He gasped at the name of it: he had +rather encounter a grisly bear than a mosquito any night of his life, +for no stretch of cunning outwits a mosquito; and enlarging on the +qualities of the terrific insect, he vowed it was damnation without +trial or judgement. + +Eventually, Mrs. Culling's departure was permitted. He argued, 'Why +go? the fellow's comfortable, getting himself together, and you say the +French are good nurses.' But her entreaties to go were vehement, though +Venice had no happy place in her recollections, and he withheld his +objections to her going. For him, the fields forbade it. He sent hearty +messages to Nevil, and that was enough, considering that the young +dog of 'humanity' had clearly been running out of his way to catch +a jaundice, and was bereaving his houses of the matronly government, +deprived of which they were all of them likely soon to be at sixes and +sevens with disorderly lacqueys, peccant maids, and cooks in hysterics. + +Now if the master of his fortunes had come to Venice!--Nevil started the +supposition in his mind often after hope had sunk.--Everard would have +seen a young sailor and a soldier the thinner for wear, reclining in a +gondola half the day, fanned by a brunette of the fine lineaments of the +good blood of France. She chattered snatches of Venetian caught from +the gondoliers, she was like a delicate cup of crystal brimming with the +beauty of the place, and making one of them drink in all his impressions +through her. Her features had the soft irregularities which run to +rarities of beauty, as the ripple rocks the light; mouth, eyes, brows, +nostrils, and bloomy cheeks played into one another liquidly; thought +flew, tongue followed, and the flash of meaning quivered over them +like night-lightning. Or oftener, to speak truth, tongue flew, thought +followed: her age was but newly seventeen, and she was French. + +Her name was Renee. She was the only daughter of the Comte de Croisnel. +Her brother Roland owed his life to Nevil, this Englishman proud of a +French name--Nevil Beauchamp. If there was any warm feeling below the +unruffled surface of the girl's deliberate eyes while gazing on him, it +was that he who had saved her brother must be nearly brother himself, +yet was not quite, yet must be loved, yet not approached. He was her +brother's brother-in-arms, brother-in-heart, not hers, yet hers through +her brother. His French name rescued him from foreignness. He spoke +her language with a piquant accent, unlike the pitiable English. Unlike +them, he was gracious, and could be soft and quick. The battle-scarlet, +battle-black, Roland's tales of him threw round him in her imagination, +made his gentleness a surprise. If, then, he was hers through her +brother, what was she to him? The question did not spring clearly within +her, though she was alive to every gradual change of manner toward the +convalescent necessitated by the laws overawing her sex. + +Venice was the French girl's dream. She was realizing it hungrily, +revelling in it, anatomizing it, picking it to pieces, reviewing it, +comparing her work with the original, and the original with her first +conception, until beautiful sad Venice threatened to be no more her +dream, and in dread of disenchantment she tried to take impressions +humbly, really tasked herself not to analyze, not to dictate from +a French footing, not to scorn. Not to be petulant with objects +disappointing her, was an impossible task. She could not consent to a +compromise with the people, the merchandize, the odours of the city. +Gliding in the gondola through the narrow canals at low tide, she +leaned back simulating stupor, with one word--'Venezia!' Her brother was +commanded to smoke: 'Fumez, fumez, Roland!' As soon as the steel-crested +prow had pushed into her Paradise of the Canal Grande, she quietly +shrouded her hair from tobacco, and called upon rapture to recompense +her for her sufferings. The black gondola was unendurable to her. She +had accompanied her father to the Accademia, and mused on the golden +Venetian streets of Carpaccio: she must have an open gondola to decorate +in his manner, gaily, splendidly, and mock at her efforts--a warning +to all that might hope to improve the prevailing gloom and squalor by +levying contributions upon the Merceria! Her most constant admiration +was for the English lord who used once to ride on the Lido sands and +visit the Armenian convent--a lord and a poet. [Lord Byron D.W.] + +This was to be infinitely more than a naval lieutenant. But Nevil +claimed her as little personally as he allowed her to be claimed by +another. The graces of her freaks of petulance and airy whims, her +sprightly jets of wilfulness, fleeting frowns of contempt, imperious +decisions, were all beautiful, like silver-shifting waves, in this +lustrous planet of her pure freedom; and if you will seize the divine +conception of Artemis, and own the goddess French, you will understand +his feelings. + +But though he admired fervently, and danced obediently to her tunes, +Nevil could not hear injustice done to a people or historic poetic +city without trying hard to right the mind guilty of it. A newspaper +correspondent, a Mr. John Holles, lingering on his road home from the +army, put him on the track of an Englishman's books--touching the spirit +as well as the stones of Venice, and Nevil thanked him when he had +turned some of the leaves. + +The study of the books to school Renee was pursued, like the Bianchina's +sleep, in gondoletta, and was not unlike it at intervals. A translated +sentence was the key to a reverie. Renee leaned back, meditating; he +forward, the book on his knee: Roland left them to themselves, and spied +for the Bianchina behind the window-bars. The count was in the churches +or the Galleries. Renee thought she began to comprehend the spirit of +Venice, and chided her rebelliousness. + +'But our Venice was the Venice of the decadence, then!' she said, +complaining. Nevil read on, distrustful of the perspicuity of his own +ideas. + +'Ah, but,' said she, 'when these Venetians were rough men, chanting like +our Huguenots, how cold it must have been here!' + +She hoped she was not very wrong in preferring the times of the +great Venetian painters and martial doges to that period of faith and +stone-cutting. What was done then might be beautiful, but the life was +monotonous; she insisted that it was Huguenot; harsh, nasal, sombre, +insolent, self-sufficient. Her eyes lightened for the flashing colours +and pageantries, and the threads of desperate adventure crossing the Rii +to this and that palace-door and balcony, like faint blood-streaks; the +times of Venice in full flower. She reasoned against the hard eloquent +Englishman of the books. 'But we are known by our fruits, are we not? +and the Venice I admire was surely the fruit of these stonecutters +chanting hymns of faith; it could not but be: and if it deserved, as he +says, to die disgraced, I think we should go back to them and ask them +whether their minds were as pure and holy as he supposes.' Her French +wits would not be subdued. Nevil pointed to the palaces. 'Pride,' said +she. He argued that the original Venetians were not responsible for +their offspring. 'You say it?' she cried, 'you, of an old race? Oh, no; +you do not feel it!' and the trembling fervour of her voice convinced +him that he did not, could not. + +Renee said: 'I know my ancestors are bound up in me, by my sentiments to +them; and so do you, M. Nevil. We shame them if we fail in courage and +honour. Is it not so? If we break a single pledged word we cast shame on +them. Why, that makes us what we are; that is our distinction: we dare +not be weak if we would. And therefore when Venice is reproached with +avarice and luxury, I choose to say--what do we hear of the children of +misers? and I say I am certain that those old cold Huguenot stonecutters +were proud and grasping. I am sure they were, and they shall share the +blame.' + +Nevil plunged into his volume. + +He called on Roland for an opinion. + +'Friend,' said Roland, 'opinions may differ: mine is, considering the +defences of the windows, that the only way into these houses or out of +them bodily was the doorway.' + +Roland complimented his sister and friend on the prosecution of their +studies: he could not understand a word of the subject, and yawning, +he begged permission to be allowed to land and join the gondola at a +distant quarter. The gallant officer was in haste to go. + +Renee stared at her brother. He saw nothing; he said a word to the +gondoliers, and quitted the boat. Mars was in pursuit. She resigned +herself, and ceased then to be a girl. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. LOVE IN VENICE + +The air flashed like heaven descending for Nevil alone with Renee. They +had never been alone before. Such happiness belonged to the avenue of +wishes leading to golden mists beyond imagination, and seemed, coming on +him suddenly, miraculous. He leaned toward her like one who has broken +a current of speech, and waits to resume it. She was all unsuspecting +indolence, with gravely shadowed eyes. + +'I throw the book down,' he said. + +She objected. 'No; continue: I like it.' + +Both of them divined that the book was there to do duty for Roland. + +He closed it, keeping a finger among the leaves; a kind of anchorage in +case of indiscretion. + +'Permit me to tell you, M. Nevil, you are inclined to play truant +to-day.' + +'I am.' + +'Now is the very time to read; for my poor Roland is at sea when we +discuss our questions, and the book has driven him away.' + +'But we have plenty of time to read. We miss the scenes.' + +'The scenes are green shutters, wet steps, barcaroli, brown women, +striped posts, a scarlet night-cap, a sick fig-tree, an old shawl, +faded spots of colour, peeling walls. They might be figured by a trodden +melon. They all resemble one another, and so do the days here.' + +'That's the charm. I wish I could look on you and think the same. You, +as you are, for ever.' + +'Would you not let me live my life?' + +'I would not have you alter.' + +'Please to be pathetic on that subject after I am wrinkled, monsieur.' + +'You want commanding, mademoiselle.' + +Renee nestled her chin, and gazed forward through her eyelashes. + +'Venice is like a melancholy face of a former beauty who has ceased to +rouge, or wipe away traces of her old arts,' she said, straining for +common talk, and showing the strain. + +'Wait; now we are rounding,' said he; 'now you have three of what you +call your theatre-bridges in sight. The people mount and drop, mount and +drop; I see them laugh. They are full of fun and good-temper. Look on +living Venice! + +'Provided that my papa is not crossing when we go under! + +'Would he not trust you to me?' + +'Yes.' + +'He would? And you?' + +'I do believe they are improvizing an operetta on the second bridge.' + +'You trust yourself willingly?' + +'As to my second brother. You hear them? How delightfully quick and +spontaneous they are! Ah, silly creatures! they have stopped. They might +have held it on for us while we were passing.' + +'Where would the naturalness have been then?' + +'Perhaps, M. Nevil, I do want commanding. I am wilful. Half my days will +be spent in fits of remorse, I begin to think.' + +'Come to me to be forgiven.' + +'Shall I? I should be forgiven too readily.' + +'I am not so sure of that.' + +'Can you be harsh? No, not even with enemies. Least of all with... with +us.' + +Oh for the black gondola!--the little gliding dusky chamber for two; +instead of this open, flaunting, gold and crimson cotton-work, which +exacted discretion on his part and that of the mannerly gondoliers, and +exposed him to window, balcony, bridge, and borderway. + +They slipped on beneath a red balcony where a girl leaned on her folded +arms, and eyed them coming and going by with Egyptian gravity. + +'How strange a power of looking these people have,' said Renee, whose +vivacity was fascinated to a steady sparkle by the girl. 'Tell me, is +she glancing round at us?' + +Nevil turned and reported that she was not. She had exhausted them while +they were in transit; she had no minor curiosity. + +'Let us fancy she is looking for her lover,' he said. + +Renee added: 'Let us hope she will not escape being seen.' + +'I give her my benediction,' said Nevil. + +'And I,' said Renee; 'and adieu to her, if you please. Look for Roland.' + +'You remind me; I have but a few instants.' + +'M. Nevil, you are a preux of the times of my brother's patronymic. And +there is my Roland awaiting us. Is he not handsome?' + +'How glad you are to have him to relieve guard!' + +Renee bent on Nevil one of her singular looks of raillery. She had +hitherto been fencing at a serious disadvantage. + +'Not so very glad,' she said, 'if that deprived me of the presence of +his friend.' + +Roland was her tower. But Roland was not yet on board. She had peeped +from her citadel too rashly. Nevil had time to spring the flood of +crimson in her cheeks, bright as the awning she reclined under. + +'Would you have me with you always?' + +'Assuredly,' said she, feeling the hawk in him, and trying to baffle him +by fluttering. + +'Always? forever? and--listen-give me a title?' + +Renee sang out to Roland like a bird in distress, and had some trouble +not to appear too providentially rescued. Roland on board, she resumed +the attack. + +'M. Nevil vows he is a better brother to me than you, who dart away on +an impulse and leave us threading all Venice till we do not know where +we are, naughty brother!' + +'My little sister, the spot where you are,' rejoined Roland, 'is +precisely the spot where I left you, and I defy you to say you have gone +on without me. This is the identical riva I stepped out on to buy you a +packet of Venetian ballads.' + +They recognized the spot, and for a confirmation of the surprising +statement, Roland unrolled several sheets of printed blotting-paper, and +rapidly read part of a Canzonetta concerning Una Giovine who reproved +her lover for his extreme addiction to wine: + + 'Ma se, ma se, + Cotanto beve, + Mi no, mi no, + No ve sposero.' + +'This astounding vagabond preferred Nostrani to his heart's mistress. +I tasted some of their Nostrani to see if it could be possible for a +Frenchman to exonerate him.' + +Roland's wry face at the mention of Nostrani brought out the chief +gondolier, who delivered himself: + +'Signore, there be hereditary qualifications. One must be born Italian +to appreciate the merits of Nostrani!' + +Roland laughed. He had covered his delinquency in leaving his sister, +and was full of an adventure to relate to Nevil, a story promising well +for him. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. AN AWAKENING FOR BOTH + +Renee was downcast. Had she not coquetted? The dear young Englishman +had reduced her to defend herself, the which fair ladies, like besieged +garrisons, cannot always do successfully without an attack at times, +which, when the pursuer is ardent, is followed by a retreat, which is +a provocation; and these things are coquettry. Her still fresh +convent-conscience accused her of it pitilessly. She could not forgive +her brother, and yet she dared not reproach him, for that would have +inculpated Nevil. She stepped on to the Piazzetta thoughtfully. Her +father was at Florian's, perusing letters from France. 'We are to +have the marquis here in a week, my child,' he said. Renee nodded. +Involuntarily she looked at Nevil. He caught the look, with a lover's +quick sense of misfortune in it. + +She heard her brother reply to him: 'Who? the Marquis de Rouaillout? It +is a jolly gaillard of fifty who spoils no fun.' + +'You mistake his age, Roland,' she said. + +'Forty-nine, then, my sister.' + +'He is not that.' + +'He looks it.' + +'You have been absent.' + +'Probably, my arithmetical sister, he has employed the interval to grow +younger. They say it is the way with green gentlemen of a certain +age. They advance and they retire. They perform the first steps of a +quadrille ceremoniously, and we admire them.' + +'What's that?' exclaimed the Comte de Croisnel. 'You talk nonsense, +Roland. M. le marquis is hardly past forty. He is in his prime.' + +'Without question, mon pere. For me, I was merely offering proof that he +can preserve his prime unlimitedly.' + +'He is not a subject for mockery, Roland.' + +'Quite the contrary; for reverence!' + +'Another than you, my boy, and he would march you out.' + +'I am to imagine, then, that his hand continues firm?' + +'Imagine to the extent of your capacity; but remember that respect +is always owing to your own family, and deliberate before you draw on +yourself such a chastisement as mercy from an accepted member of it.' + +Roland bowed and drummed on his knee. + +The conversation had been originated by Renee for the enlightenment of +Nevil and as a future protection to herself. Now that it had disclosed +its burden she could look at him no more, and when her father addressed +her significantly: 'Marquise, you did me the honour to consent to +accompany me to the Church of the Frari this afternoon?' she felt her +self-accusation of coquettry biting under her bosom like a thing alive. + +Roland explained the situation to Nevil. + +'It is the mania with us, my dear Nevil, to marry our girls young to +established men. Your established man carries usually all the signs, +visible to the multitude or not, of the stages leading to that eminence. +We cannot, I believe, unless we have the good fortune to boast the +paternity of Hercules, disconnect ourselves from the steps we have +mounted; not even, the priests inform us, if we are ascending to heaven; +we carry them beyond the grave. However, it seems that our excellent +marquis contrives to keep them concealed, and he is ready to face +marriage--the Grandest Inquisitor, next to Death. Two furious +matchmakers--our country, beautiful France, abounds in them--met one +day; they were a comtesse and a baronne, and they settled the alliance. +The bell was rung, and Renee came out of school. There is this to +be said: she has no mother; the sooner a girl without a mother has a +husband the better. That we are all agreed upon. I have no personal +objection to the marquis; he has never been in any great scandals. He +is Norman, and has estates in Normandy, Dauphiny, Touraine; he is +hospitable, luxurious. Renee will have a fine hotel in Paris. But I am +eccentric: I have read in our old Fabliaux of December and May. Say the +marquis is November, say October; he is still some distance removed from +the plump Spring month. And we in our family have wits and passions. +In fine, a bud of a rose in an old gentleman's button-hole! it is a +challenge to the whole world of youth; and if the bud should leap? +Enough of this matter, friend Nevil; but sometimes a friend must allow +himself to be bothered. I have perfect confidence in my sister, you +see; I simply protest against her being exposed to... You know men. I +protest, that is, in the privacy of my cigar-case, for I have no chance +elsewhere. The affair is on wheels. The very respectable matchmakers +have kindled the marquis on the one hand, and my father on the other, +and Renee passes obediently from the latter to the former. In India they +sacrifice the widows, in France the virgins.' + +Roland proceeded to relate his adventure. Nevil's inattention piqued him +to salt and salt it wonderfully, until the old story of He and She +had an exciting savour in its introductory chapter; but his friend +was flying through the circles of the Inferno, and the babble of an +ephemeral upper world simply affected him by its contrast with the +overpowering horrors, repugnances, despairs, pities, rushing at him, +surcharging his senses. Those that live much by the heart in their youth +have sharp foretastes of the issues imaged for the soul. St. Mark's +was in a minute struck black for him. He neither felt the sunlight nor +understood why column and campanile rose, nor why the islands basked, +and boats and people moved. All were as remote little bits of mechanism. + +Nevil escaped, and walked in the direction of the Frari down calle and +campiello. Only to see her--to compare her with the Renee of the past +hour! But that Renee had been all the while a feast of delusion; she +could never be resuscitated in the shape he had known, not even clearly +visioned. Not a day of her, not an hour, not a single look had been his +own. She had been sold when he first beheld her, and should, he muttered +austerely, have been ticketed the property of a middle-aged man, a +worn-out French marquis, whom she had agreed to marry, unwooed, without +love--the creature of a transaction. But she was innocent, she was +unaware of the sin residing in a loveless marriage; and this restored +her to him somewhat as a drowned body is given back to mourners. + +After aimless walking he found himself on the Zattere, where the lonely +Giudecca lies in front, covering mud and marsh and lagune-flames of +later afternoon, and you have sight of the high mainland hills which +seem to fling forth one over other to a golden sea-cape. + +Midway on this unadorned Zattere, with its young trees and spots of +shade, he was met by Renee and her father. Their gondola was below, +close to the riva, and the count said, 'She is tired of standing gazing +at pictures. There is a Veronese in one of the churches of the Giudecca +opposite. Will you, M. Nevil, act as parade-escort to her here for half +an hour, while I go over? Renee complains that she loses the vulgar art +of walking in her complaisant attention to the fine Arts. I weary my +poor child.' + +Renee protested in a rapid chatter. + +'Must I avow it?' said the count; 'she damps my enthusiasm a little.' + +Nevil mutely accepted the office. + +Twice that day was she surrendered to him: once in his ignorance, when +time appeared an expanse of many sunny fields. On this occasion it +puffed steam; yet, after seeing the count embark, he commenced the +parade in silence. + +'This is a nice walk,' said Renee; 'we have not the steps of the Riva +dei Schiavoni. It is rather melancholy though. How did you discover it? +I persuaded my papa to send the gondola round, and walk till we came to +the water. Tell me about the Giudecca.' + +'The Giudecca was a place kept apart for the Jews, I believe. You have +seen their burial-ground on the Lido. Those are, I think, the Euganean +hills. You are fond of Petrarch.' + +'M. Nevil, omitting the allusion to the poet, you have, permit me to +remark, the brevity without the precision of an accredited guide to +notabilities.' + +'I tell you what I know,' said Nevil, brooding on the finished tone and +womanly aplomb of her language. It made him forget that she was a girl +entrusted to his guardianship. His heart came out. + +'Renee, if you loved him, I, on my honour, would not utter a word for +myself. Your heart's inclinations are sacred for me. I would stand by, +and be your friend and his. If he were young, that I might see a chance +of it!' + +She murmured, 'You should not have listened to Roland.' + +'Roland should have warned me. How could I be near you and not... But I +am nothing. Forget me; do not think I speak interestedly, except to +save the dearest I have ever known from certain wretchedness. To yield +yourself hand and foot for life! I warn you that it must end miserably. +Your countrywomen... You have the habit in France; but like what are +you treated? You! none like you in the whole world! You consent to be +extinguished. And I have to look on! Listen to me now.' + +Renee glanced at the gondola conveying her father. And he has not yet +landed! she thought, and said, 'Do you pretend to judge of my welfare +better than my papa?' + +'Yes; in this. He follows a fashion. You submit to it. His anxiety is +to provide for you. But I know the system is cursed by nature, and that +means by heaven.' + +'Because it is not English?' + +'O Renee, my beloved for ever! Well, then, tell me, tell me you can +say with pride and happiness that the Marquis de Rouaillout is to be +your--there's the word--husband!' + +Renee looked across the water. + +'Friend, if my father knew you were asking me!' + +'I will speak to him.' + +'Useless.' + +'He is generous, he loves you.' + +'He cannot break an engagement binding his honour.' + +'Would you, Renee, would you--it must be said--consent to have it known +to him--I beg for more than life--that your are not averse... that you +support me?' + +His failing breath softened the bluntness. + +She replied, 'I would not have him ever break an engagement binding his +honour.' + +'You stretch the point of honour.' + +'It is our way. Dear friend, we are French. And I presume to think that +our French system is not always wrong, for if my father had not broken +it by treating you as one of us and leaving me with you, should I have +heard...?' + +'I have displeased you.' + +'Do not suppose that. But, I mean, a mother would not have left me.' + +'You wished to avoid it.' + +'Do not blame me. I had some instinct; you were very pale.' + +'You knew I loved you.' + +'No.' + +'Yes; for this morning...' + +This morning it seemed to me, and I regretted my fancy, that you were +inclined to trifle, as, they say, young men do.' + +'With Renee?' + +'With your friend Renee. And those are the hills of Petrarch's tomb? +They are mountains.' + +They were purple beneath a large brooding cloud that hung against the +sun, waiting for him to enfold him, and Nevil thought that a tomb there +would be a welcome end, if he might lift Renee in one wild flight over +the chasm gaping for her. He had no language for thoughts of such a +kind, only tumultuous feeling. + +She was immoveable, in perfect armour. + +He said despairingly, 'Can you have realized what you are consenting +to?' + +She answered, 'It is my duty.' + +'Your duty! it's like taking up a dice-box, and flinging once, to +certain ruin!' + +'I must oppose my father to you, friend. Do you not understand duty to +parents? They say the English are full of the idea of duty.' + +'Duty to country, duty to oaths and obligations; but with us the heart +is free to choose.' + +'Free to choose, and when it is most ignorant?' + +'The heart? ask it. Nothing is surer.' + +'That is not what we are taught. We are taught that the heart deceives +itself. The heart throws your dicebox; not prudent parents.' + +She talked like a woman, to plead the cause of her obedience as a girl, +and now silenced in the same manner that she had previously excited him. + +'Then you are lost to me,' he said. + +They saw the gondola returning. + +'How swiftly it comes home; it loitered when it went,' said Renee. +'There sits my father, brimming with his picture; he has seen one more! +We will congratulate him. This little boulevard is not much to speak of. +The hills are lovely. Friend,' she dropped her voice on the gondola's +approach, 'we have conversed on common subjects.' + +Nevil had her hand in his, to place her in the gondola. + +She seemed thankful that he should prefer to go round on foot. At least, +she did not join in her father's invitation to him. She leaned back, +nestling her chin and half closing her eyes, suffering herself to be +divided from him, borne away by forces she acquiesced in. + +Roland was not visible till near midnight on the Piazza. The +promenaders, chiefly military of the garrison, were few at that period +of social protestation, and he could declare his disappointment aloud, +ringingly, as he strolled up to Nevil, looking as if the cigar in +his mouth and the fists entrenched in his wide trowsers-pockets were +mortally at feud. His adventure had not pursued its course luminously. +He had expected romance, and had met merchandize, and his vanity was +offended. To pacify him, Nevil related how he had heard that since the +Venetian rising of '49, Venetian ladies had issued from the ordeal of +fire and famine of another pattern than the famous old Benzon one, in +which they touched earthiest earth. He praised Republicanism for that. +The spirit of the new and short-lived Republic wrought that change in +Venice. + +'Oh, if they're republican as well as utterly decayed,' said Roland, 'I +give them up; let them die virtuous.' + +Nevil told Roland that he had spoken to Renee. He won sympathy, but +Roland could not give him encouragement. They crossed and recrossed the +shadow of the great campanile, on the warm-white stones of the square, +Nevil admitting the weight of whatsoever Roland pointed to him in +favour of the arrangement according to French notions, and indeed, of +aristocratic notions everywhere, saving that it was imperative for +Renee to be disposed of in marriage early. Why rob her of her young +springtime! + +'French girls,' replied Roland, confused by the nature of the +explication in his head--'well, they're not English; they want a hand to +shape them, otherwise they grow all awry. My father will not have one of +her aunts to live with him, so there she is. But, my dear Nevil, I owe +my life to you, and I was no party to this affair. I would do anything +to help you. What says Renee?' + +'She obeys.' + +'Exactly. You see! Our girls are chess-pieces until they 're married. +Then they have life and character sometimes too much.' + +'She is not like them, Roland; she is like none. When I spoke to her +first, she affected no astonishment; never was there a creature so nobly +sincere. She's a girl in heart, not in mind. Think of her sacrificed to +this man thrice her age!' + +'She differs from other girls only on the surface, Nevil. As for the +man, I wish she were going to marry a younger. I wish, yes, my friend,' +Roland squeezed Nevil's hand, 'I wish! I'm afraid it's hopeless. She did +not tell you to hope?' + +'Not by one single sign,' said Nevil. + +'You see, my friend!' + +'For that reason,' Nevil rejoined, with the calm fanaticism of the +passion of love, 'I hope all the more... because I will not believe that +she, so pure and good, can be sacrificed. Put me aside--I am nothing. I +hope to save her from that.' + +'We have now,' said Roland, 'struck the current of duplicity. You are +really in love, my poor fellow.' + +Lover and friend came to no conclusion, except that so lovely a night +was not given for slumber. A small round brilliant moon hung almost +globed in the depths of heaven, and the image of it fell deep between +San Giorgio and the Dogana. + +Renee had the scene from her window, like a dream given out of sleep. +She lay with both arms thrown up beneath her head on the pillow, her +eyelids wide open, and her visage set and stern. Her bosom rose and +sank regularly but heavily. The fluctuations of a night stormy for her, +hitherto unknown, had sunk her to this trance, in which she lay like a +creature flung on shore by the waves. She heard her brother's voice +and Nevil's, and the pacing of their feet. She saw the long shaft of +moonlight broken to zigzags of mellow lightning, and wavering back to +steadiness; dark San Giorgio, and the sheen of the Dogana's front. +But the visible beauty belonged to a night that had shivered repose, +humiliated and wounded her, destroyed her confident happy half-infancy +of heart, and she had flown for a refuge to hard feelings. Her +predominant sentiment was anger; an anger that touched all and enveloped +none, for it was quite fictitious, though she felt it, and suffered from +it. She turned it on Nevil, as against an enemy, and became the victim +in his place. Tears for him filled in her eyes, and ran over; she +disdained to notice them, and blinked offendedly to have her sight +clear of the weakness; but these interceding tears would flow; it was +dangerous to blame him, harshly. She let them roll down, figuring to +herself with quiet simplicity of mind that her spirit was independent +of them as long as she restrained her hands from being accomplices by +brushing them away, as weeping girls do that cry for comfort. Nevil had +saved her brother's life, and had succoured her countrymen; he loved +her, and was a hero. He should not have said he loved her; that was +wrong; and it was shameful that he should have urged her to disobey her +father. But this hero's love of her might plead excuses she did not know +of; and if he was to be excused, he, unhappy that he was, had a claim +on her for more than tears. She wept resentfully. Forces above her own +swayed and hurried her like a lifeless body dragged by flying wheels: +they could not unnerve her will, or rather, what it really was, her +sense of submission to a destiny. Looked at from the height of the +palm-waving cherubs over the fallen martyr in the picture, she seemed +as nerveless as a dreamy girl. The raised arms and bent elbows were an +illusion of indifference. Her shape was rigid from hands to feet, as if +to keep in a knot the resolution of her mind; for the second and in that +young season the stronger nature grafted by her education fixed her +to the religious duty of obeying and pleasing her father, in contempt, +almost in abhorrence, of personal inclinations tending to thwart him and +imperil his pledged word. She knew she had inclinations to be tender. +Her hands released, how promptly might she not have been confiding her +innumerable perplexities of sentiment and emotion to paper, undermining +self-governance; self-respect, perhaps! Further than that, she did not +understand the feelings she struggled with; nor had she any impulse to +gaze on him, the cause of her trouble, who walked beside her brother +below, talking betweenwhiles in the night's grave undertones. Her +trouble was too overmastering; it had seized her too mysteriously, +coming on her solitariness without warning in the first watch of the +night, like a spark crackling serpentine along dry leaves to sudden +flame. A thought of Nevil and a regret had done it. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. A NIGHT ON THE ADRIATIC + +The lovers met after Roland had spoken to his sister--not exactly to +advocate the cause of Nevil, though he was under the influence of that +grave night's walk with him, but to sound her and see whether she at +all shared Nevil's view of her situation. Roland felt the awfulness of +a French family arrangement of a marriage, and the impertinence of a +foreign Cupid's intrusion, too keenly to plead for his friend: at the +same time he loved his friend and his sister, and would have been very +ready to smile blessings on them if favourable circumstances had raised +a signal; if, for example, apoplexy or any other cordial ex machina +intervention had removed the middle-aged marquis; and, perhaps, if Renee +had shown the repugnance to her engagement which Nevil declared she must +have in her heart, he would have done more than smile; he would have +laid the case deferentially before his father. His own opinion was that +young unmarried women were incapable of the passion of love, being, as +it were, but half-feathered in that state, and unable to fly; and Renee +confirmed it. The suspicion of an advocacy on Nevil's behalf steeled +her. His tentative observations were checked at the outset. + +'Can such things be spoken of to me, Roland? I am plighted. You know +it.' + +He shrugged, said a word of pity for Nevil, and went forth to let his +friend know that it was as he had predicted: Renee was obedience in +person, like a rightly educated French girl. He strongly advised +his friend to banish all hope of her from his mind. But the mind he +addressed was of a curious order; far-shooting, tough, persistent, and +when acted on by the spell of devotion, indomitable. Nevil put hope +aside, or rather, he clad it in other garments, in which it was hardly +to be recognized by himself, and said to Roland: 'You must bear this +from me; you must let me follow you to the end, and if she wavers she +will find me near.' + +Roland could not avoid asking the use of it, considering that Renee, +however much she admired and liked, was not in love with him. + +Nevil resigned himself to admit that she was not: and therefore,' said +he, 'you won't object to my remaining.' + +Renee greeted Nevil with as clear a conventional air as a woman could +assume. + +She was going, she said, to attend High Mass in the church of S. Moise, +and she waved her devoutest Roman Catholicism to show the breadth of the +division between them. He proposed to go likewise. She was mute. After +some discourse she contrived to say inoffensively that people who +strolled into her churches for the music, or out of curiosity, played +the barbarian. + +'Well, I will not go,' said Nevil. + +'But I do not wish to number you among them,' she said. + +'Then,' said Nevil, 'I will go, for it cannot be barbarous to try to be +with you.' + +'No, that is wickedness,' said Renee. + +She was sensible that conversation betrayed her, and Nevil's apparently +deliberate pursuit signified to her that he must be aware of his +mastery, and she resented it, and stumbled into pitfalls whenever she +opened her lips. It seemed to be denied to them to utter what she meant, +if indeed she had a meaning in speaking, save to hurt herself cruelly +by wounding the man who had caught her in the toils: and so long as she +could imagine that she was the only one hurt, she was the braver and the +harsher for it; but at the sight of Nevil in pain her heart relented and +shifted, and discovering it to be so weak as to be almost at his mercy, +she defended it with an aggressive unkindness, for which, in charity to +her sweeter nature, she had to ask his pardon, and then had to fib to +give reasons for her conduct, and then to pretend to herself that +her pride was humbled by him; a most humiliating round, constantly +recurring; the worse for the reflection that she created it. She +attempted silence. Nevil spoke, and was like the magical piper: she was +compelled to follow him and dance the round again, with the wretched +thought that it must resemble coquettry. Nevil did not think so, but a +very attentive observer now upon the scene, and possessed of his half of +the secret, did, and warned him. Rosamund Culling added that the French +girl might be only an unconscious coquette, for she was young. The +critic would not undertake to pronounce on her suggestion, whether the +candour apparent in merely coquettish instincts was not more dangerous +than a battery of the arts of the sex. She had heard Nevil's frank +confession, and seen Renee twice, when she tried in his service, though +not greatly wishing for success, to stir the sensitive girl for an +answer to his attachment. Probably she went to work transparently, after +the insular fashion of opening a spiritual mystery with the lancet. +Renee suffered herself to be probed here and there, and revealed nothing +of the pain of the operation. She said to Nevil, in Rosamund's hearing: + +'Have you the sense of honour acute in your country?' Nevil inquired for +the apropos. + +'None,' said she. + +Such pointed insolence disposed Rosamund to an irritable antagonism, +without reminding her that she had given some cause for it. + +Renee said to her presently: 'He saved my brother's life'; the apropos +being as little perceptible as before. + +Her voice dropped to her sweetest deep tones, and there was +a supplicating beam in her eyes, unintelligible to the direct +Englishwoman, except under the heading of a power of witchery fearful to +think of in one so young, and loved by Nevil. + +The look was turned upon her, not upon her hero, and Rosamund thought, +'Does she want to entangle me as well?' + +It was, in truth, a look of entreaty from woman to woman, signifying +need of womanly help. Renee would have made a confidante of her, if she +had not known her to be Nevil's, and devoted to him. 'I would speak to +you, but that I feel you would betray me,' her eyes had said. The strong +sincerity dwelling amid multiform complexities might have made itself +comprehensible to the English lady for a moment or so, had Renee spoken +words to her ears; but belief in it would hardly have survived the +girl's next convolutions. 'She is intensely French,' Rosamund said to +Nevil--a volume of insular criticism in a sentence. + +'You do not know her, ma'am,' said Nevil. 'You think her older than she +is, and that is the error I fell into. She is a child.' + +'A serpent in the egg is none the less a serpent, Nevil. Forgive me; but +when she tells you the case is hopeless!' + +'No case is hopeless till a man consents to think it is; and I shall +stay.' + +'But then again, Nevil, you have not consulted your uncle.' + +'Let him see her! let him only see her!' + +Rosamund Culling reserved her opinion compassionately. His uncle would +soon be calling to have him home: society panted for him to make much of +him and here he was, cursed by one of his notions of duty, in attendance +on a captious 'young French beauty, who was the less to be excused +for not dismissing him peremptorily, if she cared for him at all. His +career, which promised to be so brilliant, was spoiling at the outset. +Rosamund thought of Renee almost with detestation, as a species of +sorceress that had dug a trench in her hero's road, and unhorsed and +fast fettered him. + +The marquis was expected immediately. Renee sent up a little note to +Mrs. Calling's chamber early in the morning, and it was with an air of +one-day-more-to-ourselves, that, meeting her, she entreated the English +lady to join the expedition mentioned in her note. Roland had hired a +big Chioggian fishing-boat to sail into the gulf at night, and return +at dawn, and have sight of Venice rising from the sea. Her father +had declined; but M. Nevil wished to be one of the party, and in that +case.... Renee threw herself beseechingly into the mute interrogation, +keeping both of Rosamund's hands. They could slip away only by deciding +to, and this rare Englishwoman had no taste for the petty overt +hostilities. 'If I can be of use to you,' she said. + +'If you can bear sea-pitching and tossing for the sake of the loveliest +sight in the whole world,' said Renee. + +'I know it well,' Rosamund replied. + +Renee rippled her eyebrows. She divined a something behind that +remark, and as she was aware of the grief of Rosamund's life, her quick +intuition whispered that it might be connected with the gallant officer +dead on the battle-field. + +'Madame, if you know it too well...' she said. + +'No; it is always worth seeing,' said Rosamund, 'and I think, +mademoiselle, with your permission, I should accompany you.' + +'It is only a whim of mine, madame. I can stay on shore.' + +'Not when it is unnecessary to forego a pleasure.' + +'Say, my last day of freedom.' + +Renee kissed her hand. + +She is terribly winning, Rosamund avowed. Renee was in debate whether +the woman devoted to Nevil would hear her and help. + +Just then Roland and Nevil returned from their boat, where they had +left carpenters and upholsterers at work, and the delicate chance for an +understanding between the ladies passed by. + +The young men were like waves of ocean overwhelming it, they were +so full of their boat, and the scouring and cleaning out of it, and +provisioning, and making it worthy of its freight. Nevil was surprised +that Mrs. Culling should have consented to come, and asked her if she +really wished it--really; and 'Really,' said Rosamund; 'certainly.' + +'Without dubitation,' cried Roland. 'And now my little Renee has no more +shore-qualms; she is smoothly chaperoned, and madame will present us tea +on board. All the etcaeteras of life are there, and a mariner's eye in +me spies a breeze at sunset to waft us out of Malamocco.' + +The count listened to the recital of their preparations with his usual +absent interest in everything not turning upon Art, politics, or social +intrigue. He said, 'Yes, good, good,' at the proper intervals, and +walked down the riva to look at the busy boat, said to Nevil, 'You are +a sailor; I confide my family to you,' and prudently counselled Renee +to put on the dresses she could toss to the deep without regrets. Mrs. +Culling he thanked fervently for a wonderful stretch of generosity in +lending her presence to the madcaps. + +Altogether the day was a reanimation of external Venice. But there was a +thunderbolt in it; for about an hour before sunset, when the ladies +were superintending and trying not to criticize the ingenious efforts +to produce a make-believe of comfort on board for them, word was brought +down to the boat by the count's valet that the Marquis de Rouaillout +had arrived. Renee turned her face to her brother superciliously. Roland +shrugged. 'Note this, my sister,' he said; 'an anticipation of dates in +paying visits precludes the ripeness of the sentiment of welcome. It is, +however, true that the marquis has less time to spare than others.' + +'We have started; we are on the open sea. How can we put back?' said +Renee. + +'You hear, Francois; we are on the open sea,' Roland addressed the +valet. + +'Monsieur has cut loose his communications with land,' Francois +responded, and bowed from the landing. + +Nevil hastened to make this a true report; but they had to wait for tide +as well as breeze, and pilot through intricate mud-channels before they +could see the outside of the Lido, and meanwhile the sun lay like a +golden altarplatter on mud-banks made bare by the ebb, and curled in +drowsy yellow links along the currents. All they could do was to push +off and hang loose, bumping to right and left in the midst of volleys +and countervolleys of fishy Venetian, Chioggian, and Dalmatian, quite as +strong as anything ever heard down the Canalaggio. The representatives +of these dialects trotted the decks and hung their bodies half over the +sides of the vessels to deliver fire, flashed eyes and snapped fingers, +not a whit less fierce than hostile crews in the old wars hurling an +interchange of stink-pots, and then resumed the trot, apparently in +search of fresh ammunition. An Austrian sentinel looked on passively, +and a police inspector peeringly. They were used to it. Happily, the +combustible import of the language was unknown to the ladies, and +Nevil's attempts to keep his crew quiet, contrasting with Roland's +phlegm, which a Frenchman can assume so philosophically when his tongue +is tied, amused them. During the clamour, Renee saw her father beckoning +from the riva. She signified that she was no longer in command of +circumstances; the vessel was off. But the count stamped his foot, +and nodded imperatively. Thereupon Roland repeated the eloquent +demonstrations of Renee, and the count lost patience, and Roland +shouted, 'For the love of heaven, don't join this babel; we're nearly +bursting.' The rage of the babel was allayed by degrees, though not +appeased, for the boat was behaving wantonly, as the police officer +pointed out to the count. + +Renee stood up to bend her head. It was in reply to a salute from the +Marquis de Rouaillout, and Nevil beheld his rival. + +'M. le Marquis, seeing it is out of the question that we can come to +you, will you come to us?' cried Roland. + +The marquis gesticulated 'With alacrity' in every limb. + +'We will bring you back on to-morrow midnight's tide, safe, we promise +you.' + +The marquis advanced a foot, and withdrew it. Could he have heard +correctly? They were to be out a whole night at sea! The count +dejectedly confessed his incapability to restrain them: the young +desperadoes were ready for anything. He had tried the voice of +authority, and was laughed at. As to Renee, an English lady was with +her. + +'The English lady must be as mad as the rest,' said the marquis. + +'The English are mad,' said the count; 'but their women are strict upon +the proprieties.' + +'Possibly, my dear count; but what room is there for the proprieties on +board a fishing-boat?' + +'It is even as you say, my dear marquis.' + +'You allow it?' + +'Can I help myself? Look at them. They tell me they have given the boat +the fittings of a yacht.' + +'And the young man?' + +'That is the M. Beauchamp of whom I have spoken to you, the very pick of +his country, fresh, lively, original; and he can converse. You will like +him.' + +'I hope so,' said the marquis, and roused a doleful laugh. 'It would +seem that one does not arrive by hastening!' + +'Oh! but my dear marquis, you have paid the compliment; you are like +Spring thrusting in a bunch of lilac while the winds of winter blow. If +you were not expected, your expeditiousness is appreciated, be sure.' + +Roland fortunately did not hear the marquis compared to Spring. He was +saying: 'I wonder what those two elderly gentlemen are talking about'; +and Nevil confused his senses by trying to realize that one of them was +destined to be the husband of his now speechless Renee. The marquis was +clad in a white silken suit, and a dash of red round the neck set off +his black beard; but when he lifted his broad straw hat, a baldness of +sconce shone. There was elegance in his gestures; he looked a gentleman, +though an ultra-Gallican one, that is, too scrupulously finished for our +taste, smelling of the valet. He had the habit of balancing his body on +the hips, as if to emphasize a juvenile vigour, and his general attitude +suggested an idea that he had an oration for you. Seen from a distance, +his baldness and strong nasal projection were not winning features; the +youthful standard he had evidently prescribed to himself in his dress +and his ready jerks of acquiescence and delivery might lead a forlorn +rival to conceive him something of an ogre straining at an Adonis. It +could not be disputed that he bore his disappointment remarkably +well; the more laudably, because his position was within a step of the +ridiculous, for he had shot himself to the mark, despising sleep, heat, +dust, dirt, diet, and lo, that charming object was deliberately slipping +out of reach, proving his headlong journey an absurdity. + +As he stood declining to participate in the lunatic voyage, and bidding +them perforce good speed off the tips of his fingers, Renee turned her +eyes on him, and away. She felt a little smart of pity, arising partly +from her antagonism to Roland's covert laughter: but it was the colder +kind of feminine pity, which is nearer to contempt than to tenderness. +She sat still, placid outwardly, in fear of herself, so strange she +found it to be borne out to sea by her sailor lover under the eyes of +her betrothed. She was conscious of a tumultuous rush of sensations, +none of them of a very healthy kind, coming as it were from an unlocked +chamber of her bosom, hitherto of unimagined contents; and the marquis +being now on the spot to defend his own, she no longer blamed Nevil: it +was otherwise utterly. All the sweeter side of pity was for him. + +He was at first amazed by the sudden exquisite transition. Tenderness +breathed from her, in voice, in look, in touch; for she accepted his +help that he might lead her to the stern of the vessel, to gaze well on +setting Venice, and sent lightnings up his veins; she leaned beside +him over the vessel's rails, not separated from him by the breadth of a +fluttering riband. Like him, she scarcely heard her brother when for an +instant he intervened, and with Nevil she said adieu to Venice, where +the faint red Doge's palace was like the fading of another sunset +north-westward of the glory along the hills. Venice dropped lower and +lower, breasting the waters, until it was a thin line in air. The line +was broken, and ran in dots, with here and there a pillar standing on +opal sky. At last the topmost campanile sank. + +Renee looked up at the sails, and back for the submerged city. + +'It is gone!' she said, as though a marvel had been worked; and swiftly: +'we have one night!' + +She breathed it half like a question, like a petition, catching her +breath. The adieu to Venice was her assurance of liberty, but Venice +hidden rolled on her the sense of the return and plucked shrewdly at her +tether of bondage. + +They set their eyes toward the dark gulf ahead. The night was growing +starry. The softly ruffled Adriatic tossed no foam. + +'One night?' said Nevil; 'one? Why only one?' + +Renee shuddered. 'Oh! do not speak.' + +'Then, give me your hand.' + +'There, my friend.' + +He pressed a hand that was like a quivering chord. She gave it as though +it had been his own to claim. But that it meant no more than a hand he +knew by the very frankness of her compliance, in the manner natural to +her; and this was the charm, it filled him with her peculiar image and +spirit, and while he held it he was subdued. + +Lying on the deck at midnight, wrapt in his cloak and a coil of rope for +a pillow, considerably apart from jesting Roland, the recollection of +that little sanguine spot of time when Renee's life-blood ran with his, +began to heave under him like a swelling sea. For Nevil the starred +black night was Renee. Half his heart was in it: but the combative +division flew to the morning and the deadly iniquity of the marriage, +from which he resolved to save her; in pure devotedness, he believed. +And so he closed his eyes. She, a girl, with a heart fluttering open +and fearing, felt only that she had lost herself somewhere, and she had +neither sleep nor symbols, nothing but a sense of infinite strangeness, +as though she were borne superhumanly through space. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. MORNING AT SEA UNDER THE ALPS + +The breeze blew steadily, enough to swell the sails and sweep the vessel +on smoothly. The night air dropped no moisture on deck. + +Nevil Beauchamp dozed for an hour. He was awakened by light on his +eyelids, and starting up beheld the many pinnacles of grey and red rocks +and shadowy high white regions at the head of the gulf waiting for the +sun; and the sun struck them. One by one they came out in crimson flame, +till the vivid host appeared to have stepped forward. The shadows on the +snow-fields deepened to purple below an irradiation of rose and pink and +dazzling silver. There of all the world you might imagine Gods to sit. +A crowd of mountains endless in range, erect, or flowing, shattered and +arid, or leaning in smooth lustre, hangs above the gulf. The mountains +are sovereign Alps, and the sea is beneath them. The whole gigantic body +keeps the sea, as with a hand, to right and left. + +Nevil's personal rapture craved for Renee with the second long breath +he drew; and now the curtain of her tent-cabin parted, and greeting him +with a half smile, she looked out. The Adriatic was dark, the Alps had +heaven to themselves. Crescents and hollows, rosy mounds, white shelves, +shining ledges, domes and peaks, all the towering heights were in +illumination from Friuli into farthest Tyrol; beyond earth to the +stricken senses of the gazers. Colour was stedfast on the massive front +ranks: it wavered in the remoteness, and was quick and dim as though +it fell on beating wings; but there too divine colour seized and shaped +forth solid forms, and thence away to others in uttermost distances +where the incredible flickering gleam of new heights arose, that soared, +or stretched their white uncertain curves in sky like wings traversing +infinity. + +It seemed unlike morning to the lovers, but as if night had broken +with a revelation of the kingdom in the heart of night. While the broad +smooth waters rolled unlighted beneath that transfigured upper sphere, +it was possible to think the scene might vanish like a view caught +out of darkness by lightning. Alp over burning Alp, and around them a +hueless dawn! The two exulted they threw off the load of wonderment, and +in looking they had the delicious sensation of flight in their veins. + +Renee stole toward Nevil. She was mystically shaken and at his mercy; +and had he said then, 'Over to the other land, away from Venice!' she +would have bent her head. + +She asked his permission to rouse her brother and madame, so that they +should not miss the scene. + +Roland lay in the folds of his military greatcoat, too completely happy +to be disturbed, Nevil Beauchamp chose to think; and Rosamund Culling, +he told Renee, had been separated from her husband last on these waters. + +'Ah! to be unhappy here,' sighed Renee. 'I fancied it when I begged her +to join us. It was in her voice.' + +The impressionable girl trembled. He knew he was dear to her, and +for that reason, judging of her by himself, he forbore to urge his +advantage, conceiving it base to fear that loving him she could yield +her hand to another; and it was the critical instant. She was almost in +his grasp. A word of sharp entreaty would have swung her round to see +her situation with his eyes, and detest and shrink from it. He committed +the capital fault of treating her as his equal in passion and courage, +not as metal ready to run into the mould under temporary stress of fire. + +Even later in the morning, when she was cooler and he had come to speak, +more than her own strength was needed to resist him. The struggle was +hard. The boat's head had been put about for Venice, and they were among +the dusky-red Chioggian sails in fishing quarters, expecting momently a +campanile to signal the sea-city over the level. Renee waited for it in +suspense. To her it stood for the implacable key of a close and stifling +chamber, so different from this brilliant boundless region of air, that +she sickened with the apprehension; but she knew it must appear, and +soon, and therewith the contraction and the gloom it indicated to her +mind. He talked of the beauty. She fretted at it, and was her petulant +self again in an epigrammatic note of discord. + +He let that pass. + +'Last night you said "one night,"' he whispered. 'We will have another +sail before we leave Venice.' + +'One night, and in a little time one hour! and next one minute! and +there's the end,' said Renee. + +Her tone alarmed him. 'Have you forgotten that you gave me your hand?' + +'I gave my hand to my friend.' + +'You gave it to me for good.' + +'No; I dared not; it is not mine.' + +'It is mine,' said Beauchamp. + +Renee pointed to the dots and severed lines and isolated columns of the +rising city, black over bright sea. + +'Mine there as well as here,' said Beauchamp, and looked at her with the +fiery zeal of eyes intent on minutest signs for a confirmation, to shake +that sad negation of her face. + +'Renee, you cannot break the pledge of the hand you gave me last night.' + +'You tell me how weak a creature I am.' + +'You are me, myself; more, better than me. And say, would you not rather +coast here and keep the city under water?' + +She could not refrain from confessing that she would be glad never to +land there. + +'So, when you land, go straight to your father,' said Beauchamp, to +whose conception it was a simple act resulting from the avowal. + +'Oh! you torture me,' she cried. Her eyelashes were heavy with tears. 'I +cannot do it. Think what you will of me! And, my friend, help me. Should +you not help me? I have not once actually disobeyed my father, and he +has indulged me, but he has been sure of me as a dutiful girl. That is +my source of self-respect. My friend can always be my friend.' + +'Yes, while it's not too late,' said Beauchamp. + +She observed a sudden stringing of his features. He called to the chief +boatman, made his command intelligible to that portly capitano, and +went on to Roland, who was puffing his after-breakfast cigarette in +conversation with the tolerant English lady. + +'You condescend to notice us, Signor Beauchamp,' said Roland. 'The +vessel is up to some manoeuvre?' + +'We have decided not to land,' replied Beauchamp. 'And Roland,' he +checked the Frenchman's shout of laughter, 'I think of making for +Trieste. Let me speak to you, to both. Renee is in misery. She must not +go back.' + +Roland sprang to his feet, stared, and walked over to Renee. + +'Nevil,' said Rosamund Culling, 'do you know what you are doing?' + +'Perfectly,' said he. 'Come to her. She is a girl, and I must think and +act for her.' + +Roland met them. + +'My dear Nevil, are you in a state of delusion? Renee denies...' + +'There's no delusion, Roland. I am determined to stop a catastrophe. I +see it as plainly as those Alps. There is only one way, and that's the +one I have chosen.' + +'Chosen! my friend'. But allow me to remind you that you have others to +consult. And Renee herself...' + +'She is a girl. She loves me, and I speak for her.' + +'She has said it?' + +'She has more than said it.' + +'You strike me to the deck, Nevil. Either you are downright mad--which +seems the likeliest, or we are all in a nightmare. Can you suppose I +will let my sister be carried away the deuce knows where, while her +father is expecting her, and to fulfil an engagement affecting his +pledged word?' + +Beauchamp simply replied: + +'Come to her.' + + + + +CHAPTER X. A SINGULAR COUNCIL + +The four sat together under the shadow of the helmsman, by whom they +were regarded as voyagers in debate upon the question of some hours +further on salt water. 'No bora,' he threw in at intervals, to assure +them that the obnoxious wind of the Adriatic need not disturb their +calculations. + +It was an extraordinary sitting, but none of the parties to it thought +of it so when Nevil Beauchamp had plunged them into it. He compelled +them, even Renee--and she would have flown had there been wings on her +shoulders--to feel something of the life and death issues present to +his soul, and submit to the discussion, in plain language of the +market-place, of the most delicate of human subjects for her, for him, +and hardly less for the other two. An overmastering fervour can do this. +It upsets the vessel we float in, and we have to swim our way out of +deep waters by the directest use of the natural faculties, without much +reflection on the change in our habits. To others not under such an +influence the position seems impossible. This discussion occurred. +Beauchamp opened the case in a couple of sentences, and when the turn +came for Renee to speak, and she shrank from the task in manifest pain, +he spoke for her, and no one heard her contradiction. She would have +wished the fearful impetuous youth to succeed if she could have slept +through the storm he was rousing. + +Roland appealed to her. 'You! my sister! it is you that consent to this +wild freak, enough to break your father's heart?' + +He had really forgotten his knowledge of her character--what much he +knew--in the dust of the desperation flung about her by Nevil Beauchamp. + +She shook her head; she had not consented. + +'The man she loves is her voice and her will,' said Beauchamp. 'She +gives me her hand and I lead her.' + +Roland questioned her. It could not be denied that she had given her +hand, and her bewildered senses made her think that it had been with +an entire abandonment; and in the heat of her conflict of feelings, the +deliciousness of yielding to him curled round and enclosed her, as in a +cool humming sea-shell. + +'Renee!' said Roland. + +'Brother!' she cried. + +'You see that I cannot suffer you to be borne away.' + +'No; do not!' + +But the boat was flying fast from Venice, and she could have fallen at +his feet and kissed them for not countermanding it. + +'You are in my charge, my sister.' + +'Yes.' + +'And now, Nevil, between us two,' said Roland. + +Beauchamp required no challenge. He seemed, to Rosamund Culling, twice +older than he was, strangely adept, yet more strangely wise of worldly +matters, and eloquent too. But it was the eloquence of frenzy, madness, +in Roland's ear. The arrogation of a terrible foresight that harped on +present and future to persuade him of the righteousness of this headlong +proceeding advocated by his friend, vexed his natural equanimity. The +argument was out of the domain of logic. He could hardly sit to listen, +and tore at his moustache at each end. Nevertheless his sister listened. +The mad Englishman accomplished the miracle of making her listen, and +appear to consent. + +Roland laughed scornfully. 'Why Trieste? I ask you, why Trieste? You +can't have a Catholic priest at your bidding, without her father's +sanction.' + +'We leave Renee at Trieste, under the care of madame,' said Beauchamp, +'and we return to Venice, and I go to your father. This method protects +Renee from annoyance.' + +'It strikes me that if she arrives at any determination she must take +the consequences.' + +'She does. She is brave enough for that. But she is a girl; she has +to fight the battle of her life in a day, and I am her lover, and she +leaves it to me.' + +'Is my sister such a coward?' said Roland. + +Renee could only call out his name. + +'It will never do, my dear Nevil; Roland tried to deal with his +unreasonable friend affectionately. 'I am responsible for her. It's your +own fault--if you had not saved my life I should not have been in your +way. Here I am, and your proposal can't be heard of. Do as you will, +both of you, when you step ashore in Venice.' + +'If she goes back she is lost,' said Beauchamp, and he attacked Roland +on the side of his love for Renee, and for him. + +Roland was inflexible. Seeing which, Renee said, 'To Venice, quickly, +my brother!' and now she almost sighed with relief to think that she was +escaping from this hurricane of a youth, who swept her off her feet and +wrapt her whole being in a delirium. + +'We were in sight of the city just now!' cried Roland, staring and +frowning. 'What's this?' + +Beauchamp answered him calmly, 'The boat's under my orders.' + +'Talk madness, but don't act it,' said Roland. 'Round with the boat at +once. Hundred devils! you haven't your wits.' + +To his amazement, Beauchamp refused to alter the boat's present course. + +'You heard my sister?' said Roland. + +'You frighten her,' said Beauchamp. + +'You heard her wish to return to Venice, I say.' + +'She has no wish that is not mine.' + +It came to Roland's shouting his command to the men, while Beauchamp +pointed the course on for them. + +'You will make this a ghastly pleasantry,' said Roland. + +'I do what I know to be right,' said Beauchamp. + +'You want an altercation before these fellows?' + +'There won't be one; they obey me.' + +Roland blinked rapidly in wrath and doubt of mind. + +'Madame,' he stooped to Rosamund Culling, with a happy inspiration, +'convince him; you have known him longer than I, and I desire not to +lose my friend. And tell me, madame--I can trust you to be truth itself, +and you can see it is actually the time for truth to be spoken--is he +justified in taking my sister's hand? You perceive that I am obliged +to appeal to you. Is he not dependent on his uncle? And is he not, +therefore, in your opinion, bound in reason as well as in honour to wait +for his uncle's approbation before he undertakes to speak for my sister? +And, since the occasion is urgent, let me ask you one thing more: +whether, by your knowledge of his position, you think him entitled to +presume to decide upon my sister's destiny? She, you are aware, is not +so young but that she can speak for herself...' + +'There you are wrong, Roland,' said Beauchamp; 'she can neither speak +nor think for herself: you lead her blindfolded.' + +'And you, my friend, suppose that you are wiser than any of us. It is +understood. I venture to appeal to madame on the point in question.' + +The poor lady's heart beat dismally. She was constrained to answer, and +said, 'His uncle is one who must be consulted.' + +'You hear that, Nevil,' said Roland. + +Beauchamp looked at her sharply; angrily, Rosamund feared. She had +struck his hot brain with the vision of Everard Romfrey as with a bar +of iron. If Rosamund had inclined to the view that he was sure of his +uncle's support, it would have seemed to him a simple confirmation +of his sentiments, but he was not of the same temper now as when he +exclaimed, 'Let him see her!' and could imagine, give him only Renee's +love, the world of men subservient to his wishes. + +Then he was dreaming; he was now in fiery earnest, for that reason +accessible to facts presented to him; and Rosamund's reluctantly spoken +words brought his stubborn uncle before his eyes, inflicting a sense of +helplessness of the bitterest kind. + +They were all silent. Beauchamp stared at the lines of the deck-planks. + +His scheme to rescue Renee was right and good; but was he the man that +should do it? And was she, moreover, he thought--speculating on her bent +head--the woman to be forced to brave the world with him, and poverty? +She gave him no sign. He was assuredly not the man to pretend to powers +he did not feel himself to possess, and though from a personal, and +still more from a lover's, inability to see all round him at one time +and accurately to weigh the forces at his disposal, he had gone far, he +was not a wilful dreamer nor so very selfish a lover. The instant his +consciousness of a superior strength failed him he acknowledged it. + +Renee did not look up. She had none of those lightnings of primitive +energy, nor the noble rashness and reliance on her lover, which his +imagination had filled her with; none. That was plain. She could not +even venture to second him. Had she done so he would have held out. He +walked to the head of the boat without replying. + +Soon after this the boat was set for Venice again. + +When he rejoined his companions he kissed Rosamund's hand, and Renee, +despite a confused feeling of humiliation and anger, loved him for it. + +Glittering Venice was now in sight; the dome of Sta. Maria Salute +shining like a globe of salt. + +Roland flung his arm round his friend's neck, and said, 'Forgive me.' + +'You do what you think right,' said Beauchamp. + +'You are a perfect man of honour, my friend, and a woman would adore +you. Girls are straws. It's part of Renee's religion to obey her father. +That's why I was astonished!... I owe you my life, and I would willingly +give you my sister in part payment, if I had the giving of her; most +willingly. The case is, that she's a child, and you?' + +'Yes, I'm dependent,' Beauchamp assented. 'I can't act; I see it. That +scheme wants two to carry it out: she has no courage. I feel that I +could carry the day with my uncle, but I can't subject her to the risks, +since she dreads them; I see it. Yes, I see that! I should have done +well, I believe; I should have saved her.' + +'Run to England, get your uncle's consent, and then try.' + +'No; I shall go to her father.' + +'My dear Nevil, and supposing you have Renee to back you--supposing it, +I say--won't you be falling on exactly the same bayonet-point?' + +'If I leave her!' Beauchamp interjected. He perceived the quality of +Renee's unformed character which he could not express. + +'But we are to suppose that she loves you?' + +'She is a girl.' + +'You return, my friend, to the place you started from, as you did on the +canal without knowing it. In my opinion, frankly, she is best married. +And I think so all the more after this morning's lesson. You understand +plainly that if you leave her she will soon be pliant to the legitimate +authorities; and why not?' + +'Listen to me, Roland. I tell you she loves me. I am bound to her, +and when--if ever I see her unhappy, I will not stand by and look on +quietly.' + +Roland shrugged. 'The future not being born, my friend, we will abstain +from baptizing it. For me, less privileged than my fellows, I have never +seen the future. Consequently I am not in love with it, and to declare +myself candidly I do not care for it one snap of the fingers. Let us +follow our usages, and attend to the future at the hour of its delivery. +I prefer the sage-femme to the prophet. From my heart, Nevil, I wish +I could help you. We have charged great guns together, but a family +arrangement is something different from a hostile battery. There's +Venice! and, as soon as you land, my responsibility's ended. Reflect, +I pray you, on what I have said about girls. Upon my word, I discover +myself talking wisdom to you. Girls are precious fragilities. Marriage +is the mould for them; they get shape, substance, solidity: that is +to say, sense, passion, a will of their own: and grace and tenderness, +delicacy; all out of the rude, raw, quaking creatures we call girls. +Paris! my dear Nevil. Paris! It's the book of women.' + +The grandeur of the decayed sea-city, where folly had danced Parisianly +of old, spread brooding along the waters in morning light; beautiful; +but with that inner light of history seen through the beauty Venice was +like a lowered banner. The great white dome and the campanili watching +above her were still brave emblems. Would Paris leave signs of an +ancient vigour standing to vindicate dignity when her fall came? Nevil +thought of Renee in Paris. + +She avoided him. She had retired behind her tent-curtains, and +reappeared only when her father's voice hailed the boat from a gondola. +The count and the marquis were sitting together, and there was a spare +gondola for the voyagers, so that they should not have to encounter +another babel of the riva. Salutes were performed with lifted hats, +nods, and bows. + +'Well, my dear child, it has all been very wonderful and uncomfortable?' +said the count. + +'Wonderful, papa; splendid.' + +'No qualms of any kind?' + +'None, I assure you.' And madame?' + +'Madame will confirm it, if you find a seat for her.' + +Rosamund Culling was received in the count's gondola, cordially thanked, +and placed beside the marquis. + +'I stay on board and pay these fellows,' said Roland. + +Renee was told by her father to follow madame. He had jumped into the +spare gondola and offered a seat to Beauchamp. + +'No,' cried Renee, arresting Beauchamp, 'it is I who mean to sit with +papa.' + +Up sprang the marquis with an entreating, 'Mademoiselle!' + +'M. Beauchamp will entertain you, M. le Marquis.' + +'I want him here,' said the count; and Beauchamp showed that his wish +was to enter the count's gondola, but Renee had recovered her aplomb, +and decisively said 'No,' and Beauchamp had to yield. + +That would have been an opportunity of speaking to her father without a +formal asking of leave. She knew it as well as Nevil Beauchamp. + +Renee took his hand to be assisted in the step down to her father's +arms, murmuring: + +'Do nothing--nothing! until you hear from me.' + + + + +CHAPTER XI. CAPTAIN BASKELETT + +Our England, meanwhile, was bustling over the extinguished war, counting +the cost of it, with a rather rueful eye on Manchester, and soothing +the taxed by an exhibition of heroes at brilliant feasts. Of course, the +first to come home had the cream of the praises. She hugged them in a +manner somewhat suffocating to modest men, but heroism must be brought +to bear upon these excesses of maternal admiration; modesty, too, when +it accepts the place of honour at a public banquet, should not protest +overmuch. To be just, the earliest arrivals, which were such as reached +the shores of Albion before her war was at an end, did cordially +reciprocate the hug. They were taught, and they believed most naturally, +that it was quite as well to repose upon her bosom as to have stuck to +their posts. Surely there was a conscious weakness in the Spartans, who +were always at pains to discipline their men in heroical conduct, and +rewarded none save the stand-fasts. A system of that sort seems to +betray the sense of poverty in the article. Our England does nothing +like it. All are welcome home to her so long as she is in want of them. +Besides, she has to please the taxpayer. You may track a shadowy line or +crazy zigzag of policy in almost every stroke of her domestic history: +either it is the forethought finding it necessary to stir up an impulse, +or else dashing impulse gives a lively pull to the afterthought: policy +becomes evident somehow, clumsily very possibly. How can she manage an +enormous middle-class, to keep it happy, other than a little clumsily? +The managing of it at all is the wonder. And not only has she to stupefy +the taxpayer by a timely display of feastings and fireworks, she has to +stop all that nonsense (to quote a satiated man lightened in his purse) +at the right moment, about the hour when the old standfasts, who +have simply been doing duty, return, poor jog-trot fellows, and a +complimentary motto or two is the utmost she can present to them. On +the other hand, it is true she gives her first loves, those early birds, +fully to understand that a change has come in their island mother's +mind. If there is a balance to be righted, she leaves that business to +society, and if it be the season for the gathering of society, it will +be righted more or less; and if no righting is done at all, perhaps the +Press will incidentally toss a leaf of laurel on a name or two: thus in +the exercise of grumbling doing good. + +With few exceptions, Nevil Beauchamp's heroes received the motto instead +of the sweetmeat. England expected them to do their duty; they did +it, and she was not dissatisfied, nor should they be. Beauchamp, at a +distance from the scene, chafed with customary vehemence, concerning the +unjust measure dealt to his favourites: Captain Hardist, of the Diomed, +twenty years a captain, still a captain! Young Michell denied the cross! +Colonel Evans Cuff, on the heights from first to last, and not advanced +a step! But Prancer, and Plunger, and Lammakin were thoroughly well +taken care of, this critic of the war wrote savagely, reviving an echo +of a queer small circumstance occurring in the midst of the high dolour +and anxiety of the whole nation, and which a politic country preferred +to forget, as we will do, for it was but an instance of strong family +feeling in high quarters; and is not the unity of the country founded +on the integrity of the family sentiment? Is it not certain, which the +master tells us, that a line is but a continuation of a number of dots? +Nevil Beauchamp was for insisting that great Government officers had +paid more attention to a dot or two than to the line. He appeared to be +at war with his country after the peace. So far he had a lively ally in +his uncle Everard; but these remarks of his were a portion of a letter, +whose chief burden was the request that Everard Romfrey would back him +in proposing for the hand of a young French lady, she being, Beauchamp +smoothly acknowledged, engaged to a wealthy French marquis, under the +approbation of her family. Could mortal folly outstrip a petition of +that sort? And apparently, according to the wording and emphasis of the +letter, it was the mature age of the marquis which made Mr. Beauchamp so +particularly desirous to stop the projected marriage and take the girl +himself. He appealed to his uncle on the subject in a 'really--really' +remonstrative tone, quite overwhelming to read. 'It ought not to be +permitted: by all the laws of chivalry, I should write to the girl's +father to interdict it: I really am particeps criminis in a sin +against nature if I don't!' Mr. Romfrey interjected in burlesque of +his ridiculous nephew, with collapsing laughter. But he expressed an +indignant surprise at Nevil for allowing Rosamund to travel alone. + +'I can take very good care of myself,' Rosamund protested. + +'You can do hundreds of things you should never be obliged to do while +he's at hand, or I, ma'am,' said Mr. Romfrey. 'The fellow's insane. +He forgets a gentleman's duty. Here's his "humanity" dogging a French +frock, and pooh!--the age of the marquis! Fifty? A man's beginning his +prime at fifty, or there never was much man in him. It's the mark of +a fool to take everybody for a bigger fool than himself-or he wouldn't +have written this letter to me. He can't come home yet, not yet, and he +doesn't know when he can! Has he thrown up the service? I am to preserve +the alliance between England and France by getting this French girl for +him in the teeth of her marquis, at my peril if I refuse!' + +Rosamund asked, 'Will you let me see where Nevil says that, sir?' + +Mr. Romfrey tore the letter to strips. 'He's one of your fellows who +cock their eyes when they mean to be cunning. He sends you to do the +wheedling, that's plain. I don't say he has hit on a bad advocate; +but tell him I back him in no mortal marriage till he shows a pair of +epaulettes on his shoulders. Tell him lieutenants are fledglings--he's +not marriageable at present. It's a very pretty sacrifice of himself he +intends for the sake of the alliance, tell him that, but a lieutenant's +not quite big enough to establish it. You will know what to tell him, +ma'am. And say, it's the fellow's best friend that advises him to be +out of it and home quick. If he makes one of a French trio, he's dished. +He's too late for his luck in England. Have him out of that mire, we +can't hope for more now.' + +Rosamund postponed her mission to plead. Her heart was with Nevil; her +understanding was easily led to side against him, and for better reasons +than Mr. Romfrey could be aware of: so she was assured by her experience +of the character of Mademoiselle de Croisnel. A certain belief in her +personal arts of persuasion had stopped her from writing on her homeward +journey to inform him that Nevil was not accompanying her, and when she +drove over Steynham Common, triumphal arches and the odour of a roasting +ox richly browning to celebrate the hero's return afflicted her mind +with all the solid arguments of a common-sense country in contravention +of a wild lover's vaporous extravagances. Why had he not come with her? +The disappointed ox put the question in a wavering drop of the cheers of +the villagers at the sight of the carriage without their bleeding hero. +Mr. Romfrey, at his hall-doors, merely screwed his eyebrows; for it +was the quality of this gentleman to foresee most human events, and his +capacity to stifle astonishment when they trifled with his prognostics. +Rosamund had left Nevil fast bound in the meshes of the young French +sorceress, no longer leading, but submissively following, expecting +blindly, seeing strange new virtues in the lurid indication of +what appeared to border on the reverse. How could she plead for her +infatuated darling to one who was common sense in person? + +Everard's pointed interrogations reduced her to speak defensively, +instead of attacking and claiming his aid for the poor enamoured young +man. She dared not say that Nevil continued to be absent because he was +now encouraged by the girl to remain in attendance on her, and was more +than half inspired to hope, and too artfully assisted to deceive the +count and the marquis under the guise of simple friendship. Letters +passed between them in books given into one another's hands with an +audacious openness of the saddest augury for the future of the pair, +and Nevil could be so lost to reason as to glory in Renee's intrepidity, +which he justified by their mutual situation, and cherished for a proof +that she was getting courage. In fine, Rosamund abandoned her task of +pleading. Nevil's communications gave the case a worse and worse aspect: +Renee was prepared to speak to her father; she delayed it; then the two +were to part; they were unable to perform the terrible sacrifice and +slay their last hope; and then Nevil wrote of destiny--language hitherto +unknown to him, evidently the tongue of Renee. He slipped on from +Italy to France. His uncle was besieged by a series of letters, and his +cousin, Cecil Baskelett, a captain in England's grand reserve force--her +Horse Guards, of the Blue division--helped Everard Romfrey to laugh over +them. + +It was not difficult, alack! Letters of a lover in an extremity of love, +crying for help, are as curious to cool strong men as the contortions of +the proved heterodox tied to a stake must have been to their chastening +ecclesiastical judges. Why go to the fire when a recantation will save +you from it? Why not break the excruciating faggot-bands, and escape, +when you have only to decide to do it? We naturally ask why. Those +martyrs of love or religion are madmen. Altogether, Nevil's adjurations +and supplications, his threats of wrath and appeals to reason, were an +odd mixture. 'He won't lose a chance while there's breath in his body,' +Everard said, quite good-humouredly, though he deplored that the chance +for the fellow to make his hero-parade in society, and haply catch an +heiress, was waning. There was an heiress at Steynham, on her way with +her father to Italy, very anxious to see her old friend Nevil--Cecilia +Halkett--and very inquisitive this young lady of sixteen was to know the +cause of his absence. She heard of it from Cecil. + +'And one morning last week mademoiselle was running away with him, and +the next morning she was married to her marquis!' + +Cecil was able to tell her that. + +'I used to be so fond of him,' said the ingenuous young lady. She had to +thank Nevil for a Circassian dress and pearls, which he had sent to her +by the hands of Mrs. Culling--a pretty present to a girl in the nursery, +she thought, and in fact she chose to be a little wounded by the cause +of his absence. + +'He's a good creature-really,' Cecil spoke on his cousin's behalf. 'Mad; +he always will be mad. A dear old savage; always amuses me. He does! I +get half my entertainment from him.' + +Captain Baskelett was gifted with the art, which is a fine and +a precious one, of priceless value in society, and not wanting a +benediction upon it in our elegant literature, namely, the art of +stripping his fellow-man and so posturing him as to make every movement +of the comical wretch puppet-like, constrained, stiff, and foolish. He +could present you heroical actions in that fashion; for example: + +'A long-shanked trooper, bearing the name of John Thomas Drew, was +crawling along under fire of the batteries. Out pops old Nevil, tries +to get the man on his back. It won't do. Nevil insists that it's exactly +one of the cases that ought to be, and they remain arguing about it like +a pair of nine-pins while the Muscovites are at work with the bowls. +Very well. Let me tell you my story. It's perfectly true, I give you my +word. So Nevil tries to horse Drew, and Drew proposes to horse Nevil, +as at school. Then Drew offers a compromise. He would much rather have +crawled on, you know, and allowed the shot to pass over his head; but +he's a Briton, old Nevil the same; but old Nevil's peculiarity is that, +as you are aware, he hates a compromise--won't have it--retro Sathanas! +and Drew's proposal to take his arm instead of being carried pickaback +disgusts old Nevil. Still it won't do to stop where they are, like the +cocoa-nut and the pincushion of our friends, the gipsies, on the downs: +so they take arms and commence the journey home, resembling the best of +friends on the evening of a holiday in our native clime--two steps to +the right, half-a-dozen to the left, etcaetera.' + +Thus, with scarce a variation from the facts, with but a flowery chaplet +cast on a truthful narrative, as it were, Captain Baskelett could render +ludicrous that which in other quarters had obtained honourable mention. +Nevil and Drew being knocked down by the wind of a ball near the +battery, 'Confound it!' cries Nevil, jumping on his feet, 'it's because +I consented to a compromise!'--a transparent piece of fiction this, +but so in harmony with the character stripped naked for us that it is +accepted. Imagine Nevil's love-affair in such hands! Recovering from +a fever, Nevil sees a pretty French girl in a gondola, and immediately +thinks, 'By jingo, I'm marriageable.' He hears she is engaged. 'By +jingo, she's marriageable too.' He goes through a sum in addition, and +the total is a couple; so he determines on a marriage. 'You can't get it +out of his head; he must be married instantly, and to her, because she +is going to marry somebody else. Sticks to her, follows her, will have +her, in spite of her father, her marquis, her brother, aunts, cousins, +religion, country, and the young woman herself. I assure you, a perfect +model of male fidelity! She is married. He is on her track. He knows his +time will come; he has only to be handy. You see, old Nevil believes in +Providence, is perfectly sure he will one day hear it cry out, "Where's +Beauchamp?"--"Here I am!"--"And here's your marquise!"--"I knew I should +have her at last," says Nevil, calm as Mont Blanc on a reduced scale.' + +The secret of Captain Baskelett's art would seem to be to show the +automatic human creature at loggerheads with a necessity that winks at +remarkable pretensions, while condemning it perpetually to doll-like +action. You look on men from your own elevation as upon a quantity of +our little wooden images, unto whom you affix puny characteristics, +under restrictions from which they shall not escape, though they attempt +it with the enterprising vigour of an extended leg, or a pair of raised +arms, or a head awry, or a trick of jumping; and some of them are +extraordinarily addicted to these feats; but for all they do the end is +the same, for necessity rules, that exactly so, under stress of activity +must the doll Nevil, the doll Everard, or the dolliest of dolls, fair +woman, behave. The automatic creature is subject to the laws of its +construction, you perceive. It can this, it can that, but it cannot leap +out of its mechanism. One definition of the art is, humour made easy, +and that may be why Cecil Baskelett indulged in it, and why it is +popular with those whose humour consists of a readiness to laugh. + +The fun between Cecil Baskelett and Mr. Romfrey over the doll Nevil +threatened an intimacy and community of sentiment that alarmed Rosamund +on behalf of her darling's material prospects. She wrote to him, +entreating him to come to Steynham. Nevil Beauchamp replied to her +both frankly and shrewdly: 'I shall not pretend that I forgive my uncle +Everard, and therefore it is best for me to keep away. Have no fear. +The baron likes a man of his own tastes: they may laugh together, if it +suits them; he never could be guilty of treachery, and to disinherit me +would be that. If I were to become his open enemy to-morrow, I should +look on the estates as mine-unless I did anything to make him disrespect +me. You will not suppose it likely. I foresee I shall want money. As +for Cecil, I give him as much rope as he cares to have. I know very well +Everard Romfrey will see where the point of likeness between them stops. +I apply for a ship the moment I land.' + +To test Nevil's judgement of his uncle, Rosamund ventured on showing +this letter to Mr. Romfrey. He read it, and said nothing, but +subsequently asked, from time to time, 'Has he got his ship yet?' It +assured her that Nevil was not wrong, and dispelled her notion of the +vulgar imbroglio of a rich uncle and two thirsty nephews. She was +hardly less relieved in reflecting that he could read men so soberly and +accurately. The desperation of the youth in love had rendered her one +little bit doubtful of the orderliness of his wits. After this she +smiled on Cecil's assiduities. Nevil obtained his appointment to a ship +bound for the coast of Africa to spy for slavers. He called on his uncle +in London, and spent the greater part of the hour's visit with Rosamund; +seemed cured of his passion, devoid of rancour, glad of the prospect of +a run among the slaving hulls. He and his uncle shook hands manfully, at +the full outstretch of their arms, in a way so like them, to Rosamund's +thinking--that is, in a way so unlike any other possible couple of men +so situated--that the humour of the sight eclipsed all the pleasantries +of Captain Baskelett. 'Good-bye, sir,' Nevil said heartily; and Everard +Romfrey was not behind-hand with the cordial ring of his 'Good-bye, +Nevil'; and upon that they separated. Rosamund would have been willing +to speak to her beloved of his false Renee--the Frenchwoman, she termed +her, i.e. generically false, needless to name; and one question quivered +on her tongue's tip: 'How, when she had promised to fly with you, how +could she the very next day step to the altar with him now her husband?' +And, if she had spoken it, she would have added, 'Your uncle could not +have set his face against you, had you brought her to England.' She felt +strongly the mastery Nevil Beauchamp could exercise even over his uncle +Everard. But when he was gone, unquestioned, merely caressed, it came +to her mind that he had all through insisted on his possession of this +particular power, and she accused herself of having wantonly helped +to ruin his hope--a matter to be rejoiced at in the abstract; but what +suffering she had inflicted on him! To quiet her heart, she persuaded +herself that for the future she would never fail to believe in him and +second him blindly, as true love should; and contemplating one so brave, +far-sighted, and self-assured, her determination seemed to impose the +lightest of tasks. + +Practically humane though he was, and especially toward cattle and all +kinds of beasts, Mr. Romfrey entertained no profound fellow-feeling +for the negro, and, except as the representative of a certain amount of +working power commonly requiring the whip to wind it up, he inclined +to despise that black spot in the creation, with which our civilization +should never have had anything to do. So he pronounced his mind, and +the long habit of listening to oracles might grow us ears to hear and +discover a meaning in it. Nevil's captures and releases of the grinning +freights amused him for awhile. He compared them to strings of bananas, +and presently put the vision of the whole business aside by talking of +Nevil's banana-wreath. He desired to have Nevil out of it. He and Cecil +handed Nevil in his banana-wreath about to their friends. Nevil, in +his banana-wreath, was set preaching 'humanitomtity.' At any rate, they +contrived to keep the remembrance of Nevil Beauchamp alive during the +period of his disappearance from the world, and in so doing they did him +a service. + +There is a pause between the descent of a diver and his return to the +surface, when those who would not have him forgotten by the better world +above him do rightly to relate anecdotes of him, if they can, and +to provoke laughter at him. The encouragement of the humane sense of +superiority over an object of interest, which laughter gives, is good +for the object; and besides, if you begin to tell sly stories of one in +the deeps who is holding his breath to fetch a pearl or two for you all, +you divert a particular sympathetic oppression of the chest, that the +extremely sensitive are apt to suffer from, and you dispose the larger +number to keep in mind a person they no longer see. Otherwise it is +likely that he will, very shortly after he has made his plunge, fatigue +the contemplative brains above, and be shuffled off them, even as great +ocean smoothes away the dear vanished man's immediate circle of +foam, and rapidly confounds the rippling memory of him with its other +agitations. And in such a case the apparition of his head upon our +common level once more will almost certainly cause a disagreeable +shock; nor is it improbable that his first natural snorts in his native +element, though they be simply to obtain his share of the breath of +life, will draw down on him condemnation for eccentric behaviour and +unmannerly; and this in spite of the jewel he brings, unless it be an +exceedingly splendid one. The reason is, that our brave world cannot +pardon a breach of continuity for any petty bribe. + +Thus it chanced, owing to the prolonged efforts of Mr. Romfrey and +Cecil Baskelett to get fun out of him, at the cost of considerable +inventiveness, that the electoral Address of the candidate, signing +himself 'R. C. S. Nevil Beauchamp,' to the borough of Bevisham, did not +issue from an altogether unremembered man. + +He had been cruising in the Mediterranean, commanding the Ariadne, the +smartest corvette in the service. He had, it was widely made known, met +his marquise in Palermo. It was presumed that he was dancing the round +with her still, when this amazing Address appeared on Bevisham's walls, +in anticipation of the general Election. The Address, moreover, was +ultra-Radical: museums to be opened on Sundays; ominous references to +the Land question, etc.; no smooth passing mention of Reform, such as +the Liberal, become stately, adopts in speaking of that property of his, +but swinging blows on the heads of many a denounced iniquity. + +Cecil forwarded the Address to Everard Romfrey without comment. + +Next day the following letter, dated from Itchincope, the house of Mr. +Grancey Lespel, on the borders of Bevisham, arrived at Steynham: + +'I have despatched you the proclamation, folded neatly. The electors of +Bevisham are summoned, like a town at the sword's point, to yield him +their votes. Proclamation is the word. I am your born representative! I +have completed my political education on salt water, and I tackle you +on the Land question. I am the heir of your votes, gentlemen!--I forgot, +and I apologize; he calls them fellow-men. Fraternal, and not so +risky. Here at Lespel's we read the thing with shouts. It hangs in the +smoking-room. We throw open the curacoa to the intelligence and industry +of the assembled guests; we carry the right of the multitude to our +host's cigars by a majority. C'est un farceur que notre bon petit +cousin. Lespel says it is sailorlike to do something of this sort after +a cruise. Nevil's Radicalism would have been clever anywhere out of +Bevisham. Of all boroughs! Grancey Lespel knows it. He and his family +were Bevisham's Whig M.P.'s before the day of Manchester. In Bevisham an +election is an arrangement made by Providence to square the accounts of +the voters, and settle arrears. They reckon up the health of their two +members and the chances of an appeal to the country when they fix the +rents and leases. You have them pointed out to you in the street, +with their figures attached to them like titles. Mr. Tomkins, the +twenty-pound man; an elector of uncommon purity. I saw the ruffian +yesterday. He has an extra breadth to his hat. He has never been known +to listen to a member under L20, and is respected enormously--like the +lady of the Mythology, who was an intolerable Tartar of virtue, because +her price was nothing less than a god, and money down. Nevil will have +to come down on Bevisham in the Jupiter style. Bevisham is downright +the dearest of boroughs--"vaulting-boards," as Stukely Culbrett calls +them--in the kingdom. I assume we still say "kingdom." + +'He dashed into the Radical trap exactly two hours after landing. I +believe he was on his way to the Halketts at Mount Laurels. A notorious +old rascal revolutionist retired from his licenced business of +slaughterer--one of your gratis doctors--met him on the high-road, and +told him he was the man. Up went Nevil's enthusiasm like a bottle rid +of the cork. You will see a great deal about faith in the proclamation; +"faith in the future," and "my faith in you." When you become a Radical +you have faith in any quantity, just as an alderman gets turtle soup. +It is your badge, like a livery-servant's cockade or a corporal's sleeve +stripes--your badge and your bellyful. Calculations were gone through +at the Liberal newspaper-office, old Nevil adding up hard, and he was +informed that he was elected by something like a topping eight or nine +hundred and some fractions. I am sure that a fellow who can let himself +be gulled by a pile of figures trumped up in a Radical newspaper-office +must have great faith in the fractions. Out came Nevil's proclamation. + +'I have not met him, and I would rather not. I shall not pretend to +offer you advice, for I have the habit of thinking your judgement can +stand by itself. We shall all find this affair a nuisance. Nevil will +pay through the nose. We shall have the ridicule spattered on the +family. It would be a safer thing for him to invest his money on the +Turf, and I shall advise his doing it if I come across him. + +'Perhaps the best course would be to telegraph for the marquise!' + +This was from Cecil Baskelett. He added a postscript: + +'Seriously, the "mad commander" has not an ace of a chance. Grancey and +I saw some Working Men (you have to write them in capitals, king and +queen small); they were reading the Address on a board carried by a +red-nosed man, and shrugging. They are not such fools. + +'By the way, I am informed Shrapnel has a young female relative living +with him, said to be a sparkler. I bet you, sir, she is not a Radical. +Do you take me?' + +Rosamund Culling drove to the railway station on her way to Bevisham +within an hour after Mr. Romfrey's eyebrows had made acute play over +this communication. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. AN INTERVIEW WITH THE INFAMOUS DR. SHRAPNEL + +In the High street of the ancient and famous town and port of Bevisham, +Rosamund met the military governor of a neighbouring fortress, General +Sherwin, once colonel of her husband's regiment in India; and by him, +as it happened, she was assisted in finding the whereabout of the young +Liberal candidate, without the degrading recourse of an application at +the newspaper-office of his party. The General was leisurely walking to +a place of appointment to fetch his daughter home from a visit to an old +school-friend, a Miss Jenny Denham, no other than a ward, or a niece, or +an adoption of Dr. Shrapnel's: 'A nice girl; a great favourite of mine,' +the General said. Shrapnel he knew by reputation only as a wrong-headed +politician; but he spoke of Miss Denham pleasantly two or three times, +praising her accomplishments and her winning manners. His hearer +suspected that it might be done to dissociate the idea of her from the +ruffling agitator. 'Is she pretty?' was a question that sprang from +Rosamund's intimate reflections. The answer was, 'Yes.' + +'Very pretty?' + +'I think very pretty,' said the General. + +'Captivatingly?' + +'Clara thinks she is perfect; she is tall and slim, and dresses well. +The girls were with a French Madam in Paris. But, if you are interested +about her, you can come on with me, and we shall meet them somewhere +near the head of the street. I don't,' the General hesitated and +hummed--'I don't call at Shrapnel's.' + +'I have never heard her name before to-day,' said Rosamund. + +'Exactly,' said the General, crowing at the aimlessness of a woman's +curiosity. + +The young ladies were seen approaching, and Rosamund had to ask herself +whether the first sight of a person like Miss Denham would be of a kind +to exercise a lively influence over the political and other sentiments +of a dreamy sailor just released from ship-service. In an ordinary case +she would have said no, for Nevil enjoyed a range of society where faces +charming as Miss Denham's were plentiful as roses in the rose-garden. +But, supposing him free of his bondage to the foreign woman, there was, +she thought and feared, a possibility that a girl of this description +might capture a young man's vacant heart sighing for a new mistress. +And if so, further observation assured her Miss Denham was likely to be +dangerous far more than professedly attractive persons, enchantresses +and the rest. Rosamund watchfully gathered all the superficial +indications which incite women to judge of character profoundly. This +new object of alarm was, as the General had said of her, tall and slim, +a friend of neatness, plainly dressed, but exquisitely fitted, in the +manner of Frenchwomen. She spoke very readily, not too much, and had +the rare gift of being able to speak fluently with a smile on the mouth. +Vulgar archness imitates it. She won and retained the eyes of her hearer +sympathetically, it seemed. Rosamund thought her as little conscious as +a woman could be. She coloured at times quickly, but without confusion. +When that name, the key of Rosamund's meditations, chanced to be +mentioned, a flush swept over Miss Denham's face. The candour of it was +unchanged as she gazed at Rosamund, with a look that asked, 'Do you know +him?' + +Rosamund said, 'I am an old friend of his.' + +'He is here now, in this town.' + +'I wish to see him very much.' + +General Sherwin interposed: 'We won't talk about political characters +just for the present.' + +'I wish you knew him, papa, and would advise him,' his daughter said. + +The General nodded hastily. 'By-and-by, by-and-by.' + +They had in fact taken seats at a table of mutton pies in a pastrycook's +shop, where dashing military men were restrained solely by their +presence from a too noisy display of fascinations before the fashionable +waiting-women. + +Rosamund looked at Miss Denham. As soon as they were in the street the +latter said, 'If you will be good enough to come with me, madam...?' +Rosamund bowed, thankful to have been comprehended. The two young +ladies kissed cheeks and parted. General Sherwin raised his hat, and was +astonished to see Mrs. Culling join Miss Denham in accepting the salute, +for they had not been introduced, and what could they have in common? It +was another of the oddities of female nature. + +'My name is Mrs. Culling, and I will tell you how it is that I am +interested in Captain Beauchamp,' Rosamund addressed her companion. 'I +am his uncle's housekeeper. I have known him and loved him since he was +a boy. I am in great fear that he is acting rashly.' + +'You honour me, madam, by speaking to me so frankly,' Miss Denham +answered. + +'He is quite bent upon this Election?' + +'Yes, madam. I am not, as you can suppose, in his confidence, but I hear +of him from Dr. Shrapnel.' + +'Your uncle?' + +'I call him uncle: he is my guardian, madam.' + +It is perhaps excuseable that this communication did not cause the +doctor to shine with added lustre in Rosamund's thoughts, or ennoble the +young lady. + +'You are not relatives, then?' she said. + +'No, unless love can make us so.' + +'Not blood-relatives?' + +'No.' + +'Is he not very... extreme?' + +'He is very sincere.' + +'I presume you are a politician?' + +Miss Denham smiled. 'Could you pardon me, madam, if I said that I +was?' The counter-question was a fair retort enfolding a gentler +irony. Rosamund felt that she had to do with wits as well as with vivid +feminine intuitions in the person of this Miss Denham. + +She said, 'I really am of opinion that our sex might abstain from +politics.' + +'We find it difficult to do justice to both parties,' Miss Denham +followed. 'It seems to be a kind of clanship with women; hardly even +that.' + +Rosamund was inattentive to the conversational slipshod, and launched +one of the heavy affirmatives which are in dialogue full stops. She +could not have said why she was sensible of anger, but the sentiment +of anger, or spite (if that be a lesser degree of the same affliction), +became stirred in her bosom when she listened to the ward of Dr. +Shrapnel. A silly pretty puss of a girl would not have excited it, nor +an avowed blood-relative of the demagogue. + +Nevil's hotel was pointed out to Rosamund, and she left her card there. +He had been absent since eight in the morning. There was the probability +that he might be at Dr. Shrapnel's, so Rosamund walked on. + +'Captain Beauchamp gives himself no rest,' Miss Denham said. + +'Oh! I know him, when once his mind is set on anything,' said Rosamund. + +'Is it not too early to begin to--canvass, I think, is the word?' + +'He is studying whatever the town can teach him of its wants; that is, +how he may serve it.' + +'Indeed! But if the town will not have him to serve it?' + +'He imagines that he cannot do better, until that has been decided, than +to fit himself for the post.' + +'Acting upon your advice? I mean, of course, your uncle's; that is, Dr. +Shrapnel's.' + +'Dr. Shrapnel thinks it will not be loss of time for Captain Beauchamp +to grow familiar with the place, and observe as well as read.' + +'It sounds almost as if Captain Beauchamp had submitted to be Dr. +Shrapnel's pupil.' + +'It is natural, madam, that Dr. Shrapnel should know more of political +ways at present than Captain Beauchamp.' + +'To Captain Beauchamp's friends and relatives it appears very strange +that he should have decided to contest this election so suddenly. May I +inquire whether he and Dr. Shrapnel are old acquaintances?' + +'No, madam, they are not. They had never met before Captain Beauchamp +landed, the other day.' + +'I am surprised, I confess. I cannot understand the nature of an +influence that induces him to abandon a profession he loves and shines +in, for politics, at a moment's notice.' + +Miss Denham was silent, and then said: + +'I will tell you, madam, how it occurred, as far as circumstances +explain it. Dr. Shrapnel is accustomed to give a little country feast to +the children I teach, and their parents if they choose to come, and +they generally do. They are driven to Northeden Heath, where we set up a +booth for them, and try with cakes and tea and games to make them spend +one of their happy afternoons and evenings. We succeed, I know, for the +little creatures talk of it and look forward to the day. When they are +at their last romp, Dr. Shrapnel speaks to the parents.' + +'Can he obtain a hearing?' Rosamund asked. + +'He has not so very large a crowd to address, madam, and he is much +beloved by those that come.' + +'He speaks to them of politics on those occasions?' + +'Adouci a leur intention. It is not a political speech, but Dr. Shrapnel +thinks, that in a so-called free country seeking to be really free, +men of the lowest class should be educated in forming a political +judgement.' + +'And women too?' + +'And women, yes. Indeed, madam, we notice that the women listen very +creditably.' + +'They can put on the air.' + +'I am afraid, not more than the men do. To get them to listen +is something. They suffer like the men, and must depend on their +intelligence to win their way out of it.' + +Rosamund's meditation was exclamatory: What can be the age of this +pretentious girl? + +An afterthought turned her more conciliatorily toward the person, but +less to the subject. She was sure that she was lending ear to the echo +of the dangerous doctor, and rather pitied Miss Denham for awhile, +reflecting that a young woman stuffed with such ideas would find it hard +to get a husband. Mention of Nevil revived her feeling of hostility. + +We had seen a gentleman standing near and listening attentively,' Miss +Denham resumed, 'and when Dr. Shrapnel concluded a card was handed to +him. He read it and gave it to me, and said, "You know that name." It +was a name we had often talked about during the war. + +He went to Captain Beauchamp and shook his hand. He does not pay many +compliments, and he does not like to receive them, but it was impossible +for him not to be moved by Captain Beauchamp's warmth in thanking him +for the words he had spoken. I saw that Dr. Shrapnel became interested +in Captain Beauchamp the longer they conversed. We walked home together. +Captain Beauchamp supped with us. I left them at half-past eleven at +night, and in the morning I found them walking in the garden. They had +not gone to bed at all. Captain Beauchamp has remained in Bevisham ever +since. He soon came to the decision to be a candidate for the borough.' + +Rosamund checked her lips from uttering: To be a puppet of Dr. +Shrapnel's! + +She remarked, 'He is very eloquent--Dr. Shrapnel?' + +Miss Denham held some debate with herself upon the term. + +'Perhaps it is not eloquence; he often... no, he is not an orator.' + +Rosamund suggested that he was persuasive, possibly. + +Again the young lady deliberately weighed the word, as though the nicest +measure of her uncle or adoptor's quality in this or that direction were +in requisition and of importance--an instance of a want of delicacy +of perception Rosamund was not sorry to detect. For good-looking, +refined-looking, quick-witted girls can be grown; but the nimble sense +of fitness, ineffable lightning-footed tact, comes of race and breeding, +and she was sure Nevil was a man soon to feel the absence of that. + +'Dr. Shrapnel is persuasive to those who go partly with him, or whose +condition of mind calls on him for great patience,' Miss Denham said at +last. + +'I am only trying to comprehend how it was that he should so rapidly +have won Captain Beauchamp to his views,' Rosamund explained; and the +young lady did not reply. + +Dr. Shrapnel's house was about a mile beyond the town, on a common of +thorn and gorse, through which the fir-bordered highway ran. A fence +waist-high enclosed its plot of meadow and garden, so that the doctor, +while protecting his own, might see and be seen of the world, as was the +case when Rosamund approached. He was pacing at long slow strides along +the gravel walk, with his head bent and bare, and his hands behind +his back, accompanied by a gentleman who could be no other than Nevil, +Rosamund presumed to think; but drawing nearer she found she was +mistaken. + +'That is not Captain Beauchamp's figure,' she said. + +'No, it is not he,' said Miss Denham. + +Rosamund saw that her companion was pale. She warmed to her at once; by +no means on account of the pallor in itself. + +'I have walked too fast for you, I fear.' + +'Oh no; I am accused of being a fast walker.' + +Rosamund was unwilling to pass through the demagogue's gate. On second +thoughts, she reflected that she could hardly stipulate to have news of +Nevil tossed to her over the spikes, and she entered. + +While receiving Dr. Shrapnel's welcome to a friend of Captain Beauchamp, +she observed the greeting between Miss Denham and the younger gentleman. +It reassured her. They met like two that have a secret. + +The dreaded doctor was an immoderately tall man, lean and wiry, +carelessly clad in a long loose coat of no colour, loose trowsers, and +huge shoes. + +He stooped from his height to speak, or rather swing the stiff upper +half of his body down to his hearer's level and back again, like a +ship's mast on a billowy sea. He was neither rough nor abrupt, nor did +he roar bullmouthedly as demagogues are expected to do, though his voice +was deep. He was actually, after his fashion, courteous, it could be +said of him, except that his mind was too visibly possessed by distant +matters for Rosamund's taste, she being accustomed to drawing-room and +hunting and military gentlemen, who can be all in the words they utter. +Nevertheless he came out of his lizard-like look with the down-dropped +eyelids quick at a resumption of the dialogue; sometimes gesturing, +sweeping his arm round. A stubborn tuft of iron-grey hair fell across +his forehead, and it was apparently one of his life's labours to get it +to lie amid the mass, for his hand rarely ceased to be in motion without +an impulsive stroke at the refractory forelock. He peered through his +eyelashes ordinarily, but from no infirmity of sight. The truth was, +that the man's nature counteracted his spirit's intenser eagerness and +restlessness by alternating a state of repose that resembled dormancy, +and so preserved him. Rosamund was obliged to give him credit for +straightforward eyes when they did look out and flash. Their filmy blue, +half overflown with grey by age, was poignant while the fire in them +lasted. Her antipathy attributed something electrical to the light they +shot. + +Dr. Shrapnel's account of Nevil stated him to have gone to call on +Colonel Halkett, a new resident at Mount Laurels, on the Otley river. He +offered the welcome of his house to the lady who was Captain Beauchamp's +friend, saying, with extraordinary fatuity (so it sounded in Rosamund's +ears), that Captain Beauchamp would certainly not let an evening pass +without coming to him. Rosamund suggested that he might stay late at +Mount Laurels. + +'Then he will arrive here after nightfall,' said the doctor. 'A bed is +at your service, ma'am.' + +The offer was declined. 'I should like to have seen him to-day; but he +will be home shortly.' + +'He will not quit Bevisham till this Election's decided unless to hunt a +stray borough vote, ma'am.' + +'He goes to Mount Laurels. + +'For that purpose.' + +'I do not think he will persuade Colonel Halkett to vote in the Radical +interest.' + +'That is the probability with a landed proprietor, ma'am. We must knock, +whether the door opens or not. Like,' the doctor laughed to himself up +aloft, 'like a watchman in the night to say that he smells smoke on the +premises.' + +'Surely we may expect Captain Beauchamp to consult his family about so +serious a step as this he is taking,' Rosamund said, with an effort to +be civil. + +Why should he?' asked the impending doctor. + +His head continued in the interrogative position when it had resumed +its elevation. The challenge for a definite reply to so outrageous a +question irritated Rosamund's nerves, and, loth though she was to admit +him to the subject, she could not forbear from saying, 'Why? Surely his +family have the first claim on him!' + +'Surely not, ma'am. There is no first claim. A man's wife and children +have a claim on him for bread. A man's parents have a claim on him for +obedience while he is a child. A man's uncles, aunts, and cousins have +no claim on him at all, except for help in necessity, which he can grant +and they require. None--wife, children, parents, relatives--none has a +claim to bar his judgement and his actions. Sound the conscience, and +sink the family! With a clear conscience, it is best to leave the family +to its own debates. No man ever did brave work who held counsel with his +family. The family view of a man's fit conduct is the weak point of the +country. It is no other view than, "Better thy condition for our +sakes." Ha! In this way we breed sheep, fatten oxen: men are dying off. +Resolution taken, consult the family means--waste your time! Those who +go to it want an excuse for altering their minds. The family view is +everlastingly the shopkeeper's! Purse, pence, ease, increase of worldly +goods, personal importance--the pound, the English pound! Dare do that, +and you forfeit your share of Port wine in this world; you won't be +dubbed with a title; you'll be fingered at! Lord, Lord! is it the region +inside a man, or out, that gives him peace? Out, they say; for they have +lost faith in the existence of an inner. They haven't it. Air-sucker, +blood-pump, cooking machinery, and a battery of trained instincts, +aptitudes, fill up their vacuum. I repeat, ma'am, why should young +Captain Beauchamp spend an hour consulting his family? They won't +approve him; he knows it. They may annoy him; and what is the gain of +that? They can't move him; on that I let my right hand burn. So it would +be useless on both sides. He thinks so. So do I. He is one of the men to +serve his country on the best field we can choose for him. In a ship's +cabin he is thrown away. Ay, ay, War, and he may go aboard. But now we +must have him ashore. Too few of such as he!' + +'It is matter of opinion,' said Rosamund, very tightly compressed; +scarcely knowing what she said. + +How strange, besides hateful, it was to her to hear her darling spoken +of by a stranger who not only pretended to appreciate but to possess +him! A stranger, a man of evil, with monstrous ideas! A terribly strong +inexhaustible man, of a magical power too; or would he otherwise have +won such a mastery over Nevil? + +Of course she could have shot a rejoinder, to confute him with all the +force of her indignation, save that the words were tumbling about in her +head like a world in disruption, which made her feel a weakness at +the same time that she gloated on her capacity, as though she had an +enormous army, quite overwhelming if it could but be got to move in +advance. This very common condition of the silent-stricken, unused in +dialectics, heightened Rosamund's disgust by causing her to suppose that +Nevil had been similarly silenced, in his case vanquished, captured, +ruined; and he dwindled in her estimation for a moment or two. She felt +that among a sisterhood of gossips she would soon have found her voice, +and struck down the demagogue's audacious sophisms: not that they +affected her in the slightest degree for her own sake. + +Shrapnel might think what he liked, and say what he liked, as far as she +was concerned, apart from the man she loved. Rosamund went through these +emotions altogether on Nevil's behalf, and longed for her affirmatizing +inspiring sisterhood until the thought of them threw another shade on +him. + +What champion was she to look to? To whom but to Mr. Everard Romfrey? + +It was with a spasm of delighted reflection that she hit on Mr. Romfrey. +He was like a discovery to her. With his strength and skill, his robust +common sense and rough shrewd wit, his prompt comparisons, his chivalry, +his love of combat, his old knightly blood, was not he a match, and an +overmatch, for the ramping Radical who had tangled Nevil in his rough +snares? She ran her mind over Mr. Romfrey's virtues, down even to his +towering height and breadth. Could she but once draw these two giants +into collision in Nevil's presence, she was sure it would save him. The +method of doing it she did not stop to consider: she enjoyed her triumph +in the idea. + +Meantime she had passed from Dr. Shrapnel to Miss Denham, and carried on +a conversation becomingly. + +Tea had been made in the garden, and she had politely sipped half a +cup, which involved no step inside the guilty house, and therefore no +distress to her antagonism. The sun descended. She heard the doctor +reciting. Could it be poetry? In her imagination the sombre hues +surrounding an incendiary opposed that bright spirit. She listened, +smiling incredulously. Miss Denham could interpret looks, and said, 'Dr. +Shrapnel is very fond of those verses.' + +Rosamund's astonishment caused her to say, 'Are they his own?'--a +piece of satiric innocency at which Miss Denham laughed softly as she +answered, 'No.' + +Rosamund pleaded that she had not heard them with any distinctness. + +'Are they written by the gentleman at his side?' + +'Mr. Lydiard? No. He writes, but the verses are not his.' + +'Does he know--has he met Captain Beauchamp?' + +'Yes, once. Captain Beauchamp has taken a great liking to his works.' + +Rosamund closed her eyes, feeling that she was in a nest that had +determined to appropriate Nevil. But at any rate there was the hope and +the probability that this Mr. Lydiard of the pen had taken a long start +of Nevil in the heart of Miss Denham: and struggling to be candid, to +ensure some meditative satisfaction, Rosamund admitted to herself that +the girl did not appear to be one of the wanton giddy-pated pusses who +play two gentlemen or more on their line. Appearances, however, could +be deceptive: never pretend to know a girl by her face, was one of +Rosamund's maxims. + +She was next informed of Dr. Shrapnel's partiality for music toward +the hour of sunset. Miss Denham mentioned it, and the doctor, presently +sauntering up, invited Rosamund to a seat on a bench near the open +window of the drawing-room. He nodded to his ward to go in. + +'I am a fire-worshipper, ma'am,' he said. 'The God of day is the father +of poetry, medicine, music: our best friend. See him there! My Jenny +will spin a thread from us to him over the millions of miles, with one +touch of the chords, as quick as he shoots a beam on us. Ay! on her +wretched tinkler called a piano, which tries at the whole orchestra and +murders every instrument in the attempt. But it's convenient, like our +modern civilization--a taming and a diminishing of individuals for an +insipid harmony!' + +'You surely do not object to the organ?--I fear I cannot wait, though,' +said Rosamund. + +Miss Denham entreated her. 'Oh! do, madam. Not to hear me--I am not +so perfect a player that I should wish it--but to see him. Captain +Beauchamp may now be coming at any instant.' + +Mr. Lydiard added, 'I have an appointment with him here for this +evening.' + +'You build a cathedral of sound in the organ,' said Dr. Shrapnel, +casting out a league of leg as he sat beside his only half-persuaded +fretful guest. 'You subject the winds to serve you; that's a gain. You +do actually accomplish a resonant imitation of the various instruments; +they sing out as your two hands command them--trumpet, flute, dulcimer, +hautboy, drum, storm, earthquake, ethereal quire; you have them at your +option. But tell me of an organ in the open air? The sublimity would +vanish, ma'am, both from the notes and from the structure, because +accessories and circumstances produce its chief effects. Say that +an organ is a despotism, just as your piano is the Constitutional +bourgeois. Match them with the trained orchestral band of skilled +individual performers, indoors or out, where each grasps his instrument, +and each relies on his fellow with confidence, and an unrivalled concord +comes of it. That is our republic each one to his work; all in union! +There's the motto for us! Then you have music, harmony, the highest, +fullest, finest! Educate your men to form a band, you shame dexterous +trickery and imitation sounds. Then for the difference of real +instruments from clever shams! Oh, ay, one will set your organ +going; that is, one in front, with his couple of panting air-pumpers +behind--his ministers!' Dr. Shrapnel laughed at some undefined mental +image, apparently careless of any laughing companionship. 'One will do +it for you, especially if he's born to do it. Born!' A slap of the knee +reported what seemed to be an immensely contemptuous sentiment. 'But +free mouths blowing into brass and wood, ma'am, beat your bellows and +your whifflers; your artificial choruses--crash, crash! your unanimous +plebiscitums! Beat them? There's no contest: we're in another world; +we're in the sun's world,--yonder!' + +Miss Denham's opening notes on the despised piano put a curb on the +doctor. She began a Mass of Mozart's, without the usual preliminary +rattle of the keys, as of a crier announcing a performance, straight to +her task, for which Rosamund thanked her, liking that kind of composed +simplicity: she thanked her more for cutting short the doctor's +fanatical nonsense. It was perceptible to her that a species of mad +metaphor had been wriggling and tearing its passage through a thorn-bush +in his discourse, with the furious urgency of a sheep in a panic; but +where the ostensible subject ended and the metaphor commenced, and which +was which at the conclusion, she found it difficult to discern--much as +the sheep would, be when he had left his fleece behind him. She could +now have said, 'Silly old man!' + +Dr. Shrapnel appeared most placable. He was gazing at his Authority in +the heavens, tangled among gold clouds and purple; his head bent acutely +on one side, and his eyes upturned in dim speculation. His great feet +planted on their heels faced him, suggesting the stocks; his arms +hung loose. Full many a hero of the alehouse, anciently amenable to +leg-and-foot imprisonment in the grip of the parish, has presented as +respectable an air. His forelock straggled as it willed. + +Rosamund rose abruptly as soon as the terminating notes of the Mass had +been struck. + +Dr. Shrapnel seemed to be concluding his devotions before he followed +her example. + +'There, ma'am, you have a telegraphic system for the soul,' he said. 'It +is harder work to travel from this place to this' (he pointed at ear and +breast) 'than from here to yonder' (a similar indication traversed the +distance between earth and sun). 'Man's aim has hitherto been to +keep men from having a soul for this world: he takes it for something +infernal. He?--I mean, they that hold power. They shudder to think the +conservatism of the earth will be shaken by a change; they dread they +won't get men with souls to fetch and carry, dig, root, mine, for them. +Right!--what then? Digging and mining will be done; so will harping and +singing. But then we have a natural optimacy! Then, on the one hand, we +whip the man-beast and the man-sloth; on the other, we seize that old +fatted iniquity--that tyrant! that tempter! that legitimated swindler +cursed of Christ! that palpable Satan whose name is Capital! by the +neck, and have him disgorging within three gasps of his life. He is the +villain! Let him live, for he too comes of blood and bone. He shall not +grind the faces of the poor and helpless--that's all.' + +The comicality of her having such remarks addressed to her provoked a +smile on Rosamund's lips. + +'Don't go at him like Samson blind,' said Mr. Lydiard; and Miss Denham, +who had returned, begged her guardian to entreat the guest to stay. + +She said in an undertone, 'I am very anxious you should see Captain +Beauchamp, madam.' + +'I too; but he will write, and I really can wait no longer,' Rosamund +replied, in extreme apprehension lest a certain degree of pressure +should overbear her repugnance to the doctor's dinner-table. Miss +Denham's look was fixed on her; but, whatever it might mean, Rosamund's +endurance was at an end. She was invited to dine; she refused. She was +exceedingly glad to find herself on the high-road again, with a prospect +of reaching Steynham that night; for it was important that she should +not have to confess a visit to Bevisham now when she had so little of +favourable to tell Mr. Everard Romfrey of his chosen nephew. Whether she +had acted quite wisely in not remaining to see Nevil, was an agitating +question that had to be silenced by an appeal to her instincts of +repulsion, and a further appeal for justification of them to her +imaginary sisterhood of gossips. How could she sit and eat, how pass an +evening in that house, in the society of that man? Her tuneful chorus +cried, 'How indeed.' Besides, it would have offended Mr. Romfrey to +hear that she had done so. Still she could not refuse to remember Miss +Denham's marked intimations of there being a reason for Nevil's friend +to seize the chance of an immediate interview with him; and in her +distress at the thought, Rosamund reluctantly, but as if compelled +by necessity, ascribed the young lady's conduct to a strong sense of +personal interests. + +'Evidently she has no desire he should run the risk of angering a rich +uncle.' + +This shameful suspicion was unavoidable: there was no other opiate +for Rosamund's blame of herself after letting her instincts gain the +ascendancy. + +It will be found a common case, that when we have yielded to our +instincts, and then have to soothe conscience, we must slaughter +somebody, for a sacrificial offering to our sense of comfort. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. A SUPERFINE CONSCIENCE + +However much Mr. Everard Romfrey may have laughed at Nevil Beauchamp +with his 'banana-wreath,' he liked the fellow for having volunteered for +that African coast-service, and the news of his promotion by his admiral +to the post of commander through a death vacancy, had given him an +exalted satisfaction, for as he could always point to the cause of +failures, he strongly appreciated success. The circumstance had offered +an occasion for the new commander to hit him hard upon a matter of fact. +Beauchamp had sent word of his advance in rank, but requested his uncle +not to imagine him wearing an additional epaulette; and he corrected the +infallible gentleman's error (which had of course been reported to +him when he was dreaming of Renee, by Mrs. Culling) concerning a +lieutenant's shoulder decorations, most gravely; informing him of the +anchor on the lieutenant's pair of epaulettes, and the anchor and star +on a commander's, and the crown on a captain's, with a well-feigned +solicitousness to save his uncle from blundering further. This was done +in the dry neat manner which Mr. Romfrey could feel to be his own turned +on him. + +He began to conceive a vague respect for the fellow who had proved him +wrong upon a matter of fact. Beauchamp came from Africa rather worn +by the climate, and immediately obtained the command of the Ariadne +corvette, which had been some time in commission in the Mediterranean, +whither he departed, without visiting Steynham; allowing Rosamund +to think him tenacious of his wrath as well as of love. Mr. Romfrey +considered him to be insatiable for service. Beauchamp, during his +absence, had shown himself awake to the affairs of his country once +only, in an urgent supplication he had forwarded for all his uncle's +influence to be used to get him appointed to the first vacancy in Robert +Hall's naval brigade, then forming a part of our handful in insurgent +India. The fate of that chivalrous Englishman, that born sailor-warrior, +that truest of heroes, imperishable in the memory of those who knew him, +and in our annals, young though he was when death took him, had wrung +from Nevil Beauchamp such a letter of tears as to make Mr. Romfrey +believe the naval crown of glory his highest ambition. Who on earth +could have guessed him to be bothering his head about politics all the +while! Or was the whole stupid business a freak of the moment? + +It became necessary for Mr. Romfrey to contemplate his eccentric nephew +in the light of a mannikin once more. Consequently he called to mind, +and bade Rosamund Culling remember, that he had foreseen and had +predicted the mounting of Nevil Beauchamp on his political horse one day +or another; and perhaps the earlier the better. And a donkey could +have sworn that when he did mount he would come galloping in among the +Radical rough-riders. Letters were pouring upon Steynham from men and +women of Romfrey blood and relationship concerning the positive tone +of Radicalism in the commander's address. Everard laughed at them. As a +practical man, his objection lay against the poor fool's choice of the +peccant borough of Bevisham. Still, in view of the needfulness of his +learning wisdom, and rapidly, the disbursement of a lot of his money, +certain to be required by Bevisham's electors, seemed to be the surest +method for quickening his wits. Thus would he be acting as his own +chirurgeon, gaily practising phlebotomy on his person to cure him of his +fever. Too much money was not the origin of the fever in Nevil's case, +but he had too small a sense of the value of what he possessed, and the +diminishing stock would be likely to cry out shrilly. + +To this effect, never complaining that Nevil Beauchamp had not come to +him to take counsel with him, the high-minded old gentleman talked. At +the same time, while indulging in so philosophical a picture of himself +as was presented by a Romfrey mildly accounting for events and smoothing +them under the infliction of an offence, he could not but feel that +Nevil had challenged him: such was the reading of it; and he waited for +some justifiable excitement to fetch him out of the magnanimous mood, +rather in the image of an angler, it must be owned. + +'Nevil understands that I am not going to pay a farthing of his expenses +in Bevisham?' he said to Mrs. Culling. + +She replied blandly and with innocence, 'I have not seen him, sir.' + +He nodded. At the next mention of Nevil between them, he asked, 'Where +is it he's lying perdu, ma'am?' + +'I fancy in that town, in Bevisham.' + +'At the Liberal, Radical, hotel?' + +'I dare say; some place; I am not certain....' + +'The rascal doctor's house there? Shrapnel's?' + +'Really... I have not seen him.' + +'Have you heard from him?' + +'I have had a letter; a short one.' + +'Where did he date his letter from?' + +'From Bevisham.' + +'From what house?' + +Rosamund glanced about for a way of escaping the question. There was +none but the door. She replied, 'From Dr. Shrapnel's.' + +'That's the Anti-Game-Law agitator.' + +'You do not imagine, sir, that Nevil subscribes to every thing the +horrid man agitates for?' + +'You don't like the man, ma'am?' + +'I detest him.' + +'Ha! So you have seen Shrapnel?' + +'Only for a moment; a moment or two. I cannot endure him. I am sure I +have reason.' + +Rosamund flushed exceedingly red. The visit to Dr. Shrapnel's house was +her secret, and the worming of it out made her feel guilty, and that +feeling revived and heated her antipathy to the Radical doctor. + +'What reason?' said Mr. Romfrey, freshening at her display of colour. + +She would not expose Nevil to the accusation of childishness by +confessing her positive reason, so she answered, 'The man is a kind of +man... I was not there long; I was glad to escape. He...' she hesitated: +for in truth it was difficult to shape the charge against him, and the +effort to be reticent concerning Nevil, and communicative, now that +he had been spoken of, as to the detested doctor, reduced her to some +confusion. She was also fatally anxious to be in the extreme degree +conscientious, and corrected and modified her remarks most suspiciously. + +'Did he insult you, ma'am?' Mr. Romfrey inquired. + +She replied hastily, 'Oh no. He may be a good man in his way. He is one +of those men who do not seem to think a woman may have opinions. He does +not scruple to outrage those we hold. I am afraid he is an infidel. His +ideas of family duties and ties, and his manner of expressing himself, +shocked me, that is all. He is absurd. I dare say there is no harm +in him, except for those who are so unfortunate as to fall under his +influence--and that, I feel sure, cannot be permanent. He could not +injure me personally. He could not offend me, I mean. Indeed, I have +nothing whatever to say against him, as far as I...' + +'Did he fail to treat you as a lady, ma'am?' + +Rosamund was getting frightened by the significant pertinacity of her +lord. + +'I am sure, sir, he meant no harm.' + +'Was the man uncivil to you, ma'am?' came the emphatic interrogation. + +She asked herself, had Dr. Shrapnel been uncivil toward her? And so +conscientious was she, that she allowed the question to be debated in +her mind for half a minute, answering then, 'No, not uncivil. I cannot +exactly explain.... He certainly did not intend to be uncivil. He is +only an unpolished, vexatious man; enormously tall.' + +Mr. Romfrey ejaculated, 'Ha! humph!' + +His view of Dr. Shrapnel was taken from that instant. It was, that this +enormously big blustering agitator against the preservation of +birds, had behaved rudely toward the lady officially the chief of his +household, and might be considered in the light of an adversary one +would like to meet. The size of the man increased his aspect of villany, +which in return added largely to his giant size. Everard Romfrey's +mental eye could perceive an attractiveness about the man little short +of magnetic; for he thought of him so much that he had to think of what +was due to his pacifical disposition (deeply believed in by him) to +spare himself the trouble of a visit to Bevisham. + +The young gentleman whom he regarded as the Radical doctor's dupe, fell +in for a share of his view of the doctor, and Mr. Romfrey became less +fitted to observe Nevil Beauchamp's doings with the Olympian gravity he +had originally assumed. + +The extreme delicacy of Rosamund's conscience was fretted by a +remorseful doubt of her having conveyed a just impression of Dr. +Shrapnel, somewhat as though the fine sleek coat of it were brushed the +wrong way. Reflection warned her that her deliberative intensely sincere +pause before she responded to Mr. Romfrey's last demand, might have +implied more than her words. She consoled herself with the thought that +it was the dainty susceptibility of her conscientiousness which caused +these noble qualms, and so deeply does a refined nature esteem the gift, +that her pride in it helped her to overlook her moral perturbation. She +was consoled, moreover, up to the verge of triumph in her realization of +the image of a rivalling and excelling power presented by Mr. Romfrey, +though it had frightened her at the time. Let not Dr. Shrapnel come +across him! She hoped he would not. Ultimately she could say to herself, +'Perhaps I need not have been so annoyed with the horrid man.' It was +on Nevil's account. Shrapnel's contempt of the claims of Nevil's family +upon him was actually a piece of impudence, impudently expressed, if she +remembered correctly. And Shrapnel was a black malignant, the foe of the +nation's Constitution, deserving of punishment if ever man was; with +his ridiculous metaphors, and talk of organs and pianos, orchestras +and despotisms, and flying to the sun! How could Nevil listen to the +creature! Shrapnel must be a shameless, hypocrite to mask his wickedness +from one so clear-sighted as Nevil, and no doubt he indulged in his +impudence out of wanton pleasure in it. His business was to catch young +gentlemen of family, and to turn them against their families, plainly. +That was thinking the best of him. No doubt he had his objects to gain. +'He might have been as impudent as he liked to me; I would have pardoned +him!' Rosamund exclaimed. Personally, you see, she was generous. On +the whole, knowing Everard Romfrey as she did, she wished that she had +behaved, albeit perfectly discreet in her behaviour, and conscientiously +just, a shade or two differently. But the evil was done. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. THE LEADING ARTICLE AND MR. TIMOTHY TURBOT + +Nevil declined to come to Steynham, clearly owing to a dread of hearing +Dr. Shrapnel abused, as Rosamund judged by the warmth of his written +eulogies of the man, and an ensuing allusion to Game. He said that he +had not made up his mind as to the Game Laws. Rosamund mentioned +the fact to Mr. Romfrey. 'So we may stick by our licences to shoot +to-morrow,' he rejoined. Of a letter that he also had received from +Nevil, he did not speak. She hinted at it, and he stared. He would +have deemed it as vain a subject to discourse of India, or Continental +affairs, at a period when his house was full for the opening day of +sport, and the expectation of keeping up his renown for great bags on +that day so entirely occupied his mind. Good shots were present who had +contributed to the fame of Steynham on other opening days. Birds were +plentiful and promised not to be too wild. He had the range of the +Steynham estate in his eye, dotted with covers; and after Steynham, +Holdesbury, which had never yielded him the same high celebrity, but +both lay mapped out for action under the profound calculations of the +strategist, ready to show the skill of the field tactician. He could not +attend to Nevil. Even the talk of the forthcoming Elections, hardly to +be avoided at his table, seemed a puerile distraction. Ware the foe of +his partridges and pheasants, be it man or vermin! The name of Shrapnel +was frequently on the tongue of Captain Baskelett. Rosamund heard him, +in her room, and his derisive shouts of laughter over it. Cecil was +a fine shot, quite as fond of the pastime as his uncle, and always in +favour with him while sport stalked the land. He was in gallant spirits, +and Rosamund, brooding over Nevil's fortunes, and sitting much alone, +as she did when there were guests in the house, gave way to her +previous apprehensions. She touched on them to Mr. Stukely Culbrett, +her husband's old friend, one of those happy men who enjoy perceptions +without opinions, and are not born to administer comfort to other than +themselves. As far as she could gather, he fancied Nevil Beauchamp +was in danger of something, but he delivered his mind only upon +circumstances and characters: Nevil risked his luck, Cecil knew his +game, Everard Romfrey was the staunchest of mankind: Stukely had nothing +further to say regarding the situation. She asked him what he thought, +and he smiled. Could a reasonable head venture to think anything in +particular? He repeated the amazed, 'You don't say so' of Colonel +Halkett, on hearing the name of the new Liberal candidate for Bevisham +at the dinner-table, together with some of Cecil's waggish embroidery +upon the theme. + +Rosamund exclaimed angrily, 'Oh! if I had been there he would not have +dared.' + +'Why not be there?' said Stukely. 'You have had your choice for a number +of years.' + +She shook her head, reddening. + +But supposing that she had greater privileges than were hers now? +The idea flashed. A taint of personal pique, awakened by the fancied +necessity for putting her devotedness to Nevil to proof, asked her if +she would then be the official housekeeper to whom Captain Baskelett +bowed low with affected respect and impertinent affability, ironically +praising her abroad as a wonder among women, that could at one time have +played the deuce in the family, had she chosen to do so. + +'Just as you like,' Mr. Culbrett remarked. It was his ironical habit +of mind to believe that the wishes of men and women--women as well as +men--were expressed by their utterances. + +'But speak of Nevil to Colonel Halkett,' said Rosamund, earnestly +carrying on what was in her heart. 'Persuade the colonel you do not +think Nevil foolish--not more than just a little impetuous. I want that +marriage to come off! Not on account of her wealth. She is to inherit a +Welsh mine from her uncle, you know, besides being an only child. Recall +what Nevil was during the war. Miss Halkett has not forgotten it, I +am sure, and a good word for him from a man of the world would, I am +certain, counteract Captain Baskelett's--are they designs? At any rate, +you can if you like help Nevil with the colonel. I am convinced they are +doing him a mischief. Colonel Halkett has bought an estate--and what a +misfortune that is!--close to Bevisham. I fancy he is Toryish. Will you +not speak to him? At my request? I am so helpless I could cry. + +'Fancy you have no handkerchief,' said Mr. Culbrett, 'and give up +scheming, pray. One has only to begin to scheme, to shorten life +to half-a-dozen hops and jumps. I could say to the colonel, "Young +Beauchamp's a political cub: he ought to have a motherly wife."' + +'Yes, yes, you are right; don't speak to him at all,' said Rosamund, +feeling that there must be a conspiracy to rob her of her proud +independence, since not a soul could be won to spare her from taking +some energetic step, if she would be useful to him she loved. + +Colonel Halkett was one of the guests at Steynham who knew and respected +her, and he paid her a visit and alluded to Nevil's candidature, +apparently not thinking much the worse of him. 'We can't allow him to +succeed,' he said, and looked for a smiling approval of such natural +opposition, which Rosamund gave him readily after he had expressed the +hope that Nevil Beauchamp would take advantage of his proximity to Mount +Laurels during the contest to try the hospitality of the house. 'He +won't mind meeting his uncle?' The colonel's eyes twinkled. 'My daughter +has engaged Mr. Romfrey and Captain Baskelett to come to us when they +have shot Holdesbury.' + +And Captain Baskelett! thought Rosamund; her jealousy whispering that +the mention of his name close upon Cecilia Halkett's might have a +nuptial signification. + +She was a witness from her window--a prisoner's window, her 'eager heart +could have termed it--of a remarkable ostentation of cordiality between +the colonel and Cecil, in the presence of Mr. Romfrey. Was it his humour +to conspire to hand Miss Halkett to Cecil, and then to show Nevil the +prize he had forfeited by his folly? The three were on the lawn a little +before Colonel Halkett's departure. The colonel's arm was linked +with Cecil's while they conversed. Presently the latter received his +afternoon's letters, and a newspaper. He soon had the paper out at a +square stretch, and sprightly information for the other two was visible +in his crowing throat. Mr. Romfrey raised the gun from his shoulder-pad, +and grounded it. Colonel Halkett wished to peruse the matter with his +own eyes, but Cecil could not permit it; he must read it aloud for them, +and he suited his action to his sentences. Had Rosamund been accustomed +to leading articles which are the composition of men of an imposing +vocabulary, she would have recognized and as good as read one in Cecil's +gestures as he tilted his lofty stature forward and back, marking his +commas and semicolons with flapping of his elbows, and all but doubling +his body at his periods. Mr. Romfrey had enough of it half-way down +the column; his head went sharply to left and right. Cecil's peculiar +foppish slicing down of his hand pictured him protesting that there was +more and finer of the inimitable stuff to follow. The end of the scene +exhibited the paper on the turf, and Colonel Halkett's hand on Cecil's +shoulder, Mr. Romfrey nodding some sort of acquiescence over the muzzle +of his gun, whether reflective or positive Rosamund could not decide. +She sent out a footman for the paper, and was presently communing with +its eloquent large type, quite unable to perceive where the comicality +or the impropriety of it lay, for it would have struck her that never +were truer things of Nevil Beauchamp better said in the tone befitting +them. This perhaps was because she never heard fervid praises of him, +or of anybody, delivered from the mouth, and it is not common to hear +Englishmen phrasing great eulogies of one another. Still, as a rule, +they do not object to have it performed in that region of our national +eloquence, the Press, by an Irishman or a Scotchman. And what could +there be to warrant Captain Baskelett's malicious derision, and Mr. +Romfrey's nodding assent to it, in an article where all was truth? + +The truth was mounted on an unusually high wind. It was indeed a leading +article of a banner-like bravery, and the unrolling of it was designed +to stir emotions. Beauchamp was the theme. Nevil had it under his eyes +earlier than Cecil. The paper was brought into his room with the beams +of day, damp from the presses of the Bevisham Gazette, exactly opposite +to him in the White Hart Hotel, and a glance at the paragraphs gave him +a lively ardour to spring to his feet. What writing! He was uplifted as +'The heroical Commander Beauchamp, of the Royal Navy,' and 'Commander +Beauchamp, R.N., a gentleman of the highest connections': he was 'that +illustrious Commander Beauchamp, of our matchless, navy, who proved +on every field of the last glorious war of this country that the +traditional valour of the noble and indomitable blood transmitted to his +veins had lost none of its edge and weight since the battle-axes of the +Lords de Romfrey, ever to the fore, clove the skulls of our national +enemy on the wide and fertile campaigns of France.' This was pageantry. + +There was more of it. Then the serious afflatus of the article +condescended, as it were, to blow a shrill and well-known whistle:--the +study of the science of navigation made by Commander Beauchamp, R.N., +was cited for a jocose warranty of a seaman's aptness to assist in +steering the Vessel of the State. After thus heeling over, to tip +a familiar wink to the multitude, the leader tone resumed its fit +deportment. Commander Beauchamp, in responding to the invitation of the +great and united Liberal party of the borough of Bevisham, obeyed the +inspirations of genius, the dictates of humanity, and what he rightly +considered the paramount duty, as it is the proudest ambition, of the +citizen of a free country. + +But for an occasional drop and bump of the sailing gasbag upon +catch-words of enthusiasm, which are the rhetoric of the merely +windy, and a collapse on a poetic line, which too often signalizes the +rhetorician's emptiness of his wind, the article was eminent for +flight, sweep, and dash, and sailed along far more grandly than ordinary +provincial organs for the promoting or seconding of public opinion, that +are as little to be compared with the mighty metropolitan as are the +fife and bugle boys practising on their instruments round melancholy +outskirts of garrison towns with the regimental marching full band under +the presidency of its drum-major. No signature to the article was needed +for Bevisham to know who had returned to the town to pen it. Those +long-stretching sentences, comparable to the very ship Leviathan, +spanning two Atlantic billows, appertained to none but the renowned Mr. +Timothy Turbot, of the Corn Law campaigns, Reform agitations, and all +manifestly popular movements requiring the heaven-endowed man of speech, +an interpreter of multitudes, and a prompter. Like most men who have +little to say, he was an orator in print, but that was a poor medium for +him--his body without his fire. Mr. Timothy's place was the platform. A +wise discernment, or else a lucky accident (for he came hurriedly from +the soil of his native isle, needing occupation), set him on that side +in politics which happened to be making an established current and +strong headway. Oratory will not work against the stream, or on languid +tides. Driblets of movements that allowed the world to doubt whether +they were so much movements as illusions of the optics, did not suit his +genius. Thus he was a Liberal, no Radical, fountain. Liberalism had the +attraction for the orator of being the active force in politics, between +two passive opposing bodies, the aspect of either of which it can assume +for a menace to the other, Toryish as against Radicals; a trifle red in +the eyes of the Tory. It can seem to lean back on the Past; it can seem +to be amorous of the Future. It is actually the thing of the Present +and its urgencies, therefore popular, pouring forth the pure waters of +moderation, strong in their copiousness. Delicious and rapturous +effects are to be produced in the flood of a Liberal oration by a chance +infusion of the fierier spirit, a flavour of Radicalism. That is the +thing to set an audience bounding and quirking. Whereas if you commence +by tilling a Triton pitcher full of the neat liquor upon them, 'you have +to resort to the natural element for the orator's art of variation, +you are diluted--and that's bathos, to quote Mr. Timothy. It was a fine +piece of discernment in him. Let Liberalism be your feast, Radicalism +your spice. And now and then, off and on, for a change, for diversion, +for a new emotion, just for half an hour or so-now and then the Sunday +coat of Toryism will give you an air. You have only to complain of the +fit, to release your shoulders in a trice. Mr. Timothy felt for his +art as poets do for theirs, and considered what was best adapted to +speaking, purely to speaking. Upon no creature did he look with such +contempt as upon Dr. Shrapnel, whose loose disjunct audiences he was +conscious he could, giving the doctor any start he liked, whirl away +from him and have compact, enchained, at his first flourish; yea, though +they were composed of 'the poor man,' with a stomach for the +political distillery fit to drain relishingly every private bogside +or mountain-side tap in old Ireland in its best days--the illicit, you +understand. + +Further, to quote Mr. Timothy's points of view, the Radical orator has +but two notes, and one is the drawling pathetic, and the other is the +ultra-furious; and the effect of the former we liken to the English +working man's wife's hob-set queasy brew of well-meant villany, that she +calls by the innocent name of tea; and the latter is to be blown, asks +to be blown, and never should be blown without at least seeming to be +blown, with an accompaniment of a house on fire. Sir, we must adapt +ourselves to our times. Perhaps a spark or two does lurk about our +house, but we have vigilant watchmen in plenty, and the house has been +pretty fairly insured. Shrieking in it is an annoyance to the inmates, +nonsensical; weeping is a sickly business. The times are against +Radicalism to the full as much as great oratory is opposed to extremes. +These drag the orator too near to the matter. So it is that one Radical +speech is amazingly like another--they all have the earth-spots. They +smell, too; they smell of brimstone. Soaring is impossible among that +faction; but this they can do, they can furnish the Tory his opportunity +to soar. When hear you a thrilling Tory speech that carries the country +with it, save when the incendiary Radical has shrieked? If there was +envy in the soul of Timothy, it was addressed to the fine occasions +offered to the Tory speaker for vindicating our ancient principles and +our sacred homes. He admired the tone to be assumed for that purpose: it +was a good note. Then could the Tory, delivering at the right season the +Shakesperian 'This England...' and Byronic--'The inviolate Island...' +shake the frame, as though smiting it with the tail of the gymnotus +electricus. Ah, and then could he thump out his Horace, the Tory's +mentor and his cordial, with other great ancient comic and satiric +poets, his old Port of the classical cellarage, reflecting veneration +upon him who did but name them to an audience of good dispositions. The +Tory possessed also an innate inimitably easy style of humour, that +had the long reach, the jolly lordly indifference, the comfortable +masterfulness, of the whip of a four-in-hand driver, capable of flicking +and stinging, and of being ironically caressing. Timothy appreciated it, +for he had winced under it. No professor of Liberalism could venture +on it, unless it were in the remote district of a back parlour, in +the society of a cherishing friend or two, and with a slice of lemon +requiring to be refloated in the glass. + +But gifts of this description were of a minor order. Liberalism gave the +heading cry, devoid of which parties are dogs without a scent, orators +mere pump-handles. The Tory's cry was but a whistle to his pack, the +Radical howled to the moon like any chained hound. And no wonder, +for these parties had no established current, they were as hard-bound +waters; the Radical being dyked and dammed most soundly, the Tory +resembling a placid lake of the plains, fed by springs and no +confluents. For such good reasons, Mr. Timothy rejoiced in the happy +circumstances which had expelled him from the shores of his native isle +to find a refuge and a vocation in Manchester at a period when an orator +happened to be in request because dozens were wanted. That centre of +convulsions and source of streams possessed the statistical orator, the +reasoning orator, and the inspired; with others of quality; and yet +it had need of an ever-ready spontaneous imperturbable speaker, whose +bubbling generalizations and ability to beat the drum humorous could +swing halls of meeting from the grasp of an enemy, and then ascend on +incalescent adjectives to the popular idea of the sublime. He was the +artistic orator of Corn Law Repeal--the Manchester flood, before +which time Whigs were, since which they have walked like spectral +antediluvians, or floated as dead canine bodies that are sucked away on +the ebb of tides and flung back on the flow, ignorant whether they be +progressive or retrograde. Timothy Turbot assisted in that vast +effort. It should have elevated him beyond the editorship of a country +newspaper. Why it did not do so his antagonists pretended to know, and +his friends would smile to hear. The report was that he worshipped the +nymph Whisky. + +Timothy's article had plucked Beauchamp out of bed; Beauchamp's card in +return did the same for him. + +'Commander Beauchamp? I am heartily glad to make your acquaintance, +sir; I've been absent, at work, on the big business we have in common, +I rejoice to say, and am behind my fellow townsmen in this pleasure and +lucky I slept here in my room above, where I don't often sleep, for the +row of the machinery--it 's like a steamer that won't go, though it's +always starting ye,' Mr. Timothy said in a single breath, upon entering +the back office of the Gazette, like unto those accomplished violinists +who can hold on the bow to finger an incredible number of notes, and may +be imaged as representing slow paternal Time, that rolls his capering +dot-headed generation of mortals over the wheel, hundreds to the minute. +'You'll excuse my not shaving, sir, to come down to your summons without +an extra touch to the neck-band.' + +Beauchamp beheld a middle-sized round man, with loose lips and pendant +indigo jowl, whose eyes twinkled watery, like pebbles under the +shore-wash, and whose neck-band needed an extra touch from fingers other +than his own. + +'I am sorry to have disturbed you so early,' he replied. + +'Not a bit, Commander Beauchamp, not a bit, sir. Early or late, and ay +ready--with the Napiers; I'll wash, I'll wash.' + +'I came to speak to you of this article of yours on me. They tell me +in the office that you are the writer. Pray don't "Commander" me so +much.--It's not customary, and I object to it.' + +'Certainly, certainly,' Timothy acquiesced. + +'And for the future, Mr. Turbot, please to be good enough not to allude +in print to any of my performances here and there. Your intentions are +complimentary, but it happens that I don't like a public patting on the +back.' + +'No, and that's true,' said Timothy. + +His appreciative and sympathetic agreement with these sharp strictures +on the article brought Beauchamp to a stop. + +Timothy waited for him; then, smoothing his prickly cheek, remarked: +'If I'd guessed your errand, Commander Beauchamp, I'd have called in +the barber before I came down, just to make myself decent for a 'first +introduction.' + +Beauchamp was not insensible to the slyness of the poke at him. 'You +see, I come to the borough unknown to it, and as quietly as possible, +and I want to be taken as a politician,' he continued, for the sake +of showing that he had sufficient to say to account for his hasty and +peremptory summons of the writer of that article to his presence. 'It's +excessively disagreeable to have one's family lugged into notice in a +newspaper--especially if they are of different politics. I feel it.' + +All would, sir,' said Timothy. + +'Then why the deuce did you do it?' + +Timothy drew a lading of air into his lungs. 'Politics, Commander +Beauchamp, involves the doing of lots of disagreeable things to +ourselves and our relations; it 's positive. I'm a soldier of the Great +Campaign: and who knows it better than I, sir? It's climbing the greasy +pole for the leg o' mutton, that makes the mother's heart ache for the +jacket and the nether garments she mended neatly, if she didn't make +them. Mutton or no mutton, there's grease for certain! Since it's sure +we can't be disconnected from the family, the trick is to turn the +misfortune to a profit; and allow me the observation, that an old +family, sir, and a high and titled family, is not to be despised for a +background of a portrait in naval uniform, with medal and clasps, and +some small smoke of powder clearing off over there:--that's if we're to +act sagaciously in introducing an unknown candidate to a borough that +has a sneaking liking for the kind of person, more honour to it. I'm +a political veteran, sir; I speak from experience. We must employ our +weapons, every one of them, and all off the grindstone.' + +'Very well,' said Beauchamp. 'Now understand; you are not in future to +employ the weapons, as you call them, that I have objected to.' + +Timothy gaped slightly. + +'Whatever you will, but no puffery,' Beauchamp added. 'Can I by any +means arrest--purchase--is it possible, tell me, to lay an embargo--stop +to-day's issue of the Gazette?' + +'No more--than the bite of a mad dog,' Timothy replied, before he had +considered upon the monstrous nature of the proposal. + +Beauchamp humphed, and tossed his head. The simile of the dog struck him +with intense effect. + +'There'd be a second edition,' said Timothy, 'and you might buy up that. +But there'll be a third, and you may buy up that; but there'll be a +fourth and a fifth, and so on ad infinitum, with the advertisement of +the sale of the foregoing creating a demand like a rageing thirst in +a shipwreck, in Bligh's boat, in the tropics. I'm afraid, Com--Captain +Beauchamp, sir, there's no stopping the Press while the people have an +appetite for it--and a Company's at the back of it.' + +'Pooh, don't talk to me in that way; all I complain of is the figure +you have made of me,' said Beauchamp, fetching him smartly out of his +nonsense; 'and all I ask of you is not to be at it again. Who would +suppose from reading an article like that, that I am a candidate with a +single political idea!' + +'An article like that,' said Timothy, winking, and a little surer of his +man now that he suggested his possession of ideas, 'an article like +that is the best cloak you can put on a candidate with too many of +'em, Captain Beauchamp. I'll tell you, sir; I came, I heard of your +candidature, I had your sketch, the pattern of ye, before me, and I was +told that Dr. Shrapnel fathered you politically. There was my brief! I +had to persuade our constituents that you, Commander Beauchamp of the +Royal Navy, and the great family of the Earls of Romfrey, one of the +heroes of the war, and the recipient of a Royal Humane Society's medal +for saving life in Bevisham waters, were something more than the Radical +doctor's political son; and, sir, it was to this end, aim, and object, +that I wrote the article I am not ashamed to avow as mine, and I do +so, sir, because of the solitary merit it has of serving your political +interests as the liberal candidate for Bevisham by counteracting the +unpopularity of Dr. Shrapnel's name, on the one part, and of reviving +the credit due to your valour and high bearing on the field of battle in +defence of your country, on the other, so that Bevisham may apprehend, +in spite of party distinctions, that it has the option, and had better +seize upon the honour, of making a M.P. of a hero.' + +Beauchamp interposed hastily: 'Thank you, thank you for the best of +intentions. But let me tell you I am prepared to stand or fall with Dr. +Shrapnel, and be hanged to all that humbug.' + +Timothy rubbed his hands with an abstracted air of washing. 'Well, +commander, well, sir, they say a candidate's to be humoured in his +infancy, for he has to do all the humouring before he's many weeks old +at it; only there's the fact!--he soon finds out he has to pay for his +first fling, like the son of a family sowing his oats to reap his +Jews. Credit me, sir, I thought it prudent to counteract a bit of an +apothecary's shop odour in the junior Liberal candidate's address. I +found the town sniffing, they scented Shrapnel in the composition.' + +'Every line of it was mine,' said Beauchamp. + +'Of course it was, and the address was admirably worded, sir, I make +bold to say it to your face; but most indubitably it threatened powerful +drugs for weak stomachs, and it blew cold on votes, which are sensitive +plants like nothing else in botany.' + +'If they are only to be got by abandoning principles, and by anything +but honesty in stating them, they may go,' said Beauchamp. + +'I repeat, my dear sir, I repeat, the infant candidate delights in his +honesty, like the babe in its nakedness, the beautiful virgin in her +innocence. So he does; but he discovers it's time for him to wear +clothes in a contested election. And what's that but to preserve the +outlines pretty correctly, whilst he doesn't shock and horrify the +optics? A dash of conventionalism makes the whole civilized world kin, +ye know. That's the truth. You must appear to be one of them, for them +to choose you. After all, there's no harm in a dyer's hand; and, sir, a +candidate looking at his own, when he has won the Election...' + +'Ah, well,' said Beauchamp, swinging on his heel, 'and now I'll take +my leave of you, and I apologize for bringing you down here so early. +Please attend to what I have said; it's peremptory. You will give me +great pleasure by dining with me to-night, at the hotel opposite. +Will you? I don't know what kind of wine I shall be able to offer you. +Perhaps you know the cellar, and may help me in that.' + +Timothy grasped his hand, 'With pleasure, Commander Beauchamp. They have +a bucellas over there that 's old, and a tolerable claret, and a Port +to be inquired for under the breath, in a mysteriously intimate tone +of voice, as one says, "I know of your treasure, and the corner under +ground where it lies." Avoid the champagne: 'tis the banqueting wine. +Ditto the sherry. One can drink them, one can drink them.' + +'At a quarter to eight this evening, then,' said Nevil. + +'I'll be there at the stroke of the clock, sure as the date of a bill,' +said Timothy. + +And it's early to guess whether you'll catch Bevisham or you won't, he +reflected, as he gazed at the young gentleman crossing the road; but +female Bevisham's with you, if that counts for much. Timothy confessed, +that without the employment of any weapon save arrogance and a look of +candour, the commander had gone some way toward catching the feminine +side of himself. + + + + +CHAPTER XV. CECILIA HALKETT + +Beauchamp walked down to the pier, where he took a boat for H.M.S. Isis, +to see Jack Wilmore, whom he had not met since his return from his last +cruise, and first he tried the efficacy of a dive in salt water, as a +specific for irritation. It gave the edge to a fine appetite that he +continued to satisfy while Wilmore talked of those famous dogs to which +the navy has ever been going. + +'We want another panic, Beauchamp,' said Lieutenant Wilmore. 'No one +knows better than you what a naval man has to complain of, so I hope +you'll get your Election, if only that we may reckon on a good look-out +for the interests of the service. A regular Board with a permanent Lord +High Admiral, and a regular vote of money to keep it up to the mark. +Stick to that. Hardist has a vote in Bevisham. I think I can get one +or two more. Why aren't you a Tory? No Whigs nor Liberals look after us +half so well as the Tories. It's enough to break a man's heart to see +the troops of dockyard workmen marching out as soon as ever a Liberal +Government marches in. Then it's one of our infernal panics again, and +patch here, patch there; every inch of it make-believe! I'll prove to +you from examples that the humbug of Government causes exactly the same +humbugging workmanship. It seems as if it were a game of "rascals +all." Let them sink us! but, by heaven! one can't help feeling for the +country. And I do say it's the doing of those Liberals. Skilled workmen, +mind you, not to be netted again so easily. America reaps the benefit of +our folly .... That was a lucky run of yours up the Niger; the admiral +was friendly, but you deserved your luck. For God's sake, don't forget +the state of our service when you're one of our cherubs up aloft, +Beauchamp. This I'll say, I've never heard a man talk about it as +you used to in old midshipmite days, whole watches through--don't you +remember? on the North American station, and in the Black Sea, and the +Mediterranean. And that girl at Malta! I wonder what has become of +her? What a beauty she was! I dare say she wasn't so fine a girl as the +Armenian you unearthed on the Bosphorus, but she had something about her +a fellow can't forget. That was a lovely creature coming down the +hills over Granada on her mule. Ay, we've seen handsome women, Nevil +Beauchamp. But you always were lucky, invariably, and I should bet on +you for the Election.' + +'Canvass for me, Jack,' said Beauchamp, smiling at his friend's +unconscious double-skeining of subjects. 'If I turn out as good a +politician as you are a seaman, I shall do. Pounce on Hardist's vote +without losing a day. I would go to him, but I've missed the Halketts +twice. They 're on the Otley river, at a place called Mount Laurels, and +I particularly want to see the colonel. Can you give me a boat there, +and come?' + +'Certainly,' said Wilmore. 'I've danced there with the lady, the +handsomest girl, English style, of her time. And come, come, our English +style's the best. It wears best, it looks best. Foreign women... they're +capital to flirt with. But a girl like Cecilia Halkett--one can't call +her a girl, and it won't do to say Goddess, and queen and charmer are +out of the question, though she's both, and angel into the bargain; but, +by George! what a woman to call wife, you say; and a man attached to a +woman like that never can let himself look small. No such luck for me; +only I swear if I stood between a good and a bad action, the thought of +that girl would keep me straight, and I've only danced with her once!' + +Not long after sketching this rough presentation of the lady, with a +masculine hand, Wilmore was able to point to her in person on the deck +of her father's yacht, the Esperanza, standing out of Otley river. There +was a gallant splendour in the vessel that threw a touch of glory on its +mistress in the minds of the two young naval officers, as they pulled +for her in the ship's gig. + +Wilmore sang out, 'Give way, men!' + +The sailors bent to their oars, and presently the schooner's head was +put to the wind. + +'She sees we're giving chase,' Wilmore said. 'She can't be expecting me, +so it must be you. No, the colonel doesn't race her. They've only been +back from Italy six months: I mean the schooner. I remember she talked +of you when I had her for a partner. Yes, now I mean Miss Halkett. Blest +if I think she talked of anything else. She sees us. I'll tell you what +she likes: she likes yachting, she likes Italy, she likes painting, +likes things old English, awfully fond of heroes. I told her a tale of +one of our men saving life. "Oh!" said she, "didn't your friend Nevil +Beauchamp save a man from drowning, off the guardship, in exactly the +same place?" And next day she sent me a cheque for three pounds for the +fellow. Steady, men! I keep her letter.' + +The boat went smoothly alongside the schooner. Miss Halkett had come to +the side. The oars swung fore and aft, and Beauchamp sprang on deck. + +Wilmore had to decline Miss Halkett's invitation to him as well as +his friend, and returned in his boat. He left the pair with a ruffling +breeze, and a sky all sail, prepared, it seemed to him, to enjoy the +most delicious you-and-I on salt water that a sailor could dream of; +and placidly envying, devoid of jealousy, there was just enough of fancy +quickened in Lieutenant Wilmore to give him pictures of them without +disturbance of his feelings--one of the conditions of the singular +visitation we call happiness, if he could have known it. + +For a time his visionary eye followed them pretty correctly. So long +since they had parted last! such changes in the interval! and great +animation in Beauchamp's gaze, and a blush on Miss Halkett's cheeks. + +She said once, 'Captain Beauchamp.' He retorted with a solemn formality. +They smiled, and immediately took footing on their previous intimacy. + +'How good it was of you to come twice to Mount Laurels,' said she. 'I +have not missed you to-day. No address was on your card. Where are you +staying in the neighbourhood? At Mr. Lespel's?' + +'I'm staying at a Bevisham hotel,' said Beauchamp. + +'You have not been to Steynham yet? Papa comes home from Steynham +to-night.' + +'Does he? Well, the Ariadne is only just paid off, and I can't well +go to Steynham yet. I--' Beauchamp was astonished at the hesitation he +found in himself to name it: 'I have business in Bevisham.' + +'Naval business?' she remarked. + +'No,' said he. + +The sensitive prescience we have of a critical distaste of our +proceedings is, the world is aware, keener than our intuition of +contrary opinions; and for the sake of preserving the sweet outward +forms of friendliness, Beauchamp was anxious not to speak of the +business in Bevisham just then, but she looked and he had hesitated, so +he said flatly, 'I am one of the candidates for the borough.' + +'Indeed!' + +'And I want the colonel to give me his vote.' + +The young lady breathed a melodious 'Oh!' not condemnatory or +reproachful--a sound to fill a pause. But she was beginning to reflect. + +'Italy and our English Channel are my two Poles,' she said. 'I am +constantly swaying between them. I have told papa we will not lay up +the yacht while the weather holds fair. Except for the absence of deep +colour and bright colour, what can be more beautiful than these green +waves and that dark forest's edge, and the garden of an island! The +yachting-water here is an unrivalled lake; and if I miss colour, which +I love, I remind myself that we have temperate air here, not a sun that +fiends you under cover. We can have our fruits too, you see.' One of the +yachtsmen was handing her a basket of hot-house grapes, reclining beside +crisp home-made loaflets. 'This is my luncheon. Will you share it, +Nevil?' + +His Christian name was pleasant to hear from her lips. She held out a +bunch to him. + +'Grapes take one back to the South,' said he. 'How do you bear +compliments? You have been in Italy some years, and it must be the South +that has worked the miracle.' + +'In my growth?' said Cecilia, smiling. 'I have grown out of my +Circassian dress, Nevil.' + +'You received it, then?' + +'I wrote you a letter of thanks--and abuse, for your not coming to +Steynham. You may recognize these pearls.' + +The pearls were round her right wrist. He looked at the blue veins. + +'They're not pearls of price,' he said. + +'I do not wear them to fascinate the jewellers,' rejoined Miss Halkett. +'So you are a candidate at an Election. You still have a tinge of +Africa, do you know? But you have not abandoned the navy?' + +'--Not altogether.' + +'Oh! no, no: I hope not. I have heard of you,... but who has not? We +cannot spare officers like you. Papa was delighted to hear of your +promotion. Parliament!' + +The exclamation was contemptuous. + +'It's the highest we can aim at,' Beauchamp observed meekly. + +'I think I recollect you used to talk politics when you were a +midshipman,' she said. 'You headed the aristocracy, did you not?' + +'The aristocracy wants a head,' said Beauchamp. + +'Parliament, in my opinion, is the best of occupations for idle men,' +said she. + +'It shows that it is a little too full of them.' + +'Surely the country can go on very well without so much speech-making?' + +'It can go on very well for the rich.' + +Miss Halkett tapped with her foot. + +'I should expect a Radical to talk in that way, Nevil.' + +'Take me for one.' + +'I would not even imagine it.' + +'Say Liberal, then.' + +'Are you not'--her eyes opened on him largely, and narrowed from +surprise to reproach, and then to pain--are you not one of us? Have you +gone over to the enemy, Nevil?' + +'I have taken my side, Cecilia; but we, on our side, don't talk of an +enemy.' + +'Most unfortunate! We are Tories, you know, Nevil. Papa is a thorough +Tory. He cannot vote for you. Indeed I have heard him say he is anxious +to defeat the plots of an old Republican in Bevisham--some doctor there; +and I believe he went to London to look out for a second Tory candidate +to oppose to the Liberals. Our present Member is quite safe, of course. +Nevil, this makes me unhappy. Do you not feel that it is playing traitor +to one's class to join those men?' + +Such was the Tory way of thinking, Nevil Beauchamp said: the Tories +upheld their Toryism in the place of patriotism. + +'But do we not owe the grandeur of the country to the Tories?' she said, +with a lovely air of conviction. 'Papa has told me how false the Whigs +played the Duke in the Peninsula: ruining his supplies, writing him +down, declaring, all the time he was fighting his first hard battles, +that his cause was hopeless--that resistance to Napoleon was impossible. +The Duke never, never had loyal support but from the Tory Government. +The Whigs, papa says, absolutely preached submission to Napoleon! The +Whigs, I hear, were the Liberals of those days. The two Pitts were +Tories. The greatness of England has been built up by the Tories. I do +and will defend them: it is the fashion to decry them now. They have +the honour and safety of the country at heart. They do not play +disgracefully at reductions of taxes, as the Liberals do. They have +given us all our heroes. Non fu mai gloria senza invidia. They have +done service enough to despise the envious mob. They never condescend to +supplicate brute force for aid to crush their opponents. You feel in all +they do that the instincts of gentlemen are active.' + +Beauchamp bowed. + +'Do I speak too warmly?' she asked. 'Papa and I have talked over it +often, and especially of late. You will find him your delighted host and +your inveterate opponent.' + +'And you?' + +'Just the same. You will have to pardon me; I am a terrible foe.' + +'I declare to you, Cecilia, I would prefer having you against me to +having you indifferent.' + +'I wish I had not to think it right that you should be beaten. +And now--can you throw off political Nevil, and be sailor Nevil? I +distinguish between my old friend, and my... our...' + +'Dreadful antagonist?' + +'Not so dreadful, except in the shock he gives us to find him in the +opposite ranks. I am grieved. But we will finish our sail in peace. I +detest controversy. I suppose, Nevil, you would have no such things as +yachts? they are the enjoyments of the rich!' + +He reminded her that she wished to finish her sail in peace; and he +had to remind her of it more than once. Her scattered resources for +argumentation sprang up from various suggestions, such as the flight +of yachts, mention of the shooting season, sight of a royal palace; and +adopted a continually heightened satirical form, oddly intermixed with +an undisguised affectionate friendliness. Apparently she thought it +possible to worry him out of his adhesion to the wrong side in politics. +She certainly had no conception of the nature of his political views, +for one or two extreme propositions flung to him in jest, he swallowed +with every sign of a perfect facility, as if the Radical had come to +regard stupendous questions as morsels barely sufficient for his daily +sustenance. Cecilia reflected that he must be playing, and as it was not +a subject for play she tacitly reproved him by letting him be the +last to speak of it. He may not have been susceptible to the delicate +chastisement, probably was not, for when he ceased it was to look on the +beauty of her lowered eyelids, rather with an idea that the weight of +his argument lay on them. It breathed from him; both in the department +of logic and of feeling, in his plea for the poor man and his exposition +of the poor man's rightful claims, he evidently imagined that he had +spoken overwhelmingly; and to undeceive him in this respect, for his own +good, Cecilia calmly awaited the occasion when she might show the vanity +of arguments in their effort to overcome convictions. He stood up to +take his leave of her, on their return to the mouth of the Otley river, +unexpectedly, so that the occasion did not arrive; but on his mentioning +an engagement he had to give a dinner to a journalist and a tradesman of +the town of Bevisham, by way of excuse for not complying with her gentle +entreaty that he would go to Mount Laurels and wait to see the colonel +that evening, 'Oh! then your choice must be made irrevocably, I am +sure,' Miss Halkett said, relying upon intonation and manner to convey +a great deal more, and not without a minor touch of resentment for his +having dragged her into the discussion of politics, which she considered +as a slime wherein men hustled and tussled, no doubt worthily enough, +and as became them; not however to impose the strife upon the elect +ladies of earth. What gentleman ever did talk to a young lady upon the +dreary topic seriously? Least of all should Nevil Beauchamp have done +it. That object of her high imagination belonged to the exquisite sphere +of the feminine vision of the pure poetic, and she was vexed by the +discord he threw between her long-cherished dream and her unanticipated +realization of him, if indeed it was he presenting himself to her in his +own character, and not trifling, or not passing through a phase of young +man's madness. + +Possibly he might be the victim of the latter and more pardonable state, +and so thinking she gave him her hand. + +'Good-bye, Nevil. I may tell papa to expect you tomorrow?' + +'Do, and tell him to prepare for a field-day.' + +She smiled. 'A sham fight that will not win you a vote! I hope you will +find your guests this evening agreeable companions.' + +Beauchamp half-shrugged involuntarily. He obliterated the piece of +treason toward them by saying that he hoped so; as though the meeting +them, instead of slipping on to Mount Laurels with her, were an +enjoyable prospect. + +He was dropped by the Esperanza's boat near Otley ferry, to walk along +the beach to Bevisham, and he kept eye on the elegant vessel as she +glided swan-like to her moorings off Mount Laurels park through dusky +merchant craft, colliers, and trawlers, loosely shaking her towering +snow-white sails, unchallenged in her scornful supremacy; an image of a +refinement of beauty, and of a beautiful servicelessness. + +As the yacht, so the mistress: things of wealth, owing their graces to +wealth, devoting them to wealth--splendid achievements of art both! and +dedicated to the gratification of the superior senses. + +Say that they were precious examples of an accomplished civilization; +and perhaps they did offer a visible ideal of grace for the rough world +to aim at. They might in the abstract address a bit of a monition to +the uncultivated, and encourage the soul to strive toward perfection, in +beauty: and there is no contesting the value of beauty when the soul +is taken into account. But were they not in too great a profusion in +proportion to their utility? That was the question for Nevil Beauchamp. +The democratic spirit inhabiting him, temporarily or permanently, asked +whether they were not increasing to numbers which were oppressive? +And further, whether it was good, for the country, the race, ay, the +species, that they should be so distinctly removed from the thousands +who fought the grand, and the grisly, old battle with nature for bread +of life. Those grimy sails of the colliers and fishing-smacks, set +them in a great sea, would have beauty for eyes and soul beyond that of +elegance and refinement. And do but look on them thoughtfully, the poor +are everlastingly, unrelievedly, in the abysses of the great sea.... + +One cannot pursue to conclusions a line of meditation that is half-built +on the sensations as well as on the mind. Did Beauchamp at all desire +to have those idly lovely adornments of riches, the Yacht and the Lady, +swept away? Oh, dear, no. He admired them, he was at home with them. +They were much to his taste. Standing on a point of the beach for a last +look at them before he set his face to the town, he prolonged the look +in a manner to indicate that the place where business called him was not +in comparison at all so pleasing: and just as little enjoyable were his +meditations opposed to predilections. Beauty plucked the heart from his +breast. But he had taken up arms; he had drunk of the questioning +cup, that which denieth peace to us, and which projects us upon the +missionary search of the How, the Wherefore, and the Why not, ever +afterward. He questioned his justification, and yours, for gratifying +tastes in an ill-regulated world of wrong-doing, suffering, sin, and +bounties unrighteously dispensed--not sufficiently dispersed. He said +by-and-by to pleasure, battle to-day. From his point of observation, and +with the store of ideas and images his fiery yet reflective youth had +gathered, he presented himself as it were saddled to that hard-riding +force known as the logical impetus, which spying its quarry over +precipices, across oceans and deserts, and through systems and webs, and +into shops and cabinets of costliest china, will come at it, will not be +refused, let the distances and the breakages be what they may. He went +like the meteoric man with the mechanical legs in the song, too quick +for a cry of protestation, and reached results amazing to his instincts, +his tastes, and his training, not less rapidly and naturally than +tremendous Ergo is shot forth from the clash of a syllogism. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. A PARTIAL DISPLAY OF BEAUCHAMP IN HIS COLOURS + +Beauchamp presented himself at Mount Laurels next day, and formally +asked Colonel Halkett for his vote, in the presence of Cecilia. + +She took it for a playful glance at his new profession of politician: he +spoke half-playfully. Was it possible to speak in earnest? + +'I 'm of the opposite party,' said the colonel; as conclusive a reply +as could be: but he at once fell upon the rotten navy of a Liberal +Government. How could a true sailor think of joining those Liberals! +The question referred to the country, not to a section of it, Beauchamp +protested with impending emphasis: Tories and Liberals were much the +same in regard to the care of the navy. 'Nevil!' exclaimed Cecilia. He +cited beneficial Liberal bills recently passed, which she accepted for +a concession of the navy to the Tories, and she smiled. In spite of her +dislike of politics, she had only to listen a few minutes to be drawn +into the contest: and thus it is that one hot politician makes many +among women and men of a people that have the genius of strife, or else +in this case the young lady did unconsciously feel a deep interest in +refuting and overcoming Nevil Beauchamp. Colonel Halkett denied the +benefits of those bills. 'Look,' said he, 'at the scarecrow plight of +the army under a Liberal Government!' This laid him open to the charge +that he was for backing Administrations instead of principles. + +'I do,' said the colonel. 'I would rather have a good Administration +than all your talk of principles: one's a fact, but principles? +principles?' He languished for a phrase to describe the hazy things. 'I +have mine, and you have yours. It's like a dispute between religions. +There's no settling it except by main force. That's what principles lead +you to.' + +Principles may be hazy, but heavy artillery is disposable in defence +of them, and Beauchamp fired some reverberating guns for the eternal +against the transitory; with less of the gentlemanly fine taste, the +light and easy social semi-irony, than Cecilia liked and would have +expected from him. However, as to principles, no doubt Nevil was right, +and Cecilia drew her father to another position. 'Are not we Tories to +have principles as well as the Liberals, Nevil?' + +'They may have what they call principles,' he admitted, intent on +pursuing his advantage over the colonel, who said, to shorten the +controversy: 'It's a question of my vote, and my liking. I like a Tory +Government, and I don't like the Liberals. I like gentlemen; I don't +like a party that attacks everything, and beats up the mob for power, +and repays it with sops, and is dragging us down from all we were proud +of.' + +'But the country is growing, the country wants expansion,' said +Beauchamp; 'and if your gentlemen by birth are not up to the mark, you +must have leaders that are.' + +'Leaders who cut down expenditure, to create a panic that doubles the +outlay! I know them.' + +'A panic, Nevil.' Cecilia threw stress on the memorable word. + +He would hear no reminder in it. The internal condition of the country +was now the point for seriously-minded Englishmen. + +'My dear boy, what have you seen of the country?' Colonel Halkett +inquired. + +'Every time I have landed, colonel, I have gone to the mining and the +manufacturing districts, the centres of industry; wherever there was +dissatisfaction. I have attended meetings, to see and hear for myself. I +have read the papers....' + +'The papers!' + +'Well, they're the mirror of the country.' + +'Does one see everything in a mirror, Nevil?' said Cecilia: 'even in the +smoothest?' + +He retorted softly: 'I should be glad to see what you see,' and felled +her with a blush. + +For an example of the mirror offered by the Press, Colonel Halkett +touched on Mr. Timothy Turbot's article in eulogy of the great Commander +Beauchamp. 'Did you like it?' he asked. 'Ah, but if you meddle with +politics, you must submit to be held up on the prongs of a fork, my boy; +soaped by your backers and shaved by the foe; and there's a figure for a +gentleman! as your uncle Romfrey says.' + +Cecilia did not join this discussion, though she had heard from +her father that something grotesque had been written of Nevil. Her +foolishness in blushing vexed body and mind. She was incensed by a silly +compliment that struck at her feminine nature when her intellect stood +in arms. Yet more hurt was she by the reflection that a too lively +sensibility might have conjured up the idea of the compliment. And +again, she wondered at herself for not resenting so rare a presumption +as it implied, and not disdaining so outworn a form of flattery. She +wondered at herself too for thinking of resentment and disdain in +relation to the familiar commonplaces of licenced impertinence. Over all +which hung a darkened image of her spirit of independence, like a moon +in eclipse. + +Where lay his weakness? Evidently in the belief that he had thought +profoundly. But what minor item of insufficiency or feebleness was +discernible? She discovered that he could be easily fretted by similes +and metaphors they set him staggering and groping like an ancient knight +of faery in a forest bewitched. + +'Your specific for the country is, then, Radicalism,' she said, after +listening to an attack on the Tories for their want of a policy and +indifference to the union of classes. + +'I would prescribe a course of it, Cecilia; yes,' he turned to her. + +'The Dr. Dulcamara of a single drug?' + +'Now you have a name for me! Tory arguments always come to epithets.' + +'It should not be objectionable. Is it not honest to pretend to have +only one cure for mortal maladies? There can hardly be two panaceas, can +there be?' + +'So you call me quack?' + +'No, Nevil, no,' she breathed a rich contralto note of denial: 'but +if the country is the patient, and you will have it swallow your +prescription...' + +'There's nothing like a metaphor for an evasion,' said Nevil, blinking +over it. + +She drew him another analogy, longer than was at all necessary; so +tedious that her father struck through it with the remark: + +'Concerning that quack--that's one in the background, though!' + +'I know of none,' said Beauchamp, well-advised enough to forbear mention +of the name of Shrapnel. + +Cecilia petitioned that her stumbling ignorance, which sought the road +of wisdom, might be heard out. She had a reserve entanglement for +her argumentative friend. 'You were saying, Nevil, that you were for +principles rather than for individuals, and you instanced Mr. Cougham, +the senior Liberal candidate of Bevisham, as one whom you would prefer +to see in Parliament instead of Seymour Austin, though you confess to +Mr. Austin's far superior merits as a politician and servant of his +country: but Mr. Cougham supports Liberalism while Mr. Austin is a Tory. +You are for the principle.' + +'I am,' said he, bowing. + +She asked: 'Is not that equivalent to the doctrine of election by +Grace?' + +Beauchamp interjected: 'Grace! election?' + +Cecilia was tender to his inability to follow her allusion. + +'Thou art a Liberal--then rise to membership,' she said. 'Accept my +creed, and thou art of the chosen. Yes, Nevil, you cannot escape from +it. Papa, he preaches Calvinism in politics.' + +'We stick to men, and good men,' the colonel flourished. 'Old English +for me!' + +'You might as well say, old timber vessels, when Iron's afloat, +colonel.' + +'I suspect you have the worst of it there, papa,' said Cecilia, taken by +the unexpectedness and smartness of the comparison coming from wits that +she had been undervaluing. + +'I shall not own I'm worsted until I surrender my vote,' the colonel +rejoined. + +'I won't despair of it,' said Beauchamp. + +Colonel Halkett bade him come for it as often as he liked. You'll be +beaten in Bevisham, I warn you. Tory reckonings are safest: it's an +admitted fact: and we know you can't win. According to my judgement a +man owes a duty to his class.' + +'A man owes a duty to his class as long as he sees his class doing its +duty to the country,' said Beauchamp; and he added, rather prettily in +contrast with the sententious commencement, Cecilia thought, that the +apathy of his class was proved when such as he deemed it an obligation +on them to come forward and do what little they could. The deduction of +the proof was not clearly consequent, but a meaning was expressed; +and in that form it brought him nearer to her abstract idea of Nevil +Beauchamp than when he raged and was precise. + +After his departure she talked of him with her father, to be charitably +satirical over him, it seemed. + +The critic in her ear had pounced on his repetition of certain words +that betrayed a dialectical stiffness and hinted a narrow vocabulary: +his use of emphasis, rather reminding her of his uncle Everard, was, in +a young man, a little distressing. 'The apathy of the country, papa; +the apathy of the rich; a state of universal apathy. Will you inform me, +papa, what the Tories are doing? Do we really give our consciences to +the keeping of the parsons once a week, and let them dogmatize for us to +save us from exertion? We must attach ourselves to principles; nothing +is permanent but principles. Poor Nevil! And still I am sure you have, +as I have, the feeling that one must respect him. I am quite convinced +that he supposes he is doing his best to serve his country by trying for +Parliament, fancying himself a Radical. I forgot to ask him whether he +had visited his great-aunt, Mrs. Beauchamp. They say the dear old lady +has influence with him.' + +'I don't think he's been anywhere,' Colonel Halkett half laughed at the +quaint fellow. 'I wish the other great-nephew of hers were in England, +for us to run him against Nevil Beauchamp. He's touring the world. I'm +told he's orthodox, and a tough debater. We have to take what we can +get.' + +'My best wishes for your success, and you and I will not talk of +politics any more, papa. I hope Nevil will come often, for his own good; +he will meet his own set of people here. And if he should dogmatize so +much as to rouse our apathy to denounce his principles, we will remember +that we are British, and can be sweet-blooded in opposition. Perhaps he +may change, even tra le tre ore a le quattro: electioneering should be +a lesson. From my recollection of Blackburn Tuckham, he was a boisterous +boy.' + +'He writes uncommonly clever letters home to his aunt Beauchamp. She +has handed them to me to read,' said the colonel. 'I do like to see +tolerably solid young fellows: they give one some hope of the stability +of the country.' + +'They are not so interesting to study, and not half so amusing,' said +Cecilia. + +Colonel Halkett muttered his objections to the sort of amusement +furnished by firebrands. + +'Firebrand is too strong a word for poor Nevil,' she remonstrated. + +In that estimate of the character of Nevil Beauchamp, Cecilia soon had +to confess that she had been deceived, though not by him. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. HIS FRIEND AND FOE + +Looking from her window very early on a Sunday morning, Miss Halkett saw +Beauchamp strolling across the grass of the park. She dressed hurriedly +and went out to greet him, smiling and thanking him for his friendliness +in coming. + +He said he was delighted, and appeared so, but dashed the sweetness. +'You know I can't canvass on Sundays! + +'I suppose not,' she replied. 'Have you walked up from Bevisham? You +must be tired.' + +'Nothing tires me,' said he. + +With that they stepped on together. + +Mount Laurels, a fair broad house backed by a wood of beeches and firs, +lay open to view on the higher grassed knoll of a series of descending +turfy mounds dotted with gorseclumps, and faced South-westerly along +the run of the Otley river to the gleaming broad water and its opposite +border of forest, beyond which the downs of the island threw long +interlapping curves. Great ships passed on the line of the water to and +fro; and a little mist of masts of the fishing and coasting craft by +Otley village, near the river's mouth, was like a web in air. Cecilia +led him to her dusky wood of firs, where she had raised a bower for a +place of poetical contemplation and reading when the clear lapping salt +river beneath her was at high tide. She could hail the Esperanza from +that cover; she could step from her drawing-room window, over the +flower-beds, down the gravel walk to the hard, and be on board her yacht +within seven minutes, out on her salt-water lake within twenty, closing +her wings in a French harbour by nightfall of a summer's day, whenever +she had the whim to fly abroad. Of these enviable privileges she boasted +with some happy pride. + +'It's the finest yachting-station in England,' said Beauchamp. + +She expressed herself very glad that he should like it so much. +Unfortunately she added, 'I hope you will find it pleasanter to be here +than canvassing.' + +'I have no pleasure in canvassing,' said he. 'I canvass poor men +accustomed to be paid for their votes, and who get nothing from me but +what the baron would call a parsonical exhortation. I'm in the thick +of the most spiritless crew in the kingdom. Our southern men will not +compare with the men of the north. But still, even among these fellows, +I see danger for the country if our commerce were to fail, if distress +came on them. There's always danger in disunion. That's what the rich +won't see. They see simply nothing out of their own circle; and they +won't take a thought of the overpowering contrast between their +luxury and the way of living, that's half-starving, of the poor. They +understand it when fever comes up from back alleys and cottages, and +then they join their efforts to sweep the poor out of the district. The +poor are to get to their work anyhow, after a long morning's walk over +the proscribed space; for we must have poor, you know. The wife of a +parson I canvassed yesterday, said to me, "Who is to work for us, if you +do away with the poor, Captain Beauchamp?"' + +Cecilia quitted her bower and traversed the wood silently. + +'So you would blow up my poor Mount Laurels for a peace-offering to the +lower classes?' + +'I should hope to put it on a stronger foundation, Cecilia.' + +'By means of some convulsion?' + +'By forestalling one.' + +'That must be one of the new ironclads,' observed Cecilia, gazing at the +black smoke-pennon of a tower that slipped along the water-line. 'Yes? +You were saying? Put us on a stronger----?' + +'It's, I think, the Hastings: she broke down the other day on her trial +trip,' said Beauchamp, watching the ship's progress animatedly. 'Peppel +commands her--a capital officer. I suppose we must have these costly big +floating barracks. I don't like to hear of everything being done for +the defensive. The defensive is perilous policy in war. It's true, +the English don't wake up to their work under half a year. But, no: +defending and looking to defences is bad for the fighting power; and +there's half a million gone on that ship. Half a million! Do you know +how many poor taxpayers it takes to make up that sum, Cecilia?' + +'A great many,' she slurred over them; 'but we must have big ships, and +the best that are to be had.' + +'Powerful fast rams, sea-worthy and fit for running over shallows, +carrying one big gun; swarms of harryers and worriers known to be kept +ready for immediate service; readiness for the offensive in case of +war--there's the best defence against a declaration of war by a foreign +State.' + +'I like to hear you, Nevil,' said Cecilia, beaming: 'Papa thinks we have +a miserable army--in numbers. He says, the wealthier we become the more +difficult it is to recruit able-bodied men on the volunteering system. +Yet the wealthier we are the more an army is wanted, both to defend our +wealth and to preserve order. I fancy he half inclines to compulsory +enlistment. Do speak to him on that subject.' + +Cecilia must have been innocent of a design to awaken the fire-flash +in Nevil's eyes. She had no design, but hostility was latent, and hence +perhaps the offending phrase. + +He nodded and spoke coolly. 'An army to preserve order? So, then, an +army to threaten civil war!' + +'To crush revolutionists.' + +'Agitators, you mean. My dear good old colonel--I have always loved +him--must not have more troops at his command.' + +'Do you object to the drilling of the whole of the people?' + +'Does not the colonel, Cecilia? I am sure he does in his heart, and, for +different reasons, I do. He won't trust the working-classes, nor I the +middle.' + +'Does Dr. Shrapnel hate the middle-class?' + +'Dr. Shrapnel cannot hate. He and I are of opinion, that as the +middle-class are the party in power, they would not, if they knew the +use of arms, move an inch farther in Reform, for they would no longer be +in fear of the class below them.' + +'But what horrible notions of your country have you, Nevil! It is +dreadful to hear. Oh! do let us avoid politics for ever. Fear!' + +'All concessions to the people have been won from fear.' + +'I have not heard so.' + +'I will read it to you in the History of England.' + +'You paint us in a condition of Revolution.' + +'Happily it's not a condition unnatural to us. The danger would be in +not letting it be progressive, and there's a little danger too at times +in our slowness. We change our blood or we perish.' + +'Dr. Shrapnel?' + +'Yes, I have heard Dr. Shrapnel say that. And, by-the-way, Cecilia--will +you? can you?--take me for the witness to his character. He is the most +guileless of men, and he's the most unguarded. My good Rosamund saw him. +She is easily prejudiced when she is a trifle jealous, and you may hear +from her that he rambles, talks wildly. It may seem so. I maintain there +is wisdom in him when conventional minds would think him at his wildest. +Believe me, he is the humanest, the best of men, tenderhearted as a +child: the most benevolent, simple-minded, admirable old man--the man I +am proudest to think of as an Englishman and a man living in my time, of +all men existing. I can't overpraise him.' + +'He has a bad reputation.' + +'Only with the class that will not meet him and answer him.' + +'Must we invite him to our houses?' + +'It would be difficult to get him to come, if you did. I mean, meet him +in debate and answer his arguments. Try the question by brains.' + +'Before mobs?' + +'Not before mobs. I punish you by answering you seriously.' + +'I am sensible of the flattery.' + +'Before mobs!' Nevil ejaculated. 'It's the Tories that mob together and +cry down every man who appears to them to threaten their privileges. Can +you guess what Dr. Shrapnel compares them to?' + +'Indeed, Nevil, I have not an idea. I only wish your patriotism were +large enough to embrace them.' + +'He compares them to geese claiming possession of the whole common, +and hissing at every foot of ground they have to yield. They're always +having to retire and always hissing. "Retreat and menace," that's the +motto for them.' + +'Very well, Nevil, I am a goose upon a common.' + +So saying, Cecilia swam forward like a swan on water to give the morning +kiss to her papa, by the open window of the breakfast-room. + +Never did bird of Michaelmas fling off water from her feathers more +thoroughly than this fair young lady the false title she pretended to +assume. + +'I hear you're of the dinner party at Grancey Lespel's on Wednesday,' +the colonel said to Beauchamp. 'You'll have to stand fire.' + +'They will, papa,' murmured Cecilia. 'Will Mr. Austin be there?' + +'I particularly wish to meet Mr. Austin,' said Beauchamp. + +'Listen to him, if you do meet him,' she replied. + +His look was rather grave. + +'Lespel 's a Whig,' he said. + +The colonel answered. 'Lespel was a Whig. Once a Tory always a +Tory,--but court the people and you're on quicksands, and that's where +the Whigs are. What he is now I don't think he knows himself. You won't +get a vote.' + +Cecilia watched her friend Nevil recovering from his short fit of gloom. +He dismissed politics at breakfast and grew companionable, with the +charm of his earlier day. He was willing to accompany her to church too. + +'You will hear a long sermon,' she warned him. + +'Forty minutes.' Colonel Halkett smothered a yawn that was both retro +and prospective. + +'It has been fifty, papa.' + +'It has been an hour, my dear.' + +It was good discipline nevertheless, the colonel affirmed, and Cecilia +praised the Rev. Mr. Brisk of Urplesdon vicarage as one of our few +remaining Protestant clergymen. + +'Then he ought to be supported,' said Beauchamp. 'In the dissensions of +religious bodies it is wise to pat the weaker party on the back--I quote +Stukely Culbrett.' + +'I 've heard him,' sighed the colonel. 'He calls the Protestant clergy +the social police of the English middle-class. Those are the things he +lets fly. I have heard that man say that the Church stands to show the +passion of the human race for the drama. He said it in my presence. And +there 's a man who calls himself a Tory! + +You have rather too much of that playing at grudges and dislikes at +Steynham, with squibs, nicknames, and jests at things that--well, that +our stability is bound up in. I hate squibs.' + +'And I,' said Beauchamp. Some shadow of a frown crossed him; but Stukely +Culbrett's humour seemed to be a refuge. 'Protestant parson-not clergy,' +he corrected the colonel. 'Can't you hear Mr. Culbrett, Cecilia? The +Protestant parson is the policeman set to watch over the respectability +of the middle-class. He has sharp eyes for the sins of the poor. As for +the rich, they support his church; they listen to his sermon--to set an +example: discipline, colonel. You discipline the tradesman, who's afraid +of losing your custom, and the labourer, who might be deprived of his +bread. But the people? It's put down to the wickedness of human nature +that the parson has not got hold of the people. The parsons have lost +them by senseless Conservatism, because they look to the Tories for the +support of their Church, and let the religion run down the gutters. And +how many thousands have you at work in the pulpit every Sunday? I'm told +the Dissenting ministers have some vitality.' + +Colonel Halkett shrugged with disgust at the mention of Dissenters. + +'And those thirty or forty thousand, colonel, call the men that do +the work they ought to be doing demagogues. The parsonry are a power +absolutely to be counted for waste, as to progress.' + +Cecilia perceived that her father was beginning to be fretted. + +She said, with a tact that effected its object: 'I am one who hear Mr. +Culbrett without admiring his wit.' + +'No, and I see no good in this kind of Steynham talk,' Colonel Halkett +said, rising. 'We're none of us perfect. Heaven save us from political +parsons!' + +Beauchamp was heard to utter, 'Humanity.' + +The colonel left the room with Cecilia, muttering the Steynham tail to +that word: 'tomtity,' for the solace of an aside repartee. + +She was on her way to dress for church. He drew her into the library, +and there threw open a vast placard lying on the table. It was printed +in blue characters and red. 'This is what I got by the post this +morning. I suppose Nevil knows about it. He wants tickling, but I don't +like this kind of thing. It 's not fair war. It 's as bad as using +explosive bullets in my old game.' + +'Can he expect his adversaries to be tender with him?' Cecilia simulated +vehemence in an underbreath. She glanced down the page: + +'FRENCH MARQUEES' caught her eye. + +It was a page of verse. And, oh! could it have issued from a Tory +Committee? + +'The Liberals are as bad, and worse,' her father said. + +She became more and more distressed. 'It seems so very mean, papa; so +base. Ungenerous is no word for it. And how vulgar! Now I remember, +Nevil said he wished to see Mr. Austin.' + +'Seymour Austin would not sanction it.' + +'No, but Nevil might hold him responsible for it.' + +'I suspect Mr. Stukely Culbrett, whom he quotes, and that smoking-room +lot at Lespel's. I distinctly discountenance it. So I shall tell them on +Wednesday night. Can you keep a secret?' + +'And after all Nevil Beauchamp is very young, papa!--of course I can +keep a secret.' + +The colonel exacted no word of honour, feeling quite sure of her. + +He whispered the secret in six words, and her cheeks glowed vermilion. + +'But they will meet on Wednesday after this,' she said, and her sight +went dancing down the column of verse, of which the following trotting +couplet is a specimen:-- + + 'O did you ever, hot in love, a little British middy see, + Like Orpheus asking what the deuce to do without Eurydice?' + +The middy is jilted by his FRENCH MARQUEES, whom he 'did adore,' and +in his wrath he recommends himself to the wealthy widow Bevisham, +concerning whose choice of her suitors there is a doubt: but the middy +is encouraged to persevere: + + 'Up, up, my pretty middy; take a draught of foaming Sillery; + Go in and win the uriddy with your Radical artillery.' + +And if Sillery will not do, he is advised, he being for superlatives, to +try the sparkling Sillery of the Radical vintage, selected grapes. + +This was but impudent nonsense. But the reiterated apostrophe to 'MY +FRENCH MARQUEES' was considered by Cecilia to be a brutal offence. + +She was shocked that her party should have been guilty of it. Nevil +certainly provoked, and he required, hard blows; and his uncle Everard +might be right in telling her father that they were the best means of +teaching him to come to his understanding. Still a foul and stupid squib +did appear to her a debasing weapon to use. + +'I cannot congratulate you on your choice of a second candidate, papa,' +she said scornfully. + +'I don't much congratulate myself,' said the colonel. + +'Here's a letter from Mrs. Beauchamp informing me that her boy Blackburn +will be home in a month. There would have been plenty of time for him. +However, we must make up our minds to it. Those two 'll be meeting on +Wednesday, so keep your secret. It will be out tomorrow week.' + +'But Nevil will be accusing Mr. Austin.' + +'Austin won't be at Lespel's. And he must bear it, for the sake of +peace.' + +'Is Nevil ruined with his uncle, papa?' + +'Not a bit, I should imagine. It's Romfrey's fun.' + +'And this disgraceful squib is a part of the fun?' + +'That I know nothing about, my dear. I'm sorry, but there's pitch and +tar in politics as well as on shipboard.' + +'I do not see that there should be,' said Cecilia resolutely. + +'We can't hope to have what should be.' + +'Why not? I would have it: I would do my utmost to have it,' she flamed +out. + +'Your utmost?' Her father was glancing at her foregone mimicry of +Beauchamp's occasional strokes of emphasis. 'Do your utmost to have your +bonnet on in time for us to walk to church. I can't bear driving there.' + +Cecilia went to her room with the curious reflection, awakened by what +her father had chanced to suggest to her mind, that she likewise could +be fervid, positive, uncompromising--who knows? Radicalish, perhaps, +when she looked eye to eye on an evil. For a moment or so she espied +within herself a gulf of possibilities, wherein black night-birds, known +as queries, roused by shot of light, do flap their wings.--Her utmost to +have be what should be! And why not? + +But the intemperate feeling subsided while she was doing duty before her +mirror, and the visionary gulf closed immediately. + +She had merely been very angry on Nevil Beauchamp's behalf, and had +dimly seen that a woman can feel insurgent, almost revolutionary, for +a personal cause, Tory though her instinct of safety and love of +smoothness make her. + +No reflection upon this casual piece of self or sex revelation troubled +her head. She did, however, think of her position as the friend of Nevil +in utter antagonism to him. It beset her with contradictions that blew +rough on her cherished serenity; for she was of the order of ladies who, +by virtue of their pride and spirit, their port and their beauty, decree +unto themselves the rank of princesses among women, before our world has +tried their claim to it. She had lived hitherto in upper air, high above +the clouds of earth. Her ideal of a man was of one similarly disengaged +and lofty-loftier. Nevil, she could honestly say, was not her ideal; +he was only her old friend, and she was opposed to him in his present +adventure. The striking at him to cure him of his mental errors and +excesses was an obligation; she could descend upon him calmly with the +chastening rod, pointing to the better way; but the shielding of him was +a different thing; it dragged her down so low, that in her condemnation +of the Tory squib she found herself asking herself whether haply Nevil +had flung off the yoke of the French lady; with the foolish excuse for +the question, that if he had not, he must be bitterly sensitive to the +slightest public allusion to her. Had he? And if not, how desperately +faithful he was! or else how marvellously seductive she! + +Perhaps it was a lover's despair that had precipitated him into the +mire of politics. She conceived the impression that it must be so, and +throughout the day she had an inexplicable unsweet pleasure in inciting +him to argumentation and combating him, though she was compelled to +admit that he had been colloquially charming antecedent to her naughty +provocation; and though she was indebted to him for his patient decorum +under the weary wave of the Reverend Mr. Brisk. Now what does it matter +what a woman thinks in politics? But he deemed it of great moment. +Politically, he deemed that women have souls, a certain fire of life for +exercise on earth. He appealed to reason in them; he would not hear of +convictions. He quoted the Bevisham doctor! + +'Convictions are generally first impressions that are sealed with later +prejudices,' and insisted there was wisdom in it. Nothing tired him, as +he had said, and addressing woman or man, no prospect of fatigue or +of hopeless effort daunted him in the endeavour to correct an error of +judgement in politics--his notion of an error. The value he put upon +speaking, urging his views, was really fanatical. It appeared that he +canvassed the borough from early morning till near midnight, and nothing +would persuade him that his chance was poor; nothing that an entrenched +Tory like her father, was not to be won even by an assault of all the +reserve forces of Radical pathos, prognostication, and statistics. + +Only conceive Nevil Beauchamp knocking at doors late at night, the +sturdy beggar of a vote! or waylaying workmen, as he confessed without +shame that he had done, on their way trooping to their midday meal; +penetrating malodoriferous rooms of dismal ten-pound cottagers, to +exhort bedraggled mothers and babes, and besotted husbands; and exposed +to rebuffs from impertinent tradesmen; and lampooned and travestied, +shouting speeches to roaring men, pushed from shoulder to shoulder of +the mob!... + +Cecilia dropped a curtain on her mind's picture of him. But the blinding +curtain rekindled the thought that the line he had taken could not but +be the desperation of a lover abandoned. She feared it was, she feared +it was not. Nevil Beauchamp's foe persisted in fearing that it was not; +his friend feared that it was. Yet why? For if it was, then he could not +be quite in earnest, and might be cured. Nay, but earnestness works out +its own cure more surely than frenzy, and it should be preferable to +think him sound of heart, sincere though mistaken. Cecilia could not +decide upon what she dared wish for his health's good. Friend and foe +were not further separable within her bosom than one tick from another +of a clock; they changed places, and next his friend was fearing what +his foe had feared: they were inextricable. + +Why had he not sprung up on a radiant aquiline ambition, whither one +might have followed him, with eyes and prayers for him, if it was +not possible to do so companionably? At present, in the shape of a +canvassing candidate, it was hardly honourable to let imagination dwell +on him, save compassionately. + +When he rose to take his leave, Cecilia said, 'Must you go to Itchincope +on Wednesday, Nevil?' + +Colonel Halkett added: 'I don't think I would go to Lespel's if I were +you. I rather suspect Seymour Austin will be coming on Wednesday, and +that 'll detain me here, and you might join us and lend him an ear for +an evening.' + +'I have particular reasons for going to Lespel's; I hear he wavers +toward a Tory conspiracy of some sort,' said Beauchamp. + +The colonel held his tongue. + +The untiring young candidate chose to walk down to Bevisham at eleven +o'clock at night, that he might be the readier to continue his canvass +of the borough on Monday morning early. He was offered a bed or a +conveyance, and he declined both; the dog-cart he declined out of +consideration for horse and groom, which an owner of stables could not +but approve. + +Colonel Halkett broke into exclamations of pity for so good a young +fellow so misguided. + +The night was moonless, and Cecilia, looking through the window, said +whimsically, 'He has gone out into the darkness, and is no light in it!' + +Certainly none shone. She however carried a lamp that revealed him +footing on with a wonderful air of confidence, and she was rather +surprised to hear her father regret that Nevil Beauchamp should be +losing his good looks already, owing to that miserable business of his +in Bevisham. She would have thought the contrary, that he was looking as +well as ever. + +'He dresses just as he used to dress,' she observed. + +The individual style of a naval officer of breeding, in which you see +neatness trifling with disorder, or disorder plucking at neatness, +like the breeze a trim vessel, had been caught to perfection by Nevil +Beauchamp, according to Cecilia. It presented him to her mind in a +cheerful and a very undemocratic aspect, but in realizing it, the +thought, like something flashing black, crossed her--how attractive such +a style must be to a Frenchwoman! + +'He may look a little worn,' she acquiesced. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. CONCERNING THE ACT OF CANVASSING + +Tories dread the restlessness of Radicals, and Radicals are in awe of +the organization of Tories. Beauchamp thought anxiously of the high +degree of confidence existing in the Tory camp, whose chief could afford +to keep aloof, while he slaved all day and half the night to thump ideas +into heads, like a cooper on a cask:--an impassioned cooper on an empty +cask! if such an image is presentable. Even so enviously sometimes the +writer and the barrister, men dependent on their active wits, regard the +man with a business fixed in an office managed by clerks. That man seems +by comparison celestially seated. But he has his fits of trepidation; +for new tastes prevail and new habits are formed, and the structure of +his business will not allow him to adapt himself to them in a minute. +The secure and comfortable have to pay in occasional panics for the +serenity they enjoy. Mr. Seymour Austin candidly avowed to Colonel +Halkett, on his arrival at Mount Laurels, that he was advised to take up +his quarters in the neighbourhood of Bevisham by a recent report of +his committee, describing the young Radical's canvass as redoubtable. +Cougham he did not fear: he could make a sort of calculation of the +votes for the Liberal thumping on the old drum of Reform; but the number +for him who appealed to feelings and quickened the romantic sentiments +of the common people now huddled within our electoral penfold, was +not calculable. Tory and Radical have an eye for one another, which +overlooks the Liberal at all times except when he is, as they imagine, +playing the game of either of them. + +'Now we shall see the passions worked,' Mr. Austin said, deploring the +extension of the franchise. + +He asked whether Beauchamp spoke well. + +Cecilia left it to her father to reply; but the colonel appealed to her, +saying, 'Inclined to dragoon one, isn't he?' + +She did not think that. 'He speaks... he speaks well in conversation. +I fancy he would be liked by the poor. I should doubt his being a good +public speaker. He certainly has command of his temper: that is one +thing. I cannot say whether it favours oratory. He is indefatigable. One +may be sure he will not faint by the way. He quite believes in himself. +But, Mr. Austin, do you really regard him as a serious rival?' + +Mr. Austin could not tell. No one could tell the effect of an extended +franchise. The untried venture of it depressed him. 'Men have come +suddenly on a borough before now and carried it,' he said. + +'Not a borough like Bevisham?' + +He shook his head. 'A fluid borough, I'm afraid.' + +Colonel Halkettt interposed: 'But Ferbrass is quite sure of his +district.' + +Cecilia wished to know who the man was, of the mediaevally sounding +name. + +'Ferbrass is an old lawyer, my dear. He comes of five generations of +lawyers, and he 's as old in the county as Grancey Lespel. Hitherto he +has always been to be counted on for marching his district to the +poll like a regiment. That's our strength--the professions, especially +lawyers.' + +'Are not a great many lawyers Liberals, papa?' + +'A great many barristers are, my dear.' + +Thereat the colonel and Mr. Austin smiled together. + +It was a new idea to Cecilia that Nevil Beauchamp should be considered +by a man of the world anything but a well-meaning, moderately ridiculous +young candidate; and the fact that one so experienced as Seymour Austin +deemed him an adversary to be grappled with in earnest, created a small +revolution in her mind, entirely altering her view of the probable +pliability of his Radicalism under pressure of time and circumstances. +Many of his remarks, that she had previously half smiled at, came across +her memory hard as metal. She began to feel some terror of him, and +said, to reassure herself: 'Captain Beauchamp is not likely to be a +champion with a very large following. He is too much of a political +mystic, I think.' + +'Many young men are, before they have written out a fair copy of their +meaning,' said Mr. Austin. + +Cecilia laughed to herself at the vision of the fiery Nevil engaged +in writing out a fair copy of his meaning. How many erasures! what +foot-notes! + +The arrangement was for Cecilia to proceed to Itchincope alone for a +couple of days, and bring a party to Mount Laurels through Bevisham +by the yacht on Thursday, to meet Mr. Seymour Austin and Mr. Everard +Romfrey. An early day of the next week had been agreed on for the +unmasking of the second Tory candidate. She promised that in case +Nevil Beauchamp should have the hardihood to enter the enemy's nest at +Itchincope on Wednesday, at the great dinner and ball there, she would +do her best to bring him back to Mount Laurels, that he might meet his +uncle Everard, who was expected there. At least he may consent to come +for an evening,' she said. 'Nothing will take him from that canvassing. +It seems to me it must be not merely distasteful...?' + +Mr. Austin replied: 'It 's disagreeable, but it's' the practice. I would +gladly be bound by a common undertaking to abstain.' + +'Captain Beauchamp argues that it would be all to your advantage. He +says that a personal visit is the only chance for an unknown candidate +to make the people acquainted with him.' + +'It's a very good opportunity for making him acquainted with them; and I +hope he may profit by it.' + +'Ah! pah! "To beg the vote and wink the bribe,"' Colonel Halkett +subjoined abhorrently: + + "'It well becomes the Whiggish tribe + To beg the vote and wink the bribe." + +Canvassing means intimidation or corruption.' + +'Or the mixture of the two, called cajolery,' said Mr. Austin; 'and that +was the principal art of the Whigs.' + +Thus did these gentlemen converse upon canvassing. + +It is not possible to gather up in one volume of sound the rattle of the +knocks at Englishmen's castle-gates during election days; so, with the +thunder of it unheard, the majesty of the act of canvassing can be +but barely appreciable, and he, therefore, who would celebrate it must +follow the candidate obsequiously from door to door, where, like a +cross between a postman delivering a bill and a beggar craving an alms, +patiently he attempts the extraction of the vote, as little boys pick +periwinkles with a pin. + +'This is your duty, which I most abjectly entreat you to do,' is pretty +nearly the form of the supplication. + +How if, instead of the solicitation of the thousands by the unit, the +meritorious unit were besought by rushing thousands?--as a mound of the +plains that is circumvented by floods, and to which the waters cry, Be +thou our island. Let it be answered the questioner, with no discourteous +adjectives, Thou fool! To come to such heights of popular discrimination +and political ardour the people would have to be vivified to a pitch +little short of eruptive: it would be Boreas blowing AEtna inside +them; and we should have impulse at work in the country, and immense +importance attaching to a man's whether he will or he won't--enough to +womanize him. We should be all but having Parliament for a sample of our +choicest rather than our likest: and see you not a peril in that? + +Conceive, for the fleeting instants permitted to such insufferable +flights of fancy, our picked men ruling! So despotic an oligarchy as +would be there, is not a happy subject of contemplation. It is not too +much to say that a domination of the Intellect in England would at once +and entirely alter the face of the country. We should be governed by the +head with a vengeance: all the rest of the country being base members +indeed; Spartans--helots. Criticism, now so helpful to us, would wither +to the root: fun would die out of Parliament, and outside of it: +we could never laugh at our masters, or command them: and that good +old-fashioned shouldering of separate interests, which, if it stops +progress, like a block in the pit entrance to a theatre, proves us equal +before the law, puts an end to the pretence of higher merit in the one +or the other, and renders a stout build the safest assurance for coming +through ultimately, would be transformed to a painful orderliness, +like a City procession under the conduct of the police, and to +classifications of things according to their public value: decidedly +no benefit to burly freedom. None, if there were no shouldering and +hustling, could tell whether actually the fittest survived; as is now +the case among survivors delighting in a broad-chested fitness. + +And consider the freezing isolation of a body of our quintessential +elect, seeing below them none to resemble them! Do you not hear +in imagination the land's regrets for that amiable nobility whose +pretensions were comically built on birth, acres, tailoring, style, and +an air? Ah, that these unchallengeable new lords could be exchanged for +those old ones! These, with the traditions of how great people should +look in our country, these would pass among us like bergs of ice--a pure +Polar aristocracy, inflicting the woes of wintriness upon us. Keep them +from concentrating! At present I believe it to be their honest opinion, +their wise opinion, and the sole opinion common to a majority of them, +that it is more salutary, besides more diverting, to have the fools of +the kingdom represented than not. As professors of the sarcastic art +they can easily take the dignity out of the fools' representative at +their pleasure, showing him at antics while he supposes he is exhibiting +an honourable and a decent series of movements. Generally, too, their +archery can check him when he is for any of his measures; and if it does +not check, there appears to be such a property in simple sneering, that +it consoles even when it fails to right the balance of power. Sarcasm, +we well know, confers a title of aristocracy straightway and sharp on +the sconce of the man who does but imagine that he is using it. What, +then, must be the elevation of these princes of the intellect in their +own minds! Hardly worth bartering for worldly commanderships, it is +evident. + +Briefly, then, we have a system, not planned but grown, the outcome and +image of our genius, and all are dissatisfied with parts of it; but, as +each would preserve his own, the surest guarantee is obtained for +the integrity of the whole by a happy adjustment of the energies of +opposition, which--you have only to look to see--goes far beyond concord +in the promotion of harmony. This is our English system; like our +English pudding, a fortuitous concourse of all the sweets in the +grocer's shop, but an excellent thing for all that, and let none +threaten it. Canvassing appears to be mixed up in the system; at least +I hope I have shown that it will not do to reverse the process, for +fear of changes leading to a sovereignty of the austere and antipathetic +Intellect in our England, that would be an inaccessible tyranny of a +very small minority, necessarily followed by tremendous convulsions. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. LORD PALMET, AND CERTAIN ELECTORS OF BEVISHAM + +Meantime the candidates raised knockers, rang bells, bowed, expounded +their views, praised their virtues, begged for votes, and greatly +and strangely did the youngest of them enlarge his knowledge of his +countrymen. But he had an insatiable appetite, and except in relation to +Mr. Cougham, considerable tolerance. With Cougham, he was like a young +hound in the leash. They had to run as twins; but Beauchamp's conjunct +would not run, he would walk. He imposed his experience on Beauchamp, +with an assumption that it must necessarily be taken for the law of +Beauchamp's reason in electoral and in political affairs, and this +was hard on Beauchamp, who had faith in his reason. Beauchamp's early +canvassing brought Cougham down to Bevisham earlier than usual in the +days when he and Seymour Austin divided the borough, and he inclined to +administer correction to the Radically-disposed youngster. 'Yes, I +have gone all over that,' he said, in speech sometimes, in manner +perpetually, upon the intrusion of an idea by his junior. Cougham also, +Cougham had passed through his Radical phase, as one does on the road +to wisdom. So the frog telleth tadpoles: he too has wriggled most +preposterous of tails; and he has shoved a circular flat head into +corners unadapted to its shape; and that the undeveloped one should +dutifully listen to experience and accept guidance, is devoutly to be +hoped. Alas! Beauchamp would not be taught that though they were yoked +they stood at the opposite ends of the process of evolution. + +The oddly coupled pair deplored, among their respective friends, the +disastrous Siamese twinship created by a haphazard improvident Liberal +camp. Look at us! they said:--Beauchamp is a young demagogue; Cougham +is chrysalis Tory. Such Liberals are the ruin of Liberalism; but of such +must it be composed when there is no new cry to loosen floods. It was +too late to think of an operation to divide them. They held the heart +of the cause between them, were bound fast together, and had to go on. +Beauchamp, with a furious tug of Radicalism, spoken or performed, +pulled Cougham on his beam-ends. Cougham, to right himself, defined his +Liberalism sharply from the politics of the pit, pointed to France and +her Revolutions, washed his hands of excesses, and entirely overset +Beauchamp. Seeing that he stood in the Liberal interest, the junior +could not abandon the Liberal flag; so he seized it and bore it ahead of +the time, there where Radicals trip their phantom dances like shadows on +a fog, and waved it as the very flag of our perfectible race. So great +was the impetus that Cougham had no choice but to step out with him +briskly--voluntarily as a man propelled by a hand on his coat-collar. A +word saved him: the word practical. 'Are we practical?' he inquired, and +shivered Beauchamp's galloping frame with a violent application of the +stop abrupt; for that question, 'Are we practical?' penetrates the +bosom of an English audience, and will surely elicit a response if +not plaudits. Practical or not, the good people affectingly wish to be +thought practical. It has been asked by them. + +If we're not practical, what are we?--Beauchamp, talking to Cougham +apart, would argue that the daring and the far-sighted course was often +the most practical. Cougham extended a deprecating hand: 'Yes, I have +gone over all that.' Occasionally he was maddening. + +The melancholy position of the senior and junior Liberals was known +abroad and matter of derision. + +It happened that the gay and good-humoured young Lord Palmet, heir +to the earldom of Elsea, walking up the High Street of Bevisham, met +Beauchamp on Tuesday morning as he sallied out of his hotel to canvass. +Lord Palmet was one of the numerous half-friends of Cecil Baskelett, and +it may be a revelation of his character to you, that he owned to liking +Beauchamp because of his having always been a favourite with the women. +He began chattering, with Beauchamp's hand in his: 'I've hit on you, +have I? My dear fellow, Miss Halkett was talking of you last night. I +slept at Mount Laurels; went on purpose to have a peep. I'm bound for +Itchincope. They've some grand procession in view there; Lespel wrote +for my team; I suspect he's for starting some new October races. He +talks of half-a-dozen drags. He must have lots of women there. I say, +what a splendid creature Cissy Halkett has shot up! She topped the +season this year, and will next. You're for the darkies, Beauchamp. So +am I, when I don't see a blonde; just as a fellow admires a girl when +there's no married woman or widow in sight. And, I say, it can't be true +you've gone in for that crazy Radicalism? There's nothing to be +gained by it, you know; the women hate it! A married blonde of +five-and-twenty's the Venus of them all. Mind you, I don't forget that +Mrs. Wardour-Devereux is a thorough-paced brunette; but, upon my honour, +I'd bet on Cissy Halkett at forty. "A dark eye in woman," if you like, +but blue and auburn drive it into a corner.' + +Lord Palmet concluded by asking Beauchamp what he was doing and whither +going. + +Beauchamp proposed to him maliciously, as one of our hereditary +legislators, to come and see something of canvassing. Lord Palmet had +no objection. 'Capital opportunity for a review of their women,' he +remarked. + +'I map the places for pretty women in England; some parts of Norfolk, +and a spot or two in Cumberland and Wales, and the island over there, I +know thoroughly. Those Jutes have turned out some splendid fair women. +Devonshire's worth a tour. My man Davis is in charge of my team, and +he drives to Itchincope from Washwater station. I am independent; I 'll +have an hour with you. Do you think much of the women here?' + +Beauchamp had not noticed them. + +Palmet observed that he should not have noticed anything else. + +'But you are qualifying for the Upper House,' Beauchamp said in the tone +of an encomium. + +Palmet accepted the statement. 'Though I shall never care to figure +before peeresses,' he said. 'I can't tell you why. There's a heavy +sprinkling of the old bird among them. It isn't that. There's too much +plumage; I think it must be that. A cloud of millinery shoots me off a +mile from a woman. In my opinion, witches are the only ones for wearing +jewels without chilling the feminine atmosphere about them. Fellows +think differently.' Lord Palmet waved a hand expressive of purely +amiable tolerance, for this question upon the most important topic of +human affairs was deep, and no judgement should be hasty in settling it. +'I'm peculiar,' he resumed. 'A rose and a string of pearls: a woman who +goes beyond that's in danger of petrifying herself and her fellow man. +Two women in Paris, last winter, set us on fire with pale thin gold +ornaments--neck, wrists, ears, ruche, skirts, all in a flutter, and so +were you. But you felt witchcraft. "The magical Orient," Vivian Ducie +called the blonde, and the dark beauty, "Young Endor."' + +'Her name?' said Beauchamp. + +'A marquise; I forget her name. The other was Countess Rastaglione; you +must have heard of her; a towering witch, an empress, Helen of Troy; +though Ducie would have it the brunette was Queen of Paris. For French +taste, if you like.' + +Countess Rastaglione was a lady enamelled on the scroll of Fame. 'Did +you see them together?' said Beauchamp. 'They weren't together?' + +Palmet looked at him and laughed. 'You're yourself again, are you? Go to +Paris in January, and cut out the Frenchmen.' + +'Answer me, Palmet: they weren't in couples?' + +'I fancy not. It was luck to meet them, so they couldn't have been.' + +'Did you dance with either of them?' + +Unable to state accurately that he had, Palmet cried, 'Oh! for dancing, +the Frenchwoman beat the Italian.' + +'Did you see her often--more than once?' + +'My dear fellow, I went everywhere to see her: balls, theatres, +promenades, rides, churches.' + +'And you say she dressed up to the Italian, to challenge her, rival +her?' + +'Only one night; simple accident. Everybody noticed it, for they stood +for Night and Day,--both hung with gold; the brunette Etruscan, and the +blonde Asiatic; and every Frenchman present was epigramizing up and down +the rooms like mad.' + +'Her husband 's Legitimist; he wouldn't be at the Tuileries?' Beauchamp +spoke half to himself. + +'What, then, what?' Palmet stared and chuckled. 'Her husband must +have taken the Tuileries' bait, if we mean the same woman. My dear old +Beauchamp, have I seen her, then? She's a darling! The Rastaglione was +nothing to her. When you do light on a grand smoky pearl, the milky +ones may go and decorate plaster. That's what I say of the loveliest +brunettes. It must be the same: there can't be a couple of dark beauties +in Paris without a noise about them. Marquise--? I shall recollect her +name presently.' + +'Here's one of the houses I stop at,' said Beauchamp, 'and drop that +subject.' + +A scared servant-girl brought out her wizened mistress to confront the +candidate, and to this representative of the sex he addressed his arts +of persuasion, requesting her to repeat his words to her husband. The +contrast between Beauchamp palpably canvassing and the Beauchamp who was +the lover of the Marquise of the forgotten name, struck too powerfully +on Palmet for his gravity he retreated. + +Beauchamp found him sauntering on the pavement, and would have dismissed +him but for an agreeable diversion that occurred at that moment. A +suavely smiling unctuous old gentleman advanced to them, bowing, and +presuming thus far, he said, under the supposition that he was accosting +the junior Liberal candidate for the borough. He announced his name and +his principles Tomlinson, progressive Liberal. + +'A true distinction from some Liberals I know,' said Beauchamp. + +Mr. Tomlinson hoped so. Never, he said, did he leave it to the man of +his choice at an election to knock at his door for the vote. + +Beauchamp looked as if he had swallowed a cordial. Votes falling into +his lap are heavenly gifts to the candidate sick of the knocker and the +bell. Mr. Tomlinson eulogized the manly candour of the junior +Liberal candidate's address, in which he professed to see ideas +that distinguished it from the address of the sound but otherwise +conventional Liberal, Mr. Cougham. He muttered of plumping for +Beauchamp. 'Don't plump,' Beauchamp said; and a candidate, if he would +be an honourable twin, must say it. Cougham had cautioned him against +the heresy of plumping. + +They discoursed of the poor and their beverages, of pothouses, of the +anti-liquorites, and of the duties of parsons, and the value of a robust +and right-minded body of the poor to the country. Palmet found himself +following them into a tolerably spacious house that he took to be the +old gentleman's until some of the apparatus of an Institute for literary +and scientific instruction revealed itself to him, and he heard Mr. +Tomlinson exalt the memory of one Wingham for the blessing bequeathed by +him to the town of Bevisham. 'For,' said Mr. Tomlinson, 'it is open to +both sexes, to all respectable classes, from ten in the morning up +to ten at night. Such a place affords us, I would venture to say, the +advantages without the seductions of a Club. I rank it next--at a far +remove, but next-the church.' + +Lord Palmet brought his eyes down from the busts of certain worthies +ranged along the top of the book-shelves to the cushioned chairs, and +murmured, 'Capital place for an appointment with a woman.' + +Mr. Tomlinson gazed up at him mildly, with a fallen countenance. He +turned sadly agape in silence to the busts, the books, and the range +of scientific instruments, and directed a gaze under his eyebrows at +Beauchamp. 'Does your friend canvass with you?' he inquired. + +'I want him to taste it,' Beauchamp replied, and immediately introduced +the affable young lord--a proceeding marked by some of the dexterity he +had once been famous for, as was shown by a subsequent observation of +Mr. Tomlinson's: + +'Yes,' he said, on the question of classes, 'yes, I fear we have classes +in this country whose habitual levity sharp experience will have to +correct. I very much fear it.' + +'But if you have classes that are not to face realities classes that +look on them from the box-seats of a theatre,' said Beauchamp, 'how can +you expect perfect seriousness, or any good service whatever?' + +'Gently, sir, gently. No; we can, I feel confident, expand within the +limits of our most excellent and approved Constitution. I could wish +that socially... that is all.' + +'Socially and politically mean one thing in the end,' said Beauchamp. +'If you have a nation politically corrupt, you won't have a good state +of morals in it, and the laws that keep society together bear upon the +politics of a country.' + +'True; yes,' Mr. Tomlinson hesitated assent. He dissociated Beauchamp +from Lord Palmet, but felt keenly that the latter's presence desecrated +Wingham's Institute, and he informed the candidate that he thought he +would no longer detain him from his labours. + +'Just the sort of place wanted in every provincial town,' Palmet +remarked by way of a parting compliment. + +Mr. Tomlinson bowed a civil acknowledgement of his having again spoken. + +No further mention was made of the miraculous vote which had risen +responsive to the candidate's address of its own inspired motion; so +Beauchamp said, 'I beg you to bear in mind that I request you not to +plump.' + +'You may be right, Captain Beauchamp. Good day, sir.' + +Palmet strode after Beauchamp into the street. + +'Why did you set me bowing to that old boy?' he asked. + +'Why did you talk about women?' was the rejoinder. + +'Oh, aha!' Palmet sang to himself. 'You're a Romfrey, Beauchamp. A blow +for a blow! But I only said what would strike every fellow first off. It +is the place; the very place. Pastry-cooks' shops won't stand comparison +with it. Don't tell me you 're the man not to see how much a woman +prefers to be under the wing of science and literature, in a good-sized, +well-warmed room, with a book, instead of making believe, with a red +face, over a tart.' + +He received a smart lecture from Beauchamp, and began to think he +had enough of canvassing. But he was not suffered to escape. For his +instruction, for his positive and extreme good, Beauchamp determined +that the heir to an earldom should have a day's lesson. We will hope +there was no intention to punish him for having frozen the genial +current of Mr. Tomlinson's vote and interest; and it may be that he +clung to one who had, as he imagined, seen Renee. Accompanied by a Mr. +Oggler, a tradesman of the town, on the Liberal committee, dressed in a +pea-jacket and proudly nautical, they applied for the vote, and found it +oftener than beauty. Palmet contrasted his repeated disappointments with +the scoring of two, three, four and more in the candidate's list, and +informed him that he would certainly get the Election. 'I think you're +sure of it,' he said. 'There's not a pretty woman to be seen; not one.' + +One came up to them, the sight of whom counselled Lord Palmet to +reconsider his verdict. She was addressed by Beauchamp as Miss Denham, +and soon passed on. + +Palmet was guilty of staring at her, and of lingering behind the others +for a last look at her. + +They were on the steps of a voter's house, calmly enduring a rebuff +from him in person, when Palmet returned to them, exclaiming effusively, +'What luck you have, Beauchamp!' He stopped till the applicants +descended the steps, with the voice of the voter ringing contempt as +well as refusal in their ears; then continued: 'You introduced me neck +and heels to that undertakerly old Tomlinson, of Wingham's Institute; +you might have given me a chance with that Miss--Miss Denham, was it? +She has a bit of a style!' + +'She has a head,' said Beauchamp. + +'A girl like that may have what she likes. I don't care what she +has--there's woman in her. You might take her for a younger sister of +Mrs. Wardour-Devereux. Who 's the uncle she speaks of? She ought not to +be allowed to walk out by herself.' + +'She can take care of herself,' said Beauchamp. + +Palmet denied it. 'No woman can. Upon my honour, it's a shame that +she should be out alone. What are her people? I'll run--from you, you +know--and see her safe home. There's such an infernal lot of fellows +about; and a girl simply bewitching and unprotected! I ought to be after +her.' + +Beauchamp held him firmly to the task of canvassing. + +'Then will you tell me where she lives?' Palmet stipulated. He +reproached Beauchamp for a notorious Grand Turk exclusiveness and +greediness in regard to women, as well as a disposition to run hard +races for them out of a spirit of pure rivalry. + +'It's no use contradicting, it's universally known of you,' reiterated +Palmet. 'I could name a dozen women, and dozens of fellows you +deliberately set yourself to cut out, for the honour of it. What's that +story they tell of you in one of the American cities or watering-places, +North or South? You would dance at a ball a dozen times with a girl +engaged to a man--who drenched you with a tumbler at the hotel bar, and +off you all marched to the sands and exchanged shots from revolvers; and +both of you, they say, saw the body of a drowned sailor in the water, +in the moonlight, heaving nearer and nearer, and you stretched your man +just as the body was flung up by a wave between you. Picturesque, if you +like!' + +'Dramatic, certainly. And I ran away with the bride next morning?' + +'No!' roared Palmet; 'you didn't. There's the cruelty of the whole +affair.' + +Beauchamp laughed. 'An old messmate of mine, Lieutenant Jack Wilmore, +can give you a different version of the story. I never have fought a +duel, and never will. Here we are at the shop of a tough voter, Mr. +Oggler. So it says in my note-book. Shall we put Lord Palmet to speak to +him first?' + +'If his lordship will put his heart into what he says,' Mr. Oggler +bowed. 'Are you for giving the people recreation on a Sunday, my lord?' + +'Trap-bat and ball, cricket, dancing, military bands, puppet-shows, +theatres, merry-go-rounds, bosky dells--anything to make them happy,' +said Palmet. + +'Oh, dear! then I 'm afraid we cannot ask you to speak to this Mr. +Carpendike.' Oggler shook his head. + +'Does the fellow want the people to be miserable?' + +'I'm afraid, my lord, he would rather see them miserable.' + +They introduced themselves to Mr. Carpendike in his shop. He was a +flat-chested, sallow young shoemaker, with a shelving forehead, who +seeing three gentlemen enter to him recognized at once with a practised +resignation that they had not come to order shoe-leather, though he +would fain have shod them, being needy; but it was not the design of +Providence that they should so come as he in his blindness would have +had them. Admitting this he wished for nothing. + +The battle with Carpendike lasted three-quarters of an hour, during +which he was chiefly and most effectively silent. Carpendike would not +vote for a man that proposed to open museums on the Sabbath day. The +striking simile of the thin end of the wedge was recurred to by him for +a damning illustration. Captain Beauchamp might be honest in putting his +mind on most questions in his address, when there was no demand upon him +to do it; but honesty was no antidote to impiety. Thus Carpendike. + +As to Sunday museuming being an antidote to the pothouse--no. For the +people knew the frequenting of the pothouse to be a vice; it was a +temptation of Satan that often in overcoming them was the cause of +their flying back to grace: whereas museums and picture galleries were +insidious attractions cloaked by the name of virtue, whereby they were +allured to abandon worship. + +Beauchamp flew at this young monster of unreason: 'But the people are +not worshipping; they are idling and sotting, and if you carry your +despotism farther still, and shut them out of every shop on Sundays, do +you suppose you promote the spirit of worship? If you don't revolt them +you unman them, and I warn you we can't afford to destroy what manhood +remains to us in England. Look at the facts.' + +He flung the facts at Carpendike with the natural exaggeration of them +which eloquence produces, rather, as a rule, to assure itself in passing +of the overwhelming justice of the cause it pleads than to deceive the +adversary. Brewers' beer and publicans' beer, wife-beatings, the homes +and the blood of the people, were matters reviewed to the confusion of +Sabbatarians. + +Carpendike listened with a bent head, upraised eyes, and brows +wrinkling far on to his poll: a picture of a mind entrenched beyond +the potentialities of mortal assault. He signified that he had spoken. +Indeed Beauchamp's reply was vain to one whose argument was that he +considered the people nearer to holiness in the indulging of an evil +propensity than in satisfying a harmless curiosity and getting a +recreation. The Sabbath claimed them; if they were disobedient, Sin +ultimately might scourge them back to the fold, but never if they were +permitted to regard themselves as innocent in their backsliding and +rebelliousness. + +Such language was quite new to Beauchamp. The parsons he had spoken +to were of one voice in objecting to the pothouse. He appealed to +Carpendike's humanity. Carpendike smote him with a text from Scripture. + +'Devilish cold in this shop,' muttered Palmet. + +Two not flourishing little children of the emaciated Puritan burst into +the shop, followed by their mother, carrying a child in her arms. She +had a sad look, upon traces of a past fairness, vaguely like a snow +landscape in the thaw. Palmet stooped to toss shillings with her young +ones, that he might avoid the woman's face. It cramped his heart. + +'Don't you see, Mr. Carpendike,' said fat Mr. Oggler, 'it's the +happiness of the people we want; that's what Captain Beauchamp works +for--their happiness; that's the aim of life for all of us. Look at me! +I'm as happy as the day. I pray every night, and I go to church every +Sunday, and I never know what it is to be unhappy. The Lord has blessed +me with a good digestion, healthy pious children, and a prosperous shop +that's a competency--a modest one, but I make it satisfy me, because +I know it's the Lord's gift. Well, now, and I hate Sabbath-breakers; I +would punish them; and I'm against the public-houses on a Sunday; but +aboard my little yacht, say on a Sunday morning in the Channel, I don't +forget I owe it to the Lord that he has been good enough to put me in +the way of keeping a yacht; no; I read prayers to my crew, and a chapter +in the Bible-Genesis, Deuteronomy, Kings, Acts, Paul, just as it comes. +All's good that's there. Then we're free for the day! man, boy, and me; +we cook our victuals, and we must look to the yacht, do you see. But +we've made our peace with the Almighty. We know that. He don't mind the +working of the vessel so long as we've remembered him. He put us in that +situation, exactly there, latitude and longitude, do you see, and work +the vessel we must. And a glass of grog and a pipe after dinner, can't +be any offence. And I tell you, honestly and sincerely, I'm sure my +conscience is good, and I really and truly don't know what it is not to +know happiness.' + +'Then you don't know God,' said Carpendike, like a voice from a cave. + +'Or nature: or the state of the world,' said Beauchamp, singularly +impressed to find himself between two men, of whom--each perforce of his +tenuity and the evident leaning of his appetites--one was for the barren +black view of existence, the other for the fantastically bright. As +to the men personally, he chose Carpendike, for all his obstinacy and +sourness. Oggler's genial piety made him shrink with nausea. + +But Lord Palmet paid Mr. Oggler a memorable compliment, by assuring him +that he was altogether of his way of thinking about happiness. + +The frank young nobleman did not withhold a reference to the two or +three things essential to his happiness; otherwise Mr. Oggler might have +been pleased and flattered. + +Before quitting the shop, Beauchamp warned Carpendike that he should +come again. 'Vote or no vote, you're worth the trial. Texts as many as +you like. I'll make your faith active, if it's alive at all. You speak +of the Lord loving his own; you make out the Lord to be your own, and +use your religion like a drug. So it appears to me. That Sunday tyranny +of yours has to be defended. + +Remember that; for I for one shall combat it and expose it. Good day.' + +Beauchamp continued, in the street: 'Tyrannies like this fellow's have +made the English the dullest and wretchedest people in Europe.' + +Palmet animadverted on Carpendike: 'The dog looks like a deadly fungus +that has poisoned the woman.' + +'I'd trust him with a post of danger, though,' said Beauchamp. + +Before the candidate had opened his mouth to the next elector he was +beamed on. M'Gilliper, baker, a floured brick face, leaned on folded +arms across his counter and said, in Scotch: 'My vote? and he that asks +me for my vote is the man who, when he was midshipman, saved the life +of a relation of mine from death by drowning! my wife's first cousin, +Johnny Brownson--and held him up four to five minutes in the water, +and never left him till he was out of danger! There 's my hand on it, +I will, and a score of householders in Bevisham the same.' He dictated +precious names and addresses to Beauchamp, and was curtly thanked for +his pains. + +Such treatment of a favourable voter seemed odd to Palmet. + +'Oh, a vote given for reasons of sentiment!' Beauchamp interjected. + +Palmet reflected and said: 'Well, perhaps that's how it is women don't +care uncommonly for the men who love them, though they like precious +well to be loved. Opposition does it.' + +'You have discovered my likeness to women,' said Beauchamp, eyeing him +critically, and then thinking, with a sudden warmth, that he had seen +Renee: 'Look here, Palmet, you're too late for Itchincope, to-day; come +and eat fish and meat with me at my hotel, and come to a meeting after +it. You can run by rail to Itchincope to breakfast in the morning, and I +may come with you. You'll hear one or two men speak well to-night.' + +'I suppose I shall have to be at this business myself some day,' sighed +Palmet. 'Any women on the platform? Oh, but political women! And the +Tories get the pick of the women. No, I don't think I 'll stay. Yes, +I will; I'll go through with it. I like to be learning something. You +wouldn't think it of me, Beauchamp, but I envy fellows at work.' + +'You might make a speech for me, Palmet.' + +'No man better, my dear fellow, if it were proposing a toast to the poor +devils and asking them to drink it. But a dry speech, like leading them +over the desert without a well to cheer them--no oasis, as we used to +call a five-pound note and a holiday--I haven't the heart for that. Is +your Miss Denham a Radical?' + +Beauchamp asserted that he had not yet met a woman at all inclining in +the direction of Radicalism. 'I don't call furies Radicals. There may be +women who think as well as feel; I don't know them.' + +'Lots of them, Beauchamp. Take my word for it. I do know women. They +haven't a shift, nor a trick, I don't know. They're as clear to me as +glass. I'll wager your Miss Denham goes to the meetings. Now, doesn't +she? Of course she does. And there couldn't be a gallanter way of +spending an evening, so I'll try it. Nothing to repent of next morning! +That's to be said for politics, Beauchamp, and I confess I'm rather +jealous of you. A thoroughly good-looking girl who takes to a fellow for +what he's doing in the world, must have ideas of him precious different +from the adoration of six feet three and a fine seat in the saddle. +I see that. There's Baskelett in the Blues; and if I were he I should +detest my cuirass and helmet, for if he's half as successful as he +boasts--it's the uniform.' + +Two notorious Radicals, Peter Molyneux and Samuel Killick, were called +on. The first saw Beauchamp and refused him; the second declined to see +him. He was amazed and staggered, but said little. + +Among the remainder of the electors of Bevisham, roused that day to a +sense of their independence by the summons of the candidates, only one +man made himself conspicuous, by premising that he had two important +questions to ask, and he trusted Commander Beauchamp to answer them +unreservedly. They were: first, What is a FRENCH MARQUEES? and second: +Who was EURYDICEY? + +Beauchamp referred him to the Tory camp, whence the placard alluding to +those ladies had issued. + +'Both of them 's ladies! I guessed it,' said the elector. + +'Did you guess that one of them is a mythological lady?' + +'I'm not far wrong in guessing t'other's not much better, I reckon. Now, +sir, may I ask you, is there any tale concerning your morals?' + +'No: you may not ask; you take a liberty.' + +'Then I'll take the liberty to postpone talking about my vote. Look +here, Mr. Commander; if the upper classes want anything of me and come +to me for it, I'll know what sort of an example they're setting; now +that's me.' + +'You pay attention to a stupid Tory squib?' + +'Where there's smoke there's fire, sir.' + +Beauchamp glanced at his note-book for the name of this man, who was a +ragman and dustman. + +'My private character has nothing whatever to do with my politics,' he +said, and had barely said it when he remembered having spoken somewhat +differently, upon the abstract consideration of the case, to Mr. +Tomlinson. + +'You're quite welcome to examine my character for yourself, only I don't +consent to be catechized. Understand that.' + +'You quite understand that, Mr. Tripehallow,' said Oggler, bolder in +taking up the strange name than Beauchamp had been. + +'I understand that. But you understand, there's never been a word +against the morals of Mr. Cougham. Here's the point: Do we mean to be a +moral country? Very well, then so let our representatives be, I say. And +if I hear nothing against your morals, Mr. Commander, I don't say you +shan't have my vote. I mean to deliberate. You young nobs capering over +our heads--I nail you down to morals. Politics secondary. Adew, as the +dying spirit remarked to weeping friends.' + +'Au revoir--would have been kinder,' said Palmet. + +Mr. Tripehallow smiled roguishly, to betoken comprehension. + +Beauchamp asked Mr. Oggler whether that fellow was to be taken for a +humourist or a five-pound-note man. + +'It may be both, sir. I know he's called Morality Joseph.' + +An all but acknowledged five-pound-note man was the last they visited. +He cut short the preliminaries of the interview by saying that he was a +four-o'clock man; i.e. the man who waited for the final bids to him upon +the closing hour of the election day. + +'Not one farthing!' said Beauchamp, having been warned beforehand of the +signification of the phrase by his canvassing lieutenant. + +'Then you're nowhere,' the honest fellow replied in the mystic tongue of +prophecy. + +Palmet and Beauchamp went to their fish and meat; smoked a cigarette or +two afterward, conjured away the smell of tobacco from their persons as +well as they could, and betook themselves to the assembly-room of the +Liberal party, where the young lord had an opportunity of beholding Mr. +Cougham, and of listening to him for an hour and forty minutes. He heard +Mr. Timothy Turbot likewise. And Miss Denham was present. Lord Palmet +applauded when she smiled. When she looked attentive he was deeply +studious. Her expression of fatigue under the sonorous ring of +statistics poured out from Cougham was translated by Palmet into yawns +and sighs of a profoundly fraternal sympathy. Her face quickened on +the rising of Beauchamp to speak. She kept eye on him all the while, as +Palmet, with the skill of an adept in disguising his petty larceny of +the optics, did on her. Twice or thrice she looked pained: Beauchamp was +hesitating for the word. Once she looked startled and shut her eyes: a +hiss had sounded; Beauchamp sprang on it as if enlivened by hostility, +and dominated the factious note. Thereat she turned to a gentleman +sitting beside her; apparently they agreed that some incident had +occurred characteristic of Nevil Beauchamp; for whom, however, it was +not a brilliant evening. He was very well able to account for it, and +did so, after he had walked a few steps with Miss Denham on her homeward +way. + +'You heard Cougham, Palmet! He's my senior, and I'm obliged to come +second to him, and how am I to have a chance when he has drenched the +audience for close upon a couple of hours!' + +Palmet mimicked the manner of Cougham. + +'They cry for Turbot naturally; they want a relief,' Beauchamp groaned. + +Palmet gave an imitation of Timothy Turbot. + +He was an admirable mimic, perfectly spontaneous, without stressing any +points, and Beauchamp was provoked to laugh his discontentment with the +evening out of recollection. + +But a grave matter troubled Palmet's head. + +'Who was that fellow who walked off with Miss Denham?' + +'A married man,' said Beauchamp: 'badly married; more 's the pity; he +has a wife in the madhouse. His name is Lydiard.' + +'Not her brother! Where's her uncle?' + +'She won't let him come to these meetings. It's her idea; well-intended, +but wrong, I think. She's afraid that Dr. Shrapnel will alarm the +moderate Liberals and damage Radical me.' + +Palmet muttered between his teeth, 'What queer things they let their +women do!' He felt compelled to say, 'Odd for her to be walking home at +night with a fellow like that.' + +It chimed too consonantly with a feeling of Beauchamp's, to repress +which he replied: 'Your ideas about women are simply barbarous, Palmet. +Why shouldn't she? Her uncle places his confidence in the man, and in +her. Isn't that better--ten times more likely to call out the sense of +honour and loyalty, than the distrust and the scandal going on in your +class?' + +'Please to say yours too.' + +'I've no class. I say that the education for women is to teach them to +rely on themselves.' + +'Ah! well, I don't object, if I'm the man.' + +'Because you and your set are absolutely uncivilized in your views of +women.' + +'Common sense, Beauchamp!' + +'Prey. You eye them as prey. And it comes of an idle aristocracy. You +have no faith in them, and they repay you for your suspicion.' + +'All the same, Beauchamp, she ought not to be allowed to go about at +night with that fellow. "Rich and rare were the gems she wore": but that +was in Erin's isle, and if we knew the whole history, she'd better have +stopped at home. She's marvellously pretty, to my mind. She looks a +high-bred wench. Odd it is, Beauchamp, to see a lady's-maid now and +then catch the style of my lady. No, by Jove! I've known one or two--you +couldn't tell the difference! Not till you were intimate. I know one +would walk a minuet with a duchess. Of course--all the worse for her. +If you see that uncle of Miss Denham's--upon my honour, I should advise +him: I mean, counsel him not to trust her with any fellow but you.' + +Beauchamp asked Lord Palmet how old he was. + +Palmet gave his age; correcting the figures from six-and-twenty to +one year more. 'And never did a stroke of work in my life,' he said, +speaking genially out of an acute guess at the sentiments of the man he +walked with. + +It seemed a farcical state of things. + +There was a kind of contrition in Palmet's voice, and to put him at his +ease, as well as to stamp something in his own mind, Beauchamp said: +'It's common enough.' + + + + +CHAPTER XX. A DAY AT ITCHINCOPE + +An election in Bevisham was always an exciting period at Itchincope, the +large and influential old estate of the Lespels, which at one time, with +but a ceremonious drive through the town, sent you two good Whig men to +Parliament to sit at Reform banquets; two unswerving party men, blest +subscribers to the right Review, and personally proud of its trenchancy. +Mr. Grancey Lespel was the survivor of them, and well could he remember +the happier day of his grandfather, his father, and his own hot youth. +He could be carried so far by affectionate regrets as to think of the +Tories of that day benignly:--when his champion Review of the orange +and blue livery waved a wondrous sharp knife, and stuck and bled them, +proving to his party, by trenchancy alone, that the Whig was the cause +of Providence. Then politics presented you a table whereat two parties +feasted, with no fear of the intrusion of a third, and your backs were +turned on the noisy lower world, your ears were deaf to it. + +Apply we now the knocker to the door of venerable Quotation, and call +the aged creature forth, that he, half choked by his eheu--! + + 'A sound between a sigh and bray,' + +may pronounce the familiar but respectable words, the burial-service of +a time so happy! + +Mr. Grancey Lespel would still have been sitting for Bevisham (or +politely at this elective moment bowing to resume the seat) had not +those Manchester jugglers caught up his cry, appropriated his colours, +displaced and impersonated him, acting beneficent Whig on a scale +approaching treason to the Constitution; leaning on the people in +earnest, instead of taking the popular shoulder for a temporary lift, +all in high party policy, for the clever manoeuvre, to oust the Tory +and sway the realm. See the consequences. For power, for no other +consideration, those manufacturing rascals have raised Radicalism +from its primaeval mire--from its petty backslum bookseller's shop and +public-house back-parlour effluvia of oratory--to issue dictates in +England, and we, England, formerly the oak, are topsy-turvy, like +onions, our heels in the air! + +The language of party is eloquent, and famous for being grand at +illustration; but it is equally well known that much of it gives us +humble ideas of the speaker, probably because of the naughty temper +party is prone to; which, while endowing it with vehemence, lessens the +stout circumferential view that should be taken, at least historically. +Indeed, though we admit party to be the soundest method for conducting +us, party talk soon expends its attractiveness, as would a summer's +afternoon given up to the contemplation of an encounter of rams' heads. +Let us be quit of Mr. Grancey Lespel's lamentations. The Whig gentleman +had some reason to complain. He had been trained to expect no other +attack than that of his hereditary adversary-ram in front, and a sham +ram--no honest animal, but a ramming engine rather--had attacked him in +the rear. Like Mr. Everard Romfrey and other Whigs, he was profoundly +chagrined by popular ingratitude: 'not the same man,' his wife said of +him. It nipped him early. He took to proverbs; sure sign of the sere +leaf in a man's mind. + +His wife reproached the people for their behaviour to him bitterly. The +lady regarded politics as a business that helped hunting-men a stage +above sportsmen, for numbers of the politicians she was acquainted with +were hunting-men, yet something more by virtue of the variety they +could introduce into a conversation ordinarily treating of sport and +the qualities of wines. Her husband seemed to have lost in that +Parliamentary seat the talisman which gave him notions distinguishing +him from country squires; he had sunk, and he no longer cared for the +months in London, nor for the speeches she read to him to re-awaken +his mind and make him look out of himself, as he had done when he was a +younger man and not a suspended Whig. Her own favourite reading was of +love-adventures written in the French tongue. She had once been in love, +and could be so sympathetic with that passion as to avow to Cecilia +Halkett a tenderness for Nevil Beauchamp, on account of his relations +with the Marquise de Rouaillout, and notwithstanding the demoniacal +flame-halo of the Radical encircling him. + +The allusion to Beauchamp occurred a few hours after Cecilia's arrival +at Itchincope. + +Cecilia begged for the French lady's name to be repeated; she had not +heard it before, and she tasted the strange bitter relish of realization +when it struck her ear to confirm a story that she believed indeed, but +had not quite sensibly felt. + +'And it is not over yet, they say,' Mrs. Grancey Lespel added, while +softly flipping some spots of the colour proper to radicals in morals +on the fame of the French lady. She possessed fully the grave judicial +spirit of her countrywomen, and could sit in judgement on the personages +of tales which had entranced her, to condemn the heroines: it was +impolitic in her sex to pity females. As for the men--poor weak things! +As for Nevil Beauchamp, in particular, his case, this penetrating lady +said, was clear: he ought to be married. 'Could you make a sacrifice?' +she asked Cecilia playfully. + +'Nevil Beauchamp and I are old friends, but we have agreed that we are +deadly political enemies,' Miss Halkett replied. + +'It is not so bad for a beginning,' said Mrs. Lespel. + +'If one were disposed to martyrdom.' + +The older woman nodded. 'Without that.' + +'My dear Mrs. Lespel, wait till you have heard him. He is at war with +everything we venerate and build on. The wife you would give him should +be a creature rooted in nothing--in sea-water. Simply two or three +conversations with him have made me uncomfortable ever since; I can see +nothing durable; I dream of surprises, outbreaks, dreadful events. At +least it is perfectly true that I do not look with the same eyes on my +country. He seems to delight in destroying one's peaceful contemplation +of life. The truth is that he blows a perpetual gale, and is all +agitation,' Cecilia concluded, affecting with a smile a slight shiver. + +'Yes, one tires of that,' said Mrs. Lespel. 'I was determined I would +have him here if we could get him to come. Grancey objected. We shall +have to manage Captain Beauchamp and the rest as well. He is sure to +come late to-morrow, and will leave early on Thursday morning for his +canvass; our driving into Bevisham is for Friday or Saturday. I do not +see that he need have any suspicions. Those verses you are so angry +about cannot be traced to Itchincope. My dear, they are a childish +trifle. When my husband stood first for Bevisham, the whole of his +University life appeared in print. What we have to do is to forewarn the +gentlemen to be guarded, and especially in what they say to my nephew +Lord Palmet, for that boy cannot keep a secret; he is as open as a +plate.' + +'The smoking-room at night?' Cecilia suggested, remembering her father's +words about Itchincope's tobacco-hall. + +'They have Captain Beauchamp's address hung up there, I have heard,' +said Mrs. Lespel. 'There may be other things--another address, though it +is not yet, placarded. Come with me. For fifteen years I have never once +put my head into that room, and now I 've a superstitious fear about +it.' + +Mrs. Lespel led the way to the deserted smoking-room, where the stale +reek of tobacco assailed the ladies, as does that dire place of Customs +the stranger visiting savage (or too natural) potentates. + +In silence they tore down from the wall Beauchamp's electoral +Address--flanked all its length with satirical pen and pencil comments +and sketches; and they consigned to flames the vast sheet of animated +verses relating to the FRENCH MARQUEES. A quarter-size chalk-drawing +of a slippered pantaloon having a duck on his shoulder, labelled to say +'Quack-quack,' and offering our nauseated Dame Britannia (or else it +was the widow Bevisham) a globe of a pill to swallow, crossed with the +consolatory and reassuring name of Shrapnel, they disposed of likewise. +And then they fled, chased forth either by the brilliancy of the +politically allusive epigrams profusely inscribed around them on the +walls, or by the atmosphere. Mrs. Lespel gave her orders for the walls +to be scraped, and said to Cecilia: 'A strange air to breathe, was it +not? The less men and women know of one another, the happier for them. I +knew my superstition was correct as a guide to me. I do so much wish to +respect men, and all my experience tells me the Turks know best how to +preserve it for us. Two men in this house would give their wives for +pipes, if it came to the choice. We might all go for a cellar of old +wine. After forty, men have married their habits, and wives are only an +item in the list, and not the most important.' + +With the assistance of Mr. Stukely Culbrett, Mrs. Lespel prepared the +house and those of the company who were in the secret of affairs for the +arrival of Beauchamp. The ladies were curious to see him. The gentlemen, +not anticipating extreme amusement, were calm: for it is an axiom in the +world of buckskins and billiard-cues, that one man is very like another; +and so true is it with them, that they can in time teach it to the fair +sex. Friends of Cecil Baskelett predominated, and the absence of so +sprightly a fellow was regretted seriously; but he was shooting with his +uncle at Holdesbury, and they did not expect him before Thursday. + +On Wednesday morning Lord Palmet presented himself at a remarkably +well-attended breakfast-table at Itchincope. He passed from Mrs. Lespel +to Mrs. Wardour-Devsreux and Miss Halkett, bowed to other ladies, shook +hands with two or three men, and nodded over the heads of half-a-dozen, +accounting rather mysteriously for his delay in coming, it was thought, +until he sat down before a plate of Yorkshire pie, and said: + +'The fact is I've been canvassing hard. With Beauchamp!' + +Astonishment and laughter surrounded him, and Palmet looked from face to +face, equally astonished, and desirous to laugh too. + +'Ernest! how could you do that?' said Mrs. Lespel; and her husband cried +in stupefaction, 'With Beauchamp?' + +'Oh! it's because of the Radicalism,' Palmet murmured to himself. 'I +didn't mind that.' + +'What sort of a day did you have?' Mr. Culbrett asked him; and several +gentlemen fell upon him for an account of the day. + +Palmet grimaced over a mouthful of his pie. + +'Bad!' quoth Mr. Lespel; 'I knew it. I know Bevisham. The only chance +there is for five thousand pounds in a sack with a hole in it.' + +'Bad for Beauchamp? Dear me, no'; Palmet corrected the error. 'He is +carrying all before him. And he tells them,' Palmet mimicked Beauchamp, +'they shall not have one penny: not a farthing. I gave a couple of +young ones a shilling apiece, and he rowed me for bribery; somehow I did +wrong.' + +Lord Palmet described the various unearthly characters he had inspected +in their dens: Carpendike, Tripehallow, and the radicals Peter Molyneux +and Samuel Killick, and the ex-member for the borough, Cougham, +posing to suit sign-boards of Liberal inns, with a hand thrust in his +waistcoat, and his head well up, the eyes running over the under-lids, +after the traditional style of our aristocracy; but perhaps more closely +resembling an urchin on tiptoe peering above park-palings. Cougham's +remark to Beauchamp, heard and repeated by Palmet with the object +of giving an example of the senior Liberal's phraseology: 'I was +necessitated to vacate my town mansion, to my material discomfort and +that of my wife, whose equipage I have been compelled to take, by your +premature canvass of the borough, Captain Beauchamp: and now, I hear, +on undeniable authority, that no second opponent to us will be +forthcoming'---this produced the greatest effect on the company. + +'But do you tell me,' said Mr. Lespel, when the shouts of the gentlemen +were subsiding, 'do you tell me that young Beauchamp is going ahead?' + +'That he is. They flock to him in the street.' + +'He stands there, then, and jingles a money-bag.' + +Palmet resumed his mimicry of Beauchamp: 'Not a stiver; purity +of election is the first condition of instruction to the people! +Principles! Then they've got a capital orator: Turbot, an Irishman. I +went to a meeting last night, and heard him; never heard anything finer +in my life. You may laugh he whipped me off my legs; fellow spun me like +a top; and while he was orationing, a donkey calls, "Turbot! ain't you +a flat fish?" and he swings round, "Not for a fool's hook!" and out they +hustled the villain for a Tory. I never saw anything like it.' + +'That repartee wouldn't have done with a Dutchman or a Torbay trawler,' +said Stukely Culbrett. 'But let us hear more.' + +'Is it fair?' Miss Halkett murmured anxiously to Mrs. Lespel, who +returned a flitting shrug. + +'Charming women follow Beauchamp, you know,' Palmet proceeded, as he +conceived, to confirm and heighten the tale of success. 'There's a +Miss Denham, niece of a doctor, a Dr.... Shot--Shrapnel! a wonderfully +good-looking, clever-looking girl, comes across him in half-a-dozen +streets to ask how he's getting on, and goes every night to his +meetings, with a man who 's a writer and has a mad wife; a man named +Lydia-no, that's a woman--Lydiard. It's rather a jumble; but you should +see her when Beauchamp's on his legs and speaking.' + +'Mr. Lydiard is in Bevisham?' Mrs. Wardour-Devereux remarked. + +'I know the girl,' growled Mr. Lespel. 'She comes with that rascally +doctor and a bobtail of tea-drinking men and women and their brats to +Northeden Heath--my ground. There they stand and sing.' + +'Hymns?'inquired Mr. Culbrett. + +'I don't know what they sing. And when it rains they take the liberty +to step over my bank into my plantation. Some day I shall have them +stepping into my house.' + +'Yes, it's Mr. Lydiard; I'm sure of the man's name,' Palmet replied to +Mrs. Wardour-Devereux. + +'We met him in Spain the year before last,' she observed to Cecilia. + +The 'we' reminded Palmet that her husband was present. + +'Ah, Devereux, I didn't see you,' he nodded obliquely down the table. +'By the way, what's the grand procession? I hear my man Davis has +come all right, and I caught sight of the top of your coach-box in the +stableyard as I came in. What are we up to?' + +'Baskelett writes, it's to be for to-morrow morning at ten-the start.' +Mr. Wardour-Devereux addressed the table generally. He was a fair, +huge, bush-bearded man, with a voice of unvarying bass: a squire in +his county, and energetic in his pursuit of the pleasures of hunting, +driving, travelling, and tobacco. + +'Old Bask's the captain of us? Very well, but where do we drive the +teams? How many are we? What's in hand?' + +Cecilia threw a hurried glance at her hostess. + +Luckily some witling said, 'Fours-in-hand!' and so dryly that it passed +for humour, and gave Mrs. Lespel time to interpose. 'You are not to know +till to-morrow, Ernest.' + +Palmet had traced the authorship of the sally to Mr. Algy Borolick, and +crowned him with praise for it. He asked, 'Why not know till to-morrow?' +A word in a murmur from Mr. Culbrett, 'Don't frighten the women,' +satisfied him, though why it should he could not have imagined. + +Mrs. Lespel quitted the breakfast-table before the setting in of the +dangerous five minutes of conversation over its ruins, and spoke to her +husband, who contested the necessity for secresy, but yielded to her +judgement when it was backed by Stukely Culbrett. Soon after Lord Palmet +found himself encountered by evasions and witticisms, in spite of the +absence of the ladies, upon every attempt he made to get some light +regarding the destination of the four-in-hands next day. + +'What are you going to do?' he said to Mr. Devereux, thinking him the +likeliest one to grow confidential in private. + +'Smoke,' resounded from the depths of that gentleman. + +Palmet recollected the ground of division between the beautiful brunette +and her lord--his addiction to the pipe in perpetuity, and deemed it +sweeter to be with the lady. + +She and Miss Halkett were walking in the garden. + +Miss Halkett said to him: 'How wrong of you to betray the secrets of +your friend! Is he really making way?' + +'Beauchamp will head the poll to a certainty,' Palmet replied. + +'Still,' said Miss Halkett, 'you should not forget that you are not in +the house of a Liberal. Did you canvass in the town or the suburbs?' + +'Everywhere. I assure you, Miss Halkett, there's a feeling for +Beauchamp--they're in love with him!' + +'He promises them everything, I suppose?' + +'Not he. And the odd thing is, it isn't the Radicals he catches. He +won't go against the game laws for them, and he won't cut down army and +navy. So the Radicals yell at him. One confessed he had sold his vote +for five pounds last election: "you shall have it for the same," says +he, "for you're all humbugs." Beauchamp took him by the throat and shook +him--metaphorically, you know. But as for the tradesmen, he's their +hero; bakers especially.' + +'Mr. Austin may be right, then!' Cecilia reflected aloud. + +She went to Mrs. Lespel to repeat what she had extracted from Palmet, +after warning the latter not, in common loyalty, to converse about his +canvass with Beauchamp. + +'Did you speak of Mr. Lydiard as Captain Beauchamp's friend?' Mrs. +Devereux inquired of him. + +'Lydiard? why, he was the man who made off with that pretty Miss +Denham,' said Palmet. 'I have the greatest trouble to remember them all; +but it was not a day wasted. Now I know politics. Shall we ride or walk? +You will let me have the happiness? I'm so unlucky; I rarely meet you!' + +'You will bring Captain Beauchamp to me the moment he comes?' + +'I'll bring him. Bring him? Nevil Beauchamp won't want bringing.' + +Mrs. Devereux smiled with some pleasure. + +Grancey Lespel, followed at some distance by Mr. Ferbrass, the Tory +lawyer, stepped quickly up to Palmet, and asked whether Beauchamp had +seen Dollikins, the brewer. + +Palmet could recollect the name of one Tomlinson, and also the calling +at a brewery. Moreover, Beauchamp had uttered contempt of the brewer's +business, and of the social rule to accept rich brewers for gentlemen. +The man's name might be Dollikins and not Tomlinson, and if so, it +was Dollikins who would not see Beauchamp. To preserve his political +importance, Palmet said, 'Dollikins! to be sure, that was the man.' + +'Treats him as he does you,' Mr. Lespel turned to Ferbrass. 'I've sent +to Dollikins to come to me this morning, if he's not driving into the +town. I'll have him before Beauchamp sees him. I've asked half-a-dozen +of these country gentlemen-tradesmen to lunch at my table to-day.' + +'Then, sir,' observed Ferbrass, 'if they are men to be persuaded, they +had better not see me.' + +'True; they're my old supporters, and mightn't like your Tory face,' Mr. +Lespel assented. + +Mr. Ferbrass congratulated him on the heartiness of his espousal of the +Tory cause. + +Mr. Lespel winced a little, and told him not to put his trust in that. + +'Turned Tory?' said Palmet. + +Mr. Lespel declined to answer. + +Palmet said to Mrs. Devereux, 'He thinks I'm not worth speaking to upon +politics. Now I'll give him some Beauchamp; I learned lots yesterday.' + +'Then let it be in Captain Beauchamp's manner,' said she softly. + +Palmet obeyed her commands with the liveliest exhibition of his peculiar +faculty: Cecilia, rejoining them, seemed to hear Nevil himself in his +emphatic political mood. 'Because the Whigs are defunct! They had no +root in the people! Whig is the name of a tribe that was! You have Tory, +Liberal, and Radical. There is no place for Whig. He is played out.' + +'Who has been putting that nonsense into your head?' Mr. Lespel +retorted. 'Go shooting, go shooting!' + +Shots were heard in the woods. Palmet pricked up his ears; but he was +taken out riding to act cavalier to Mrs. Devereux and Miss Halkett. + +Cecilia corrected his enthusiasm with the situation. 'No flatteries +to-day. There are hours when women feel their insignificance and +helplessness. I begin to fear for Mr. Austin; and I find I can do +nothing to aid him. My hands are tied. And yet I know I could win voters +if only it were permissible for me to go and speak to them.' + +'Win them!' cried Palmet, imagining the alacrity of men's votes to be +won by her. He recommended a gallop for the chasing away of melancholy, +and as they were on the Bevisham high road, which was bordered by strips +of turf and heath, a few good stretches brought them on the fir-heights, +commanding views of the town and broad water. + +'No, I cannot enjoy it,' Cecilia said to Mrs. Devereux; 'I don't mind +the grey light; cloud and water, and halftones of colour, are homely +English and pleasant, and that opal where the sun should be has a +suggestiveness richer than sunlight. I'm quite northern enough to +understand it; but with me it must be either peace or strife, and that +Election down there destroys my chance of peace. I never could mix +reverie with excitement; the battle must be over first, and the dead +buried. Can you?' + +Mrs. Devereux answered: 'Excitement? I am not sure that I know what it +is. An Election does not excite me.' + +'There's Nevil Beauchamp himself!' Palmet sang out, and the ladies +discerned Beauchamp under a fir-tree, down by the road, not alone. A +man, increasing in length like a telescope gradually reaching its end +for observation, and coming to the height of a landmark, as if raised +by ropes, was rising from the ground beside him. 'Shall we trot on, Miss +Halkett?' + +Cecilia said, 'No.' + +'Now I see a third fellow,' said Palmet. 'It's the other fellow, the +Denham-Shrapnel-Radical meeting... Lydiard's his name: writes books! + +'We may as well ride on,' Mrs. Devereux remarked, and her horse fretted +singularly. + +Beauchamp perceived them, and lifted his hat. Palmet made demonstrations +for the ladies. Still neither party moved nearer. + +After some waiting, Cecilia proposed to turn back. + +Mrs. Devereux looked into her eyes. 'I'll take the lead,' she said, and +started forward, pursued by Palmet. Cecilia followed at a sullen canter. + +Before they came up to Beauchamp, the long-shanked man had stalked away +townward. Lydiard held Beauchamp by the hand. Some last words, after +the manner of instructions, passed between them, and then Lydiard also +turned away. + +'I say, Beauchamp, Mrs. Devereux wants to hear who that man is,' Palmet +said, drawing up. + +'That man is Dr. Shrapnel,' said Beauchamp, convinced that Cecilia had +checked her horse at the sight of the doctor. + +'Dr. Shrapnel,' Palmet informed Mrs. Devereux. + +She looked at him to seek his wits, and returning Beauchamp's admiring +salutation with a little bow and smile, said, 'I fancied it was a +gentleman we met in Spain.' + +'He writes books,' observed Palmet, to jog a slow intelligence. + +'Pamphlets, you mean.' + +'I think he is not a pamphleteer', Mrs. Devereux said. + +'Mr. Lydiard, then, of course; how silly I am! How can you pardon me!' +Beauchamp was contrite; he could not explain that a long guess he had +made at Miss Halkett's reluctance to come up to him when Dr. Shrapnel +was with him had preoccupied his mind. He sent off Palmet the bearer +of a pretext for bringing Lydiard back, and then said to Cecilia, 'You +recognized Dr. Shrapnel?' + +'I thought it might be Dr. Shrapnel', she was candid enough to reply. 'I +could not well recognize him, not knowing him.' + +'Here comes Mr. Lydiard; and let me assure you, if I may take +the liberty of introducing him, he is no true Radical. He is a +philosopher--one of the flirts, the butterflies of politics, as Dr. +Shrapnel calls them.' + +Beauchamp hummed over some improvized trifles to Lydiard, then +introduced him cursorily, and all walked in the direction of Itchincope. +It was really the Mr. Lydiard Mrs. Devereux had met in Spain, so they +were left in the rear to discuss their travels. Much conversation did +not go on in front. Cecilia was very reserved. By-and-by she said, 'I am +glad you have come into the country early to-day.' + +He spoke rapturously of the fresh air, and not too mildly of his +pleasure in meeting her. Quite off her guard, she began to hope he was +getting to be one of them again, until she heard him tell Lord Palmet +that he had come early out of Bevisham for the walk with Dr. Shrapnel, +and to call on certain rich tradesmen living near Itchincope. He +mentioned the name of Dollikins. + +'Dollikins?' Palmet consulted a perturbed recollection. Among the +entangled list of new names he had gathered recently from the study of +politics, Dollikins rang in his head. He shouted, 'Yes, Dollikins! to be +sure. Lespel has him to lunch to-day;--calls him a gentleman-tradesman; +odd fish! and told a fellow called--where is it now?--a name like brass +or copper... Copperstone? Brasspot?... told him he'd do well to keep his +Tory cheek out of sight. It 's the names of those fellows bother one so! +All the rest's easy.' + +'You are evidently in a state of confusion, Lord Palmet,' said Cecilia. + +The tone of rebuke and admonishment was unperceived. 'Not about the +facts,' he rejoined. 'I 'm for fair play all round; no trickery. I tell +Beauchamp all I know, just as I told you this morning, Miss Halkett. +What I don't like is Lespel turning Tory.' + +Cecilia put a stop to his indiscretions by halting for Mrs. Devereux, +and saying to Beauchamp, 'If your friend would return to Bevisham by +rail, this is the nearest point to the station.' + +Palmet, best-natured of men, though generally prompted by some of his +peculiar motives, dismounted from his horse, leaving him to Beauchamp, +that he might conduct Mr. Lydiard to the station, and perhaps hear +a word of Miss Denham: at any rate be able to form a guess as to the +secret of that art of his, which had in the space of an hour restored a +happy and luminous vivacity to the languid Mrs. Wardour-Devereux. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. THE QUESTION AS TO THE EXAMINATION OF THE WHIGS, AND THE +FINE BLOW STRUCK BY MR. EVERARD ROMFREY + +Itchincope was famous for its hospitality. Yet Beauchamp, when in the +presence of his hostess, could see that he was both unexpected and +unwelcome. Mrs. Lespel was unable to conceal it; she looked meaningly +at Cecilia, talked of the house being very full, and her husband engaged +till late in the afternoon. And Captain Baskelett had arrived on a +sudden, she said. And the luncheon-table in the dining-room could not +possibly hold more. + +'We three will sit in the library, anywhere,' said Cecilia. + +So they sat and lunched in the library, where Mrs. Devereux served +unconsciously for an excellent ally to Cecilia in chatting to Beauchamp, +principally of the writings of Mr. Lydiard. + +Had the blinds of the windows been drawn down and candles lighted, +Beauchamp would have been well contented to remain with these two +ladies, and forget the outer world; sweeter society could not have been +offered him: but glancing carelessly on to the lawn, he exclaimed in +some wonderment that the man he particularly wished to see was there. +'It must be Dollikins, the brewer. I've had him pointed out to me in +Bevisham, and I never can light on him at his brewery.' + +No excuse for detaining the impetuous candidate struck Cecilia. She +betook herself to Mrs. Lespel, to give and receive counsel in the +emergency, while Beauchamp struck across the lawn to Mr. Dollikins, who +had the squire of Itchincope on the other side of him. + +Late in the afternoon a report reached the ladies of a furious contest +going on over Dollikins. Mr. Algy Borolick was the first to give them +intelligence of it, and he declared that Beauchamp had wrested Dollikins +from Grancey Lespel. This was contradicted subsequently by Mr. Stukely +Culbrett. 'But there's heavy pulling between them,' he said. + +'It will do all the good in the world to Grancey,' said Mrs. Lespel. + +She sat in her little blue-room, with gentlemen congregating at the open +window. + +Presently Grancey Lespel rounded a projection of the house where the +drawing-room stood out: 'The maddest folly ever talked!' he delivered +himself in wrath. 'The Whigs dead? You may as well say I'm dead.' + +It was Beauchamp answering: 'Politically, you're dead, if you call +yourself a Whig. You couldn't be a live one, for the party's in pieces, +blown to the winds. The country was once a chess-board for Whig and +Tory: but that game's at an end. There's no doubt on earth that the +Whigs are dead.' + +'But if there's no doubt about it, how is it I have a doubt about it?' + +'You know you're a Tory. You tried to get that man Dollikins from me in +the Tory interest.' + +'I mean to keep him out of Radical clutches. Now that 's the truth.' + +They came up to the group by the open window, still conversing hotly, +indifferent to listeners. + +'You won't keep him from me; I have him,' said Beauchamp. + +'You delude yourself; I have his promise, his pledged word,' said +Grancey Lespel. + +'The man himself told you his opinion of renegade Whigs.' + +'Renegade!' + +'Renegade Whig is an actionable phrase,' Mr. Culbrett observed. + +He was unnoticed. + +'If you don't like "renegade," take "dead,"' said Beauchamp. 'Dead Whig +resurgent in the Tory. You are dead.' + +'It's the stupid conceit of your party thinks that.' + +'Dead, my dear Mr. Lespel. I'll say for the Whigs, they would not be +seen touting for Tories if they were not ghosts of Whigs. You are dead. +There is no doubt of it.' + +'But,' Grancey Lespel repeated, 'if there's no doubt about it, how is it +I have a doubt about it?' + +'The Whigs preached finality in Reform. It was their own funeral +sermon.' + +'Nonsensical talk!' + +'I don't dispute your liberty of action to go over to the Tories, but +you have no right to attempt to take an honest Liberal with you. And +that I've stopped.' + +'Aha! Beauchamp; the man's mine. Come, you'll own he swore he wouldn't +vote for a Shrapnelite.' + +'Don't you remember?--that's how the Tories used to fight you; they +stuck an epithet to you, and hooted to set the mob an example; you hit +them off to the life,' said Beauchamp, brightening with the fine ire of +strife, and affecting a sadder indignation. 'You traded on the ignorance +of a man prejudiced by lying reports of one of the noblest of human +creatures.' + +'Shrapnel? There! I've had enough.' Grancey Lespel bounced away with +both hands outspread on the level of his ears. + +'Dead!' Beauchamp sent the ghastly accusation after him. + +Grancey faced round and said, 'Bo!' which was applauded for a smart +retort. And let none of us be so exalted above the wit of daily life as +to sneer at it. Mrs. Lespel remarked to Mr. Culbrett, 'Do you not see +how much he is refreshed by the interest he takes in this election? He +is ten years younger.' + +Beauchamp bent to her, saying mock-dolefully, 'I'm sorry to tell you +that if ever he was a sincere Whig, he has years of remorse before him.' + +'Promise me, Captain Beauchamp,' she answered, 'promise you will give us +no more politics to-day.' + +'If none provoke me.' + +'None shall.' + +'And as to Bevisham,' said Mr. Culbrett, 'it's the identical borough +for a Radical candidate, for every voter there demands a division of his +property, and he should be the last to complain of an adoption of his +principles.' + +'Clever,' rejoined Beauchamp; 'but I am under government'; and he swept +a bow to Mrs. Lespel. + +As they were breaking up the group, Captain Baskelett appeared. + +'Ah! Nevil,' said he, passed him, saluted Miss Halkett through the +window, then cordially squeezed his cousin's hand. 'Having a holiday out +of Bevisham? The baron expects to meet you at Mount Laurels to-morrow. +He particularly wishes me to ask you whether you think all is fair in +war.' + +'I don't,' said Nevil. + +'Not? The canvass goes on swimmingly.' + +'Ask Palmet! + +'Palmet gives you two-thirds of the borough. The poor old Tory tortoise +is nowhere. They've been writing about you, Nevil.' + +'They have. And if there 's a man of honour in the party I shall hold +him responsible for it.' + +'I allude to an article in the Bevisham Liberal paper; a magnificent +eulogy, upon my honour. I give you my word, I have rarely read an +article so eloquent. And what is the Conservative misdemeanour which the +man of honour in the party is to pay for?' + +'I'll talk to you about it by-and-by,' said Nevil. + +He seemed to Cecilia too trusting, too simple, considering his cousin's +undisguised tone of banter. Yet she could not put him on his guard. She +would have had Mr. Culbrett do so. She walked on the terrace with him +near upon sunset, and said, 'The position Captain Beauchamp is in here +is most unfair to him.' + +'There's nothing unfair in the lion's den,' said Stukely Culbrett; +adding, 'Now, observe, Miss Halkett; he talks for effect. He discovers +that Lespel is a Torified Whig; but that does not make him a bit more +alert. It's to say smart things. He speaks, but won't act, as if he were +among enemies. He's getting too fond of his bow-wow. Here he is, and +he knows the den, and he chooses to act the innocent. You see how +ridiculous? That trick of the ingenu, or peculiarly heavenly messenger, +who pretends that he ought never to have any harm done to him, though +he carries the lighted match, is the way of young Radicals. Otherwise +Beauchamp would be a dear boy. We shall see how he takes his thrashing.' + +'You feel sure he will be beaten?' + +'He has too strong a dose of fool's honesty to succeed--stands for the +game laws with Radicals, for example. He's loaded with scruples and +crotchets, and thinks more of them than of his winds and his tides. No +public man is to be made out of that. His idea of the Whigs being dead +shows a head that can't read the country. He means himself for mankind, +and is preparing to be the benefactor of a country parish.' + +'But as a naval officer?' + +'Excellent.' + +Cecilia was convinced that Mr. Culbrett underestimated Beauchamp. +Nevertheless the confidence expressed in Beauchamp's defeat reassured +and pleased her. At midnight she was dancing with him in the midst of +great matronly country vessels that raised a wind when they launched +on the waltz, and exacted an anxious pilotage on the part of gentlemen +careful of their partners; and why I cannot say, but contrasts produce +quaint ideas in excited spirits, and a dancing politician appeared to +her so absurd that at one moment she had to bite her lips not to laugh. +It will hardly be credited that the waltz with Nevil was delightful to +Cecilia all the while, and dancing with others a penance. He danced with +none other. He led her to a three o'clock morning supper: one of those +triumphant subversions of the laws and customs of earth which have the +charm of a form of present deification for all young people; and she, +while noting how the poor man's advocate dealt with costly pasties and +sparkling wines, was overjoyed at his hearty comrade's manner with the +gentlemen, and a leadership in fun that he seemed to have established. +Cecil Baskelett acknowledged it, and complimented him on it. 'I give +you my word, Nevil, I never heard you in finer trim. Here's to our drive +into Bevisham to-morrow! Do you drink it? I beg; I entreat.' + +'Oh, certainly,' said Nevil. + +'Will you take a whip down there?' + +'If you're all insured.' + +'On my honour, old Nevil, driving a four-in-hand is easier than +governing the country.' + +'I'll accept your authority for what you know best,' said Nevil. + +The toast of the Drive into Bevisham was drunk. + +Cecilia left the supper-table, mortified, and feeling disgraced by her +participation in a secret that was being wantonly abused to humiliate +Nevil, as she was made to think by her sensitiveness. All the gentlemen +were against him, excepting perhaps that chattering pie Lord Palmet, who +did him more mischief than his enemies. She could not sleep. She walked +out on the terrace with Mrs. Wardour-Devereux, in a dream, hearing that +lady breathe remarks hardly less than sentimental, and an unwearied +succession of shouts from the smoking-room. + +'They are not going to bed to-night,' said Mrs. Devereux. + +'They are mystifying Captain Beauchamp,' said Cecilia. + +'My husband tells me they are going to drive him into the town +to-morrow.' + +Cecilia flushed: she could scarcely get her breath. + +'Is that their plot?' she murmured. + +Sleep was rejected by her, bed itself. The drive into Bevisham had been +fixed for nine A.M. She wrote two lines on note-paper in her room: +but found them overfervid and mysterious. Besides, how were they to be +conveyed to Nevil's chamber. + +She walked in the passage for half an hour, thinking it possible she +might meet him; not the most lady-like of proceedings, but her head was +bewildered. An arm-chair in her room invited her to rest and think--the +mask of a natural desire for sleep. At eight in the morning she was +awakened by her maid, and at a touch exclaimed, 'Have they gone?' and +her heart still throbbed after hearing that most of the gentlemen were +in and about the stables. Cecilia was down-stairs at a quarter to +nine. The breakfast-room was empty of all but Lord Palmet and Mr. +Wardour-Devereux; one selecting a cigar to light out of doors, the other +debating between two pipes. She beckoned to Palmet, and commissioned him +to inform Beauchamp that she wished him to drive her down to Bevisham in +her pony-carriage. Palmet brought back word from Beauchamp that he had +an appointment at ten o'clock in the town. 'I want to see him,' she +said; so Palmet ran out with the order. Cecilia met Beauchamp in the +entrance-hall. + +'You must not go,' she said bluntly. + +'I can't break an appointment,' said he--'for the sake of my own +pleasure,' was implied. + +'Will you not listen to me, Nevil, when I say you cannot go?' + +A coachman's trumpet blew. + +'I shall be late. That's Colonel Millington's team. He starts first, +then Wardour-Devereux, then Cecil, and I mount beside him; Palmet's at +our heels.' + +'But can't you even imagine a purpose for their driving into Bevisham so +pompously?' + +'Well, men with drags haven't commonly much purpose,' he said. + +'But on this occasion! At an Election time! Surely, Nevil, you can guess +at a reason.' + +A second trumpet blew very martially. Footmen came in search of Captain +Beauchamp. The alternative of breaking her pledged word to her father, +or of letting Nevil be burlesqued in the sight of the town, could no +longer be dallied with. + +Cecilia said, 'Well, Nevil, then you shall hear it.' + +Hereupon Captain Baskelett's groom informed Captain Beauchamp that he +was off. + +'Yes,' Nevil said to Cecilia, 'tell me on board the yacht.' + +'Nevil, you will be driving into the town with the second Tory candidate +of the borough.' + +'Which? who?' Nevil 'asked. + +'Your cousin Cecil.' + +'Tell Captain Baskelett that I don't drive down till an hour later,' +Nevil said to the groom. 'Cecilia, you're my friend; I wish you were +more. I wish we didn't differ. I shall hope to change you--make you come +half-way out of that citadel of yours. This is my uncle Everard! I might +have made sure there'd be a blow from him! And Cecil! of all men for +a politician! Cecilia, think of it! Cecil Baskelett! I beg Seymour +Austin's pardon for having suspected him...' + +Now sounded Captain Baskelett's trumpet. + +Angry though he was, Beauchamp laughed. 'Isn't it exactly like the baron +to spring a mine of this kind?' + +There was decidedly humour in the plot, and it was a lusty quarterstaff +blow into the bargain. Beauchamp's head rang with it. He could not +conceal the stunning effect it had on him. Gratitude and tenderness +toward Cecilia for saving him, at the cost of a partial breach of faith +that he quite understood, from the scandal of the public entry into +Bevisham on the Tory coach-box, alternated with his interjections +regarding his uncle Everard. + +At eleven, Cecilia sat in her pony-carriage giving final directions to +Mrs. Devereux where to look out for the Esperanza and the schooner's +boat. 'Then I drive down alone,' Mrs. Devereux said. + +The gentlemen were all off, and every available maid with them on +the coach-boxes, a brilliant sight that had been missed by Nevil and +Cecilia. + +'Why, here's Lydiard!' said Nevil, supposing that Lydiard must be +approaching him with tidings of the second Tory candidate. But +Lydiard knew nothing of it. He was the bearer of a letter on foreign +paper--marked urgent, in Rosamund's hand--and similarly worded in the +well-known hand which had inscribed the original address of the letter +to Steynham. + +Beauchamp opened it and read: + + Chateau Tourdestelle + '(Eure). + + 'Come. I give you three days--no more. + + 'RENEE.' + +The brevity was horrible. Did it spring from childish imperiousness or +tragic peril? + +Beauchamp could imagine it to be this or that. In moments of excited +speculation we do not dwell on the possibility that there may be a +mixture of motives. + +'I fear I must cross over to France this evening,' he said to Cecilia. + +She replied, 'It is likely to be stormy to-night. The steamboat may not +run.' + +'If there's a doubt of it, I shall find a French lugger. You are tired, +from not sleeping last night.' + +'No,' she answered, and nodded to Mrs. Devereux, beside whom Mr. Lydiard +stood: 'You will not drive down alone, you see.' + +For a young lady threatened with a tempest in her heart, as disturbing +to her as the one gathering in the West for ships at sea, Miss Halkett +bore herself well. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII. THE DRIVE INTO BEVISHAM + +Beauchamp was requested by Cecilia to hold the reins. His fair companion +in the pony-carriage preferred to lean back musing, and he had leisure +to think over the blow dealt him by his uncle Everard with so sure an +aim so ringingly on the head. And in the first place he made no attempt +to disdain it because it was nothing but artful and heavy-handed, after +the mediaeval pattern. Of old he himself had delighted in artfulness as +well as boldness and the unmistakeable hit. Highly to prize generalship +was in his blood, though latterly the very forces propelling him to his +political warfare had forbidden the use of it to him. He saw the patient +veteran laying his gun for a long shot--to give as good as he had +received; and in realizing Everard Romfrey's perfectly placid bearing +under provocation, such as he certainly would have maintained while +preparing his reply to it, the raw fighting humour of the plot touched +the sense of justice in Beauchamp enough to make him own that he had +been the first to offend. + +He could reflect also on the likelihood that other offended men of his +uncle's age and position would have sulked or stormed, threatening the +Parthian shot of the vindictive testator. If there was godlessness in +turning to politics for a weapon to strike a domestic blow, manfulness +in some degree signalized it. Beauchamp could fancy his uncle crying +out, Who set the example? and he was not at that instant inclined to +dwell on the occult virtues of the example he had set. To be honest, +this elevation of a political puppet like Cecil Baskelett, and the +starting him, out of the same family which Turbot, the journalist, had +magnified, into Bevisham with such pomp and flourish in opposition to +the serious young champion of popular rights and the Puritan style, was +ludicrously effective. Conscienceless of course. But that was the way of +the Old School. + +Beauchamp broke the silence by thanking Cecilia once more for saving +him from the absurd exhibition of the Radical candidate on the Tory +coach-box, and laughing at the grimmish slyness of his uncle Everard's +conspiracy a something in it that was half-smile half-sneer; not exactly +malignant, and by no means innocent; something made up of the simplicity +of a lighted match, and its proximity to powder, yet neither deadly, +in spite of a wicked twinkle, nor at all pretending to be harmless: in +short, a specimen of old English practical humour. + +He laboured to express these or corresponding views of it, with +tolerably natural laughter, and Cecilia rallied her spirits at his +pleasant manner of taking his blow. + +'I shall compliment the baron when I meet him tonight,' he said. 'What +can we compare him to?' + +She suggested the Commander of the Faithful, the Lord Haroun, who +likewise had a turn for buffooneries to serve a purpose, and could +direct them loftily and sovereignty. + +'No: Everard Romfrey's a Northerner from the feet up,' said Beauchamp. + +Cecilia compliantly offered him a sketch of the Scandinavian Troll: much +nearer the mark, he thought, and exclaimed: 'Baron Troll! I'm afraid, +Cecilia, you have robbed him of the best part of his fun. And you will +owe it entirely to him if you should be represented in Parliament by my +cousin Basketett.' + +'Promise me, Nevit, that you will, when you meet Captain Baskelett, not +forget I did you some service, and that I wish, I shall be so glad if +you do not resent certain things.... Very objectionable, we all think.' + +He released her from the embarrassing petition: 'Oh! now I know my man, +you may be sure I won't waste a word on him. The fact is, he would not +understand a word, and would require more--and that I don't do. When I +fancied Mr. Austin was the responsible person, I meant to speak to him.' + +Cecilia smiled gratefully. + +The sweetness of a love-speech would not have been sweeter to her than +this proof of civilized chivalry in Nevil. + +They came to the fir-heights overlooking Bevisham. Here the breezy +beginning of a South-western autumnal gale tossed the ponies' manes +and made threads of Cecilia's shorter locks of beautiful auburn by the +temples and the neck, blustering the curls that streamed in a thick +involution from the silken band gathering them off her uncovered +clear-swept ears. + +Beauchamp took an impression of her side face. It seemed to offer him +everything the world could offer of cultivated purity, intelligent +beauty and attractiveness; and 'Wilt thou?' said the winged minute. +Peace, a good repute in the mouths of men, home, and a trustworthy woman +for mate, an ideal English lady, the rarest growth of our country, and +friends and fair esteem, were offered. Last night he had waltzed with +her, and the manner of this tall graceful girl in submitting to the +union of the measure and reserving her individual distinction, had +exquisitely flattered his taste, giving him an auspicious image of her +in partnership, through the uses of life. + +He looked ahead at the low dead-blue cloud swinging from across channel. +What could be the riddle of Renee's letter! It chained him completely. + +'At all events, I shall not be away longer than three days,' he said; +paused, eyed Cecilia's profile, and added, 'Do we differ so much?' + +'It may not be so much as we think,' said she. + +'But if we do!' + +'Then, Nevil, there is a difference between us.' + +'But if we keep our lips closed?' + +'We should have to shut our eyes as well!' + +A lovely melting image of her stole over him; all the warmer for her +unwittingness in producing it: and it awakened a tenderness toward the +simple speaker. + +Cecilia's delicate breeding saved her from running on figuratively. She +continued: 'Intellectual differences do not cause wounds, except when +very unintellectual sentiments are behind them:--my conceit, or your +impatience, Nevil? "Noi veggiam come quei, che ha mala luce."... I can +confess my sight to be imperfect: but will you ever do so?' + +Her musical voice in Italian charmed his hearing. + +'What poet was that you quoted?' + +'The wisest: Dante.' + +'Dr. Shrapnel's favourite! I must try to read him.' + +'He reads Dante?' Cecilia threw a stress on the august name; and it was +manifest that she cared not for the answer. + +Contemptuous exclusiveness could not go farther. + +'He is a man of cultivation,' Beauchamp said cursorily, trying to avoid +dissension, but in vain. 'I wish I were half as well instructed, and the +world half as charitable as he!--You ask me if I shall admit my sight to +be imperfect. Yes; when you prove to me that priests and landlords are +willing to do their duty by the people in preference to their churches +and their property: but will you ever shake off prejudice?' + +Here was opposition sounding again. Cecilia mentally reproached Dr. +Shrapnel for it. + +'Indeed, Nevil, really, must not--may I not ask you this?--must not +every one feel the evil spell of some associations? And Dante and Dr. +Shrapnel!' + +'You don't know him, Cecilia.' + +'I saw him yesterday.' + +'You thought him too tall?' + +'I thought of his character.' + +'How angry I should be with you if you were not so beautiful!' + +'I am immensely indebted to my unconscious advocate.' + +'You are clad in steel; you flash back; you won't answer me out of the +heart. I 'm convinced it is pure wilfulness that makes you oppose me.' + +'I fancy you must be convinced because you cannot imagine women to have +any share of public spirit, Nevil.' + +A grain of truth in that remark set Nevil reflecting. + +'I want them to have it,' he remarked, and glanced at a Tory placard, +probably the puppet's fresh-printed address to the electors, on one of +the wayside fir-trees. 'Bevisham looks well from here. We might make a +North-western Venice of it, if we liked.' + +'Papa told you it would be money sunk in mud.' + +'Did I mention it to him?--Thoroughly Conservative!--So he would leave +the mud as it is. They insist on our not venturing anything--those +Tories! exactly as though we had gained the best of human conditions, +instead of counting crops of rogues, malefactors, egoists, noxious and +lumbersome creatures that deaden the country. Your town down there +is one of the ugliest and dirtiest in the kingdom: it might be the +fairest.' + +'I have often thought that of Bevisham, Nevil.' + +He drew a visionary sketch of quays, embankments, bridged islands, +public buildings, magical emanations of patriotic architecture, with +a practical air, an absence of that enthusiasm which struck her with +suspicion when it was not applied to landscape or the Arts; and she +accepted it, and warmed, and even allowed herself to appear hesitating +when he returned to the similarity of the state of mud-begirt Bevisham +and our great sluggish England. + +Was he not perhaps to be pitied in his bondage to the Frenchwoman, who +could have no ideas in common with him? + +The rare circumstance that she and Nevil Beauchamp had found a subject +of agreement, partially overcame the sentiment Cecilia entertained +for the foreign lady; and having now one idea in common with him, she +conceived the possibility that there might be more. There must be many, +for he loved England, and she no less. She clung, however, to the topic +of Bevisham, preferring to dream of the many more, rather than run +risks. Undoubtedly the town was of an ignoble aspect; and it was +declining in prosperity; and it was consequently over-populated. +And undoubtedly (so she was induced to coincide for the moment) a +Government, acting to any extent like a supervising head, should aid +and direct the energies of towns and ports and trades, and not leave +everything everywhere to chance: schools for the people, public +morality, should be the charge of Government. Cecilia had surrendered +the lead to him, and was forced to subscribe to an equivalent of +'undoubtedly' the Tories just as little as the Liberals had done these +good offices. Party against party, neither of them had a forethoughtful +head for the land at large. They waited for the Press to spur a great +imperial country to be but defensively armed, and they accepted the +so-called volunteers, with a nominal one-month's drill per annum, as a +guarantee of defence! + +Beauchamp startled her, actually kindled her mind to an activity of +wonder and regret, with the statement of how much Government, acting +with some degree of farsightedness, might have won to pay the public +debt and remit taxation, by originally retaining the lines of railway, +and fastening on the valuable land adjoining stations. Hundreds of +millions of pounds! + +She dropped a sigh at the prodigious amount, but inquired, 'Who has +calculated it?' + +For though perfectly aware that this kind of conversation was a special +compliment paid to her by her friend Nevil, and dimly perceiving that it +implied something beyond a compliment-in fact, that it was his manner of +probing her for sympathy, as other men would have conducted the process +preliminary to deadly flattery or to wooing, her wits fenced her heart +about; the exercise of shrewdness was an instinct of self-preservation. +She had nothing but her poor wits, daily growing fainter, to resist +him with. And he seemed to know it, and therefore assailed them, never +trying at the heart. + +That vast army of figures might be but a phantom army conjured out of +the Radical mists, might it not? she hinted. And besides, we cannot +surely require a Government to speculate in the future, can we? + +Possibly not, as Governments go, Beauchamp said. + +But what think you of a Government of landowners decreeing the enclosure +of millions of acres of common land amongst themselves; taking the +property of the people to add to their own! Say, is not that plunder? +Public property, observe; decreed to them by their own law-making, +under the pretence that it was being reclaimed for cultivation, when in +reality it has been but an addition to their pleasure-grounds: a flat +robbery of pasture from the poor man's cow and goose, and his right +of cutting furze for firing. Consider that! Beauchamp's eyes flashed +democratic in reciting this injury to the objects of his warm +solicitude--the man, the cow, and the goose. But so must he have looked +when fronting England's enemies, and his aspect of fervour subdued +Cecilia. She confessed her inability to form an estimate of such +conduct. + +'Are they doing it still?' she asked. + +'We owe it to Dr. Shrapnel foremost that there is now a watch over them +to stop them. But for him, Grancey Lespel would have enclosed half of +Northeden Heath. As it is, he has filched bits here and there, and he +will have to put back his palings.' + +However, now let Cecilia understand that we English, calling ourselves +free, are under morally lawless rule. Government is what we require, and +our means of getting it must be through universal suffrage. At present +we have no Government; only shifting Party Ministries, which are the +tools of divers interests, wealthy factions, to the sacrifice of the +Commonwealth. + +She listened, like Rosamund Culling overborne by Dr. Shrapnel, inwardly +praying that she might discover a man to reply to him. + +'A Despotism, Nevil?' + +He hoped not, declined the despot, was English enough to stand against +the best of men in that character; but he cast it on Tory, Whig, and +Liberal, otherwise the Constitutionalists, if we were to come upon the +despot. + +'They see we are close on universal suffrage; they've been bidding +each in turn for "the people," and that has brought them to it, and now +they're alarmed, and accuse one another of treason to the Constitution, +and they don't accept the situation: and there's a fear, that to carry +on their present system, they will be thwarting the people or corrupting +them: and in that case we shall have our despot in some shape or other, +and we shall suffer.' + +'Nevil,' said Cecilia, 'I am out of my depth.' + +'I'll support you; I can swim for two,' said he. + +'You are very self-confident, but I find I am not fit for battle; at +least not in the front ranks.' + +'Nerve me, then: will you? Try to comprehend once for all what the +battle is.' + +'I am afraid I am too indifferent; I am too luxurious. That reminds +me: you want to meet your uncle Everard and if you will sleep at Mount +Laurels to-night, the Esperanza shall take you to France to-morrow +morning, and can wait to bring you back.' + +As she spoke she perceived a flush mounting over Nevil's face. Soon it +was communicated to hers. + +The strange secret of the blood electrified them both, and revealed the +burning undercurrent running between them from the hearts of each. The +light that showed how near they were to one another was kindled at the +barrier dividing them. It remained as good as a secret, unchallenged +until they had separated, and after midnight Cecilia looked through +her chamber windows at the driving moon of a hurricane scud, and read +clearly his honourable reluctance to be wafted over to his French +love by her assistance; and Beauchamp on board the tossing steamboat +perceived in her sympathetic reddening that she had divined him. + +This auroral light eclipsed the other events of the day. He drove into +a town royally decorated, and still humming with the ravishment of +the Tory entrance. He sailed in the schooner to Mount Laurels, in the +society of Captain Baskelett and his friends, who, finding him tamer +than they expected, bantered him in the cheerfullest fashion. He waited +for his uncle Everard several hours at Mount Laurels, perused the +junior Tory's address to the Electors, throughout which there was not an +idea--safest of addresses to canvass upon! perused likewise, at Captain +Baskelett's request, a broad sheet of an article introducing the new +candidate to Bevisham with the battle-axe Romfreys to back him, in high +burlesque of Timothy Turbot upon Beauchamp: and Cecil hoped his cousin +would not object to his borrowing a Romfrey or two for so pressing +an occasion. All very funny, and no doubt the presence of Mr. Everard +Romfrey would have heightened the fun from the fountain-head; but he +happened to be delayed, and Beauchamp had to leave directions behind him +in the town, besides the discussion of a whole plan of conduct with Dr. +Shrapnel, so he was under the necessity of departing without seeing his +uncle, really to his regret. He left word to that effect. + +Taking leave of Cecilia, he talked of his return 'home' within three or +four days as a certainty. + +She said: 'Canvassing should not be neglected now.' + +Her hostility was confused by what she had done to save him from +annoyance, while his behaviour to his cousin Cecil increased her respect +for him. She detected a pathetic meaning in his mention of the word +home; she mused on his having called her beautiful: whither was she +hurrying? Forgetful of her horror of his revolutionary ideas, forgetful +of the elevation of her own, she thrilled secretly on hearing it stated +by the jubilant young Tories at Mount Laurels, as a characteristic +of Beauchamp, that he was clever in parrying political thrusts, and +slipping from the theme; he who with her gave out unguardedly the +thoughts deepest in him. And the thoughts!--were they not of generous +origin? Where so true a helpmate for him as the one to whom his mind +appealed? It could not be so with the Frenchwoman. Cecilia divined a +generous nature by generosity, and set herself to believe that in honour +he had not yet dared to speak to her from the heart, not being at heart +quite free. She was at the same time in her remains of pride cool enough +to examine and rebuke the weakness she succumbed to in now clinging to +him by that which yesterday she hardly less than loathed, still deeply +disliked. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII. TOURDESTELLE + +On the part of Beauchamp, his conversation with Cecilia during the drive +into Bevisham opened out for the first time in his life a prospect of +home; he had felt the word in speaking it, and it signified an end +to the distractions produced by the sex, allegiance to one beloved +respected woman, and also a basis of operations against the world. For +she was evidently conquerable, and once matched with him would be the +very woman to nerve and sustain him. Did she not listen to him? He liked +her resistance. That element of the barbarous which went largely to form +his emotional nature was overjoyed in wresting such a woman from the +enemy, and subduing her personally. She was a prize. She was a splendid +prize, cut out from under the guns of the fort. He rendered all that was +due to his eminently good cause for its part in so signal a success, +but individual satisfaction is not diminished by the thought that the +individual's discernment selected the cause thus beneficent to him. + +Beauchamp's meditations were diverted by the sight of the coast of +France dashed in rain-lines across a weed-strewn sea. The 'three days' +granted him by Renee were over, and it scarcely troubled him that he +should be behind the time; he detested mystery, holding it to be a sign +of pretentious feebleness, often of imposture, it might be frivolity. +Punctilious obedience to the mysterious brevity of the summons, and +not to chafe at it, appeared to him as much as could be expected of a +struggling man. This was the state of the case with him, until he stood +on French earth, breathed French air, and chanced to hear the tongue of +France twittered by a lady on the quay. The charm was instantaneous. He +reminded himself that Renee, unlike her countrywomen, had no gift for +writing letters. They had never corresponded since the hour of her +marriage. They had met in Sicily, at Syracuse, in the presence of her +father and her husband, and so inanimate was she that the meeting seemed +like the conclusion of their history. Her brother Roland sent tidings +of her by fits, and sometimes a conventional message from Tourdestelle. +Latterly her husband's name had been cited as among the wildfires of +Parisian quays, in journals more or less devoted to those unreclaimed +spaces of the city. Well, if she was unhappy, was it not the fulfilment +of his prophecy in Venice? + +Renee's brevity became luminous. She needed him urgently, and knowing +him faithful to the death, she, because she knew him, dispatched purely +the words which said she needed him. Why, those brief words were the +poetry of noble confidence! But what could her distress be? The lover +was able to read that, 'Come; I give you three days,' addressed to him, +was not language of a woman free of her yoke. + +Excited to guess and guess, Beauchamp swept on to speculations of a +madness that seized him bodily at last. Were you loved, Cecilia? He +thought little of politics in relation to Renee; or of home, or of +honour in the world's eye, or of labouring to pay the fee for his share +of life. This at least was one of the forms of love which precipitate +men: the sole thought in him was to be with her. She was Renee, the +girl of whom he had prophetically said that she must come to regrets and +tears. His vision of her was not at Tourdestelle, though he assumed her +to be there awaiting him: she was under the sea-shadowing Alps, looking +up to the red and gold-rosed heights of a realm of morning that was hers +inviolably, and under which Renee was eternally his. + +The interval between then and now was but the space of an unquiet sea +traversed in the night, sad in the passage of it, but featureless--and +it had proved him right! It was to Nevil Beauchamp as if the spirit of +his old passion woke up again to glorious hopeful morning when he stood +in Renee's France. + +Tourdestelle enjoyed the aristocratic privilege of being twelve miles +from the nearest railway station. Alighting here on an evening of clear +sky, Beauchamp found an English groom ready to dismount for him and +bring on his portmanteau. The man said that his mistress had been twice +to the station, and was now at the neighbouring Chateau Dianet. Thither +Beauchamp betook himself on horseback. He was informed at the gates +that Madame la Marquise had left for Tourdestelle in the saddle only ten +minutes previously. The lodge-keeper had been instructed to invite him +to stay at Chateau Dianet in the event of his arriving late, but it +would be possible to overtake madame by a cut across the heights at a +turn of the valley. Beauchamp pushed along the valley for this visible +projection; a towering mass of woodland, in the midst of which a narrow +roadway, worn like the track of a torrent with heavy rain, wound upward. +On his descent to the farther side, he was to spy directly below in the +flat for Tourdestelle. He crossed the wooded neck above the valley, and +began descending, peering into gulfs of the twilight dusk. Some paces +down he was aided by a brilliant half-moon that divided the whole +underlying country into sharp outlines of dark and fair, and while +endeavouring to distinguish the chateau of Tourdestelle his eyes were +attracted to an angle of the downward zigzag, where a pair of horses +emerged into broad light swiftly; apparently the riders were disputing, +or one had overtaken the other in pursuit. Riding-habit and plumed hat +signalized the sex of one. Beauchamp sung out a gondolier's cry. He +fancied it was answered. + +He was heard, for the lady turned about, and as he rode down, still +uncertain of her, she came cantering up alone, and there could be no +uncertainty. + +Moonlight is friendless to eyes that would make sure of a face long +unseen. It was Renee whose hand he clasped, but the story of the years +on her, and whether she was in bloom, or wan as the beams revealing her, +he could not see. + +Her tongue sounded to him as if it were loosened without a voice. 'You +have come. That storm! You are safe!' + +So phantom-like a sound of speech alarmed him. 'I lost no time. But +you?' + +'I am well.' + +'Nothing hangs over you?' + +'Nothing.' + +'Why give me just three days?' + +'Pure impatience. Have you forgotten me?' + +Their horses walked on with them. They unlocked their hands. + +'You knew it was I?' said he. + +'Who else could it be? I heard Venice,' she replied. + +Her previous cavalier was on his feet, all but on his knees, it +appeared, searching for something that eluded him under the road-side +bank. He sprang at it and waved it, leapt in the saddle, and remarked, +as he drew up beside Renee: 'What one picks from the earth one may wear, +I presume, especially when we can protest it is our property.' + +Beauchamp saw him planting a white substance most carefully at the +breast buttonhole of his coat. It could hardly be a flower. Some +drooping exotic of the conservatory perhaps resembled it. + +Renee pronounced his name: 'M. le Comte Henri d'Henriel.' + +He bowed to Beauchamp with an extreme sweep of the hat. + +'Last night, M. Beauchamp, we put up vows for you to the Marine God, +beseeching an exemption from that horrible mal de mer. Thanks to the +storm, I suppose, I have won. I must maintain, madame, that I won.' + +'You wear your trophy,' said Renee, and her horse reared and darted +ahead. + +The gentleman on each side of her struck into a trot. Beauchamp glanced +at M. d'Henriel's breast-decoration. Renee pressed the pace, and +threading dense covers of foliage they reached the level of the valley, +where for a couple of miles she led them, stretching away merrily, now +in shadow, now in moonlight, between high land and meadow land, and a +line of poplars in the meadows winding with the river that fed the vale +and shot forth gleams of silvery disquiet by rustic bridge and mill. + +The strangeness of being beside her, not having yet scanned her face, +marvelling at her voice--that was like and unlike the Renee of old, +full of her, but in another key, a mellow note, maturer--made the +ride magical to Beauchamp, planting the past in the present like a +perceptible ghost. + +Renee slackened speed, saying: 'Tourdestelle spans a branch of our +little river. This is our gate. Had it been daylight I would have taken +you by another way, and you would have seen the black tower burnt in the +Revolution; an imposing monument, I am assured. However, you will think +it pretty beside the stream. Do you come with us, M. le Comte?' + +His answer was inaudible to Beauchamp; he did not quit them. + +The lamp at the lodge-gates presented the young man's face in full view, +and Beauchamp thought him supremely handsome. He perceived it to be a +lady's glove that M. d'Henriel wore at his breast. + +Renee walked her horse up the park-drive, alongside the bright running +water. It seemed that she was aware of the method of provoking or +reproving M. d'Henriel. He endured some minutes of total speechlessness +at this pace, and abruptly said adieu and turned back. + +Renee bounded like a vessel free of her load. 'But why should we hurry?' +said she, and checked her course to the walk again. 'I hope you like our +Normandy, and my valley. You used to love France, Nevil; and Normandy, +they tell me, is cousin to the opposite coast of England, in climate, +soil, people, it may be in manners too. A Beauchamp never can feel +that he is a foreigner in Normandy. We claim you half French. You have +grander parks, they say. We can give you sunlight.' + +'And it was really only the wish to see me?' said Beauchamp. + +'Only, and really. One does not live for ever--on earth; and it becomes +a question whether friends should be shadows to one another before +death. I wrote to you because I wished to see you: I was impatient +because I am Renee.' + +'You relieve me!' + +'Evidently you have forgotten my character, Nevil.' + +'Not a feature of it.' + +'Ah!' she breathed involuntarily. + +'Would you have me forget it?' + +'When I think by myself, quite alone, yes, I would. Otherwise how can +one hope that one's friend is friendship, supposing him to read us as +we are--minutely, accurately? And it is in absence that we desire our +friends to be friendship itself. And... and I am utterly astray! I have +not dealt in this language since I last thought of writing a diary, +and stared at the first line. If I mistake not, you are fond of the +picturesque. If moonlight and water will satisfy you, look yonder.' + +The moon launched her fairy silver fleets on a double sweep of the +little river round an island of reeds and two tall poplars. + +'I have wondered whether I should ever see you looking at that scene,' +said Renee. + +He looked from it to her, and asked if Roland was well, and her father; +then alluded to her husband; but the unlettering elusive moon, bright +only in the extension of her beams, would not tell him what story this +face, once heaven to him, wore imprinted on it. Her smile upon a parted +mouth struck him as two-edged in replying: 'I have good news to give +you of them all: Roland is in garrison at Rouen, and will come when I +telegraph. My father is in Touraine, and greets you affectionately; he +hopes to come. They are both perfectly happy. My husband is travelling.' + +Beauchamp was conscious of some bitter taste; unaware of what it was, +though it led him to say, undesigningly: 'How very handsome that M. +d'Henriel is!--if I have his name correctly.' + +Renee answered: 'He has the misfortune to be considered the handsomest +young man in France.' + +'He has an Italian look.' + +'His mother was Provencale.' + +She put her horse in motion, saying: 'I agree with you that handsome men +are rarities. And, by the way, they do not set our world on fire quite +as much as beautiful women do yours, my friend. Acknowledge so much in +our favour.' + +He assented indefinitely. He could have wished himself away canvassing +in Bevisham. He had only to imagine himself away from her, to feel the +flood of joy in being with her. + +'Your husband is travelling?' + +'It is his pleasure.' + +Could she have intended to say that this was good news to give of him as +well as of the happiness of her father and brother? + +'Now look on Tourdestelle,' said Renee. 'You will avow that for an +active man to be condemned to seek repose in so dull a place, after +the fatigues of the season in Paris, it is considerably worse than for +women, so I am here to dispense the hospitalities. The right wing of the +chateau, on your left, is new. The side abutting the river is inhabited +by Dame Philiberte, whom her husband imprisoned for attempting to take +her pleasure in travel. I hear upon authority that she dresses in white, +and wears a black crucifix. She is many centuries old, and still she +lives to remind people that she married a Rouaillout. Do you not think +she should have come to me to welcome me? She never has; and possibly +of ladies who are disembodied we may say that they know best. For me, +I desire the interview--and I am a coward: I need not state it.' She +ceased; presently continuing: 'The other inhabitants are my sister, +Agnes d'Auffray, wife of a general officer serving in Afric--my sister +by marriage, and my friend; the baronne d'Orbec, a relation by marriage; +M. d'Orbec, her son, a guest, and a sportsman; M. Livret, an erudite. No +young ladies: I can bear much, but not their presence; girls are odious +to me. I knew one in Venice.' + +They came within the rays of the lamp hanging above the unpretending +entrance to the chateau. Renee's broad grey Longueville hat curved low +with its black plume on the side farthest from him. He was favoured by +the gallant lift of the brim on the near side, but she had overshadowed +her eyes. + +'He wears a glove at his breast,' said Beauchamp. + +'You speak of M. d'Henriel. He wears a glove at his breast; yes, it is +mine,' said Renee. + +She slipped from her horse and stood against his shoulder, as if waiting +to be questioned before she rang the bell of the chateau. + +Beauchamp alighted, burning with his unutterable questions concerning +that glove. + +'Lift your hat, let me beg you; let me see you,' he said. + +This was not what she had expected. With one heave of her bosom, and +murmuring: 'I made a vow I would obey you absolutely if you came,' she +raised the hat above her brows, and lightning would not have surprised +him more; for there had not been a single vibration of her voice to tell +him of tears running: nay, the absence of the usual French formalities +in her manner of addressing him, had seemed to him to indicate her +intention to put him at once on an easy friendly footing, such as would +be natural to her, and not painful to him. Now she said: + +'You perceive, monsieur, that I have my sentimental fits like others; +but in truth I am not insensible to the picturesque or to gratitude, +and I thank you sincerely for coming, considering that I wrote like a +Sphinx--to evade writing comme une folle!' + +She swept to the bell. + +Standing in the arch of the entrance, she stretched her whip out to a +black mass of prostrate timber, saying: + +'It fell in the storm at two o'clock after midnight, and you on the +sea!' + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV. HIS HOLIDAY + +A single day was to be the term of his holiday at Tourdestelle; but it +stood forth as one of those perfect days which are rounded by an evening +before and a morning after, giving him two nights under the same +roof with Renee, something of a resemblance to three days of her; +anticipation and wonder filling the first, she the next, the adieu the +last: every hour filled. And the first day was not over yet. He forced +himself to calmness, that he might not fritter it, and walked up and +down the room he was dressing in, examining its foreign decorations, +and peering through the window, to quiet his nerves. He was in her own +France with her! The country borrowed hues from Renee, and lent some. +This chivalrous France framed and interlaced her image, aided in +idealizing her, and was in turn transfigured. Not half so well would his +native land have pleaded for the forgiveness of a British damsel who had +wrecked a young man's immoderate first love. That glorified self-love +requires the touch upon imagination of strangeness and an unaccustomed +grace, to subdue it and make it pardon an outrage to its temples and +altars, and its happy reading of the heavens, the earth too: earth +foremost, we ought perhaps to say. It is an exacting heathen, best +understood by a glance at what will appease it: beautiful, however, as +everybody has proved; and shall it be decried in a world where beauty is +not overcommon, though it would slaughter us for its angry satisfaction, +yet can be soothed by a tone of colour, as it were by a novel +inscription on a sweetmeat? + +The peculiarity of Beauchamp was that he knew the slenderness of the +thread which was leading him, and foresaw it twisting to a coil unless +he should hold firm. His work in life was much above the love of a woman +in his estimation, so he was not deluded by passion when he entered +the chateau; it is doubtful whether he would not hesitatingly have +sacrificed one of the precious votes in Bevisham for the pleasure of +kissing her hand when they were on the steps. She was his first love and +only love, married, and long ago forgiven:--married; that is to say, she +especially among women was interdicted to him by the lingering shadow +of the reverential love gone by; and if the anguish of the lover's worse +than death survived in a shudder of memory at the thought of her not +solely lost to him but possessed by another, it did but quicken a hunger +that was three parts curiosity to see how she who had suffered this bore +the change; how like or unlike she might be to the extinct Renee; what +traces she kept of the face he had known. Her tears were startling, but +tears tell of a mood, they do not tell the story of the years; and it +was that story he had such eagerness to read in one brief revelation: +an eagerness born only of the last few hours, and broken by fears of a +tarnished aspect; these again being partly hopes of a coming disillusion +that would restore him his independence and ask him only for pity. The +slavery of the love of a woman chained like Renee was the most revolting +of prospects to a man who cherished his freedom that he might work +to the end of his time. Moreover, it swung a thunder-cloud across his +holiday. He recurred to the idea of the holiday repeatedly, and the +more he did so the thinner it waned. He was exhausting the very air and +spirit of it with a mind that ran incessantly forward and back; and +when he and the lady of so much speculation were again together, an +incapacity of observation seemed to have come over him. In reality it +was the inability to reflect on his observations. Her presence resembled +those dark sunsets throwing the spell of colour across the world; when +there is no question with us of morning or of night, but of that sole +splendour only. + +Owing to their arrival late at the chateau, covers were laid for them in +the boudoir of Madame la Marquise, where he had his hostess to himself, +and certainly the opportunity of studying her. An English Navy List, +solitary on a shelf, and laid within it an extract of a paper announcing +the return of the Ariadne to port, explained the mystery of her knowing +that he was in England, as well as the correctness of the superscription +of her letter to him. 'You see, I follow you,' she said. + +Beauchamp asked if she read English now. + +'A little; but the paper was dispatched to me by M. Vivian Ducie, of +your embassy in Paris. He is in the valley.' + +The name of Ducie recalled Lord Palmet's description of the dark beauty +of the fluttering pale gold ornaments. She was now dressed without one +decoration of gold or jewel, with scarcely a wave in the silk, a modesty +of style eloquent of the pride of her form. + +Could those eyes fronting him under the lamp have recently shed tears? +They were the living eyes of a brilliant unembarrassed lady; shields +flinging light rather than well-depths inviting it. + +Beauchamp tried to compare her with the Renee of Venice, and found +himself thinking of the glove she had surrendered to the handsomest +young man in France. The effort to recover the younger face gave him a +dead creature, with the eyelashes of Renee, the cast of her mouth and +throat, misty as a shape in a dream. + +He could compare her with Cecilia, who never would have risked a glove, +never have betrayed a tear, and was the statelier lady, not without +language: but how much less vivid in feature and the gift of speech! +Renee's gift of speech counted unnumbered strings which she played on +with a grace that clothed the skill, and was her natural endowment--an +art perfected by the education of the world. Who cannot talk!--but who +can? Discover the writers in a day when all are writing! It is as rare +an art as poetry, and in the mouths of women as enrapturing, richer than +their voices in music. + +This was the fascination Beauchamp felt weaving round him. Would you, +that are separable from boys and mobs, and the object malignly called +the Briton, prefer the celestial singing of a woman to her excellently +talking? But not if it were given you to run in unison with her +genius of the tongue, following her verbal ingenuities and feminine +silk-flashes of meaning; not if she led you to match her fine quick +perceptions with more or less of the discreet concordance of the +violoncello accompanying the viol. It is not high flying, which usually +ends in heavy falling. You quit the level of earth no more than two +birds that chase from bush to bush to bill in air, for mutual delight to +make the concert heavenly. Language flowed from Renee in affinity with +the pleasure-giving laws that make the curves we recognize as beauty in +sublimer arts. Accept companionship for the dearest of the good things +we pray to have, and what equalled her! Who could be her rival! + +Her girl's crown of irradiated Alps began to tremble over her dimly, as +from moment to moment their intimacy warmed, and Beauchamp saw the +young face vanishing out of this flower of womanhood. He did not see it +appearing or present, but vanishing like the faint ray in the rosier. +Nay, the blot of her faithlessness underwent a transformation: it +affected him somewhat as the patch cunningly laid on near a liquid +dimple in fair cheeks at once allures and evades a susceptible +attention. + +Unused in his French of late, he stumbled at times, and she supplied +the needed phrase, taking no note of a blunder. Now men of sweet blood +cannot be secretly accusing or criticizing a gracious lady. Domestic +men are charged with thinking instantly of dark death when an ordinary +illness befalls them; and it may be so or not: but it is positive that +the gallant man of the world, if he is in the sensitive condition, and +not yet established as the lord of her, feels paralyzed in his masculine +sense of leadership the moment his lady assumes the initiative and +directs him: he gives up at once; and thus have many nimble-witted dames +from one clear start retained their advantage. + +Concerning that glove: well! the handsomest young man in France wore the +glove of the loveliest woman. The loveliest? The very loveliest in the +purity of her French style--the woman to challenge England for a type of +beauty to eclipse her. It was possible to conceive her country wagering +her against all women. + +If Renee had faults, Beauchamp thought of her as at sea breasting +tempests, while Cecilia was a vessel lying safe in harbour, untried, +however promising: and if Cecilia raised a steady light for him, it was +over the shores he had left behind, while Renee had really nothing to do +with warning or rescuing, or with imperilling; she welcomed him simply +to a holiday in her society. He associated Cecilia strangely with the +political labours she would have had him relinquish; and Renee with a +pleasant state of indolence, that her lightest smile disturbed. Shun +comparisons. + +It is the tricksy heart which sets up that balance, to jump into it on +one side or the other. Comparisons come of a secret leaning that is sure +to play rogue under its mien of honest dealer: so Beauchamp suffered +himself to be unjust to graver England, and lost the strength she would +have given him to resist a bewitchment. The case with him was, that his +apprenticeship was new; he had been trotting in harness as a veritable +cab-horse of politics--he by blood a racer; and his nature craved for +diversions, against his will, against his moral sense and born tenacity +of spirit. + +Not a word further of the glove. But at night, in his bed, the glove +was a principal actor in events of extraordinary magnitude and +inconsequence. + +He was out in the grounds with the early morning light. Coffee and sweet +French bread were brought out to him, and he was informed of the hours +of reunion at the chateau, whose mistress continued invisible. She might +be sleeping. He strolled about, within view of the windows, wondering +at her subservience to sleep. Tourdestelle lay in one of those Norman +valleys where the river is the mother of rich pasture, and runs hidden +between double ranks of sallows, aspens and poplars, that mark its +winding line in the arms of trenched meadows. The high land on either +side is an unwatered flat up to the horizon, little varied by dusty +apple-trees planted in the stubble here and there, and brown mud walls +of hamlets; a church-top, a copse, an avenue of dwarf limes leading to +the three-parts farm, quarter residence of an enriched peasant striking +new roots, or decayed proprietor pinching not to be severed from +ancient. Descending on the deep green valley in Summer is like a change +of climes. The chateau stood square at a branch of the river, tossing +three light bridges of pretty woodwork to park and garden. Great +bouquets of swelling blue and pink hydrangia nestled at his feet +on shaven grass. An open window showed a cloth of colour, as in a +reminiscence of Italy. + +Beauchamp heard himself addressed:--'You are looking for my +sister-in-law, M. Beauchamp?' + +The speaker was Madame d'Auffray, to whom he had been introduced +overnight--a lady of the aquiline French outline, not ungentle. + +Renee had spoken affectionately of her, he remembered. There was nothing +to make him be on his guard, and he stated that he was looking for +Madame de Rouaillout, and did not conceal surprise at the information +that she was out on horseback. + +'She is a tireless person,' Madame d'Auffray remarked. 'You will not +miss her long. We all meet at twelve, as you know.' + +'I grudge an hour, for I go to-morrow,' said Beauchamp. + +The notification of so early a departure, or else his bluntness, +astonished her. She fell to praising Renee's goodness. He kept her to it +with lively interrogations, in the manner of a guileless boy urging +for eulogies of his dear absent friend. Was it duplicity in him or +artlessness? + +'Has she, do you think, increased in beauty?' Madame d'Auffray inquired: +an insidious question, to which he replied: + +'Once I thought it would be impossible.' + +Not so bad an answer for an Englishman, in a country where speaking is +fencing; the race being little famous for dialectical alertness: but was +it artful or simple? + +They skirted the chateau, and Beauchamp had the history of Dame +Philiberte recounted to him, with a mixture of Gallic irony, innuendo, +openness, touchingness, ridicule, and charity novel to his ears. Madame +d'Auffray struck the note of intimacy earlier than is habitual. She +sounded him in this way once or twice, carelessly perusing him, and +waiting for the interesting edition of the Book of Man to summarize +its character by showing its pages or remaining shut. It was done +delicately, like the tap of a finger-nail on a vase. He rang clear; he +had nothing to conceal; and where he was reserved, that is, in speaking +of the developed beauty and grace of Renee, he was transparent. She read +the sort of man he was; she could also hazard a guess as to the man's +present state. She ventured to think him comparatively harmless--for the +hour: for she was not the woman to be hoodwinked by man's dark nature +because she inclined to think well of a particular man; nor was she +one to trust to any man subject to temptation. The wisdom of the +Frenchwoman's fortieth year forbade it. A land where the war between the +sexes is honestly acknowledged, and is full of instruction, abounds in +precepts; but it ill becomes the veteran to practise rigorously what she +would prescribe to young women. She may discriminate; as thus:--Trust no +man. Still, this man may be better than that man; and it is bad policy +to distrust a reasonably guileless member of the preying sex entirely, +and so to lose his good services. Hawks have their uses in destroying +vermin; and though we cannot rely upon the taming of hawks, one tied by +the leg in a garden preserves the fruit. + +'There is a necessity for your leaving us to-morrow; M. Beauchamp?' + +'I regret to say, it is imperative, madame.' + +'My husband will congratulate me on the pleasure I have, and have long +desired, of making your acquaintance, and he will grieve that he has not +been so fortunate; he is on service in Africa. My brother, I need not +say, will deplore the mischance which has prevented him from welcoming +you. I have telegraphed to him; he is at one of the Baths in Germany, +and will come assuredly, if there is a prospect of finding you here. +None? Supposing my telegram not to fall short of him, I may count on his +being here within four days.' + +Beauchamp begged her to convey the proper expressions of his regret to +M. le Marquis. + +'And M. de Croisnel? And Roland, your old comrade and brother-in-arms? +What will be their disappointment!' she said. + +'I intend to stop for an hour at Rouen on my way back,' said Beauchamp. + +She asked if her belle-soeur was aware of the short limitation of his +visit. + +He had not mentioned it to Madame la Marquise. + +'Perhaps you may be moved by the grief of a friend: Renee may persuade +you to stay.' + +'I came imagining I could be of some use to Madame la Marquise. She +writes as if she were telegraphing.' + +'Perfectly true of her! For that matter, I saw the letter. Your looks +betray a very natural jealousy; but seeing it or not it would have been +the same: she and I have no secrets. She was, I may tell you, strictly +unable to write more words in the letter. Which brings me to inquire +what impression M. d'Henriel made on you yesterday evening.' + +'He is particularly handsome.' + +'We women think so. Did you take him to be... eccentric?' + +Beauchamp gave a French jerk of the shoulders. + +It confessed the incident of the glove to one who knew it as well as he: +but it masked the weight he was beginning to attach to that incident, +and Madame d'Auffray was misled. Truly, the Englishman may be just such +an ex-lover, uninflammable by virtue of his blood's native coldness; +endued with the frozen vanity called pride, which does not seek to be +revenged. Under wary espionage, he might be a young woman's friend, +though male friend of a half-abandoned wife should write himself down +morally saint, mentally sage, medically incurable, if he would win our +confidence. + +This lady of sharp intelligence was the guardian of Renee during the +foolish husband's flights about Paris and over Europe, and, for a proof +of her consummate astuteness, Renee had no secrets and had absolute +liberty. And hitherto no man could build a boast on her reputation. The +liberty she would have had at any cost, as Madame d'Auffray knew; and an +attempt to restrict it would have created secrets. + +Near upon the breakfast-hour Renee was perceived by them going toward +the chateau at a walking pace. They crossed one of the garden bridges to +intercept her. She started out of some deep meditation, and raised +her whip hand to Beauchamp's greeting. 'I had forgotten to tell you, +monsieur, that I should be out for some hours in the morning.' + +'Are you aware,' said Madame d'Auffray, 'that M. Beauchamp leaves us +to-morrow?' + +'So soon?' It was uttered hardly with a tone of disappointment. + +The marquise alighted, crying hold, to the stables, caressed her horse, +and sent him off with a smack on the smoking flanks to meet the groom. + +'To-morrow? That is very soon; but M. Beauchamp is engaged in an +Election, and what have we to induce him to stay?' + +'Would it not be better to tell M. Beauchamp why he was invited to +come?' rejoined Madame d'Auffray. + +The sombre light in Renee's eyes quickened through shadowy spheres of +surprise and pain to resolution. She cried, 'You have my full consent,' +and left them. + +Madame d'Auffray smiled at Beauchamp, to excuse the childishness of +the little story she was about to relate; she gave it in the essence, +without a commencement or an ending. She had in fact but two or three +hurried minutes before the breakfast-bell would ring; and the fan +she opened and shut, and at times shaded her head with, was nearly as +explicit as her tongue. + +He understood that Renee had staked her glove on his coming within a +certain number of hours to the briefest wording of invitation possible. +Owing to his detention by the storm, M. d'Henriel had won the bet, and +now insisted on wearing the glove. 'He is the privileged young madman +our women make of a handsome youth,' said Madame d'Auffray. + +Where am I? thought Beauchamp--in what land, he would have phrased it, +of whirlwinds catching the wits, and whipping the passions? Calmer than +they, but unable to command them, and guessing that Renee's errand of +the morning, by which he had lost hours of her, pertained to the glove, +he said quiveringly, 'Madame la Marquise objects?' + +'We,' replied Madame d'Auffray, 'contend that the glove was not loyally +won. The wager was upon your coming to the invitation, not upon your +conquering the elements. As to his flaunting the glove for a favour, I +would ask you, whom does he advertize by that? Gloves do not wear white; +which fact compromises none but the wearer. He picked it up from the +ground, and does not restore it; that is all. You see a boy who catches +at anything to placard himself. There is a compatriot of yours, a +M. Ducie, who assured us you must be with an uncle in your county of +Sussex. Of course we ran the risk of the letter missing you, but the +chance was worth a glove. Can you believe it, M. Beauchamp? it was I, +old woman as I am, I who provoked the silly wager. I have long desired +to meet you; and we have little society here, we are desperate with +loneliness, half mad with our whims. I said, that if you were what I +had heard of you, you would come to us at a word. They dared Madame la +Marquise to say the same. I wished to see the friend of Frenchmen, as M. +Roland calls you; not merely to see him--to know him, whether he is +this perfect friend whose absolute devotion has impressed my dear +sister Renee's mind. She respects you: that is a sentiment scarcely +complimentary to the ideas of young men. She places you above human +creatures: possibly you may not dislike to be worshipped. It is not to +be rejected when one's influence is powerful for good. But you leave us +to-morrow!' + +'I' might stay...' Beauchamp hesitated to name the number of hours. He +stood divided between a sense of the bubbling shallowness of the life +about him, and a thought, grave as an eye dwelling on blood, of sinister +things below it. + +'I may stay another day or two,' he said, 'if I can be of any earthly +service.' + +Madame d'Auffray bowed as to a friendly decision on his part, saying, +'It would be a thousand pities to disappoint M. Roland; and it will be +offering my brother an amicable chance. I will send him word that you +await him; at least, that you defer your departure as long as possible. +Ah! now you perceive, M. Beauchamp, now you have become aware of our +purely infantile plan to bring you over to us, how very ostensible a +punishment it would be were you to remain so short a period.' + +Having no designs, he was neither dupe nor sceptic; but he felt oddly +entangled, and the dream of his holiday had fled like morning's beams, +as a self-deception will at a very gentle shaking. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV. THE ADVENTURE OF THE BOAT + +Madame d'Auffray passed Renee, whispering on her way to take her seat at +the breakfast-table. + +Renee did not condescend to whisper. 'Roland will be glad,' she said +aloud. + +Her low eyelids challenged Beauchamp for a look of indifference. There +was more for her to unbosom than Madame d'Auffray had revealed, but the +comparative innocence of her position in this new light prompted her to +meet him defiantly, if he chose to feel injured. He was attracted by a +happy contrast of colour between her dress and complexion, together +with a cavalierly charm in the sullen brows she lifted; and seeing the +reverse of a look of indifference on his face, after what he had heard +of her frivolousness, she had a fear that it existed. + +'Are we not to have M. d'Henriel to-day? he amuses me,' the baronne +d'Orbec remarked. + +'If he would learn that he was fashioned for that purpose!' exclaimed +little M. Livret. + +'Do not ask young men for too much head, my friend; he would cease to be +amusing.' + +'D'Henriel should have been up in the fields at ten this morning,' said +M. d'Orbec. 'As to his head, I back him for a clever shot.' + +'Or a duelling-sword,' said Renee. 'It is a quality, count it for +what we will. Your favourite, Madame la Baronne, is interdicted from +presenting himself here so long as he persists in offending me.' + +She was requested to explain, and, with the fair ingenuousness which +outshines innocence, she touched on the story of the glove. + +Ah! what a delicate, what an exciting, how subtle a question! + +Had M. d'Henriel the right to possess it? and, having that, had he the +right to wear it at his breast? + +Beauchamp was dragged into the discussion of the case. + +Renee waited curiously for his judgement. + +Pleading an apology for the stormy weather, which had detained him, and +for his ignorance that so precious an article was at stake, he held, +that by the terms of the wager, the glove was lost; the claim to wear it +was a matter of taste. + +'Matters of taste, monsieur, are not, I think, decided by weapons in +your country?' said M. d'Orbec. + +'We have no duelling,' said Beauchamp. + +The Frenchman imagined the confession to be somewhat humbling, and +generously added, 'But you have your volunteers--a magnificent spectacle +of patriotism and national readiness for defence!' + +A shrewd pang traversed Beauchamp's heart, as he looked back on his +country from the outside and the inside, thinking what amount of +patriotic readiness the character of the volunteering signified, in the +face of all that England has to maintain. Like a politic islander, he +allowed the patriotic spectacle to be imagined; reflecting that it did a +sort of service abroad, and had only to be unmasked at home. + +'But you surrendered the glove, marquise!' The baronne d'Orbec spoke +judicially. + +'I flung it to the ground: that made it neutral,' said Renee. + +'Hum. He wears it with the dust on it, certainly.' + +'And for how long a time,' M. Livret wished to know, 'does this amusing +young man proclaim his intention of wearing the glove?' + +'Until he can see with us that his Order of Merit is utter kid,' +said Madame d'Auffray; and as she had spoken more or less neatly, +satisfaction was left residing in the ear of the assembly, and the glove +was permitted to be swept away on a fresh tide of dialogue. + +The admirable candour of Renee in publicly alluding to M. d'Henriel's +foolishness restored a peep of his holiday to Beauchamp. Madame +d'Auffray took note of the effect it produced, and quite excused her +sister-in-law for intending to produce is; but that speaking out the +half-truth that we may put on the mask of the whole, is no new trick; +and believing as she did that Renee was in danger with the handsome +Count Henri, the practice of such a kind of honesty on her part appeared +alarming. + +Still it is imprudent to press for confidences when our friend's heart +is manifestly trifling with sincerity. Who knows but that some foregone +reckless act or word may have superinduced the healthy shame which +cannot speak, which must disguise itself, and is honesty in that form, +but roughly troubled would resolve to rank dishonesty? So thought the +patient lady, wiser in that than in her perceptions. + +Renee made a boast of not persuading her guest to stay, avowing that she +would not willingly have him go. Praising him equably, she listened to +praise of him with animation. She was dumb and statue-like when +Count Henri's name was mentioned. Did not this betray liking for one, +subjection to the other? Indeed, there was an Asiatic splendour of +animal beauty about M. d'Henriel that would be serpent with most women, +Madame d'Auffray conceived; why not with the deserted Renee, who adored +beauty of shape and colour, and was compassionate toward a rashness of +character that her own unnatural solitariness and quick spirit made her +emulous of? + +Meanwhile Beauchamp's day of adieu succeeded that of his holiday, and +no adieu was uttered. The hours at Tourdestelle had a singular turn +for slipping. Interlinked and all as one they swam by, brought evening, +brought morning, never varied. They might have varied with such a +division as when flame lights up the night or a tempest shades the day, +had Renee chosen; she had that power over him. She had no wish to use +it; perhaps she apprehended what it would cause her to forfeit. She +wished him to respect her; felt that she was under the shadow of the +glove, slight though it was while it was nothing but a tale of a lady +and a glove; and her desire, like his, was that they should meet daily +and dream on, without a variation. He noticed how seldom she led him +beyond the grounds of the chateau. They were to make excursions when +her brother came, she said. Roland de Croisnel's colonel, Coin de +Grandchamp, happened to be engaged in a duel, which great business +detained Roland. It supplied Beauchamp with an excuse for staying, that +he was angry with himself for being pleased to have; so he attacked the +practice of duelling, and next the shrug, wherewith M. Livret and M. +d'Orbec sought at first to defend the foul custom, or apologize for +it, or plead for it philosophically, or altogether cast it off their +shoulders; for the literal interpretation of the shrug in argument is +beyond human capacity; it is the point of speech beyond our treasury of +language. He attacked the shrug, as he thought, very temperately; but in +controlling his native vehemence he grew, perforce of repression, and of +incompetency to deliver himself copiously in French, sarcastic. In +fine, his contrast of the pretence of their noble country to head +civilization, and its encouragement of a custom so barbarous, offended +M. d'Orbec and irritated M. Livret. + +The latter delivered a brief essay on Gallic blood; the former +maintained that Frenchmen were the best judges of their own ways and +deeds. Politeness reigned, but politeness is compelled to throw off +cloak and jacket when it steps into the arena to meet the encounter of +a bull. Beauchamp drew on their word 'solidaire' to assist him in +declaring that no civilized nation could be thus independent. Imagining +himself in the France of brave ideas, he contrived to strike out sparks +of Legitimist ire around him, and found himself breathing the atmosphere +of the most primitive nursery of Toryism. Again he encountered the +shrug, and he would have it a verbal matter. M. d'Orbec gravely recited +the programme of the country party in France. M. Livret carried the +war across Channel. You English have retired from active life, like the +exhausted author, to turn critic--the critic that sneers: unless we copy +you abjectly we are execrable. And what is that sneer? Materially it is +an acrid saliva, withering where it drops; in the way of fellowship it +is a corpse-emanation. As to wit, the sneer is the cloak of clumsiness; +it is the Pharisee's incense, the hypocrite's pity, the post of +exaltation of the fat citizen, etc.; but, said M. Livret, the people +using it should have a care that they keep powerful: they make no +friends. He terminated with this warning to a nation not devoid of +superior merit. M. d'Orbec said less, and was less consoled by his +outburst. + +In the opinion of Mr. Vivian Ducie, present at the discussion, Beauchamp +provoked the lash; for, in the first place, a beautiful woman's apparent +favourite should be particularly discreet in all that he says: and next, +he should have known that the Gallic shrug over matters political is +volcanic--it is the heaving of the mountain, and, like the proverbial +Russ, leaps up Tartarly at a scratch. Our newspapers also had been +flea-biting M. Livret and his countrymen of late; and, to conclude, +over in old England you may fly out against what you will, and there is +little beyond a motherly smile, a nurse's rebuke, or a fool's rudeness +to answer you. In quick-blooded France you have whip for whip, sneer, +sarcasm, claw, fang, tussle, in a trice; and if you choose to comport +yourself according to your insular notion of freedom, you are bound to +march out to the measured ground at an invitation. To begin by saying +that your principles are opposed to it, naturally excites a malicious +propensity to try your temper. + +A further cause, unknown to Mr. Ducie, of M. Livret's irritation was, +that Beauchamp had vexed him on a subject peculiarly dear to him. The +celebrated Chateau Dianet was about to be visited by the guests at +Tourdestelle. In common with some French philosophers and English +matrons, he cherished a sentimental sad enthusiasm for royal concubines; +and when dilating upon one among them, the ruins of whose family's +castle stood in the neighbourhood-Agrees, who was really a kindly soul, +though not virtuous--M. Livret had been traversed by Beauchamp with +questions as to the condition of the people, the peasantry, that were +sweated in taxes to support these lovely frailties. They came oddly from +a man in the fire of youth, and a little old gentleman somewhat seduced +by the melting image of his theme might well blink at him to ask, of +what flesh are you, then? His historic harem was insulted. Personally +too, the fair creature picturesquely soiled, intrepid in her +amorousness, and ultimately absolved by repentance (a shuddering +narrative of her sins under showers of salt drops), cried to him to +champion her. Excited by the supposed cold critical mind in Beauchamp, +M. Livret painted and painted this lady, tricked her in casuistical +niceties, scenes of pomp and boudoir pathos, with many shifting +sidelights and a risky word or two, until Renee cried out, 'Spare us the +esprit Gaulois, M. Livret!' There was much to make him angry with this +Englishman. + +'The esprit Gaulois is the sparkle of crystal common sense, madame, and +may we never abandon it for a Puritanism that hides its face to conceal +its filthiness, like a stagnant pond,' replied M. Livret, flashing. + +'It seems, then, that there are two ways of being objectionable,' said +Renee. + +'Ah! Madame la Marquise, your wit is French,' he breathed low; 'keep +your heart so!' + +Both M. Livret and M. d'Orbec had forgotten that when Count Henri +d'Henriel was received at Tourdestelle, the arrival of the Englishman +was pleasantly anticipated by them as an eclipse of the handsome +boy; but a foreign interloper is quickly dispossessed of all means of +pleasing save that one of taking his departure; and they now talked of +Count Henri's disgrace and banishment in a very warm spirit of sympathy, +not at all seeing why it should be made to depend upon the movements of +this M. Beauchamp, as it appeared to be. Madame d'Auffray heard some of +their dialogue, and hurried with a mouth full of comedy to Renee, who +did not reproach them for silly beings, as would be done elsewhere. +On the contrary, she appreciated a scene of such absolute comedy, +recognizing it instantly as a situation plucked out of human nature. +She compared them to republicans that regretted the sovereign they had +deposed for a pretender to start up and govern them. + +'Who hurries them round to the legitimate king again!' said Madame +d'Auffray. + +Renee cast her chin up. 'How, my dear?' + +'Your husband.' + +'What of him?' + +'He is returning.' + +'What brings him?' + +'You should ask who, my Renee! I was sure he would not hear of M. +Beauchamp's being here, without an effort to return and do the honours +of the chateau.' + +Renee looked hard at her, saying, 'How thoughtful of you! You must have +made use of the telegraph wires to inform him that M. Beauchamp was with +us.' + +'More; I made use of them to inform him that M. Beauchamp was expected.' + +'And that was enough to bring him! He pays M. Beauchamp a wonderful +compliment.' + +'Such as he would pay to no other man, my Renee. Virtually it is the +highest of compliments to you. I say that to M. Beauchamp's credit; for +Raoul has met him, and, whatever his personal feeling may be, must know +your friend is a man of honour.' + +'My friend is... yes, I have no reason to think otherwise,' Renee +replied. Her husband's persistent and exclusive jealousy of Beauchamp +was the singular point in the character of one who appeared to have no +sentiment of the kind as regarded men that were much less than men +of honour. 'So, then, my sister Agnes,' she said, 'you suggested the +invitation of M. Beauchamp for the purpose of spurring my husband to +return! Apparently he and I are surrounded by plotters.' + +'Am I so very guilty?' said Madame d'Auffray. + +'If that mad boy, half idiot, half panther, were by chance to insult M. +Beauchamp, you would feel so.' + +'You have taken precautions to prevent their meeting; and besides, M. +Beauchamp does not fight.' + +Renee flushed crimson. + +Madame d'Auffray added, 'I do not say that he is other than a perfectly +brave and chivalrous gentleman.' + +'Oh!' cried Renee, 'do not say it, if ever you should imagine it. Bid +Roland speak of him. He is changed, oppressed: I did him a terrible +wrong ....' She checked herself. 'But the chief thing to do is to keep +M. d'Henriel away from him. I suspect M. d'Orbec of a design to make +them clash: and you, my dear, will explain why, to flatter me. Believe +me, I thirst for flattery; I have had none since M. Beauchamp came: and +you, so acute, must have seen the want of it in my face. But you, so +skilful, Agnes, will manage these men. Do you know, Agnes, that the +pride of a woman so incredibly clever as you have shown me you are +should resent their intrigues and overthrow them. As for me, I thought I +could command M. d'Henriel, and I find he has neither reason in him nor +obedience. Singular to say, I knew him just as well a week back as I do +now, and then I liked him for his qualities--or the absence of any. But +how shall we avoid him on the road to Dianet? He is aware that we are +going.' + +'Take M. Beauchamp by boat,' said Madame d'Auffray. + +'The river winds to within a five minutes' walk of Dianet; we could go +by boat,' Renee said musingly. 'I thought of the boat. But does it not +give the man a triumph that we should seem to try to elude him? What +matter! Still, I do not like him to be the falcon, and Nevil Beauchamp +the... little bird. So it is, because we began badly, Agnes!' + +'Was it my fault?' + +'Mine. Tell me: the legitimate king returns when?' + +'In two days or three.' + +'And his rebel subjects are to address him--how?' + +Madame d'Auffray smote the point of a finger softly on her cheek. + +'Will they be pardoned?' said Renee. + +'It is for him to kneel, my dearest.' + +'Legitimacy kneeling for forgiveness is a painful picture, Agnes. +Legitimacy jealous of a foreigner is an odd one. However, we are women, +born to our lot. If we could rise en masse!--but we cannot. Embrace me.' + +Madame d'Auffray embraced her, without an idea that she assisted in +performing the farewell of their confidential intimacy. + +When Renee trifled with Count Henri, it was playing with fire, and she +knew it; and once or twice she bemoaned to Agnes d'Auffray her abandoned +state, which condemned her, for the sake of the sensation of living, to +have recourse to perilous pastimes; but she was revolted, as at a piece +of treachery, that Agnes should have suggested the invitation of Nevil +Beauchamp with the secret design of winning home her husband to protect +her. This, for one reason, was because Beauchamp gave her no notion of +danger; none, therefore, of requiring protection; and the presence of +her husband could not but be hateful to him, an undeserved infliction. +To her it was intolerable that they should be brought into contact. +It seemed almost as hard that she should have to dismiss Beauchamp +to preclude their meeting. She remembered, nevertheless, a certain +desperation of mind, scarce imaginable in the retrospect, by which, +trembling, fever-smitten, scorning herself, she had been reduced to hope +for Nevil Beauchamp's coming as for a rescue. The night of the storm had +roused her heart. Since then his perfect friendliness had lulled, his +air of thoughtfulness had interested it; and the fancy that he, +who neither reproached nor sentimentalized, was to be infinitely +compassionated, stirred up remorse. She could not tell her friend Agnes +of these feelings while her feelings were angered against her friend. +So she talked lightly of 'the legitimate king,' and they embraced: +a situation of comedy quite as true as that presented by the humble +admirers of the brilliant chatelaine. + +Beauchamp had the pleasure of rowing Madame la Marquise to the short +shaded walk separating the river from Chateau Dianet, whither M. d'Orbec +went on horseback, and Madame d'Auffray and M. Livret were driven. The +portrait of Diane of Dianet was praised for the beauty of the dame, a +soft-fleshed acutely featured person, a fresh-of-the-toilette face, of +the configuration of head of the cat, relieved by a delicately aquiline +nose; and it could only be the cat of fairy metamorphosis which should +stand for that illustration: brows and chin made an acceptable triangle, +and eyes and mouth could be what she pleased for mice or monarchs. +M. Livret did not gainsay the impeachment of her by a great French +historian, tender to women, to frailties in particular--yes, she was +cold, perhaps grasping: but dwell upon her in her character of woman; +conceive her existing, to estimate the charm of her graciousness. Name +the two countries which alone have produced THE WOMAN, the ideal +woman, the woman of art, whose beauty, grace, and wit offer her to our +contemplation in an atmosphere above the ordinary conditions of the +world: these two countries are France and Greece! None other give you +the perfect woman, the woman who conquers time, as she conquers men, by +virtue of the divinity in her blood; and she, as little as illustrious +heroes, is to be judged by the laws and standards of lesser creatures. +In fashioning her, nature and art have worked together: in her, poetry +walks the earth. The question of good or bad is entirely to be put +aside: it is a rustic's impertinence--a bourgeois' vulgarity. She is +preeminent, voila tout. Has she grace and beauty? Then you are answered: +such possessions are an assurance that her influence in the aggregate +must be for good. Thunder, destructive to insects, refreshes earth: +so she. So sang the rhapsodist. Possibly a scholarly little French +gentleman, going down the grey slopes of sixty to second childishness, +recovers a second juvenility in these enthusiasms; though what it is +that inspires our matrons to take up with them is unimaginable. M. +Livret's ardour was a contrast to the young Englishman's vacant gaze at +Diane, and the symbols of her goddesship running along the walls, the +bed, the cabinets, everywhere that the chaste device could find frontage +and a corner. + +M. d'Orbec remained outside the chateau inspecting the fish-ponds. +When they rejoined him he complimented Beauchamp semi-ironically on his +choice of the river's quiet charms in preference to the dusty roads. +Madame de Rouaillout said, 'Come, M. d'Orbec; what if you surrender your +horse to M. Beauchamp, and row me back?' He changed colour, hesitated, +and declined he had an engagement to call on M. d'Henriel. + +'When did you see him?' said she. + +He was confused. 'It is not long since, madame.' + +'On the road?' + +'Coming along-the road.' + +'And our glove?' + +'Madame la Marquise, if I may trust my memory, M. d'Henriel was not in +official costume.' + +Renee allowed herself to be reassured. + +A ceremonious visit that M. Livret insisted on was paid to the chapel of +Diane, where she had worshipped and laid her widowed ashes, which, said +M. Livret, the fiends of the Revolution would not let rest. + +He raised his voice to denounce them. + +It was Roland de Croisnel that answered: 'The Revolution was our +grandmother, monsieur, and I cannot hear her abused.' + +Renee caught her brother by the hand. He stepped out of the chapel with +Beauchamp to embrace him; then kissed Renee, and, remarking that she was +pale, fetched flooding colour to her cheeks. He was hearty air to them +after the sentimentalism they had been hearing. Beauchamp and he walked +like loving comrades at school, questioning, answering, chattering, +laughing,--a beautiful sight to Renee, and she looked at Agrnes +d'Auffray to ask her whether 'this Englishman' was not one of them in +his frankness and freshness. + +Roland stopped to turn to Renee. 'I met d'Henriel on my ride here,' he +said with a sharp inquisitive expression of eye that passed immediately. + +'You rode here from Tourdestelle, then,' said Renee. + +'Has he been one of the company, marquise?' + +'Did he ride by you without speaking, Roland?' + +'Thus.' Roland described a Spanish caballero's formallest +salutation, saying to Beauchamp, 'Not the best sample of our young +Frenchman;--woman-spoiled! Not that the better kind of article need be +spoiled by them--heaven forbid that! Friend Nevil,' he spoke lower, 'do +you know, you have something of the prophet in you? I remember: much has +come true. An old spoiler of women is worse than one spoiled by them! +Ah, well: and Madame Culling? and your seven-feet high uncle? And have +you a fleet to satisfy Nevil Beauchamp yet? You shall see a trial of our +new field-guns at Rouen.' + +They were separated with difficulty. + +Renee wished her brother to come in the boat; and he would have done so, +but for his objection to have his Arab bestridden by a man unknown to +him. + +'My love is a four-foot, and here's my love,' Roland said, going outside +the gilt gate-rails to the graceful little beast, that acknowledged his +ownership with an arch and swing of the neck round to him. + +He mounted and called, 'Au revoir, M. le Capitaine.' + +'Au revoir, M. le Commandant,' cried Beauchamp. + +'Admiral and marshal, each of us in good season,' said Roland. 'Thanks +to your promotion, I had a letter from my sister. Advance a grade, and I +may get another.' + +Beauchamp thought of the strange gulf now between him and the time when +he pined to be a commodore, and an admiral. The gulf was bridged as he +looked at Renee petting Roland's horse. + +'Is there in the world so lovely a creature?' she said, and appealed +fondlingly to the beauty that brings out beauty, and, bidding it disdain +rivalry, rivalled it insomuch that in a moment of trance Beauchamp with +his bodily vision beheld her, not there, but on the Lido of Venice, +shining out of the years gone. + +Old love reviving may be love of a phantom after all. We can, if it must +revive, keep it to the limits of a ghostly love. The ship in the Arabian +tale coming within the zone of the magnetic mountain, flies all its +bolts and bars, and becomes sheer timbers, but that is the carelessness +of the ship's captain; and hitherto Beauchamp could applaud himself for +steering with prudence, while Renee's attractions warned more than they +beckoned. She was magnetic to him as no other woman was. Then whither +his course but homeward? + +After they had taken leave of their host and hostess of Chateau +Dianet, walking across a meadow to a line of charmilles that led to the +river-side, he said, 'Now I have seen Roland I shall have to decide upon +going.' + +'Wantonly won is deservedly lost,' said Renee. 'But do not disappoint my +Roland much because of his foolish sister. Is he not looking handsome? +And he is young to be a commandant, for we have no interest at this +Court. They kept him out of the last war! My father expects to find you +at Tourdestelle, and how account to him for your hurried flight? save +with the story of that which brought you to us!' + +'The glove? I shall beg for the fellow to it before I depart, marquise.' + +'You perceived my disposition to light-headedness, monsieur, when I was +a girl.' + +'I said that I--But the past is dust. Shall I ever see you in England?' + +'That country seems to frown on me. But if I do not go there, nor you +come here, except to imperious mysterious invitations, which will not be +repeated, the future is dust as well as the past: for me, at least. Dust +here, dust there!--if one could be like a silk-worm, and live lying +on the leaf one feeds on, it would be a sort of answer to the +riddle--living out of the dust, and in the present. I find none in my +religion. No doubt, Madame de Breze did: why did you call Diane so to M. +Livret?' + +She looked at him smiling as they came out of the shadow of the clipped +trees. He was glancing about for the boat. + +'The boat is across the river,' Renee said, in a voice that made him +seek her eyes for an explanation of the dead sound. She was very pale. +'You have perfect command of yourself? For my sake!' she said. + +He looked round. + +Standing up in the boat, against the opposite bank, and leaning with +crossed legs on one of the sculls planted in the gravel of the river, +Count Henri d'Henriel's handsome figure presented itself to Beauchamp's +gaze. + +With a dryness that smacked of his uncle Everard Romfrey, Beauchamp said +of the fantastical posture of the young man, 'One can do that on fresh +water.' + +Renee did not comprehend the sailor-sarcasm of the remark; but she also +commented on the statuesque appearance of Count Henri: 'Is the pose for +photography or for sculpture?' + +Neither of them showed a sign of surprise or of impatience. + +M. d'Henriel could not maintain the attitude. He uncrossed his legs +deliberately, drooped hat in hand, and came paddling over; apologized +indolently, and said, 'I am not, I believe, trespassing on the grounds +of Tourdestelle, Madame la Marquise!' + +'You happen to be in my boat, M. le Comte,' said Renee. + +'Permit me, madame.' He had set one foot on shore, with his back to +Beauchamp, and reached a hand to assist her step into the boat. + +Beauchamp caught fast hold of the bows while Renee laid a finger on +Count Henri's shoulder to steady herself. + +The instant she had taken her seat, Count Henri dashed the scull's blade +at the bank to push off with her, but the boat was fast. His manoeuvre +had been foreseen. Beauchamp swung on board like the last seaman of a +launch, and crouched as the boat rocked away to the stream; and still +Count Henri leaned on the scull, not in a chosen attitude, but for +positive support. He had thrown his force into the blow, to push off +triumphantly, and leave his rival standing. It occurred that the boat's +brief resistance and rocking away agitated his artificial equipoise, +and, by the operation of inexorable laws, the longer he leaned across an +extending surface the more was he dependent; so that when the measure of +the water exceeded the length of his failing support on land, there was +no help for it: he pitched in. His grimace of chagrin at the sight of +Beauchamp securely established, had scarcely yielded to the grimness +of feature of the man who feels he must go, as he took the plunge; and +these two emotions combined to make an extraordinary countenance. + +He went like a gallant gentleman; he threw up his heels to clear the +boat, dropping into about four feet of water, and his first remark on +rising was, 'I trust, madame, I have not had the misfortune to splash +you.' + +Then he waded to the bank, scrambled to his feet, and drew out his +moustachios to their curving ends. Renee nodded sharply to Beauchamp to +bid him row. He, with less of wisdom, having seized the floating scull +abandoned by Count Henri, and got it ready for the stroke, said a word +of condolence to the dripping man. + +Count Henri's shoulders and neck expressed a kind of negative that, +like a wet dog's shake of the head, ended in an involuntary whole length +shudder, dog-like and deplorable to behold. He must have been conscious +of this miserable exhibition of himself; he turned to Beauchamp: 'You +are, I am informed, a sailor, monsieur. I compliment you on your naval +tactics: our next meeting will be on land. Au revoir, monsieur. Madame +la Marquise, I have the honour to salute you.' + +With these words he retreated. + +'Row quickly, I beg of you,' Renee said to Beauchamp. Her desire was +to see Roland, and open her heart to her brother; for now it had to be +opened. Not a minute must be lost to prevent further mischief. And who +was guilty? she. Her heart clamoured of her guilt to waken a cry of +innocence. A disdainful pity for the superb young savage just made +ludicrous, relieved him of blame, implacable though he was. He was +nothing; an accident--a fool. But he might become a terrible instrument +of punishment. The thought of that possibility gave it an aspect of +retribution, under which her cry of innocence was insufferable in its +feebleness. It would have been different with her if Beauchamp had taken +advantage of her fever of anxiety, suddenly appeased by the sight of +him on the evening of his arrival at Tourdestelle after the storm, to +attempt a renewal of their old broken love-bonds. Then she would have +seen only a conflict between two men, neither of whom could claim a more +secret right than the other to be called her lover, and of whom both +were on a common footing, and partly despicable. But Nevil Beauchamp had +behaved as her perfect true friend, in the character she had hoped for +when she summoned him. The sense of her guilt lay in the recognition +that he had saved her. From what? From the consequences of delirium +rather than from love--surely delirium, founded on delusion; love had +not existed. She had said to Count Henri, 'You speak to me of love. I +was beloved when I was a girl, before my marriage, and for years I have +not seen or corresponded with the man who loved me, and I have only to +lift my finger now and he will come to me, and not once will he speak +to me of love.' Those were the words originating the wager of the glove. +But what of her, if Nevil Beauchamp had not come? + +Her heart jumped, and she blushed ungovernably in his face,--as if he +were seeing her withdraw her foot from the rock's edge, and had that +instant rescued her. But how came it she had been so helpless? She could +ask; she could not answer. + +Thinking, talking to her heart, was useless. The deceiver simply feigned +utter condemnation to make partial comfort acceptable. She burned to do +some act of extreme self-abasement that should bring an unwonted degree +of wrath on her externally, and so re-entitle her to consideration in +her own eyes. She burned to be interrogated, to have to weep, to be +scorned, abused, and forgiven, that she might say she did not deserve +pardon. Beauchamp was too English, evidently too blind, for the +description of judge-accuser she required; one who would worry her +without mercy, until-disgraced by the excess of torture inflicted--he +should reinstate her by as much as he had overcharged his accusation, +and a little more. Reasonably enough, instinctively in fact, she shunned +the hollow of an English ear. A surprise was in reserve for her. + +Beauchamp gave up rowing. As he rested on the sculls, his head was bent +and turned toward the bank. Renee perceived an over-swollen monster +gourd that had strayed from a garden adjoining the river, and hung +sliding heavily down the bank on one greenish yellow cheek, in prolonged +contemplation of its image in the mirror below. Apparently this obese +Narcissus enchained his attention. + +She tapped her foot. 'Are you tired of rowing, monsieur?' + +'It was exactly here,' said he, 'that you told me you expected your +husband's return.' + +She glanced at the gourd, bit her lip, and, colouring, said, 'At what +point of the river did I request you to congratulate me on it?' + +She would not have said that, if she had known the thoughts at work +within him. + +He set the boat swaying from side to side, and at once the hugeous +reflection of that conceivably self-enamoured bulk quavered and +distended, and was shattered in a thousand dancing fragments, to +re-unite and recompose its maudlin air of imaged satisfaction. + +She began to have a vague idea that he was indulging grotesque fancies. + +Very strangely, the ridiculous thing, in the shape of an over-stretched +likeness, that she never would have seen had he indicated it directly, +became transfused from his mind to hers by his abstract, half-amused +observation of the great dancing gourd--that capering antiquity, +lumbering volatility, wandering, self-adored, gross bald Cupid, +elatest of nondescripts! Her senses imagined the impressions agitating +Beauchamp's, and exaggerated them beyond limit; and when he amazed her +with a straight look into her eyes, and the words, 'Better let it be +a youth--and live, than fall back to that!' she understood him +immediately; and, together with her old fear of his impetuosity and +downrightness, came the vivid recollection, like a bright finger +pointing upon darkness, of what foul destiny, magnified by her present +abhorrence of it, he would have saved her from in the days of Venice and +Touraine, and unto what loathly example of the hideous grotesque she, in +spite of her lover's foresight on her behalf, had become allied. + +Face to face as they sat, she had no defence for her scarlet cheeks; her +eyes wavered. + +'We will land here; the cottagers shall row the boat up,' she said. + +'Somewhere--anywhere,' said Beauchamp. 'But I must speak. I will tell +you now. I do not think you to blame--barely; not in my sight; though no +man living would have suffered as I should. Probably some days more and +you would have been lost. You looked for me! Trust your instinct now +I'm with you as well as when I'm absent. Have you courage? that 's the +question. You have years to live. Can you live them in this place--with +honour? and alive really?' + +Renee's eyes grew wide; she tried to frown, and her brows merely +twitched; to speak, and she was inarticulate. His madness, miraculous +penetration, and the super-masculine charity in him, unknown to the +world of young men in their treatment of women, excited, awed, and +melted her. He had seen the whole truth of her relations with M. +d'Henriel!--the wickedness of them in one light, the innocence in +another; and without prompting a confession he forgave her. Could she +believe it? This was love, and manly love. + +She yearned to be on her feet, to feel the possibility of an escape from +him. + +She pointed to a landing. He sprang to the bank. 'It could end in +nothing else,' he said, 'unless you beat cold to me. And now I have your +hand, Renee! It's the hand of a living woman, you have no need to tell +me that; but faithful to her comrade! I can swear it for her--faithful +to a true alliance! You are not married, you are simply chained: and you +are terrorized. What a perversion of you it is! It wrecks you. But with +me? Am I not your lover? You and I are one life. What have we suffered +for but to find this out and act on it? Do I not know that a woman +lives, and is not the rooted piece of vegetation hypocrites and tyrants +expect her to be? Act on it, I say; own me, break the chains, come +to me; say, Nevil Beauchamp or death! And death for you? But you are +poisoned and thwart-eddying, as you live now: worse, shaming the Renee +I knew. Ah-Venice! But now we are both of us wiser and stronger: we +have gone through fire. Who foretold it? This day, and this misery and +perversion that we can turn to joy, if we will--if you will! No heart to +dare is no heart to love!--answer that! Shall I see you cower away from +me again? Not this time!' + +He swept on in a flood, uttered mad things, foolish things, and things +of an insight electrifying to her. Through the cottager's garden, +across a field, and within the park gates of Tourdestelle it continued +unceasingly; and deeply was she won by the rebellious note in all that +he said, deeply too by his disregard of the vulgar arts of wooers: she +detected none. He did not speak so much to win as to help her to see +with her own orbs. Nor was it roughly or chidingly, though it was +absolutely, that he stripped her of the veil a wavering woman will keep +to herself from her heart's lord if she can. + +They arrived long after the boat at Tourdestelle, and Beauchamp might +believe he had prevailed with her, but for her forlorn repetition of +the question he had put to her idly and as a new idea, instead of +significantly, with a recollection and a doubt 'Have I courage, Nevil?' + +The grain of common sense in cowardice caused her to repeat it when her +reason was bedimmed, and passion assumed the right to show the way of +right and wrong. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI. MR. BLACKBURN TUCKHAM + +Some time after Beauchamp had been seen renewing his canvass in Bevisham +a report reached Mount Laurels that he was lame of a leg. The wits of +the opposite camp revived the FRENCH MARQUEES, but it was generally +acknowledged that he had come back without the lady: she was invisible. +Cecilia Halkett rode home with her father on a dusky Autumn evening, and +found the card of Commander Beauchamp awaiting her. He might have stayed +to see her, she thought. Ladies are not customarily so very late in +returning from a ride on chill evenings of Autumn. Only a quarter of an +hour was between his visit and her return. The shortness of the interval +made it appear the deeper gulf. She noticed that her father particularly +inquired of the man-servant whether Captain Beauchamp limped. It seemed +a piece of kindly anxiety on his part. The captain was mounted, the man +said. Cecilia was conscious of rumours being abroad relating to Nevil's +expedition to France; but he had enemies, and was at war with them, +and she held herself indifferent to tattle. This card bearing his name, +recently in his hand, was much more insidious and precise. She took +it to her room to look at it. Nothing but his name and naval title was +inscribed; no pencilled line; she had not expected to discover one. The +simple card was her dark light, as a handkerchief, a flower, a knot of +riband, has been for men luridly illuminated by such small sparks to +fling their beams on shadows and read the monstrous things for truths. +Her purer virgin blood was, not inflamed. She read the signification +of the card sadly as she did clearly. What she could not so distinctly +imagine was, how he could reconcile the devotion to his country, which +he had taught her to put her faith in, with his unhappy subjection to +Madame de Rouaillout. How could the nobler sentiment exist side by side +with one that was lawless? Or was the wildness characteristic of his +political views proof of a nature inclining to disown moral ties? She +feared so; he did not speak of the clergy respectfully. Reading in the +dark, she was forced to rely on her social instincts, and she distrusted +her personal feelings as much as she could, for she wished to know the +truth of him; anything, pain and heartrending, rather than the shutting +of the eyes in an unworthy abandonment to mere emotion and fascination. +Cecilia's love could not be otherwise given to a man, however near +she might be drawn to love--though she should suffer the pangs of love +cruelly. + +She placed his card in her writing-desk; she had his likeness there. +Commander Beauchamp encouraged the art of photography, as those that +make long voyages do, in reciprocating what they petition their friends +for. Mrs. Rosamund Culling had a whole collection of photographs of him, +equal to a visual history of his growth in chapters, from boyhood to +midshipmanship and to manhood. The specimen possessed by Cecilia was one +of a couple that Beauchamp had forwarded to Mrs. Grancey Lespel on +the day of his departure for France, and was a present from that lady, +purchased, like so many presents, at a cost Cecilia would have paid +heavily in gold to have been spared, namely, a public blush. She was +allowed to make her choice, and she chose the profile, repeating +a remark of Mrs. Culling's, that it suggested an arrow-head in the +upflight; whereupon Mr. Stukely Culbrett had said, 'Then there is the +man, for he is undoubtedly a projectile'; nor were politically-hostile +punsters on an arrow-head inactive. But Cecilia was thinking of the +side-face she (less intently than Beauchamp at hers) had glanced at +during the drive into Bevisham. At that moment, she fancied Madame de +Rouaillout might be doing likewise; and oh that she had the portrait of +the French lady as well! + +Next day her father tossed her a photograph of another gentleman, coming +out of a letter he had received from old Mrs. Beauchamp. He asked her +opinion of it. She said, 'I think he would have suited Bevisham better +than Captain Baskelett.' Of the original, who presented himself at Mount +Laurels in the course of the week, she had nothing to say, except that +he was very like the photograph, very unlike Nevil Beauchamp. 'Yes, +there I'm of your opinion,' her father observed. The gentleman was Mr. +Blackburn Tuckham, and it was amusing to find an exuberant Tory in one +who was the reverse of the cavalier type. Nevil and he seemed to have +been sorted to the wrong sides. Mr. Tuckham had a round head, square +flat forehead, and ruddy face; he stood as if his feet claimed the earth +under them for his own, with a certain shortness of leg that detracted +from the majesty of his resemblance to our Eighth Harry, but increased +his air of solidity; and he was authoritative in speaking. 'Let me set +you right, sir,' he said sometimes to Colonel Halkett, and that was +his modesty. 'You are altogether wrong,' Miss Halkett heard herself +informed, which was his courtesy. He examined some of her water-colour +drawings before sitting down to dinner, approved of them, but thought +it necessary to lay a broad finger on them to show their defects. On the +question of politics, 'I venture to state,' he remarked, in anything but +the tone of a venture, 'that no educated man of ordinary sense who has +visited our colonies will come back a Liberal.' As for a man of sense +and education being a Radical, he scouted the notion with a pooh +sufficient to awaken a vessel in the doldrums. He said carelessly of +Commander Beauchamp, that he might think himself one. Either the Radical +candidate for Bevisham stood self-deceived, or--the other supposition. +Mr. Tuckham would venture to state that no English gentleman, exempt +from an examination by order of the Commissioners of Lunacy, could be +sincerely a Radical. 'Not a bit of it; nonsense,' he replied to Miss +Halkett's hint at the existence of Radical views; 'that is, those views +are out of politics; they are matters for the police. Dutch dykes are +built to shut away the sea from cultivated land, and of course it's a +part of the business of the Dutch Government to keep up the dykes,--and +of ours to guard against the mob; but that is only a political +consideration after the mob has been allowed to undermine our defences.' + +'They speak,' said Miss Halkett, 'of educating the people to fit them--' + +'They speak of commanding the winds and tides,' he cut her short, with +no clear analogy; 'wait till we have a storm. It's a delusion amounting +to dementedness to suppose, that with the people inside our defences, +we can be taming them and tricking them. As for sending them to school +after giving them power, it's like asking a wild beast to sit down to +dinner with us--he wants the whole table and us too. The best education +for the people is government. They're beginning to see that in +Lancashire at last. I ran down to Lancashire for a couple of days on my +landing, and I'm thankful to say Lancashire is preparing to take a +step back. Lancashire leads the country. Lancashire men see what this +Liberalism has done for the Labour-market.' + +'Captain Beauchamp considers that the political change coming over the +minds of the manufacturers is due to the large fortunes they have made,' +said Miss Halkett, maliciously associating a Radical prophet with him. + +He was unaffected by it, and continued: 'Property is ballast as well +as treasure. I call property funded good sense. I would give it every +privilege. If we are to speak of patriotism, I say the possession of +property guarantees it. I maintain that the lead of men of property is +in most cases sure to be the safe one.' + +'I think so,' Colonel Halkett interposed, and he spoke as a man of +property. + +Mr. Tuckham grew fervent in his allusions to our wealth and our +commerce. Having won the race and gained the prize, shall we let it +slip out of our grasp? Upon this topic his voice descended to tones +of priestlike awe: for are we not the envy of the world? Our wealth is +countless, fabulous. It may well inspire veneration. And we have won it +with our hands, thanks (he implied it so) to our religion. We are rich +in money and industry, in those two things only, and the corruption +of an energetic industry is constantly threatened by the profusion of +wealth giving it employment. This being the case, either your Radicals +do not know the first conditions of human nature, or they do; and if +they do they are traitors, and the Liberals opening the gates to them +are fools: and some are knaves. We perish as a Great Power if we cease +to look sharp ahead, hold firm together, and make the utmost of what we +possess. The word for the performance of those duties is Toryism: a word +with an older flavour than Conservatism, and Mr. Tuckham preferred it. +By all means let workmen be free men but a man must earn his freedom +daily, or he will become a slave in some form or another: and the way to +earn it is by work and obedience to right direction. In a country like +ours, open on all sides to the competition of intelligence and strength, +with a Press that is the voice of all parties and of every interest; +in a country offering to your investments three and a half and more per +cent., secure as the firmament! + +He perceived an amazed expression on Miss Halkett's countenance; and +'Ay,' said he, 'that means the certainty of food to millions of mouths, +and comforts, if not luxuries, to half the population. A safe percentage +on savings is the basis of civilization.' + +But he had bruised his eloquence, for though you may start a sermon from +stones to hit the stars, he must be a practised orator who shall descend +out of the abstract to take up a heavy lump of the concrete without +unseating himself, and he stammered and came to a flat ending: 'In such +a country--well, I venture to say, we have a right to condemn in advance +disturbers of the peace, and they must show very good cause indeed for +not being summarily held--to account for their conduct.' + +The allocution was not delivered in the presence of an audience other +than sympathetic, and Miss Halkett rightly guessed that it was intended +to strike Captain Beauchamp by ricochet. He puffed at the mention of +Beauchamp's name. He had read a reported speech or two of Beauchamp's, +and shook his head over a quotation of the stuff, as though he would +have sprung at him like a lion, but for his enrolment as a constable. + +Not a whit the less did Mr. Tuckham drink his claret relishingly, and +he told stories incidental to his travels now and then, commended the +fishing here, the shooting there, and in some few places the cookery, +with much bright emphasis when it could be praised; it appeared to be an +endearing recollection to him. Still, as a man of progress, he declared +his belief that we English would ultimately turn out the best cooks, +having indubitably the best material. 'Our incomprehensible political +pusillanimity' was the one sad point about us: we had been driven from +surrender to surrender. + +'Like geese upon a common, I have heard it said,' Miss Halkett assisted +him to Dr. Shrapnel's comparison. + +Mr. Tuckham laughed, and half yawned and sighed, 'Dear me!' + +His laughter was catching, and somehow more persuasive of the soundness +of the man's heart and head than his remarks. + +She would have been astonished to know that a gentleman so uncourtly, if +not uncouth--judged by the standard of the circle she moved in--and so +unskilled in pleasing the sight and hearing of ladies as to treat them +like junior comrades, had raised the vow within himself on seeing her: +You, or no woman! + +The colonel delighted in him, both as a strong and able young fellow, +and a refreshingly aggressive recruit of his party, who was for +onslaught, and invoked common sense, instead of waving the flag of +sentiment in retreat; a very horse-artillery man of Tories. Regretting +immensely that Mr. Tuckham had not reached England earlier, that he +might have occupied the seat for Bevisham, about to be given to Captain +Baskelett, Colonel Halkett set up a contrast of Blackburn Tuckham +and Nevil Beauchamp; a singular instance of unfairness, his daughter +thought, considering that the distinct contrast presented by the +circumstances was that of Mr. Tuckham and Captain Baskelett. + +'It seems to me, papa,--that you are contrasting the idealist and the +realist,' she said. + +'Ah, well, we don't want the idealist in politics,' muttered the +colonel. + +Latterly he also had taken to shaking his head over Nevil: Cecilia dared +not ask him why. + +Mr. Tuckham arrived at Mount Laurels on the eve of the Nomination day +in Bevisham. An article in the Bevisham Gazette calling upon all true +Liberals to demonstrate their unanimity by a multitudinous show of +hands, he ascribed to the writing of a child of Erin; and he was highly +diverted by the Liberal's hiring of Paddy to 'pen and spout' for him. 'A +Scotchman manages, and Paddy does the sermon for all their journals,' he +said off-hand; adding: 'And the English are the compositors, I suppose.' +You may take that for an instance of the national spirit of Liberal +newspapers! + +'Ah!' sighed the colonel, as at a case clearly demonstrated against +them. + +A drive down to Bevisham to witness the ceremony of the nomination in +the town-hall sobered Mr. Tuckham's disposition to generalize. Beauchamp +had the show of hands, and to say with Captain Baskelett, that they were +a dirty majority, was beneath Mr. Tuckham's verbal antagonism. He fell +into a studious reserve, noting everything, listening to everybody, +greatly to Colonel Halkett's admiration of one by nature a talker and a +thunderer. + +The show of hands Mr. Seymour Austin declared to be the most delusive of +electoral auspices; and it proved so. A little later than four o'clock +in the afternoon of the election-day, Cecilia received a message from +her father telling her that both of the Liberals were headed; 'Beauchamp +nowhere.' + +Mrs. Grancey Lespel was the next herald of Beauchamp's defeat. She +merely stated the fact that she had met the colonel and Mr. Blackburn +Tuckham driving on the outskirts of the town, and had promised to bring +Cecilia the final numbers of the poll. Without naming them, she unrolled +the greater business in her mind. + +'A man who in the middle of an Election goes over to France to fight a +duel, can hardly expect to win; he has all the morality of an English +borough opposed to him,' she said; and seeing the young lady stiffen: +'Oh! the duel is positive,' she dropped her voice. 'With the husband. +Who else could it be? And returns invalided. That is evidence. My nephew +Palmet has it from Vivian Ducie, and he is acquainted with her tolerably +intimately, and the story is, she was overtaken in her flight in the +night, and the duel followed at eight o'clock in the morning; but her +brother insisted on fighting for Captain Beauchamp, and I cannot tell +you how--but his place in it I can't explain--there was a beau jeune +homme, and it's quite possible that he should have been the person +to stand up against the marquis. At any rate, he insulted Captain +Beauchamp, or thought your hero had insulted him, and the duel was with +one or the other. It matters exceedingly little with whom, if a duel was +fought, and you see we have quite established that.' + +'I hope it is not true,' said Cecilia. + +'My dear, that is the Christian thing to do,' said Mrs. Lespel. +'Duelling is horrible: though those Romfreys!--and the Beauchamps were +just as bad, or nearly. Colonel Richard fought for a friend's wife or +sister. But in these days duelling is incredible. It was an inhuman +practice always, and it is now worse--it is a reach of manners. I would +hope it is not true; and you may mean that I have it from Lord +Palmet. But I know Vivian Ducie as well as I know my nephew, and if he +distinctly mentions an occurrence, we may too surely rely on the truth +of it; he is not a man to spread mischief. Are you unaware that he met +Captain Beauchamp at the chateau of the marquise? The whole story was +acted under his eyes. He had only to take up his pen. Generally he +favours me with his French gossip. I suppose there were circumstances in +this affair more suitable to Palmet than to me. He wrote a description +of Madame de Rouaillout that set Palmet strutting about for an hour. I +have no doubt she must be a very beautiful woman, for a Frenchwoman: not +regular features; expressive, capricious. Vivian Ducie lays great stress +on her eyes and eyebrows, and, I think, her hair. With a Frenchwoman's +figure, that is enough to make men crazy. He says her husband +deserves--but what will not young men write? It is deeply to be +regretted that Englishmen abroad--women the same, I fear--get the +Continental tone in morals. But how Captain Beauchamp could expect to +carry on an Election and an intrigue together, only a head like his can +tell us. Grancey is in high indignation with him. It does not concern +the Election, you can imagine. Something that man Dr. Shrapnel has done, +which he says Captain Beauchamp could have prevented. Quarrels of men! +I have instructed Palmet to write to Vivian Ducie for a photograph of +Madame de Rouaillout. Do you know, one has a curiosity to see the face +of the woman for whom a man ruins himself. But I say again, he ought to +be married.' + +'That there may be two victims?' Cecilia said it smiling. + +She was young in suffering, and thought, as the unseasoned and +inexperienced do, that a mask is a concealment. + +'Married--settled; to have him bound in honour,' said Mrs. Lespel. 'I +had a conversation with him when he was at Itchincope; and his look, +and what I know of his father, that gallant and handsome Colonel Richard +Beauchamp, would give one a kind of confidence in him; supposing always +that he is not struck with one of those deadly passions that are like +snakes, like magic. I positively believe in them. I have seen them. +And if they end, they end as if the man were burnt out, and was ashes +inside; as you see Mr. Stukely Culbrett, all cynicism. You would not now +suspect him of a passion! It is true. Oh, I know it! That is what the +men go to. The women die. Vera Winter died at twenty-three. Caroline +Ormond was hardly older. You know her story; everybody knows it. The +most singular and convincing case was that of Lord Alfred Burnley and +Lady Susan Gardiner, wife of the general; and there was an instance of +two similarly afflicted--a very rare case, most rare: they never could +meet to part! It was almost ludicrous. It is now quite certain that they +did not conspire to meet. At last the absolute fatality became so well +understood by the persons immediately interested--You laugh?' + +'Do I laugh?' said Cecilia. + +'We should all know the world, my dear, and you are a strong head. The +knowledge is only dangerous for fools. And if romance is occasionally +ridiculous, as I own it can be, humdrum, I protest, is everlastingly so. +By-the-by, I should have told you that Captain Beauchamp was one hundred +and ninety below Captain Baskelett when the state of the poll was handed +to me. The gentleman driving with your father compared the Liberals to a +parachute cut away from the balloon. Is he army or navy?' + +'He is a barrister, and some cousin of Captain Beauchamp.' + +'I should not have taken him for a Beauchamp,' said Mrs. Lespel; and, +resuming her worldly sagacity, 'I should not like to be in opposition to +that young man.' + +She seemed to have a fancy unexpressed regarding Mr. Tuckham. Reminding +herself that she might be behind time at Itchincope, where the guests +would be numerous that evening, and the song of triumph loud, with +Captain Baskelett to lead it, she kissed the young lady she had +unintentionally been torturing so long, and drove away. + +Cecilia hoped it was not true. Her heart sank heavily under the belief +that it was. She imagined the world abusing Nevil and casting him out, +as those electors of Bevisham had just done, and impulsively she pleaded +for him, and became drowned in criminal blushes that forced her to +defend herself with a determination not to believe the dreadful story, +though she continued mitigating the wickedness of it; as if, by a +singular inversion of the fact, her clear good sense excused, and it +was her heart that condemned him. She dwelt fondly on an image of the +'gallant and handsome Colonel Richard Beauchamp,' conjured up in her +mind from the fervour of Mrs. Lespel when speaking of Nevil's father, +whose chivalry threw a light on the son's, and whose errors, condoned +by time, and with a certain brilliancy playing above them, interceded +strangely on behalf of Nevil. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII. A SHORT SIDELOOK AT THE ELECTION + +The brisk Election-day, unlike that wearisome but instructive canvass +of the Englishman in his castle vicatim, teaches little; and its +humours are those of a badly managed Christmas pantomime without a +columbine--old tricks, no graces. Nevertheless, things hang together so +that it cannot be passed over with a bare statement of the fact of the +Liberal-Radical defeat in Bevisham: the day was not without fruit in +time to come for him whom his commiserating admirers of the non-voting +sex all round the borough called the poor dear commander. Beauchamp's +holiday out of England had incited Dr. Shrapnel to break a positive +restriction put upon him by Jenny Denham, and actively pursue the +canvass and the harangue in person; by which conduct, as Jenny had +foreseen, many temperate electors were alienated from Commander +Beauchamp, though no doubt the Radicals were made compact: for they +may be the skirmishing faction--poor scattered fragments, none of +them sufficiently downright for the other; each outstripping each; +rudimentary emperors, elementary prophets, inspired physicians, +nostrum-devouring patients, whatsoever you will; and still here and +there a man shall arise to march them in close columns, if they can but +trust him; in perfect subordination, a model even for Tories while they +keep shoulder to shoulder. And to behold such a disciplined body is +intoxicating to the eye of a leader accustomed to count ahead upon +vapourish abstractions, and therefore predisposed to add a couple of +noughts to every tangible figure in his grasp. Thus will a realized +fifty become five hundred or five thousand to him: the very sense of +number is instinct with multiplication in his mind; and those years far +on in advance, which he has been looking to with some fatigue to the +optics, will suddenly and rollickingly roll up to him at the shutting of +his eyes in a temporary fit of gratification. So, by looking and by not +looking, he achieves his phantom victory--embraces his cloud. + +Dr. Shrapnel conceived that the day was to be a Radical success; and +he, a citizen aged and exercised in reverses, so rounded by the habit +of them indeed as to tumble and recover himself on the wind of the blow +that struck him, was, it must be acknowledged, staggered and cast down +when he saw Beauchamp drop, knowing full well his regiment had polled to +a man. Radicals poll early; they would poll at cockcrow if they might; +they dance on the morning. As for their chagrin at noon, you will find +descriptions of it in the poet's Inferno. They are for lifting our clay +soil on a lever of Archimedes, and are not great mathematicians. They +have perchance a foot of our earth, and perpetually do they seem to be +producing an effect, perpetually does the whole land roll back on them. +You have not surely to be reminded that it hurts them; the weight is +immense. Dr. Shrapnel, however, speedily looked out again on his vast +horizon, though prostrate. He regained his height of stature with no +man's help. Success was but postponed for a generation or two. Is it so +very distant? Gaze on it with the eye of our parent orb! 'I shall not +see it here; you may,' he said to Jenny Denham; and he fortified his +outlook by saying to Mr. Lydiard that the Tories of our time walked, or +rather stuck, in the track of the Radicals of a generation back. Note, +then, that Radicals, always marching to the triumph, never taste it; and +for Tories it is Dead Sea fruit, ashes in their mouths! Those Liberals, +those temporisers, compromisers, a concourse of atoms! glorify +themselves in the animal satisfaction of sucking the juice of the fruit, +for which they pay with their souls. They have no true cohesion, for +they have no vital principle. + +Mr. Lydiard being a Liberal, bade the doctor not to forget the work +of the Liberals, who touched on Tory and Radical with a pretty steady +swing, from side to side, in the manner of the pendulum of a clock, +which is the clock's life, remember that. The Liberals are the +professors of the practicable in politics. + +'A suitable image for time-servers!' Dr. Shrapnel exclaimed, intolerant +of any mention of the Liberals as a party, especially in the hour of +Radical discomfiture, when the fact that compromisers should exist +exasperates men of a principle. 'Your Liberals are the band of Pyrrhus, +an army of bastards, mercenaries professing the practicable for pay. +They know us the motive force, the Tories the resisting power, and they +feign to aid us in battering our enemy, that they may stop the shock. +We fight, they profit. What are they? Stranded Whigs, crotchetty +manufacturers; dissentient religionists; the half-minded, the +hare-hearted; the I would and I would-not--shifty creatures, with +youth's enthusiasm decaying in them, and a purse beginning to jingle; +fearing lest we do too much for safety, our enemy not enough for safety. +They a party? Let them take action and see! We stand a thousand defeats; +they not one! Compromise begat them. Once let them leave sucking the +teats of compromise, yea, once put on the air of men who fight and die +for a cause, they fly to pieces. And whither the fragments? Chiefly, my +friend, into the Tory ranks. Seriously so I say. You between future and +past are for the present--but with the hunted look behind of all godless +livers in the present. You Liberals are Tories with foresight, +Radicals without faith. You start, in fear of Toryism, on an errand of +Radicalism, and in fear of Radicalism to Toryism you draw back. There is +your pendulum-swing!' + +Lectures to this effect were delivered by Dr. Shrapnel throughout the +day, for his private spiritual solace it may be supposed, unto Lydiard, +Turbot, Beauchamp, or whomsoever the man chancing to be near him, +and never did Sir Oracle wear so extraordinary a garb. The favourite +missiles of the day were flour-bags. Dr. Shrapnel's uncommon height, and +his outrageous long brown coat, would have been sufficient to attract +them, without the reputation he had for desiring to subvert everything +old English. The first discharges gave him the appearance of a thawing +snowman. Drenchings of water turned the flour to ribs of paste, and +in colour at least he looked legitimately the cook's own spitted hare, +escaped from her basting ladle, elongated on two legs. It ensued that +whenever he was caught sight of, as he walked unconcernedly about, the +young street-professors of the decorative arts were seized with a frenzy +to add their share to the whitening of him, until he might have been +taken for a miller that had gone bodily through his meal. The popular +cry proclaimed him a ghost, and he walked like one, impassive, blanched, +and silent amid the uproar of mobs of jolly ruffians, for each of whom +it was a point of honour to have a shy at old Shrapnel. + +Clad in this preparation of pie-crust, he called from time to time at +Beauchamp's hotel, and renewed his monologue upon that Radical empire in +the future which was for ever in the future for the pioneers of men, +yet not the less their empire. 'Do we live in our bodies?' quoth he, +replying to his fiery interrogation: 'Ay, the Tories! the Liberals!' +They lived in their bodies. Not one syllable of personal consolation did +he vouchsafe to Beauchamp. He did not imagine it could be required by a +man who had bathed in the pure springs of Radicalism; and it should +be remarked that Beauchamp deceived him by imitating his air of happy +abstraction, or subordination of the faculties to a distant view, +comparable to a ship's crew in difficulties receiving the report of the +man at the masthead. Beauchamp deceived Miss Denham too, and himself, +by saying, as if he cherished the philosophy of defeat, besides the +resolution to fight on: + +'It's only a skirmish lost, and that counts for nothing in a battle +without end: it must be incessant.' + +'But does incessant battling keep the intellect clear?' was her +memorable answer. + +He glanced at Lydiard, to indicate that it came of that gentleman's +influence upon her mind. It was impossible for him to think that women +thought. The idea of a pretty woman exercising her mind independently, +and moreover moving him to examine his own, made him smile. Could a +sweet-faced girl, the nearest to Renee in grace of manner and in feature +of all women known to him, originate a sentence that would set him +reflecting? He was unable to forget it, though he allowed her no credit +for it. + +On the other hand, his admiration of her devotedness to Dr. Shrapnel +was unbounded. There shone a strictly feminine quality! according to the +romantic visions of the sex entertained by Commander Beauchamp, and by +others who would be the objects of it. But not alone the passive virtues +were exhibited by Jenny Denham: she proved that she had high courage. +No remonstrance could restrain Dr. Shrapnel from going out to watch the +struggle, and she went with him as a matter of course on each occasion. +Her dress bore witness to her running the gauntlet beside him. + +'It was not thrown at me purposely,' she said, to quiet Beauchamp's +wrath. She saved the doctor from being rough mobbed. Once when they were +surrounded she fastened his arm under hers, and by simply moving on with +an unswerving air of serenity obtained a passage for him. So much did +she make herself respected, that the gallant rascals became emulous +in dexterity to avoid powdering her, by loudly execrating any but dead +shots at the detested one, and certain boys were maltreated for an +ardour involving clumsiness. A young genius of this horde conceiving, in +the spirit of the inventors of our improved modern ordnance, that it +was vain to cast missiles which left a thing standing, hurled a stone +wrapped in paper. It missed its mark. Jenny said nothing about it. The +day closed with a comfortable fight or two in by-quarters of the town, +probably to prove that an undaunted English spirit, spite of fickle +Fortune, survived in our muscles. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII. TOUCHING A YOUNG LADY'S HEART AND HER INTELLECT + +Mr. Tuckham found his way to Dr. Shrapnel's cottage to see his kinsman +on the day after the election. There was a dinner in honour of the +Members for Bevisham at Mount Laurels in the evening, and he was five +minutes behind military time when he entered the restive drawing-room +and stood before the colonel. No sooner had he stated that he had been +under the roof of Dr. Shrapnel, than his unpunctuality was immediately +overlooked in the burst of impatience evoked by the name. + +'That pestilent fellow!' Colonel Halkett ejaculated. 'I understand +he has had the impudence to serve a notice on Grancey Lespel about +encroachments on common land.' + +Some one described Dr. Shrapnel's appearance under the flour storm. + +'He deserves anything,' said the colonel, consulting his mantelpiece +clock. + +Captain Baskelett observed: 'I shall have my account to settle with +Dr. Shrapnel.' He spoke like a man having a right to be indignant, but +excepting that the doctor had bestowed nicknames upon him in a speech at +a meeting, no one could discover the grounds for it. He nodded briefly. +A Radical apple had struck him on the left cheekbone as he performed his +triumphal drive through the town, and a slight disfigurement remained, +to which his hand was applied sympathetically at intervals, for the +cheek-bone was prominent in his countenance, and did not well bear +enlargement. And when a fortunate gentleman, desiring to be still +more fortunate, would display the winning amiability of his character, +distension of one cheek gives him an afflictingly false look of +sweetness. + +The bent of his mind, nevertheless, was to please Miss Halkett. He would +be smiling, and intimately smiling. Aware that she had a kind of pitiful +sentiment for Nevil, he smiled over Nevil--poor Nevil! 'I give you my +word, Miss Halkett, old Nevil was off his head yesterday. I daresay he +meant to be civil. I met him; I called out to him, "Good day, cousin, +I'm afraid you're beaten" and says he, "I fancy you've gained it, +uncle." He didn't know where he was; all abroad, poor boy. Uncle!--to +me!' + +Miss Halkett would have accepted the instance for a proof of Nevil's +distraction, had not Mr. Seymour Austin, who sat beside her, laughed and +said to her: 'I suppose "uncle" was a chance shot, but it's equal to a +poetic epithet in the light it casts on the story.' Then it seemed +to her that Nevil had been keenly quick, and Captain Baskelett's +impenetrability was a sign of his density. Her mood was to think Nevil +Beauchamp only too quick, too adventurous and restless: one that wrecked +brilliant gifts in a too general warfare; a lover of hazards, a hater +of laws. Her eyes flew over Captain Baskelett as she imagined Nevil +addressing him as uncle, and, to put aside a spirit of mockery rising +within her, she hinted a wish to hear Seymour Austin's opinion of Mr. +Tuckham. He condensed it in an interrogative tone: 'The other extreme?' +The Tory extreme of Radical Nevil Beauchamp. She assented. Mr. Tuckham +was at that moment prophesying the Torification of mankind; not as the +trembling venturesome idea which we cast on doubtful winds, but as +a ship is launched to ride the waters, with huzzas for a thing +accomplished. Mr. Austin raised his shoulders imperceptibly, saying to +Miss Halkett: 'The turn will come to us as to others--and go. Nothing +earthly can escape that revolution. We have to meet it with a policy, +and let it pass with measures carried and our hands washed of some of +our party sins. I am, I hope, true to my party, but the enthusiasm of +party I do not share. He is right, however, when he accuses the nation +of cowardice for the last ten years. One third of the Liberals have +been with us at heart, and dared not speak, and we dared not say what +we wished. We accepted a compact that satisfied us both--satisfied us +better than when we were opposed by Whigs--that is, the Liberal reigned, +and we governed: and I should add, a very clever juggler was our common +chief. Now we have the consequences of hollow peacemaking, in a +suffrage that bids fair to extend to the wearing of hats and boots for a +qualification. The moral of it seems to be that cowardice is even worse +for nations than for individual men, though the consequences come on us +more slowly.' + +'You spoke of party sins,' Miss Halkett said incredulously. + +'I shall think we are the redoubtable party when we admit the charge.' + +'Are you alluding to the landowners?' + +'Like the land itself, they have rich veins in heavy matter. For +instance, the increasing wealth of the country is largely recruiting +our ranks; and we shall be tempted to mistake numbers for strength, and +perhaps again be reading Conservatism for a special thing of our own--a +fortification. That would be a party sin. Conservatism is a principle +of government; the best because the safest for an old country; and +the guarantee that we do not lose the wisdom of past experience in our +struggle with what is doubtful. Liberalism stakes too much on the chance +of gain. It is uncomfortably seated on half-a-dozen horses; and it has +to feed them too, and on varieties of corn.' + +'Yes,' Miss Halkett said, pausing, 'and I know you would not talk down +to me, but the use of imagery makes me feel that I am addressed as a +primitive intelligence.' + +'That's the fault of my trying at condensation, as the hieroglyphists +put an animal for a paragraph. I am incorrigible, you see; but the +lecture in prose must be for by-and-by, if you care to have it.' + +'If you care to read it to me. Did a single hieroglyphic figure stand +for so much?' + +'I have never deciphered one.' + +'You have been speaking to me too long in earnest, Mr. Austin!' + +'I accept the admonition, though it is wider than the truth. Have you +ever consented to listen to politics before?' + +Cecilia reddened faintly, thinking of him who had taught her to listen, +and of her previous contempt of the subject. + +A political exposition devoid of imagery was given to her next day on +the sunny South-western terrace of Mount Laurels, when it was only +by mentally translating it into imagery that she could advance a step +beside her intellectual guide; and she was ashamed of the volatility of +her ideas. She was constantly comparing Mr. Austin and Nevil Beauchamp, +seeing that the senior and the junior both talked to her with the +familiar recognition of her understanding which was a compliment without +the gross corporeal phrase. But now she made another discovery, +that should have been infinitely more of a compliment, and it was +bewildering, if not repulsive to her:--could it be credited? Mr. Austin +was a firm believer in new and higher destinies for women. He went +farther than she could concede the right of human speculation to go; he +was, in fact, as Radical there as Nevil Beauchamp politically; and would +not the latter innovator stare, perchance frown conservatively, at +a prospect of woman taking counsel, in council, with men upon public +affairs, like the women in the Germania! Mr. Austin, if this time he +talked in earnest, deemed that Englishwomen were on the road to win such +a promotion, and would win it ultimately. He said soberly that he saw +more certain indications of the reality of progress among women than any +at present shown by men. And he was professedly temperate. He was but +for opening avenues to the means of livelihood for them, and leaving it +to their strength to conquer the position they might wish to win. His +belief that they would do so was the revolutionary sign. + +'Are there points of likeness between Radicals and Tories?' she +inquired. + +'I suspect a cousinship in extremes,' he answered. + +'If one might be present at an argument,' said she. + +'We have only to meet to fly apart as wide as the Poles,' Mr. Austin +rejoined. + +But she had not spoken of a particular person to meet him; and how, +then, had she betrayed herself? She fancied he looked unwontedly arch as +he resumed: + +'The end of the argument would see us each entrenched in his party. +Suppose me to be telling your Radical friend such truisms as that we +English have not grown in a day, and were not originally made free and +equal by decree; that we have grown, and must continue to grow, by the +aid and the development of our strength; that ours is a fairly legible +history, and a fair example of the good and the bad in human growth; +that his landowner and his peasant have no clear case of right and wrong +to divide them, one being the descendant of strong men, the other of +weak ones; and that the former may sink, the latter may rise--there is +no artificial obstruction; and if it is difficult to rise, it is easy +to sink. Your Radical friend, who would bring them to a level by +proclamation, could not adopt a surer method for destroying the manhood +of a people: he is for doctoring wooden men, and I for not letting our +stout English be cut down short as Laplanders; he would have them in +a forcing house, and I in open air, as hitherto. Do you perceive a +discussion? and you apprehend the nature of it. We have nerves. That is +why it is better for men of extremely opposite opinions not to meet. I +dare say Radicalism has a function, and so long as it respects the +laws I am ready to encounter it where it cannot be avoided. Pardon my +prosing.' + +'Recommend me some hard books to study through the Winter,' said +Cecilia, refreshed by a discourse that touched no emotions, as by a +febrifuge. Could Nevil reply to it? She fancied him replying, with that +wild head of his--wildest of natures. She fancied also that her wish was +like Mr. Austin's not to meet him. She was enjoying a little rest. + +It was not quite generous in Mr. Austin to assume that 'her Radical +friend' had been prompting her. However, she thanked him in her heart +for the calm he had given her. To be able to imagine Nevil Beauchamp +intellectually erratic was a tonic satisfaction to the proud young +lady, ashamed of a bondage that the bracing and pointing of her critical +powers helped her to forget. She had always preferred the society of men +of Mr. Austin's age. How old was he? Her father would know. And why was +he unmarried? A light frost had settled on the hair about his temples; +his forehead was lightly wrinkled; but his mouth and smile, and his +eyes, were lively as a young man's, with more in them. His age must be +something less than fifty. O for peace! she sighed. When he stepped into +his carriage, and stood up in it to wave adieu to her, she thought his +face and figure a perfect example of an English gentleman in his prime. + +Captain Baskelett requested the favour of five minutes of conversation +with Miss Halkett before he followed Mr. Austin, on his way to Steynham. + +She returned from that colloquy to her father and Mr. Tuckham. The +colonel looked straight in her face, with an elevation of the brows. +To these points of interrogation she answered with a placid fall of her +eyelids. He sounded a note of approbation in his throat. + +All the company having departed, Mr. Tuckham for the first time spoke +of his interview with his kinsman Beauchamp. Yesterday evening he had +slurred it, as if he had nothing to relate, except the finding of an +old schoolfellow at Dr. Shrapnel's named Lydiard, a man of ability fool +enough to have turned author on no income. But that which had appeared +to Miss Halkett a want of observancy, became attributable to depth of +character on its being clear that he had waited for the departure of +the transient guests of the house, to pour forth his impressions without +holding up his kinsman to public scorn. He considered Shrapnel mad and +Beauchamp mad. No such grotesque old monster as Dr. Shrapnel had he seen +in the course of his travels. He had never listened to a madman running +loose who was at all up to Beauchamp. At a loss for words to paint him, +he said: 'Beauchamp seems to have a head like a firework manufactory, +he's perfectly pyrocephalic.' For an example of Dr. Shrapnel's talk: +'I happened,' said Mr. Tuckham, 'casually, meaning no harm, and not +supposing I was throwing a lighted match on powder, to mention the +word Providence. I found myself immediately confronted by +Shrapnel--overtopped, I should say. He is a lank giant of about seven +feet in height; the kind of show man that used to go about in caravans +over the country; and he began rocking over me like a poplar in a gale, +and cries out: "Stay there! away with that! Providence? Can you set a +thought on Providence, not seeking to propitiate it? And have you not +there the damning proof that you are at the foot of an Idol?"--The old +idea about a special Providence, I suppose. These fellows have nothing +new but their trimmings. And he went on with: "Ay, invisible," and his +arm chopping, "but an Idol! an Idol!"--I was to think of "nought but +Laws." He admitted there might be one above the Laws. "To realize him +is to fry the brains in their pan," says he, and struck his forehead--a +slap: and off he walked down the garden, with his hands at his +coat-tails. I venture to say it may be taken for a proof of incipient +insanity to care to hear such a fellow twice. And Beauchamp holds him up +for a sage and a prophet!' + +'He is a very dangerous dog,' said Colonel Halkett. + +'The best of it is--and I take this for the strongest possible proof +that Beauchamp is mad--Shrapnel stands for an advocate of morality +against him. I'll speak of it....' + +Mr. Tuckham nodded to the colonel, who said: 'Speak out. My daughter has +been educated for a woman of the world.' + +'Well, sir, it's nothing to offend a young lady's ears. Beauchamp is for +socially enfranchising the sex--that is all. Quite enough. Not a whit +politically. Love is to be the test: and if a lady ceases to love her +husband... if she sets her fancy elsewhere, she's bound to leave him. +The laws are tyrannical, our objections are cowardly. Well, this Dr. +Shrapnel harangued about society; and men as well as women are to +sacrifice their passions on that altar. If he could burlesque himself it +would be in coming out as a cleric--the old Pagan!' + +'Did he convince Captain Beauchamp?' the colonel asked, manifestly for +his daughter to hear the reply; which was: 'Oh dear, no!' + +'Were you able to gather from Captain Beauchamp's remarks whether he is +much disappointed by the result of the election?' said Cecilia. + +Mr. Tuckham could tell her only that Captain Beauchamp was incensed +against an elector named Tomlinson for withdrawing a promised vote +on account of lying rumours, and elated by the conquest of a Mr. +Carpendike, who was reckoned a tough one to drag by the neck. 'The +only sane people in the house are a Miss Denham and the cook: I lunched +there,' Mr. Tuckham nodded approvingly. 'Lydiard must be mad. What he's +wasting his time there for I can't guess. He says he's engaged there +in writing a prefatory essay to a new publication of Harry Denham's +poems--whoever that may be. And why wasting it there? I don't like it. +He ought to be earning his bread. He'll be sure to be borrowing money +by-and-by. We've got ten thousand too many fellows writing already, and +they 've seen a few inches of the world, on the Continent! He can write. +But it's all unproductive-dead weight on the country, these fellows +with their writings! He says Beauchamp's praise of Miss Denham is quite +deserved. He tells me, that at great peril to herself--and she nearly +had her arm broken by a stone he saved Shrapnel from rough usage on the +election-day.' + +'Hum!' Colonel Halkett grunted significantly. + +'So I thought,' Mr. Tuckham responded. 'One doesn't want the man to +be hurt, but he ought to be put down in some way. My belief is he's a +Fire-worshipper. I warrant I would extinguish him if he came before me. +He's an incendiary, at any rate.' + +'Do you think,' said Cecilia, 'that Captain Beauchamp is now satisfied +with his experience of politics?' + +'Dear me, no,' said Mr. Tuckham. 'It's the opening of a campaign. He's +off to the North, after he has been to Sussex and Bucks. He's to be at +it all his life. One thing he shows common sense in. If I heard him once +I heard him say half-a-dozen times, that he must have money:--"I must +have money!" And so he must if he 's to head the Radicals. He wants to +start a newspaper! Is he likely to get money from his uncle Romfrey?' + +'Not for his present plan of campaign.' Colonel Halkett enunciated the +military word sarcastically. 'Let's hope he won't get money.' + +'He says he must have it.' + +'Who is to stand and deliver, then?' + +'I don't know; I only repeat what he says: unless he has an eye on +my Aunt Beauchamp; and I doubt his luck there, if he wants money for +political campaigning.' + +'Money!' Colonel Halkett ejaculated. + +That word too was in the heart of the heiress. + +Nevil must have money! Could he have said it? Ordinary men might say or +think it inoffensively; Captain Baskelett, for instance: but not Nevil +Beauchamp. + +Captain Baskelett, as she had conveyed the information to her father for +his comfort in the dumb domestic language familiar between them on +these occasions, had proposed to her unavailingly. Italian and English +gentlemen were in the list of her rejected suitors: and hitherto she had +seen them come and go, one might say, from a watchtower in the skies. +None of them was the ideal she waited for: what their feelings were, +their wishes, their aims, she had not reflected on. They dotted the +landscape beneath the unassailable heights, busy after their fashion, +somewhat quaint, much like the pigmy husbandmen in the fields were to +the giant's daughter, who had more curiosity than Cecilia. But Nevil +Beauchamp had compelled her to quit her lofty station, pulled her low +as the littlest of women that throb and flush at one man's footstep: and +being well able to read the nature and aspirations of Captain Baskelett, +it was with the knowledge of her having been proposed to as heiress of a +great fortune that she chanced to hear of Nevil's resolve to have money. +If he did say it! And was anything likelier? was anything unlikelier? +His foreign love denied to him, why, now he devoted himself to money: +money--the last consideration of a man so single-mindedly generous as +he! But he must have money to pursue his contest! But would he forfeit +the truth in him for money for any purpose? + +The debate on this question grew as incessant as the thought of him. Was +it not to be supposed that the madness of the pursuit of his political +chimaera might change his character? + +She hoped he would not come to Mount Laurels, thinking she should esteem +him less if he did; knowing that her defence of him, on her own behalf, +against herself, depended now on an esteem lodged perhaps in her +wilfulness. Yet if he did not come, what an Arctic world! + +He came on a November afternoon when the woods glowed, and no sun. The +day was narrowed in mist from earth to heaven: a moveless and possessing +mist. It left space overhead for one wreath of high cloud mixed with +touches of washed red upon moist blue, still as the mist, insensibly +passing into it. Wet webs crossed the grass, chill in the feeble light. +The last flowers of the garden bowed to decay. Dead leaves, red and +brown and spotted yellow, fell straight around the stems of trees, lying +thick. The glow was universal, and the chill. + +Cecilia sat sketching the scene at a window of her study, on the level +of the drawing-room, and he stood by outside till she saw him. He +greeted her through the glass, then went round to the hall door, giving +her time to recover, if only her heart had been less shaken. + +Their meeting was like the features of the day she set her brush to +picture: characteristic of a season rather than cheerless in +tone, though it breathed little cheer. Is there not a pleasure in +contemplating that which is characteristic? Her unfinished sketch +recalled him after he had gone: he lived in it, to startle her again, +and bid her heart gallop and her cheeks burn. The question occurred to +her: May not one love, not craving to be beloved? Such a love does not +sap our pride, but supports it; increases rather than diminishes our +noble self-esteem. To attain such a love the martyrs writhed up to the +crown of saints. For a while Cecilia revelled in the thought that she +could love in this most saint-like manner. How they fled, the sordid +ideas of him which accused him of the world's one passion, and were +transferred to her own bosom in reproach that she should have imagined +them existing in his! He talked simply and sweetly of his defeat, of +time wasted away from the canvass, of loss of money: and he had little +to spare, he said. The water-colour drawing interested him. He said +he envied her that power of isolation, and the eye for beauty in every +season. She opened a portfolio of Mr. Tuckham's water-colour drawings in +every clime; scenes of Europe, Asia, and the Americas; and he was to +be excused for not caring to look through them. His remark, that they +seemed hard and dogged, was not so unjust, she thought, smiling to +think of the critic criticized. His wonderment that a young man like his +Lancastrian cousin should be 'an unmitigated Tory' was perhaps natural. + +Cecilia said, 'Yet I cannot discern in him a veneration for +aristocracy.' 'That's not wanted for modern Toryism,' said Nevil. 'One +may venerate old families when they show the blood of the founder, and +are not dead wood. I do. And I believe the blood of the founder, though +the man may have been a savage and a robber, had in his day finer +elements in it than were common. But let me say at a meeting that I +respect true aristocracy, I hear a growl and a hiss beginning: why? +Don't judge them hastily: because the people have seen the aristocracy +opposed to the cause that was weak, and only submitting to it when it +commanded them to resist at their peril; clinging to traditions, and +not anywhere standing for humanity: much more a herd than the people +themselves. Ah! well, we won't talk of it now. I say that is no +aristocracy, if it does not head the people in virtue--military, +political, national: I mean the qualities required by the times for +leadership. I won't bother you with my ideas now. I love to see you +paint-brush in hand.' + +Her brush trembled on the illumination of a scarlet maple. 'In this +country we were not originally made free and equal by decree, Nevil.' + +'No,' said he, 'and I cast no blame on our farthest ancestors.' + +It struck her that this might be an outline of a reply to Mr. Austin. + +'So you have been thinking over it?' he asked. + +'Not to conclusions,' she said, trying to retain in her mind the +evanescent suggestiveness of his previous remark, and vexed to find +herself upon nothing but a devious phosphorescent trail there. + +Her forehead betrayed the unwonted mental action. He cried out for +pardon. 'What right have I to bother you? I see it annoys you. The truth +is, I came for peace. I think of you when they talk of English homes.' + +She felt then that he was comparing her home with another, a foreign +home. After he had gone she felt that there had been a comparison of two +persons. She remembered one of his observations: 'Few women seem to have +courage'; when his look at her was for an instant one of scrutiny +or calculation. Under a look like that we perceive that we are being +weighed. She had no clue to tell her what it signified. + +Glorious and solely glorious love, that has risen above emotion, quite +independent of craving! That is to be the bird of upper air, poised +on his wings. It is a home in the sky. Cecilia took possession of it +systematically, not questioning whether it would last; like one who is +too enamoured of the habitation to object to be a tenant-at-will. If it +was cold, it was in recompense immeasurably lofty, a star-girdled place; +and dwelling in it she could avow to herself the secret which was now +working self-deception, and still preserve her pride unwounded. Her +womanly pride, she would have said in vindication of it: but Cecilia +Halkett's pride went far beyond the merely womanly. + +Thus she was assisted to endure a journey down to Wales, where Nevil +would surely not be. She passed a Winter without seeing him. She +returned to Mount Laurels from London at Easter, and went on a visit to +Steynham, and back to London, having sight of him nowhere, still firm +in the thought that she loved ethereally, to bless, forgive, direct, +encourage, pray for him, impersonally. She read certain speeches +delivered by Nevil at assemblies of Liberals or Radicals, which were +reported in papers in the easy irony of the style of here and there a +sentence, here and there a summary: salient quotations interspersed +with running abstracts: a style terrible to friends of the speaker so +reported, overwhelming if they differ in opinion: yet her charity was a +match for it. She was obliged to have recourse to charity, it should +be observed. Her father drew her attention to the spectacle of R. C. S. +Nevil Beauchamp, Commander R.N., fighting those reporters with letters +in the newspapers, and the dry editorial comment flanked by three stars +on the left. He was shocked to see a gentleman writing such letters to +the papers. 'But one thing hangs on another,' said he. + +'But you seem angry with Nevil, papa,' said she. + +'I do hate a turbulent, restless fellow, my dear,' the colonel burst +out. + +'Papa, he has really been unfairly reported.' + +Cecilia laid three privately-printed full reports of Commander +Beauchamp's speeches (very carefully corrected by him) before her +father. + +He suffered his eye to run down a page. 'Is it possible you read +this?--this trash!--dangerous folly, I call it.' + +Cecilia's reply, 'In the interests of justice, I do,' was meant to +express her pure impartiality. By a toleration of what is detested we +expose ourselves to the keenness of an adverse mind. + +'Does he write to you, too?' said the colonel. + +She answered: 'Oh, no; I am not a politician.' + +'He seems to have expected you to read those tracts of his, though.' + +'Yes, I think he would convert me if he could,' said Cecilia. + +'Though you're not a politician.' + +'He relies on the views he delivers in public, rather than on writing to +persuade; that was my meaning, papa.' + +'Very well,' said the colonel, not caring to show his anxiety. + +Mr. Tuckham dined with them frequently in London. This gentleman +betrayed his accomplishments one by one. He sketched, and was no artist; +he planted, and was no gardener; he touched the piano neatly, and was no +musician; he sang, and he had no voice. Apparently he tried his hand at +anything, for the privilege of speaking decisively upon all things. He +accompanied the colonel and his daughter on a day's expedition to Mrs. +Beauchamp, on the Upper Thames, and they agreed that he shone to +great advantage in her society. Mrs. Beauchamp said she had seen her +great-nephew Nevil, but without a comment on his conduct or his person; +grave silence. Reflecting on it, Cecilia grew indignant at the thought +that Mr. Tuckham might have been acting a sinister part. Mrs. Beauchamp +alluded to a newspaper article of her favourite great-nephew Blackburn, +written, Cecilia knew through her father, to controvert some tremendous +proposition of Nevil's. That was writing, Mrs. Beauchamp said. 'I am not +in the habit of fearing a conflict, so long as we have stout defenders. +I rather like it,' she said. + +The colonel entertained Mrs. Beauchamp, while Mr. Tuckham led Miss +Halkett over the garden. Cecilia considered that his remarks upon Nevil +were insolent. + +'Seriously, Miss Halkett, to take him at his best, he is a very good +fellow, I don't doubt; I am told so; and a capital fellow among men, +a good friend and not a bad boon-fellow, and for that matter, the +smoking-room is a better test than the drawing-room; all he wants is +emphatically school--school--school. I have recommended the simple +iteration of that one word in answer to him at his meetings, and the +printing of it as a foot-note to his letters.' + +Cecilia's combative spirit precipitated her to say, 'I hear the mob in +it shouting Captain Beauchamp down.' + +'Ay,' said Mr. Tuckham, 'it would be setting the mob to shout wisely at +last.' + +'The mob is a wild beast.' + +'Then we should hear wisdom coming out of the mouth of the wild beast.' + +'Men have the phrase, "fair play."' + +'Fair play, I say, is not applicable to a man who deliberately goes +about to stir the wild beast. He is laughed at, plucked, hustled, and +robbed, by those who deafen him with their "plaudits"--their roars. +Did you see his advertisement of a great-coat, lost at some rapscallion +gathering down in the North, near my part of the country? A great-coat +and a packet of letters. He offers a reward of L10. But that's honest +robbery compared with the bleeding he'll get.' + +'Do you know Mr. Seymour Austin?' Miss Halkett asked him. + +'I met him once at your father's table. Why?' + +'I think you would like to listen to him.' + +'Yes, my fault is not listening enough,' said Mr. Tuckham. + +He was capable of receiving correction. + +Her father told her he was indebted to Mr. Tuckham past payment in coin, +for services rendered by him on a trying occasion among the miners +in Wales during the first spring month. 'I dare say he can speak +effectively to miners,' Cecilia said, outvying the contemptuous young +man in superciliousness, but with effort and not with satisfaction. + +She left London in July, two days before her father could be induced +to return to Mount Laurels. Feverish, and strangely subject to caprices +now, she chose the longer way round by Sussex, and alighted at the +station near Steynham to call on Mrs. Culling, whom she knew to be at +the Hall, preparing it for Mr. Romfrey's occupation. In imitation of +her father she was Rosamund's fast friend, though she had never quite +realized her position, and did not thoroughly understand her. Would it +not please her father to hear that she had chosen the tedious route for +the purpose of visiting this lady, whose champion he was? + +So she went to Steynham, and for hours she heard talk of no one, +of nothing, but her friend Nevil. Cecilia was on her guard against +Rosamund's defence of his conduct in France. The declaration that there +had been no misbehaviour at all could not be accepted; but the news +of Mr. Romfrey's having installed Nevil in Holdesbury to manage that +property, and of his having mooted to her father the question of an +alliance between her and Nevil, was wonderful. Rosamund could not say +what answer her father had made: hardly favourable, Cecilia supposed, +since he had not spoken of the circumstance to her. But Mr. Romfrey's +influence with him would certainly be powerful. + +It was to be assumed, also, that Nevil had been consulted by his uncle. +Rosamund said full-heartedly that this alliance had for years been her +life's desire, and then she let the matter pass, nor did she once loop +at Cecilia searchingly, or seem to wish to probe her. Cecilia disagreed +with Rosamund on an insignificant point in relation to something +Mr. Romfrey and Captain Baskelett had done, and, as far as she could +recollect subsequently, there was a packet of letters, or a pocket-book +containing letters of Nevil's which he had lost, and which had been +forwarded to Mr. Romfrey; for the pocket-book was originally his, and +his address was printed inside. But among these letters was one from +Dr. Shrapnel to Nevil: a letter so horrible that Rosamund frowned at the +reminiscence of it, holding it to be too horrible for the quotation of +a sentence. She owned she had forgotten any three consecutive words. Her +known dislike of Captain Baskelett, however, was insufficient to make +her see that it was unjustifiable in him to run about London reading it, +with comments of the cruellest. Rosamund's greater detestation of Dr. +Shrapnel blinded her to the offence committed by the man she would +otherwise have been very ready to scorn. So small did the circumstance +appear to Cecilia, notwithstanding her gentle opposition at the time she +listened to it, that she never thought of mentioning it to her father, +and only remembered it when Captain Baskelett, with Lord Palmet in his +company, presented himself at Mount Laurels, and proposed to the colonel +to read to him 'a letter from that scoundrelly old Shrapnel to Nevil +Beauchamp, upon women, wives, thrones, republics, British loyalty, +et caetera,'--an et caetera that rolled a series of tremendous +reverberations down the list of all things held precious by freeborn +Englishmen. + +She would have prevented the reading. But the colonel would have it. + +'Read on,' said he. 'Mr. Romfrey saw no harm.' + +Captain Baskelett held up Dr. Shrapnel's letter to Commander Beauchamp, +at about half a yard's distance on the level of his chin, as a +big-chested singer in a concert-room holds his music-scroll. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX. THE EPISTLE OF DR. SHRAPNEL TO COMMANDER BEAUCHAMP + +Before we give ear to the recital of Dr. Shrapnel's letter to his pupil +in politics by the mouth of Captain Baskelett, it is necessary to defend +this gentleman, as he would handsomely have defended himself, from the +charge that he entertained ultimate designs in regard to the really +abominable scrawl, which was like a child's drawing of ocean with here +and there a sail capsized, and excited his disgust almost as much as +did the contents his great indignation. He was prepared to read it, and +stood blown out for the task, but it was temporarily too much for him. +'My dear Colonel, look at it, I entreat you,' he said, handing the +letter for exhibition, after fixing his eye-glass, and dropping it in +repulsion. The common sentiment of mankind is offended by heterodoxy in +mean attire; for there we see the self-convicted villain--the criminal +caught in the act; we try it and convict it by instinct without the +ceremony of a jury; and so thoroughly aware of our promptitude in this +respect has our arch-enemy become since his mediaeval disgraces that his +particular advice to his followers is now to scrupulously copy the world +in externals; never to appear poorly clothed, nor to impart deceptive +communications in bad handwriting. We can tell black from white, and our +sagacity has taught him a lesson. + +Colonel Halkett glanced at the detestable penmanship. Lord Palmet did +the same, and cried, 'Why, it's worse than mine!' + +Cecilia had protested against the reading of the letter, and she +declined to look at the writing. She was entreated, adjured to look, in +Captain Baskelett's peculiarly pursuing fashion; a 'nay, but you shall,' +that she had been subjected to previously, and would have consented to +run like a schoolgirl to escape from. + +To resume the defence of him: he was a man incapable of forming plots, +because his head would not hold them. He was an impulsive man, who could +impale a character of either sex by narrating fables touching persons +of whom he thought lightly, and that being done he was devoid of malice, +unless by chance his feelings or his interests were so aggrieved that +his original haphazard impulse was bent to embrace new circumstances and +be the parent of a line of successive impulses, in the main resembling +an extremely far-sighted plot, whereat he gazed back with fondness, all +the while protesting sincerely his perfect innocence of anything of +the kind. Circumstances will often interwind with the moods of simply +irritated men. In the present instance he could just perceive what might +immediately come of his reading out of this atrocious epistle wherein +Nevil Beauchamp was displayed the dangling puppet of a mountebank +wire-pulley, infidel, agitator, leveller, and scoundrel. Cognizant +of Mr. Romfrey's overtures to Colonel Halkett, he traced them to that +scheming woman in the house at Steynham, and he was of opinion that it +was a friendly and good thing to do to let the old colonel and Cissy +Halkett know Mr. Nevil through a bit of his correspondence. This, then, +was a matter of business and duty that furnished an excuse for his going +out of his, way to call at Mount Laurels on the old familiar footing, so +as not to alarm the heiress. + +A warrior accustomed to wear the burnished breastplates between London +and Windsor has, we know, more need to withstand than to discharge +the shafts of amorous passion; he is indeed, as an object of beauty, +notoriously compelled to be of the fair sex in his tactics, and must +practise the arts and whims of nymphs to preserve himself: and no doubt +it was the case with the famous Captain Baskelett, in whose mind sweet +ladies held the place that the pensive politician gives to the masses, +dreadful in their hatred, almost as dreadful in their affection. But an +heiress is a distinct species among women; he hungered for the heiress; +his elevation to Parliament made him regard her as both the ornament and +the prop of his position; and it should be added that his pride, all +the habits of thought of a conqueror of women, had been shocked by that +stupefying rejection of him, which Cecilia had intimated to her father +with the mere lowering of her eyelids. Conceive the highest bidder at an +auction hearing the article announce that it will not have him! Captain +Baskelett talked of it everywhere for a month or so:--the girl could +not know her own mind, for she suited him exactly! and he requested the +world to partake of his astonishment. Chronicles of the season in London +informed him that he was not the only fellow to whom the gates were +shut. She could hardly be thinking of Nevil? However, let the epistle be +read. 'Now for the Shrapnel shot,' he nodded finally to Colonel Halkett, +expanded his bosom, or natural cuirass, as before-mentioned, and was +vocable above the common pitch:-- + + '"MY BRAVE BEAUCHAMP,--On with your mission, and never a summing of + results in hand, nor thirst for prospects, nor counting upon + harvests; for seed sown in faith day by day is the nightly harvest + of the soul, and with the soul we work. With the soul we see."' + +Captain Baskelett intervened: 'Ahem! I beg to observe that this +delectable rubbish is underlined by old Nevil's pencil.' He promised +to do a little roaring whenever it occurred, and continued with ghastly +false accentuation, an intermittent sprightliness and depression of tone +in the wrong places. + +'"The soul," et caetera. Here we are! + + "Desires to realize our gains are akin to the passion of usury; + these are tricks of the usurer to grasp his gold in act and + imagination. Have none of them. Work at the people!" +--At them, remark--! + + "Moveless do they seem to you? Why, so is the earth to the sowing + husbandman, and though we cannot forecast a reaping season, we have + in history durable testification that our seasons come in the souls + of men, yea, as a planet that we have set in motion, and faster and + faster are we spinning it, and firmer and firmer shall we set it to + regularity of revolution. That means life!" +--Shrapnel roars: you will have Nevil in a minute. + + "Recognize that now we have bare life; at best for the bulk of men + the Saurian lizard's broad back soaking and roasting in primeval + slime; or say, in the so-called teachers of men, as much of life as + pricks the frog in March to stir and yawn, and up on a flaccid leap + that rolls him over some three inches nearer to the ditchwater + besought by his instinct." + +'I ask you, did you ever hear? The flaccid frog! But on we go.' + + '"Professors, prophets, masters, each hitherto has had his creed and + system to offer, good mayhap for the term; and each has put it forth + for the truth everlasting, to drive the dagger to the heart of time, + and put the axe to human growth!--that one circle of wisdom issuing + of the experience and needs of their day, should act the despot over + all other circles for ever!--so where at first light shone to light + the yawning frog to his wet ditch, there, with the necessitated + revolution of men's minds in the course of ages, darkness radiates." + +'That's old Nevil. Upon my honour, I haven't a notion of what it all +means, and I don't believe the old rascal Shrapnel has himself. And pray +be patient, my dear colonel. You will find him practical presently. I'll +skip, if you tell me to. Darkness radiates, does it! + + '"The creed that rose in heaven sets below; and where we had an + angel we have claw-feet and fangs. Ask how that is! The creed is + much what it was when the followers diverged it from the Founder. + But humanity is not where it was when that creed was food and + guidance. Creeds will not die not fighting. We cannot root them up + out of us without blood." + +'He threatens blood!--' + + '"Ours, my Beauchamp, is the belief that humanity advances beyond + the limits of creeds, is to be tied to none. We reverence the + Master in his teachings; we behold the limits of him in his creed-- + and that is not his work. We truly are his disciples, who see how + far it was in him to do service; not they that made of his creed a + strait-jacket for humanity. So, in our prayers we dedicate the + world to God, not calling him great for a title, no--showing him we + know him great in a limitless world, lord of a truth we tend to, + have not grasped. I say Prayer is good. I counsel it to you again + and again: in joy, in sickness of heart. The infidel will not pray; + the creed-slave prays to the image in his box."' + +'I've had enough!' Colonel Halkett ejaculated. + +'"We,"' Captain Baskelett put out his hand for silence with an ineffable +look of entreaty, for here was Shrapnel's hypocrisy in full bloom: + + '"We make prayer a part of us, praying for no gifts, no + interventions; through the faith in prayer opening the soul to the + undiscerned. And take this, my Beauchamp, for the good in prayer, + that it makes us repose on the unknown with confidence, makes us + flexible to change, makes us ready for revolution--for life, then! + He who has the fountain of prayer in him will not complain of + hazards. Prayer is the recognition of laws; the soul's exercise and + source of strength; its thread of conjunction with them. Prayer for + an object is the cajolery of an idol; the resource of superstition. + There you misread it, Beauchamp. We that fight the living world + must have the universal for succour of the truth in it. Cast forth + the soul in prayer, you meet the effluence of the outer truth, you + join with the creative elements giving breath to you; and that crust + of habit which is the soul's tomb; and custom, the soul's tyrant; + and pride, our volcano-peak that sinks us in a crater; and fear, + which plucks the feathers from the wings of the soul and sits it + naked and shivering in a vault, where the passing of a common + hodman's foot above sounds like the king of terrors coming,--you are + free of them, you live in the day and for the future, by this + exercise and discipline of the soul's faith. Me it keeps young + everlastingly, like the fountain of..."' + +'I say I cannot sit and hear any more of it!' exclaimed the colonel, +chafing out of patience. + +Lord Palmet said to Miss Halkett: 'Isn't it like what we used to +remember of a sermon?' + +Cecilia waited for her father to break away, but Captain Baskelett had +undertaken to skip, and was murmuring in sing-song some of the phrases +that warned him off: + +'"History--Bible of Humanity;... Permanency--enthusiast's +dream--despot's aim--clutch of dead men's fingers in live flesh... Man +animal; man angel; man rooted; man winged":... Really, all this is too +bad. Ah! here we are: "At them with outspeaking, Beauchamp!" Here we +are, colonel, and you will tell me whether you think it treasonable or +not. "At them," et caetera: "We have signed no convention to respect +their"--he speaks of Englishmen, Colonel Halkett--"their passive +idolatries; a people with whom a mute conformity is as good as worship, +but a word of dissent holds you up to execration; and only for the +freedom won in foregone days their hate would be active. As we have them +in their present stage,"--old Nevil's mark--"We are not parties to the +tacit agreement to fill our mouths and shut our eyes. We speak because +it is better they be roused to lapidate us than soused in their sty, +with none to let them hear they live like swine, craving only not to be +disturbed at the trough. The religion of this vast English middle-class +ruling the land is Comfort. It is their central thought; their idea of +necessity; their sole aim. Whatsoever ministers to Comfort, seems to +belong to it, pretends to support it, they yield their passive worship +to. Whatsoever alarms it they join to crush. There you get at their +point of unity. They will pay for the security of Comfort, calling +it national worship, or national defence, if too much money is not +subtracted from the means of individual comfort: if too much foresight +is not demanded for the comfort of their brains. Have at them there. +Speak. Moveless as you find them, they are not yet all gross clay, and +I say again, the true word spoken has its chance of somewhere alighting +and striking root. Look not to that. Seeds perish in nature; good men +fail. Look to the truth in you, and deliver it, with no afterthought of +hope, for hope is dogged by dread; we give our courage as hostage for +the fulfilment of what we hope. Meditate on that transaction. Hope +is for boys and girls, to whom nature is kind. For men to hope is +to tremble. Let prayer--the soul's overflow, the heart's +resignation--supplant it..." + +'Pardon, colonel; I forgot to roar, but old Nevil marks all down that +page for encomium,' said Captain Baskelett. 'Oh! here we are. English +loyalty is the subject. Now, pray attend to this, colonel. Shrapnel +communicates to Beauchamp that if ten Beauchamps were spouting over +the country without intermission he might condescend to hope. So on--to +British loyalty. We are, so long as our sovereigns are well-conducted +persons, and we cannot unseat them--observe; he is eminently explicit, +the old traitor!--we are to submit to the outward forms of respect, but +we are frankly to say we are Republicans; he has the impudence to +swear that England is a Republican country, and calls our thoroughgoing +loyalty--yours and mine, colonel--disloyalty. Hark: "Where kings lead, +it is to be supposed they are wanted. Service is the noble office on +earth, and where kings do service let them take the first honours of the +State: but"--hark at this--"the English middle-class, which has absorbed +the upper, and despises, when it is not quaking before it, the lower, +will have nothing above it but a ricketty ornament like that you see on +a confectioner's twelfth-cake."' + +'The man deserves hanging!' said Colonel Halkett. + +'Further, my dear colonel, and Nevil marks it pretty much throughout: +"This loyalty smacks of a terrible perfidy. Pass the lords and squires; +they are old trees, old foundations, or joined to them, whether old or +new; they naturally apprehend dislocation when a wind blows, a river +rises, or a man speaks;--that comes of age or aping age: their hearts +are in their holdings! For the loyalty of the rest of the land, it is +the shopkeeper's loyalty, which is to be computed by the exact annual +sum of his net profits. It is now at high tide. It will last with +the prosperity of our commerce."--The insolent old vagabond!--"Let +commercial disasters come on us, and what of the loyalty now paying +its hundreds of thousands, and howling down questioners! In a day +of bankruptcies, how much would you bid for the loyalty of a class +shivering under deprivation of luxuries, with its God Comfort beggared? +Ay, my Beauchamp,"--the most offensive thing to me is that "my +Beauchamp," but old Nevil has evidently given himself up hand and +foot to this ruffian--"ay, when you reflect that fear of the so-called +rabble, i.e. the people, the unmoneyed class, which knows not Comfort, +tastes not of luxuries, is the main component of their noisy frigid +loyalty, and that the people are not with them but against, and yet +that the people might be won by visible forthright kingly service to a +loyalty outdoing theirs as the sun the moon; ay, that the people verily +thirst to love and reverence; and that their love is the only love worth +having, because it is disinterested love, and endures, and takes heat in +adversity,--reflect on it and wonder at the inversion of things! So +with a Church. It lives if it is at home with the poor. In the arms of +enriched shopkeepers it rots, goes to decay in vestments--vestments! +flakes of mummy-wraps for it! or else they use it for one of their +political truncheons--to awe the ignorant masses: I quote them. So. Not +much ahead of ancient Egyptians in spirituality or in priestcraft! They +call it statesmanship. O for a word for it! Let Palsy and Cunning go to +form a word. Deadmanship, I call it."--To quote my uncle the baron, this +is lunatic dribble!--"Parsons and princes are happy with the homage of +this huge passive fleshpot class. It is enough for them. Why not? The +taxes are paid and the tithes. Whilst commercial prosperity lasts!"' + +Colonel Halkett threw his arms aloft. + + '"Meanwhile, note this: the people are the Power to come. + Oppressed, unprotected, abandoned; left to the ebb and flow of the + tides of the market, now taken on to work, now cast off to starve, + committed to the shifting laws of demand and supply, slaves of + Capital-the whited name for old accursed. Mammon: and of all the + ranked and black-uniformed host no pastor to come out of the + association of shepherds, and proclaim before heaven and man the + primary claim of their cause; they are, I say, the power, worth the + seduction of by another Power not mighty in England now: and likely + in time to set up yet another Power not existing in England now. + What if a passive comfortable clergy hand them over to men on the + models of Irish pastors, who will succour, console, enfold, champion + them? what if, when they have learnt to use their majority, sick of + deceptions and the endless pulling of interests, they raise ONE + representative to force the current of action with an authority as + little fictitious as their preponderance of numbers? The despot and + the priest! There I see our danger, Beauchamp. You and I and some + dozen labour to tie and knot them to manliness. We are few; they + are many and weak. Rome offers them real comfort in return for + their mites in coin, and--poor souls! mites in conscience, many of + them. A Tyrant offers them to be directly their friend. Ask, + Beauchamp, why they should not have comfort for pay as well as the + big round--"' + +Captain Baskelett stopped and laid the letter out for Colonel Halkett to +read an unmentionable word, shamelessly marked by Nevil's pencil: + + "--belly-class!" Ask, too, whether the comfort they wish for is not + approaching divine compared with the stagnant fleshliness of that + fat shopkeeper's Comfort. + + '"Warn the people of this. Ay, warn the clergy. It is not only the + poor that are caught by ranters. Endeavour to make those + accommodating shepherds understand that they stand a chance of + losing rich as well as poor! It should awaken them. The helpless + poor and the uneasy rich are alike open to the seductions of Romish + priests and intoxicated ranters. I say so it will be if that band + of forty thousand go on slumbering and nodding. They walk in a + dream. The flesh is a dream. The soul only is life." + +'Now for you, colonel. + + '"No extension of the army--no! A thousand times no. Let India go, + then! Good for India that we hold India? Ay, good: but not at such + a cost as an extra tax, or compulsory service of our working man. + If India is to be held for the good of India, throw open India to + the civilized nations, that they help us in a task that overstrains + us. At present India means utter perversion of the policy of + England. Adrift India! rather than England red-coated. We dissent, + Beauchamp! For by-and-by." + +'That is,' Captain Baskelett explained, 'by-and-by Shrapnel will have +old Nevil fast enough.' + +'Is there more of it?' said Colonel Halkett, flapping his forehead for +coolness. + +'The impudence of this dog in presuming to talk about India!--eh, +colonel? Only a paragraph or two more: I skip a lot.... Ah! here we +are.' Captain Baskelett read to himself and laughed in derision: 'He +calls our Constitution a compact unsigned by the larger number involved +in it. What's this? "A band of dealers in fleshpottery." Do you detect +a gleam of sense? He underscores it. Then he comes to this': Captain +Baskelett requested Colonel Halkett to read for himself: 'The stench of +the trail of Ego in our History.' + +The colonel perused it with an unsavoury expression of his features, and +jumped up. + +'Oddly, Mr. Romfrey thought this rather clever,' said Captain Baskelett, +and read rapidly: + + '"Trace the course of Ego for them: first the king who conquers and + can govern. In his egoism he dubs him holy; his family is of a + selected blood; he makes the crown hereditary--Ego. Son by son the + shame of egoism increases; valour abates; hereditary Crown, no + hereditary qualities. The Barons rise. They in turn hold sway, and + for their order--Ego. The traders overturn them: each class rides + the classes under it while it can. It is ego--ego, the fountain + cry, origin, sole source of war! Then death to ego, I say! If + those traders had ruled for other than ego, power might have rested + with them on broad basis enough to carry us forward for centuries. + The workmen have ever been too anxious to be ruled. Now comes on + the workman's era. Numbers win in the end: proof of small wisdom in + the world. Anyhow, with numbers there is rough nature's wisdom and + justice. With numbers ego is inter-dependent and dispersed; it is + universalized. Yet these may require correctives. If so, they will + have it in a series of despots and revolutions that toss, mix, and + bind the classes together: despots, revolutions; panting + alternations of the quickened heart of humanity." + +'Marked by our friend Nevil in notes of admiration.' + +'Mad as the writer,' groaned Colonel Halkett. 'Never in my life have I +heard such stuff.' + +'Stay, colonel; here's Shrapnel defending Morality and Society,' said +Captain Baskelett. + +Colonel Halkett vowed he was under no penal law to listen, and would +not; but Captain Baskelett persuaded him: 'Yes, here it is: I give you +my word. Apparently old Nevil has been standing up for every man's right +to run away with... Yes, really! I give you my word; and here we have +Shrapnel insisting on respect for the marriage laws. Do hear this; here +it is in black and white:-- + + "Society is our one tangible gain, our one roofing and flooring in a + world of most uncertain structures built on morasses. Toward the + laws that support it men hopeful of progress give their adhesion. + If it is martyrdom, what then? Let the martyrdom be. Contumacy is + animalism. And attend to me," says Shrapnel, "the truer the love + the readier for sacrifice! A thousand times yes. Rebellion against + Society, and advocacy of Humanity, run counter. Tell me Society is + the whited sepulchre, that it is blotched, hideous, hollow: and I + say, add not another disfigurement to it; add to the purification of + it. And you, if you answer, what can only one? I say that is the + animal's answer, and applies also to politics, where the question, + what can one? put in the relapsing tone, shows the country decaying + in the individual. Society is the protection of the weaker, + therefore a shield of women, who are our temple of civilization, to + be kept sacred; and he that loves a woman will assuredly esteem and + pity her sex, and not drag her down for another example of their + frailty. Fight this out within you--!" + +But you are right, colonel; we have had sufficient. I shall be getting a +democratic orator's twang, or a crazy parson's, if I go on much further. +He covers thirty-two pages of letter-paper. The conclusion is:--"Jenny +sends you her compliments, respects, and best wishes, and hopes she may +see you before she goes to her friend Clara Sherwin and the General."' + +'Sherwin? Why, General Sherwin's a perfect gentleman,' Colonel Halkett +interjected; and Lord Palmet caught the other name: 'Jenny? That's Miss +Denham, Jenny Denham; an amazingly pretty girl: beautiful thick brown +hair, real hazel eyes, and walks like a yacht before the wind.' + +'Perhaps, colonel, Jenny accounts for the defence of society,' said +Captain Baskelett. 'I have no doubt Shrapnel has a scheme for Jenny. +The old communist and socialist!' He folded up the letter: 'A curious +composition, is it not, Miss Halkett?' + +Cecilia was thinking that he tempted her to be the apologist of even +such a letter. + +'One likes to know the worst, and what's possible,' said the colonel. + +After Captain Baskelett had gone, Colonel Halkett persisted in talking +of the letter, and would have impressed on his daughter that the person +to whom the letter was addressed must be partly responsible for the +contents of it. Cecilia put on the argumentative air of a Court of +Equity to discuss the point with him. + +'Then you defend that letter?' he cried. + +Oh, no: she did not defend the letter; she thought it wicked and +senseless. 'But,' said she, 'the superior strength of men to women seems +to me to come from their examining all subjects, shrinking from none. At +least, I should not condemn Nevil on account of his correspondence.' + +'We shall see,' said her father, sighing rather heavily. 'I must have a +talk with Mr. Romfrey about that letter.' + + + + +CHAPTER XXX. THE BAITING OF DR. SHRAPNEL + +Captain Baskelett went down from Mount Laurels to Bevisham to arrange +for the giving of a dinner to certain of his chief supporters in the +borough, that they might know he was not obliged literally to sit in +Parliament in order to pay a close attention to their affairs. He had +not distinguished himself by a speech during the session, but he had +stored a political precept or two in his memory, and, as he told Lord +Palmet, he thought a dinner was due to his villains. 'The way to manage +your Englishman, Palmet, is to dine him.' As the dinner would decidedly +be dull, he insisted on having Lord Palmet's company. + +They crossed over to the yachting island, where portions of the letter +of Commander Beauchamp's correspondent were read at the Club, under the +verandah, and the question put, whether a man who held those opinions +had a right to wear his uniform. + +The letter was transmitted to Steynham in time to be consigned to the +pocket-book before Beauchamp arrived there on one of his rare visits. +Mr. Romfrey handed him the pocketbook with the frank declaration that he +had read Shrapnel's letter. 'All is fair in war, Sir!' Beauchamp quoted +him ambiguously. + +The thieves had amused Mr. Romfrey by their scrupulous honesty in +returning what was useless to them, while reserving the coat: but +subsequently seeing the advertized reward, they had written to claim it; +and, according to Rosamund Culling, he had been so tickled that he had +deigned to reply to them, very briefly, but very comically. + +Speaking of the matter with her, Beauchamp said (so greatly was he +infatuated with the dangerous man) that the reading of a letter of Dr. +Shrapnel's could do nothing but good to any reflecting human creature: +he admitted that as the lost pocket-book was addressed to Mr. Romfrey, +it might have been by mistake that he had opened it, and read the +topmost letter lying open. But he pressed Rosamund to say whether that +one only had been read. + +'Only Dr. Shrapnel's letter,' Rosamund affirmed. 'The letter from +Normandy was untouched by him.' + +'Untouched by anybody?' + +'Unopened, Nevil. You look incredulous.' + +'Not if I have your word, ma'am.' + +He glanced somewhat contemptuously at his uncle Everard's anachronistic +notions of what was fair in war. + +To prove to him Mr. Romfrey's affectionate interest in his fortunes, +Rosamund mentioned the overtures which had been made to Colonel Halkett +for a nuptial alliance between the two houses; and she said: 'Your uncle +Everard was completely won by your manly way of taking his opposition +to you in Bevisham. He pays for Captain Baskelett, but you and your +fortunes are nearest his heart, Nevil.' + +Beauchamp hung silent. His first remark was, 'Yes, I want money. I must +have money.' By degrees he seemed to warm to some sense of gratitude. +'It was kind of the baron,' he said. + +'He has a great affection for you, Nevil, though you know he spares no +one who chooses to be antagonistic. All that is over. But do you not +second him, Nevil? You admire her? You are not adverse?' + +Beauchamp signified the horrid intermixture of yes and no, frowned in +pain of mind, and Walked up and down. 'There's no living woman I admire +so much.' + +'She has refused the highest matches.' + +'I hold her in every way incomparable.' + +'She tries to understand your political ideas, if she cannot quite +sympathize with them, Nevil. And consider how hard it is for a young +English lady, bred in refinement, to understand such things.' + +'Yes,' Beauchamp nodded; yes. Well, more 's the pity for me!' + +'Ah! Nevil, that fatal Renee!' + +'Ma'am, I acquit you of any suspicion of your having read her letter in +this pocket-book. She wishes me to marry. You would have seen it written +here. She wishes it.' + +'Fly, clipped wing!' murmured Rosamund, and purposely sent a buzz into +her ears to shut out his extravagant talk of Renee's friendly wishes. + +'How is it you women will not believe in the sincerity of a woman!' he +exclaimed. + +'Nevil, I am not alluding to the damage done to your election.' + +'To my candidature, ma'am. You mean those rumours, those lies of the +enemy. Tell me how I could suppose you were alluding to them. You bring +them forward now to justify your charge of "fatal" against her. She has +one fault; she wants courage; she has none other, not one that is not +excuseable. We won't speak of France. What did her father say?' + +'Colonel Halkett? I do not know. He and his daughter come here next +week, and the colonel will expect to meet you here. That does not look +like so positive an objection to you?' + +'To me personally, no,' said Beauchamp. 'But Mr. Romfrey has not told me +that I am to meet them.' + +'Perhaps he has not thought it worth while. It is not his way. He has +asked you to come. You and Miss Halkett will be left to yourselves. Her +father assured Mr. Romfrey that he should not go beyond advising her. +His advice might not be exactly favourable to you at present, but if you +sued and she accepted--and she would, I am convinced she would; she was +here with me, talking of you a whole afternoon, and I have eyes--then +he would not oppose the match, and then I should see you settled, the +husband of the handsomest wife and richest heiress in England.' + +A vision of Cecilia swam before him, gracious in stateliness. + +Two weeks back Renee's expression of a wish that he would marry +had seemed to him an idle sentence in a letter breathing of her own +intolerable situation. The marquis had been struck down by illness. What +if she were to be soon suddenly free? But Renee could not be looking +to freedom, otherwise she never would have written the wish for him to +marry. She wrote perhaps hearing temptation whisper; perhaps wishing +to save herself and him by the aid of a tie that would bring his honour +into play and fix his loyalty. He remembered Dr. Shrapnel's written +words: 'Rebellion against society and advocacy of humanity run counter.' +They had a stronger effect on him than when he was ignorant of his uncle +Everard's plan to match him with Cecilia. He took refuge from them in +the image of that beautiful desolate Renee, born to be beloved, now +wasted, worse than trodden under foot--perverted; a life that looked +to him for direction and resuscitation. She was as good as dead in her +marriage. It was impossible for him ever to think of Renee without the +surprising thrill of his enchantment with her, and tender pity that drew +her closer to him by darkening her brightness. + +Still a man may love his wife. A wife like Cecilia was not to be +imagined coldly. Let the knot once be tied, it would not be regretted, +could not be; hers was a character, and hers a smile, firmly assuring +him of that. + +He told Mr. Romfrey that he should be glad to meet Colonel Halkett and +Cecilia. Business called him to Holdesbury. Thence he betook himself to +Dr. Shrapnel's cottage to say farewell to Jenny Denham previous to her +departure for Switzerland with her friend Clara Sherwin. She had never +seen a snow-mountain, and it was pleasant to him to observe in her eyes, +which he had known weighing and balancing intellectual questions more +than he quite liked, a childlike effort to conjure in imagination the +glories of the Alps. She appeared very happy, only a little anxious +about leaving Dr. Shrapnel with no one to take care of him for a whole +month. Beauchamp promised he would run over to him from Holdesbury, only +an hour by rail, as often as he could. He envied her the sight of the +Alps, he said, and tried to give her an idea of them, from which he +broke off to boast of a famous little Jersey bull that he had won from +a rival, an American, deeply in love with the bull; cutting him out by +telegraph by just five minutes. The latter had examined the bull in the +island and had passed on to Paris, not suspecting there would be haste +to sell him. Beauchamp, seeing the bull advertized, took him on trust, +galloped to the nearest telegraph station forthwith, and so obtained +possession of him; and the bull was now shipped on the voyage. But for +this precious bull, however, and other business, he would have been able +to spend almost the entire month with Dr. Shrapnel, he said regretfully. +Miss Denham on the contrary did not regret his active occupation. The +story of his rush from the breakfast-table to the stables, and gallop +away to the station, while the American Quaker gentleman soberly paced +down a street in Paris on the same errand, in invisible rivalry, touched +her risible fancy. She was especially pleased to think of him living in +harmony with his uncle--that strange, lofty, powerful man, who by plot +or by violence punished opposition to his will, but who must be kind at +heart, as well as forethoughtful of his nephew's good; the assurance +of it being, that when the conflict was at an end he had immediately +installed him as manager of one of his estates, to give his energy play +and make him practically useful. + +The day before she left home was passed by the three in botanizing, some +miles distant from Bevisham, over sand country, marsh and meadow; +Dr. Shrapnel, deep in the science, on one side of her, and Beauchamp, +requiring instruction in the names and properties of every plant and +simple, on the other. It was a day of summer sweetness, gentle laughter, +conversation, and the happiest homeliness. The politicians uttered +barely a syllable of politics. The dinner basket was emptied heartily to +make way for herb and flower, and at night the expedition homeward was +crowned with stars along a road refreshed by mid-day thunder-showers and +smelling of the rain in the dust, past meadows keenly scenting, gardens +giving out their innermost balm and odour. Late at night they drank tea +in Jenny's own garden. They separated a little after two in the morning, +when the faded Western light still lay warm on a bow of sky, and on the +level of the East it quickened. Jenny felt sure she should long for that +yesterday when she was among foreign scenes, even among high Alps-those +mysterious eminences which seemed in her imagination to know of heaven +and have the dawn of a new life for her beyond their peaks. + +Her last words when stepping into the railway carriage were to +Beauchamp: 'Will you take care of him?' She flung her arms round Dr. +Shrapnel's neck, and gazed at him under troubled eyelids which seemed +to be passing in review every vision of possible harm that might come to +him during her absence; and so she continued gazing, and at no one +but Dr. Shrapnel until the bend of the line cut him from her sight. +Beauchamp was a very secondary person on that occasion, and he was +unused to being so in the society of women--unused to find himself +entirely eclipsed by their interest in another. He speculated on it, +wondering at her concentrated fervency; for he had not supposed her to +possess much warmth. + +After she was fairly off on her journey, Dr. Shrapnel mentioned to +Beauchamp a case of a Steynham poacher, whom he had thought it his duty +to supply with means of defence. It was a common poaching case. + +Beauchamp was not surprised that Mr. Romfrey and Dr. Shrapnel should +come to a collision; the marvel was that it had never occurred before, +and Beauchamp said at once: 'Oh, my uncle Mr. Romfrey would rather see +them stand their ground than not.' He was disposed to think well of his +uncle. The Jersey bull called him away to Holdesbury. + +Captain Baskelett heard of this poaching case at Steynham, where he had +to appear in person when he was in want of cheques, and the Bevisham +dinner furnished an excuse for demanding one. He would have preferred a +positive sum annually. Mr. Romfrey, however, though he wrote his cheques +out like the lord he was by nature, exacted the request for them; a +system that kept the gallant gentleman on his good behaviour, probably +at a lower cost than the regular stipend. In handing the cheque to Cecil +Baskelett, Mr. Romfrey spoke of a poacher, of an old poaching family +called the Dicketts, who wanted punishment and was to have it, but Mr. +Romfrey's local lawyer had informed him that the man Shrapnel was, as +usual, supplying the means of defence. For his own part, Mr. Romfrey +said, he had no objection to one rascal's backing another, and Shrapnel +might hit his hardest, only perhaps Nevil might somehow get mixed up +in it, and Nevil was going on quietly now--he had in fact just done +capitally in lassoing with a shot of the telegraph a splendid little +Jersey bull that a Yankee was after: and on the whole it was best to try +to keep him quiet, for he was mad about that man Shrapnel; Shrapnel +was his joss: and if legal knocks came of this business Nevil might be +thinking of interfering: 'Or he and I may be getting to exchange a lot +of shindy letters,' Mr. Romfrey said. 'Tell him I take Shrapnel just +like any other man, and don't want to hear apologies, and I don't mix +him up in it. Tell him if he likes to have an explanation from me, +I'll give it him when he comes here. You can run over to Holdesbury the +morning after your dinner.' + +Captain Baskelett said he would go. He was pleased with his cheque at +the time, but hearing subsequently that Nevil was coming to Steynham to +meet Colonel Halkett and his daughter, he became displeased, considering +it a very silly commission. The more he thought of it the more +ridiculous and unworthy it appeared. He asked himself and Lord Palmet +also why he should have to go to Nevil at Holdesbury to tell him of +circumstances that he would hear of two or three days later at Steynham. +There was no sense in it. The only conclusion for him was that the +scheming woman Culling had determined to bring down every man concerned +in the Bevisham election, and particularly Mr. Romfrey, on his knees +before Nevil. Holdesbury had been placed at his disposal, and the use of +the house in London, which latter would have been extremely serviceable +to Cecil as a place of dinners to the Parliament of Great Britain in +lieu of the speech-making generally expected of Members, and not so +effectively performed. One would think the baron had grown afraid of old +Nevil! He had spoken as if he were. + +Cecil railed unreservedly to Lord Palmet against that woman 'Mistress +Culling,' as it pleased him to term her, and who could be offended by +his calling her so? His fine wit revelled in bestowing titles that were +at once batteries directed upon persons he hated, and entrenchments for +himself. + +At four o'clock on a sultry afternoon he sat at table with his Bevisham +supporters, and pledged them correspondingly in English hotel champagne, +sherry and claret. At seven he was rid of them, but parched and heated, +as he deserved to be, he owned, for drinking the poison. It would be a +good subject for Parliament if he could get it up, he reflected. + +'And now,' said he to Palmet, 'we might be crossing over to the Club +if I hadn't to go about that stupid business to Holdesbury to-morrow +morning. We shall miss the race, or, at least, the start.' + +The idea struck him: 'Ten to one old Nevil 's with Shrapnel,' and no +idea could be more natural. + +'We 'll call on Shrapnel,' said Palmet. 'We shall see Jenny Denham. +He gives her out as his niece. Whatever she is she's a brimming little +beauty. I assure you, Bask, you seldom see so pretty a girl.' + +Wine, which has directed men's footsteps upon more marvellous +adventures, took them to a chemist's shop for a cooling effervescent +draught, and thence through the town to the address, furnished to them +by the chemist, of Dr. Shrapnel on the common. + +Bad wine, which is responsible for the fate of half the dismal bodies +hanging from trees, weltering by rocks, grovelling and bleaching round +the bedabbled mouth of the poet's Cave of Despair, had rendered Captain +Baskelett's temper extremely irascible; so when he caught sight of Dr. +Shrapnel walling in his garden, and perceived him of a giant's height, +his eyes fastened on the writer of the abominable letter with an +exultation peculiar to men having a devil inside them that kicks to be +out. The sun was low, blazing among the thicker branches of the pollard +forest trees, and through sprays of hawthorn. Dr. Shrapnel stopped, +facing the visible master of men, at the end of his walk before he +turned his back to continue the exercise and some discourse he was +holding aloud either to the heavens or bands of invisible men. + +'Ahem, Dr. Shrapnel!' He was accosted twice, the second time +imperiously. + +He saw two gentlemen outside the garden-hedge. + +'I spoke, sir,' said Captain Baskelett. + +'I hear you now, sir,' said the doctor, walking in a parallel line with +them. + +'I desired to know, sir, if you are Dr. Shrapnel?' + +'I am.' + +They arrived at the garden-gate. + +'You have a charming garden, Dr. Shrapnel,' said Lord Palmet, very +affably and loudly, with a steady observation of the cottage windows. + +Dr. Shrapnel flung the gate open. + +Lord Palmet raised his hat and entered, crying loudly, 'A very charming +garden, upon my word!' + +Captain Baskelett followed him, bowing stiffly. + +'I am,' he said, 'Captain Beauchamp's cousin. I am Captain Baskelett, +one of the Members for the borough.' + +The doctor said, 'Ah.' + +'I wish to see Captain Beauchamp, sir. He is absent?' + +'I shall have him here shortly, sir.' + +'Oh, you will have him!' Cecil paused. + +'Admirable roses!' exclaimed Lord Palmet. + +'You have him, I think,' said Cecil, 'if what we hear is correct. I wish +to know, sir, whether the case you are conducting against his uncle is +one you have communicated to Captain Beauchamp. I repeat, I am here to +inquire if he is privy to it. You may hold family ties in contempt--Now, +sir! I request you abstain from provocations with me.' + +Dr. Shrapnel had raised his head, with something of the rush of +a rocket, from the stooping posture to listen, and his frown of +non-intelligence might be interpreted as the coming on of the fury +Radicals are prone to, by a gentleman who believed in their constant +disposition to explode. + +Cecil made play with a pacifying hand. 'We shall arrive at no +understanding unless you are good enough to be perfectly calm. I repeat, +my cousin Captain Beauchamp is more or less at variance with his +family, owing to these doctrines of yours, and your extraordinary +Michael-Scott-the-wizard kind of spell you seem to have cast upon his +common sense as a man of the world. You have him, as you say. I do +not dispute it. I have no, doubt you have him fast. But here is a case +demanding a certain respect for decency. Pray, if I may ask you, be +still, be quiet, and hear me out if you can. I am accustomed to explain +myself to the comprehension of most men who are at large, and I tell you +candidly I am not to be deceived or diverted from my path by a show of +ignorance.' + +'What is your immediate object, sir?' said Dr. Shrapnel, chagrined by +the mystification within him, and a fear that his patience was going. + +'Exactly,' Cecil nodded. He was acute enough to see that he had +established the happy commencement of fretfulness in the victim, which +is equivalent to a hook well struck in the mouth of your fish, and with +an angler's joy he prepared to play his man. 'Exactly. I have stated it. +And you ask me. But I really must decline to run over the whole ground +again for you. I am here to fulfil a duty to my family; a highly +disagreeable one to me. I may fail, like the lady who came here previous +to the Election, for the result of which I am assured I ought to thank +your eminently disinterested services. I do. You recollect a lady +calling on you?' + +Dr. Shrapnel consulted his memory. 'I think I have a recollection of +some lady calling.' + +'Oh! you think you have a recollection of some lady calling.' + +'Do you mean a lady connected with Captain Beauchamp?' + +'A lady connected with Captain Beauchamp. You are not aware of the +situation of the lady?' + +'If I remember, she was a kind of confidential housekeeper, some one +said, to Captain Beauchamp's uncle.' + +'A kind of confidential housekeeper! She is recognized in our family as +a lady, sir. I can hardly expect better treatment at your hands than she +met with, but I do positively request you to keep your temper whilst I +am explaining my business to you. Now, sir! what now?' + +A trifling breeze will set the tall tree bending, and Dr. Shrapnel did +indeed appear to display the agitation of a full-driving storm when he +was but harassed and vexed. + +'Will you mention your business concisely, if you Please?' he said. + +'Precisely; it is my endeavour. I supposed I had done so. To be frank, +I would advise you to summon a member of your household, wife, daughter, +housekeeper, any one you like, to whom you may appeal, and I too, +whenever your recollections are at fault.' + +'I am competent,' said the doctor. + +'But in justice to you,' urged Cecil considerately. + +Dr. Shrapnel smoothed his chin hastily. 'Have you done?' + +'Believe me, the instant I have an answer to my question, I have done.' + +'Name your question.' + +'Very well, sir. Now mark, I will be plain with you. There is no escape +for you from this. You destroy my cousin's professional prospects--I +request you to listen--you blast his career in the navy; it was +considered promising. He was a gallant officer and a smart seaman. Very +well. You set him up as a politician, to be knocked down, to a dead +certainty. You set him against his class; you embroil him with his +family ...' + +'On all those points,' interposed Dr. Shrapnel, after dashing a hand to +straighten his forelock; but Cecil vehemently entreated him to control +his temper. + +'I say you embroil him with his family, you cause him to be in +everlasting altercation with his uncle Mr. Romfrey, materially to his +personal detriment; and the question of his family is one that every +man of sense would apprehend on the spot; for we, you should know, have, +sir, an opinion of Captain Beauchamp's talents and abilities forbidding +us to think he could possibly be the total simpleton you make him +appear, unless to the seductions of your political instructions, other +seductions were added.... You apprehend me, I am sure.' + +'I don't,' cried the doctor, descending from his height and swinging +about forlornly. + +'Oh! yes, you do; you do indeed, you cannot avoid it; you quite +apprehend me; it is admitted that you take my meaning: I insist on +that. I have nothing to say but what is complimentary of the young +lady, whoever she may turn out to be; bewitching, no doubt; and to speak +frankly, Dr. Shrapnel, I, and I am pretty certain every honest man would +think with me, I take it to be ten times more creditable to my cousin +Captain Beauchamp that he should be under a lady's influence than under +yours. Come, sir! I ask you. You must confess that a gallant officer +and great admirer of the sex does not look such a donkey if he is led in +silken strings by a beautiful creature. And mark--stop! mark this, Dr. +Shrapnel: I say, to the lady we can all excuse a good deal, and at +the same time you are to be congratulated on first-rate diplomacy +in employing so charming an agent. I wish, I really wish you did it +generally, I assure you: only, mark this--I do beg you to contain +yourself for a minute, if possible--I say, my cousin Captain Beauchamp +is fair game to hunt, and there is no law to prevent the chase, only you +must not expect us to be quiet spectators of your sport; and we have, I +say, undoubtedly a right to lay the case before the lady, and induce her +to be a peace-agent in the family if we can. Very well.' + +'This garden is redolent of a lady's hand,' sighed Palmet, poetical in +his dejection. + +'Have you taken too much wine, gentlemen?' said Dr. Shrapnel. + +Cecil put this impertinence aside with a graceful sweep of his fingers. +'You attempt to elude me, sir.' + +'Not I! You mention some lady.' + +'Exactly. A young lady.' + +'What is the name of the lady?' + +'Oh! You ask the name of the lady. And I too. What is it? I have heard +two or three names.' + +'Then you have heard villanies.' + +'Denham, Jenny Denham, Miss Jenny Denham,' said Palmet, rejoiced at the +opportunity of trumpeting her name so that she should not fail to hear +it. + +'I stake my reputation I have heard her called Shrapnel--Miss Shrapnel,' +said Cecil. + +The doctor glanced hastily from one to the other of his visitors. 'The +young lady is my ward; I am her guardian,' he said. + +Cecil pursed his mouth. 'I have heard her called your niece.' + +'Niece--ward; she is a lady by birth and education, in manners, +accomplishments, and character; and she is under my protection,' cried +Dr. Shrapnel. + +Cecil bowed. 'So you are for gentle birth? I forgot you are for morality +too, and for praying; exactly; I recollect. But now let me tell you, +entirely with the object of conciliation, my particular desire is to see +the young lady, in your presence of course, and endeavour to persuade +her, as I have very little doubt I shall do, assuming that you give +me fair play, to exercise her influence, on this occasion contrary +to yours, and save my cousin Captain Beauchamp from a fresh +misunderstanding with his uncle Mr. Romfrey. Now, sir; now, there!' + +'You will not see Miss Denham with my sanction ever,' said Dr. Shrapnel. + +'Oh! Then I perceive your policy. Mark, sir, my assumption was that the +young lady would, on hearing my representations, exert herself to heal +the breach between Captain Beauchamp and his family. You stand in the +way. You treat me as you treated the lady who came here formerly to +wrest your dupe from your clutches. If I mistake not, she saw the young +lady you acknowledge to be your ward.' + +Dr. Shrapnel flashed back: 'I acknowledge? Mercy and justice! is there +no peace with the man? You walk here to me, I can't yet guess why, from +a town where I have enemies, and every scandal flies touching me and +mine; and you--' He stopped short to master his anger. He subdued it +so far as to cloak it in an attempt to speak reasoningly, as angry men +sometimes deceive themselves in doing, despite the good maxim for the +wrathful--speak not at all. 'See,' said he, 'I was never married. My +dear friend dies, and leaves me his child to protect and rear; and +though she bears her father's name, she is most wrongly and foully made +to share the blows levelled at her guardian. Ay, have at me, all of +you, as much as you will! Hold off from her. Were it true, the cowardice +would be not a whit the smaller. Why, casting a stone like that, were +it the size of a pebble and the weight of a glance, is to toss the whole +cowardly world on an innocent young girl. And why suspect evil? You +talk of that lady who paid me a visit here once, and whom I treated +becomingly, I swear. I never do otherwise. She was a handsome woman; and +what was she? The housekeeper of Captain Beauchamp's uncle. Hear me, if +you please! To go with the world, I have as good a right to suppose the +worst of an attractive lady in that situation as you regarding my ward: +better warrant for scandalizing, I think; to go with the world. But +now--' + +Cecil checked him, ejaculating, 'Thank you, Dr. Shrapnel; I thank you +most cordially,' with a shining smile. 'Stay, sir! no more. I take my +leave of you. Not another word. No "buts"! I recognize that conciliation +is out of the question: you are the natural protector of poachers, and +you will not grant me an interview with the young lady you call your +ward, that I may represent to her, as a person we presume to have a +chance of moving you, how easily--I am determined you shall hear me, +Dr. Shrapnel!--how easily the position of Captain Beauchamp may become +precarious with his uncle Mr. Romfrey. And let me add--"but" and "but" +me till Doomsday, sir!--if you were--I do hear you, sir, and you shall +hear me--if you were a younger man, I say, I would hold you answerable +to me for your scandalous and disgraceful insinuations.' + +Dr. Shrapnel was adroitly fenced and over-shouted. He shrugged, +stuttered, swayed, wagged a bulrush-head, flapped his elbows, puffed +like a swimmer in the breakers, tried many times to expostulate, +and finding the effort useless, for his adversary was copious and +commanding, relapsed, eyeing him as an object far removed. + +Cecil rounded one of his perplexingly empty sentences and turned on his +heel. + +'War, then!' he said. + +'As you like,' retorted the doctor. + +'Oh! Very good. Good evening.' Cecil slightly lifted his hat, with the +short projection of the head of the stately peacock in its walk, +and passed out of the garden. Lord Palmet, deeply disappointed and +mystified, went after him, leaving Dr. Shrapnel to shorten his garden +walk with enormous long strides. + +'I'm afraid you didn't manage the old boy,' Palmet complained. 'They're +people who have tea in their gardens; we might have sat down with them +and talked, the best friends in the world, and come again to-morrow +might have called her Jenny in a week. She didn't show her pretty nose +at any of the windows.' + +His companion pooh-poohed and said: 'Foh! I'm afraid I permitted myself +to lose my self-command for a moment.' + +Palmet sang out an amorous couplet to console himself. Captain Baskelett +respected the poetic art for its magical power over woman's virtue, +but he disliked hearing verses, and they were ill-suited to Palmet. He +abused his friend roundly, telling him it was contemptible to be quoting +verses. He was irritable still. + +He declared himself nevertheless much refreshed by his visit to Dr. +Shrapnel. 'We shall have to sleep tonight in this unhallowed town, but +I needn't be off to Holdesbury in the morning; I've done my business. I +shall write to the baron to-night, and we can cross the water to-morrow +in time for operations.' + +The letter to Mr. Romfrey was composed before midnight. It was a long +one, and when he had finished it, Cecil remembered that the act of +composition had been assisted by a cigar in his mouth, and Mr. Romfrey +detested the smell of tobacco. There was nothing to be done but to write +the letter over again, somewhat more briefly: it ran thus: + +'Thinking to kill two birds at a blow, I went yesterday with Palmet +after the dinner at this place to Shrapnel's house, where, as I heard, +I stood a chance of catching friend Nevil. The young person living under +the man's protection was absent, and so was the "poor dear commander," +perhaps attending on his bull. Shrapnel said he was expecting him. I +write to you to confess I thought myself a cleverer fellow than I am. I +talked to Shrapnel and tried hard to reason with him. I hope I can keep +my temper under ordinary circumstances. You will understand that it +required remarkable restraint when I make you acquainted with the fact +that a lady's name was introduced, which, as your representative in +relation to her, I was bound to defend from a gratuitous and +scoundrelly aspersion. Shrapnel's epistle to "brave Beauchamp" is Church +hymnification in comparison with his conversation. He is indubitably one +of the greatest ruffians of his time. + +'I took the step with the best of intentions, and all I can plead is +that I am not a diplomatist of sixty. His last word was that he is for +war with us. As far as we men are concerned it is of small importance. +I should think that the sort of society he would scandalize a lady in is +not much to be feared. I have given him his warning. He tops me by about +a head, and loses his temper every two minutes. I could have drawn him +out deliciously if he had not rather disturbed mine. By this time my +equanimity is restored. The only thing I apprehend is your displeasure +with me for having gone to the man. I have done no good, and it +prevents me from running over to Holdesbury to see Nevil, for if "shindy +letters," as you call them, are bad, shindy meetings are worse. I should +be telling him my opinion of Shrapnel, he would be firing out, I should +retort, he would yell, I should snap my fingers, and he would go into +convulsions. I am convinced that a cattle-breeder ought to keep himself +particularly calm. So unless I have further orders from you I refrain +from going. + +'The dinner was enthusiastic. I sat three hours among my Commons, they +on me for that length of time--fatiguing, but a duty.' + +Cecil subscribed his name with the warmest affection toward his uncle. + +The brevity of the second letter had not brought him nearer to the truth +in rescinding the picturesque accessories of his altercation with Dr. +Shrapnel, but it veraciously expressed the sentiments he felt, and that +was the palpable truth for him. + +He posted the letter next morning. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI. SHOWING A CHIVALROUS GENTLEMAN SET IN MOTION + +About noon the day following, on board the steam-yacht of the Countess +of Menai, Cecil was very much astonished to see Mr. Romfrey descending +into a boat hard by, from Grancey Lespel's hired cutter. Steam was up, +and the countess was off for a cruise in the Channel, as it was not a +race-day, but seeing Mr. Romfrey's hand raised, she spoke to Cecil, and +immediately gave orders to wait for the boat. This lady was a fervent +admirer of the knightly gentleman, and had reason to like him, for he +had once been her champion. Mr. Romfrey mounted the steps, received +her greeting, and beckoned to Cecil. He carried a gold-headed horsewhip +under his arm. Lady Menai would gladly have persuaded him to be one +of her company for the day's voyage, but he said he had business in +Bevisham, and moving aside with Cecil, put the question to him abruptly: +'What were the words used by Shrapnel?' + +'The identical words?' Captain Baskelett asked. He could have tripped +out the words with the fluency of ancient historians relating what +great kings, ambassadors, or Generals may well have uttered on State +occasions, but if you want the identical words, who is to remember them +the day after they have been delivered? He said: + +'Well, as for the identical words, I really, and I was tolerably +excited, sir, and upon my honour, the identical words are rather +difficult to....' He glanced at the horsewhip, and pricked by the sight +of it to proceed, thought it good to soften the matter if possible. 'I +don't quite recollect... I wrote off to you rather hastily. I think he +said--but Palmet was there.' + +'Shrapnel spoke the words before Lord Palmet?' said Mr. Romfrey +austerely. + +Captain Baskelett summoned Palmet to come near, and inquired of him what +he had heard Shrapnel say, suggesting: 'He spoke of a handsome woman for +a housekeeper, and all the world knew her character?' + +Mr. Romfrey cleared his throat. + +'Or knew she had no character,' Cecil pursued in a fit of gratified +spleen, in scorn of the woman. 'Don't you recollect his accent in +pronouncing housekeeper?' + +The menacing thunder sounded from Mr. Romfrey. He was patient in +appearance, and waited for Cecil's witness to corroborate the evidence. + +It happened (and here we are in one of the circles of small things +producing great consequences, which have inspired diminutive +philosophers with ironical visions of history and the littleness of +man), it happened that Lord Palmet, the humanest of young aristocrats, +well-disposed toward the entire world, especially to women, also to men +in any way related to pretty women, had just lit a cigar, and it was a +cigar that he had been recommended to try the flavour of; and though +he, having his wits about him, was fully aware that shipboard is no good +place for a trial of the delicacy of tobacco in the leaf, he had begun +puffing and sniffing in a critical spirit, and scarcely knew for the +moment what to decide as to this particular cigar. He remembered, +however, Mr. Romfrey's objection to tobacco. Imagining that he saw the +expression of a profound distaste in that gentleman's more than usually +serious face, he hesitated between casting the cigar into the water +and retaining it. He decided upon the latter course, and held the +cigar behind his back, bowing to Mr. Romfrey at about a couple of yards +distance, and saying to Cecil, 'Housekeeper; yes, I remember hearing +housekeeper. I think so. Housekeeper? yes, oh yes.' + +'And handsome housekeepers were doubtful characters,' Captain Baskelett +prompted him. + +Palmet laughed out a single 'Ha!' that seemed to excuse him for lounging +away to the forepart of the vessel, where he tugged at his fine specimen +of a cigar to rekindle it, and discharged it with a wry grimace, so +delicate is the flavour of that weed, and so adversely ever is it +affected by a breeze and a moist atmosphere. He could then return +undivided in his mind to Mr. Romfrey and Cecil, but the subject was not +resumed in his presence. + +The Countess of Menai steamed into Bevisham to land Mr. Romfrey there. +'I can be out in the Channel any day; it is not every day that I see +you,' she said, in support of her proposal to take him over. + +They sat together conversing, apart from the rest of the company, until +they sighted Bevisham, when Mr. Romfrey stood up, and a little crowd +of men came round him to enjoy his famous racy talk. Captain Baskelett +offered to land with him. He declined companionship. Dropping her hand +in his, the countess asked him what he had to do in that town, and he +replied, 'I have to demand an apology.' + +Answering the direct look of his eyes, she said, 'Oh, I shall not speak +of it.' + +In his younger days, if the rumour was correct, he had done the same on +her account. + +He stepped into the boat, and presently they saw him mount the +pier-steps, with the riding-whip under his arm, his head more than +commonly bent, a noticeable point in a man of his tall erect figure. +The ladies and some of the gentlemen thought he was looking particularly +grave, even sorrowful. + +Lady Menai inquired of Captain Baskelett whether he knew the nature of +his uncle's business in Bevisham, the town he despised. + +What could Cecil say but no? His uncle had not imparted it to him. + +She was flattered in being the sole confidante, and said no more. + +The sprightly ingenuity of Captain Baskelett's mind would have informed +him of the nature of his uncle's expedition, we may be sure, had he put +it to the trial; for Mr. Romfrey was as plain to read as a rudimentary +sum in arithmetic, and like the tracings of a pedigree-map his +preliminary steps to deeds were seen pointing on their issue in lines of +straight descent. But Cecil could protest that he was not bound to know, +and considering that he was neither bound to know nor to speculate, he +determined to stand on his right. So effectually did he accomplish the +task, that he was frequently surprised during the evening and the night +by the effervescence of a secret exultation rising imp-like within him, +that was, he assured himself, perfectly unaccountable. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII. AN EFFORT TO CONQUER CECILIA IN BEAUCHAMP'S FASHION + +The day after Mr. Romfrey's landing in Bevisham a full South-wester +stretched the canvas of yachts of all classes, schooner, cutter and +yawl, on the lively green water between the island and the forest shore. +Cecilia's noble schooner was sure to be out in such a ringing breeze, +for the pride of it as well as the pleasure. She landed her father at +the Club steps, and then bore away Eastward to sight a cutter race, the +breeze beginning to stiffen. Looking back against sun and wind, she +saw herself pursued by a saucy little 15-ton craft that had been in her +track since she left the Otley river before noon, dipping and straining, +with every inch of sail set; as mad a stern chase as ever was witnessed: +and who could the man at the tiller, clad cap-A-pie in tarpaulin, be? +She led him dancing away, to prove his resoluteness and laugh at him. +She had the powerful wings, and a glory in them coming of this pursuit: +her triumph was delicious, until the occasional sparkle of the tarpaulin +was lost, the small boat appeared a motionless object far behind, and +all ahead of her exceedingly dull, though the race hung there and the +crowd of sail. + +Cecilia's transient flutter of coquettry created by the animating air +and her queenly flight was over. She fled splendidly and she came back +graciously. But he refused her open hand, as it were. He made as if +to stand across her tack, and, reconsidering it, evidently scorned his +advantage and challenged the stately vessel for a beat up against the +wind. It was as pretty as a Court minuet. But presently Cecilia stood +too far on one tack, and returning to the centre of the channel, found +herself headed by seamanship. He waved an ironical salute with his +sou'wester. Her retort consisted in bringing her vessel to the wind, and +sending a boat for him. + +She did it on the impulse; had she consulted her wishes she would rather +have seen him at his post, where he seemed in his element, facing the +spray and cunningly calculating to get wind and tide in his favour. +Partly with regret she saw him, stripped of his tarpaulin, jump into +her boat, as though she had once more to say farewell to sailor Nevil +Beauchamp; farewell the bright youth, the hero, the true servant of his +country! + +That feeling of hers changed when he was on board. The stirring cordial +day had put new breath in him. + +'Should not the flag be dipped?' he said, looking up at the peak, where +the white flag streamed. + +'Can you really mistake compassion for defeat?' said she, with a smile. + +'Oh! before the wind of course I hadn't a chance.' + +'How could you be so presumptuous as to give chase? And who has lent you +that little cutter?' + +Beauchamp had hired her for a month, and he praised her sailing, and +pretended to say that the race was not always to the strong in a stiff +breeze. + +'But in point' of fact I was bent on trying how my boat swims, and had +no idea of overhauling you. To-day our salt-water lake is as fine as the +Mediterranean.' + +'Omitting the islands and the Mediterranean colour, it is. I have often +told you how I love it. I have landed papa at the Club. Are you aware +that we meet you at Steynham the day after to-morrow?' + +'Well, we can ride on the downs. The downs between three and four of a +summer's morning are as lovely as anything in the world. They have the +softest outlines imaginable... and remind me of a friend's upper lip +when she deigns to smile.' + +'Is one to rise at that hour to behold the effect? And let me remind you +further, Nevil, that the comparison of nature's minor work beside her +mighty is an error, if you will be poetical.' + +She cited a well-known instance of degradation in verse. + +But a young man who happens to be intimately acquainted with a certain +'dark eye in woman' will not so lightly be brought to consider that the +comparison of tempestuous night to the flashing of those eyes of hers +topples the scene headlong from grandeur. And if Beauchamp remembered +rightly, the scene was the Alps at night. + +He was prepared to contest Cecilia's judgement. At that moment the +breeze freshened and the canvas lifted from due South the yacht swung +her sails to drive toward the West, and Cecilia's face and hair came out +golden in the sunlight. Speech was difficult, admiration natural, so he +sat beside her, admiring in silence. + +She said a good word for the smartness of his little yacht. + +'This is my first trial of her,' said Beauchamp. 'I hired her chiefly to +give Dr. Shrapnel a taste of salt air. I 've no real right to be idling +about. His ward Miss Denham is travelling in Switzerland; the dear old +man is alone, and not quite so well as I should wish. Change of scene +will do him good. I shall land him on the French coast for a couple of +days, or take him down Channel.' + +Cecilia gazed abstractedly at a passing schooner. + +'He works too hard,' said Beauchamp. + +'Who does?' + +'Dr. Shrapnel.' + +Some one else whom we have heard of works too hard, and it would be +happy for mankind if he did not. + +Cecilia named the schooner; an American that had beaten our crack +yachts. Beauchamp sprang up to spy at the American. + +'That's the Corinne, is she!' + +Yankee craftiness on salt water always excited his respectful attention +as a spectator. + +'And what is the name of your boat, Nevil?' + +'The fool of an owner calls her the Petrel. It's not that I'm +superstitious, but to give a boat a name of bad augury to sailors +appears to me... however, I 've argued it with him and I will have her +called the Curlew. Carrying Dr. Shrapnel and me, Petrel would be thought +the proper title for her isn't that your idea?' + +He laughed and she smiled, and then he became overcast with his +political face, and said, 'I hope--I believe--you will alter your +opinion of him. Can it be an opinion when it's founded on nothing? You +know really nothing of him. I have in my pocket what I believe would +alter your mind about him entirely. I do think so; and I think so +because I feel you would appreciate his deep sincerity and real +nobleness.' + +'Is it a talisman that you have, Nevil?' + +'No, it's a letter.' + +Cecilia's cheeks took fire. + +'I should so much like to read it to you,' said he. + +'Do not, please,' she replied with a dash of supplication in her voice. + +'Not the whole of it--an extract here and there? I want you so much to +understand him.' + +'I am sure I should not.' + +'Let me try you!' + +'Pray do not.' + +'Merely to show you...' + +'But, Nevil, I do not wish to understand him.' + +'But you have only to listen for a few minutes, and I want you to know +what good reason I have to reverence him as a teacher and a friend.' + +Cecilia looked at Beauchamp with wonder. A confused recollection of the +contents of the letter declaimed at Mount Laurels in Captain Baskelett's +absurd sing-song, surged up in her mind revoltingly. She signified a +decided negative. Something of a shudder accompanied the expression of +it. + +But he as little as any member of the Romfrey blood was framed to +let the word no stand quietly opposed to him. And the no that a woman +utters! It calls for wholesome tyranny. Those old, those hoar-old +duellists, Yes and No, have rarely been better matched than in Beauchamp +and Cecilia. For if he was obstinate in attack she had great resisting +power. Twice to listen to that letter was beyond her endurance. Indeed +it cast a shadow on him and disfigured him; and when, affecting to +plead, he said: 'You must listen to it to please me, for my sake, +Cecilia,' she answered: 'It is for your sake, Nevil, I decline to.' + +'Why, what do you know of it?' he exclaimed. + +'I know the kind of writing it would be.' + +'How do you know it?' + +'I have heard of some of Dr. Shrapnel's opinions.' + +'You imagine him to be subversive, intolerant, immoral, and the rest! +all that comes under your word revolutionary.' + +'Possibly; but I must defend myself from hearing what I know will be +certain to annoy me.' + +'But he is the reverse of immoral: and I intend to read you parts of the +letter to prove to you that he is not the man you would blame, but I, +and that if ever I am worthier... worthier of you, as I hope to become, +it will be owing to this admirable and good old man.' + +Cecilia trembled: she was touched to the quick. Yet it was not pleasant +to her to be wooed obliquely, through Dr. Shrapnel. + +She recognized the very letter, crowned with many stamps, thick with +many pages, in Beauchamp's hands. + +'When you are at Steynham you will probably hear my uncle Everard's +version of this letter,' he said. 'The baron chooses to think everything +fair in war, and the letter came accidentally into his hands with the +seal broken; well, he read it. And, Cecilia, you can fancy the sort of +stuff he would make of it. Apart from that, I want you particularly to +know how much I am indebted to Dr. Shrapnel. Won't you learn to like him +a little? Won't you tolerate him?--I could almost say, for my sake! He +and I are at variance on certain points, but taking him altogether, I am +under deeper obligations to him than to any man on earth. He has found +where I bend and waver.' + +'I recognize your chivalry, Nevil.' + +'He has done his best to train me to be of some service. Where's the +chivalry in owning a debt? He is one of our true warriors; fearless +and blameless. I have had my heroes before. You know how I loved +Robert Hall: his death is a gap in my life. He is a light for fighting +Englishmen--who fight with the sword. But the scale of the war, the +cause, and the end in view, raise Dr. Shrapnel above the bravest I have +ever had the luck to meet. Soldiers and sailors have their excitement +to keep them up to the mark; praise and rewards. He is in his +eight-and-sixtieth year, and he has never received anything but obloquy +for his pains. Half of the small fortune he has goes in charities and +subscriptions. Will that touch you? But I think little of that, and so +does he. Charity is a common duty. The dedication of a man's life and +whole mind to a cause, there's heroism. I wish I were eloquent; I wish I +could move you.' + +Cecilia turned her face to him. 'I listen to you with pleasure, Nevil; +but please do not read the letter.' + +'Yes; a paragraph or two I must read.' + +She rose. + +He was promptly by her side. 'If I say I ask you for one sign that you +care for me in some degree?' + +'I have not for a moment ceased to be your friend, Nevil, since I was a +child.' + +'But if you allow yourself to be so prejudiced against my best friend +that you will not hear a word of his writing, are you friendly?' + +'Feminine, and obstinate,' said Cecilia. + +'Give me your eyes an instant. I know you think me reckless and lawless: +now is not that true? You doubt whether, if a lady gave me her hand I +should hold to it in perfect faith. Or, perhaps not that: but you do +suspect I should be capable of every sophism under the sun to persuade a +woman to break her faith, if it suited me: supposing some passion to be +at work. Men who are open to passion have to be taught reflection before +they distinguish between the woman they should sue for love because she +would be their best mate, and the woman who has thrown a spell on them. +Now, what I beg you to let me read you in this letter is a truth nobly +stated that has gone into my blood, and changed me. It cannot fail, too, +in changeing your opinion of Dr. Shrapnel. It makes me wretched that +you should be divided from me in your ideas of him. I, you see--and I +confess I think it my chief title to honour--reverence him.' + +'I regret that I am unable to utter the words of Ruth,' said Cecilia, in +a low voice. She felt rather tremulously; opposed only to the letter +and the writer of it, not at all to Beauchamp, except on account of +his idolatry of the wicked revolutionist. Far from having a sense of +opposition to Beauchamp; she pitied him for his infatuation, and in her +lofty mental serenity she warmed to him for the seeming boyishness +of his constant and extravagant worship of the man, though such an +enthusiasm cast shadows on his intellect. + +He was reading a sentence of the letter. + +'I hear nothing but the breeze, Nevil,' she said. + +The breeze fluttered the letter-sheets: they threatened to fly. Cecilia +stepped two paces away. + +'Hark; there is a military band playing on the pier,' said she. 'I am so +fond of hearing music a little off shore.' + +Beauchamp consigned the letter to his pocket. + +'You are not offended, Nevil?' + +'Dear me, no. You haven't a mind for tonics, that's all.' + +'Healthy persons rarely have,' she remarked, and asked him, smiling +softly, whether he had a mind for music. + +His insensibility to music was curious, considering how impressionable +he was to verse, and to songs of birds. He listened with an oppressed +look, as to something the particular secret of which had to be reached +by a determined effort of sympathy for those whom it affected. He +liked it if she did, and said he liked it, reiterated that he liked it, +clearly trying hard to comprehend it, as unmoved by the swell and sigh +of the resonant brass as a man could be, while her romantic spirit +thrilled to it, and was bountiful in glowing visions and in tenderness. + +There hung her hand. She would not have refused to yield it. The hero +of her childhood, the friend of her womanhood, and her hero still, might +have taken her with half a word. + +Beauchamp was thinking: She can listen to that brass band, and she shuts +her ears to this letter: + +The reading of it would have been a prelude to the opening of his +heart to her, at the same time that it vindicated his dear and honoured +master, as he called Dr. Shrapnel. To speak, without the explanation of +his previous reticence which this letter would afford, seemed useless: +even the desire to speak was absent, passion being absent. + +'I see papa; he is getting into a boat with some one,' said Cecilia, +and gave orders for the yacht to stand in toward the Club steps. 'Do you +know, Nevil, the Italian common people are not so subject to the charm +of music as other races? They have more of the gift, and I think less of +the feeling. You do not hear much music in Italy. I remember in the year +of Revolution there was danger of a rising in some Austrian city, and +a colonel of a regiment commanded his band to play. The mob was put in +good humour immediately.' + +'It's a soporific,' said Beauchamp. + +'You would not rather have had them rise to be slaughtered?' + +'Would you have them waltzed into perpetual servility?' + +Cecilia hummed, and suggested: 'If one can have them happy in any way?' + +'Then the day of destruction may almost be dated.' + +'Nevil, your terrible view of life must be false.' + +'I make it out worse to you than to any one else, because I want our +minds to be united.' + +'Give me a respite now and then.' + +'With all my heart. And forgive me for beating my drum. I see what +others don't see, or else I feel it more; I don't know; but it appears +to me our country needs rousing if it's to live. There 's a division +between poor and rich that you have no conception of, and it can't +safely be left unnoticed. I've done.' + +He looked at her and saw tears on her under-lids. + +'My dearest Cecilia!' + +'Music makes me childish,' said she. + +Her father was approaching in the boat. Beside him sat the Earl of +Lockrace, latterly classed among the suitors of the lady of Mount +Laurels. + +A few minutes remained to Beauchamp of his lost opportunity. Instead +of seizing them with his usual promptitude, he let them slip, painfully +mindful of his treatment of her last year after the drive into Bevisham, +when she was England, and Renee holiday France. + +This feeling he fervently translated into the reflection that the bride +who would bring him beauty and wealth, and her especial gift of tender +womanliness, was not yet so thoroughly mastered as to grant her husband +his just prevalence with her, or even indeed his complete independence +of action, without which life itself was not desireable. + +Colonel Halkett stared at Beauchamp as if he had risen from the deep. + +'Have you been in that town this morning?' was one of his first +questions to him when he stood on board. + +'I came through it,' said Beauchamp, and pointed to his little cutter +labouring in the distance. 'She's mine for a month; I came from +Holdesbury to try her; and then he stated how he had danced attendance +on the schooner for a couple of hours before any notice was taken of +him, and Cecilia with her graceful humour held up his presumption to +scorn. + +Her father was eyeing Beauchamp narrowly, and appeared troubled. + +'Did you see Mr. Romfrey yesterday, or this morning?' the colonel asked +him, mentioning that Mr. Romfrey had been somewhere about the island +yesterday, at which Beauchamp expressed astonishment, for his uncle +Everard seldom visited a yachting station. + +Colonel Halkett exchanged looks with Cecilia. Hers were inquiring, and +he confirmed her side-glance at Beauchamp. She raised her brows; +he nodded, to signify that there was gravity in the case. Here the +signalling stopped short; she had to carry on a conversation with Lord +Lockrace, one of those men who betray the latent despot in an exhibition +of discontentment unless they have all a lady's hundred eyes attentive +to their discourse. + +At last Beauchamp quitted the vessel. + +When he was out of hearing, Colonel Halkett said to Cecilia: 'Grancey +Lespel tells me that Mr. Romfrey called on the man Shrapnel yesterday +evening at six o'clock.' + +'Yes, Papa?' + +'Now come and see the fittings below,' the colonel addressed Lord +Lockrace, and murmured to his daughter: + +'And soundly horsewhipped him!' + +Cecilia turned on the instant to gaze after Nevil Beauchamp. She could +have wept for pity. Her father's emphasis on 'soundly' declared an +approval of the deed, and she was chilled by a sickening abhorrence and +dread of the cruel brute in men, such as, awakened by she knew not what, +had haunted her for a year of her girlhood. + +'And he deserved it!' the colonel pursued, on emerging from the cabin at +Lord Lockrace's heels. 'I've no doubt he richly deserved it. The writer +of that letter we heard Captain Baskelett read the other day deserves +the very worst he gets.' + +'Baskelett bored the Club the other night with a letter of a Radical +fellow,' said Lord Lockrace. 'Men who write that stuff should be strung +up and whipped by the common hangman.' + +'It was a private letter,' said Cecilia. + +'Public or private, Miss Halkett.' + +Her mind flew back to Seymour Austin for the sense of stedfastness when +she heard such language as this, which, taken in conjunction with Dr. +Shrapnel's, seemed to uncloak our Constitutional realm and show it +boiling up with the frightful elements of primitive societies. + +'I suppose we are but half civilized,' she said. + +'If that,' said the earl. + +Colonel Halkett protested that he never could quite make out what +Radicals were driving at. + +'The rents,' Lord Lockrace observed in the conclusive tone of brevity. +He did not stay very long. + +The schooner was boarded subsequently by another nobleman, an Admiral of +the Fleet and ex-minister of the Whig Government, Lord Croyston, who +was a friend of Mr. Romfrey's, and thought well of Nevil Beauchamp as +a seaman and naval officer, but shook an old head over him as a +politician. He came to beg a passage across the water to his marine +Lodge, an accident having happened early in the morning to his yacht, +the Lady Violet. He was able to communicate the latest version of the +horsewhipping of Dr. Shrapnel, from which it appeared that after +Mr. Romfrey had handsomely flogged the man he flung his card on the +prostrate body, to let men know who was responsible for the act. He +expected that Mr. Romfrey would be subjected to legal proceedings. 'But +if there's a pleasure worth paying for it's the trouncing of a villain,' +said he; and he had been informed that Dr. Shrapnel was a big one. Lord +Croyston's favourite country residence was in the neighbourhood of +old Mrs. Beauchamp, on the Upper Thames. Speaking of Nevil Beauchamp a +second time, he alluded to his relations with his great-aunt, said his +prospects were bad, that she had interdicted her house to him, and was +devoted to her other great-nephew. + +'And so she should be,' said Colonel Halkett. 'That's a young man who's +an Englishman without French gunpowder notions in his head. He works for +us down at the mine in Wales a good part of the year, and has tided us +over a threatening strike there: gratuitously: I can't get him to accept +anything. I can't think why he does it.' + +'He'll have plenty,' said Lord Croyston, levelling his telescope to +sight the racing cutters. + +Cecilia fancied she descried Nevil's Petrel, dubbed Curlew, to Eastward, +and had a faint gladness in the thought that his knowledge of his uncle +Everard's deed of violence would be deferred for another two or three +hours. + +She tried to persuade her father to wait for Nevil, and invite him to +dine at Mount Laurels, and break the news to him gently. Colonel +Halkett argued that in speaking of the affair he should certainly not +commiserate the man who had got his deserts, and saying this he burst +into a petty fury against the epistle of Dr. Shrapnel, which appeared +to be growing more monstrous in proportion to his forgetfulness of the +details, as mountains gather vastness to the eye at a certain remove. +Though he could not guess the reason for Mr. Romfrey's visit to +Bevisham, he was, he said, quite prepared to maintain that Mr. Romfrey +had a perfect justification for his conduct. + +Cecilia hinted at barbarism. The colonel hinted at high police duties +that gentlemen were sometimes called on to perform for the protection of +society. 'In defiance of its laws?' she asked; and he answered: 'Women +must not be judging things out of their sphere,' with the familiar +accent on 'women' which proves their inferiority. He was rarely guilty +of it toward his daughter. Evidently he had resolved to back Mr. Romfrey +blindly. That epistle of Dr. Shrapnel's merited condign punishment +and had met with it, he seemed to rejoice in saying: and this was his +abstract of the same: 'An old charlatan who tells his dupe to pray every +night of his life for the beheading of kings and princes, and scattering +of the clergy, and disbanding the army, that he and his rabble may fall +upon the wealthy, and show us numbers win; and he'll undertake to make +them moral!' + +'I wish we were not going to Steynham,' said Cecilia. + +'So do I. Well, no, I don't,' the colonel corrected himself, 'no; it +'s an engagement. I gave my consent so far. We shall see whether Nevil +Beauchamp's a man of any sense.' + +Her heart sank. This was as much as to let her know that if Nevil broke +with his uncle, the treaty of union between the two families, which +her father submitted to entertain out of consideration for Mr. Romfrey, +would be at an end. + +The wind had fallen. Entering her river, Cecilia gazed back at the +smooth broad water, and the band of golden beams flung across it from +the evening sun over the forest. No little cutter was visible. She could +not write to Nevil to bid him come and concert with her in what spirit +to encounter his uncle Everard at Steynham. And guests would be at Mount +Laurels next day; Lord Lockrace, Lord Croyston, and the Lespels; she +could not drive down to Bevisham on the chance of seeing him. Nor was +it to be acknowledged even to herself that she so greatly desired to +see him and advise him. Why not? Because she was one of the artificial +creatures called women (with the accent) who dare not be spontaneous, +and cannot act independently if they would continue to be admirable in +the world's eye, and who for that object must remain fixed on shelves, +like other marketable wares, avoiding motion to avoid shattering or +tarnishing. This is their fate, only in degree less inhuman than that of +Hellenic and Trojan princesses offered up to the Gods, or pretty slaves +to the dealers. Their artificiality is at once their bane and their +source of superior pride. + +Seymour Austin might have reason for seeking to emancipate them, +she thought, and blushed in thought that she could never be learning +anything but from her own immediate sensations. + +Of course it was in her power to write to Beauchamp, just as it had been +in his to speak to her, but the fire was wanting in her blood and absent +from his mood, so they were kept apart. + +Her father knew as little as she what was the positive cause of Mr. +Romfrey's chastisement of Dr. Shrapnel. 'Cause enough, I don't doubt,' +he said, and cited the mephitic letter. + +Cecilia was not given to suspicions, or she would have had them kindled +by a certain wilfulness in his incessant reference to the letter, and +exoneration, if not approval, of Mr. Romfrey's conduct. + +How did that chivalrous gentleman justify himself for condescending to +such an extreme as the use of personal violence? Was there a possibility +of his justifying it to Nevil? She was most wretched in her reiteration +of these inquiries, for, with a heart subdued, she had still a mind +whose habit of independent judgement was not to be constrained, and +while she felt that it was only by siding with Nevil submissively and +blindly in this lamentable case that she could hope for happiness, she +foresaw the likelihood of her not being able to do so as much as he +would desire and demand. This she took for the protest of her pure +reason. In reality, grieved though she was on account of that Dr. +Shrapnel, her captive heart resented the anticipated challenge to her to +espouse his cause or languish. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII. THE FIRST ENCOUNTER AT STEYNHAM + +The judge pronouncing sentence of condemnation on the criminal is +proverbially a sorrowfully-minded man; and still more would he be so had +he to undertake the part of executioner as well. This is equivalent to +saying that the simple pleasures are no longer with us; it must be +a personal enemy now to give us any satisfaction in chastising and +slaying. Perhaps by-and-by that will be savourless: we degenerate. +There is, nevertheless, ever (and let nature be praised for it) a strong +sustainment in the dutiful exertion of our physical energies, and Mr. +Everard Romfrey experienced it after he had fulfilled his double office +on the person of Dr. Shrapnel by carrying out his own decree. His +conscience approved him cheerlessly, as it is the habit of that secret +monitor to do when we have no particular advantage coming of the act +we have performed; but the righteous labour of his arm gave him high +breathing and an appetite. + +He foresaw that he and Nevil would soon be having a wrestle over the +matter, hand and thigh; but a gentleman in the right engaged with +a fellow in the wrong has nothing to apprehend; is, in fact, in the +position of a game-preserver with a poacher. The nearest approach to +gratification in that day's work which Mr. Romfrey knew was offered +by the picture of Nevil's lamentable attitude above his dirty idol. He +conceived it in the mock-mediaeval style of our caricaturists:--Shrapnel +stretched at his length, half a league, in slashed yellows and blacks, +with his bauble beside him, and prodigious pointed toes; Nevil in +parti-coloured tights, on one leg, raising his fists in imprecation to a +nose in the firmament. + +Gentlemen of an unpractised imaginative capacity cannot vision for +themselves exactly what they would, being unable to exercise authority +over the proportions and the hues of the objects they conceive, which +are very much at the mercy of their sportive caprices; and the state of +mind of Mr. Romfrey is not to be judged by his ridiculous view of the +pair. In the abstract he could be sorry for Shrapnel. As he knew himself +magnanimous, he promised himself to be forbearing with Nevil. + +Moreover, the month of September was drawing nigh; he had plenty to +think of. The entire land (signifying all but all of those who occupy +the situation of thinkers in it) may be said to have been exhaling the +same thought in connection with September. Our England holds possession +of a considerable portion of the globe, and it keeps the world in awe to +see her bestowing so considerable a portion of her intelligence upon +her recreations. To prosecute them with her whole heart is an ingenious +exhibition of her power. Mr. Romfrey was of those who said to his +countrymen, 'Go yachting; go cricketing; go boat-racing; go shooting; +go horseracing, nine months of the year, while the other Europeans go +marching and drilling.' Those occupations he considered good for us; and +our much talking, writing, and thinking about them characteristic, and +therefore good. And he was not one of those who do penance for that +sweating indolence in the fits of desperate panic. Beauchamp's argument +that the rich idler begets the idling vagabond, the rich wagerer the +brutal swindler, the general thirst for a mad round of recreation a +generally-increasing disposition to avoid serious work, and the unbraced +moral tone of the country an indifference to national responsibility +(an argument doubtless extracted from Shrapnel, talk tall as the very +demagogue when he stood upright), Mr. Romfrey laughed at scornfully, +affirming that our manufactures could take care of themselves. As for +invasion, we are circled by the sea. Providence has done that for us, +and may be relied on to do more in an emergency.--The children of wealth +and the children of the sun alike believe that Providence is for them, +and it would seem that the former can do without it less than the +latter, though the former are less inclined to give it personification. + +This year, however, the array of armaments on the Continent made Mr. +Romfrey anxious about our navy. Almost his first topic in welcoming +Colonel Halkett and Cecilia to Steynham was the rottenness of navy +administration; for if Providence is to do anything for us it must have +a sea-worthy fleet for the operation. How loudly would his contemptuous +laughter have repudiated the charge that he trusted to supernatural +agency for assistance in case of need! But so it was: and he owned to +believing in English luck. Partly of course he meant that steady fire +of combat which his countrymen have got heated to of old till fortune +blessed them. + +'Nevil is not here?' the colonel asked. + +'No, I suspect he's gruelling and plastering a doctor of his +acquaintance,' Mr. Romfrey said, with his nasal laugh composed of scorn +and resignation. + +'Yes, yes, I've heard,' said Colonel Halkett hastily. + +He would have liked to be informed of Dr. Shrapnel's particular offence: +he mentioned the execrable letter. + +Mr. Romfrey complacently interjected: 'Drug-vomit!' and after an +interval: 'Gallows!' + +'That man has done Nevil Beauchamp a world of mischief, Romfrey.' + +'We'll hope for a cure, colonel.' + +'Did the man come across you?' + +'He did.' + +Mr. Romfrey was mute on the subject. Colonel Halkett abstained from +pushing his inquiries. + +Cecilia could only tell her father when they were alone in the +drawing-room a few minutes before dinner that Mrs. Culling was entirely +ignorant of any cause to which Nevil's absence might be attributed. + +'Mr. Romfrey had good cause,' the colonel said, emphatically. + +He repeated it next day, without being a bit wiser of the cause. + +Cecilia's happiness or hope was too sensitive to allow of a beloved +father's deceiving her in his opposition to it. + +She saw clearly now that he had fastened on this miserable incident, +expecting an imbroglio that would divide Nevil and his uncle, and be +an excuse for dividing her and Nevil. O for the passionate will to make +head against what appeared as a fate in this matter! She had it not. + +Mr. and Mrs. Wardour-Devereux, Sir John and Lady Baskelett, and the +Countess of Welshpool, another sister of Mr. Romfrey's, arrived at +Steynham for a day and a night. Lady Baskelett and Lady Welshpool +came to see their brother, not to countenance his household; and Mr. +Wardour-Devereux could not stay longer than a certain number of hours +under a roof where tobacco was in evil odour. From her friend Louise, +his wife, Cecilia learnt that Mr. Lydiard had been summoned to Dr. +Shrapnel's bedside, as Mrs. Devereux knew by a letter she had received +from Mr. Lydiard, who was no political devotee of that man, she assured +Cecilia, but had an extraordinary admiration for the Miss Denham living +with him. This was kindly intended to imply that Beauchamp was released +from his attendance on Dr. Shrapnel, and also that it was not he whom +the Miss Denham attracted. + +'She is in Switzerland,' said Cecilia. + +'She is better there,' said Mrs. Devereux. + +Mr. Stukely Culbrett succeeded to these visitors. He heard of the case +of Dr. Shrapnel from Colonel Halkett, and of Beauchamp's missing of his +chance with the heiress from Mr. Romfrey. + +Rosamund Culling was in great perplexity about Beauchamp's prolonged +absence; for he had engaged to come, he had written to her to say +he would be sure to come; and she feared he was ill. She would have +persuaded Mr. Culbrett to go down to Bevisham to see him: she declared +that she could even persuade herself to call on Dr. Shrapnel a second +time, in spite of her horror of the man. Her anger at the thought of his +keeping Nevil away from good fortune and happiness caused her to speak +in resentment and loathing of the man. + +'He behaved badly when you saw him, did he?' said Stukely. + +'Badly, is no word. He is detestable,' Rosamund replied. + +'You think he ought to be whipped?' + +She feigned an extremity of vindictiveness, and twisted her brows in +comic apology for the unfeminine sentiment, as she said: 'I really do.' + +The feminine gentleness of her character was known to Stukely, so she +could afford to exaggerate the expression of her anger, and she did not +modify it, forgetful that a woman is the representative of the sex with +cynical men, and escapes from contempt at the cost of her sisterhood. + +Looking out of an upper window in the afternoon she beheld Nevil +Beauchamp in a group with his uncle Everard, the colonel and Cecilia, +and Mr. Culbrett. Nevil was on his feet; the others were seated under +the great tulip-tree on the lawn. + +A little observation of them warned her that something was wrong. There +was a vacant chair; Nevil took it in his hand at times, stamped it to +the ground, walked away and sharply back fronting his uncle, speaking +vehemently, she perceived, and vainly, as she judged by the cast of his +uncle's figure. Mr. Romfrey's head was bent, and wagged slightly, as he +screwed his brows up and shot his eyes, queerly at the agitated young +man. Colonel Halkett's arms crossed his chest. Cecilia's eyelids drooped +their lashes. Mr. Culbrett was balancing on the hind-legs of his chair. +No one appeared to be speaking but Nevil. + +It became evident that Nevil was putting a series of questions to his +uncle. Mechanical nods were given him in reply. + +Presently Mr. Romfrey rose, thundering out a word or two, without a +gesture. + +Colonel Halkett rose. + +Nevil flung his hand out straight to the house. + +Mr. Romfrey seemed to consent; the colonel shook his head: Nevil +insisted. + +A footman carrying a tea-tray to Miss Halkett received some commission +and swiftly disappeared, making Rosamund wonder whether sugar, milk or +cream had been omitted. + +She met him on the first landing, and heard that Mr. Romfrey requested +her to step out on the lawn. + +Expecting to hear of a piece of misconduct on the part of the household +servants, she hurried forth, and found that she had to traverse the +whole space of the lawn up to the tuliptree. Colonel Halkett and Mr. +Romfrey had resumed their seats. The colonel stood up and bowed to her. + +Mr. Romfrey said: 'One question to you, ma'am, and you shall not be +detained. Did not that man Shrapnel grossly insult you on the day you +called on him to see Captain Beauchamp about a couple of months before +the Election?' + +'Look at me when you speak, ma'am,' said Beauchamp. + +Rosamund looked at him. + +The whiteness of his face paralyzed her tongue. A dreadful levelling of +his eyes penetrated and chilled her. Instead of thinking of her answer +she thought of what could possibly have happened. + +'Did he insult you at all, ma'am?' said Beauchamp. + +Mr. Romfrey reminded him that he was not a cross-examining criminal +barrister. + +They waited for her to speak. + +She hesitated, coloured, betrayed confusion; her senses telling her of a +catastrophe, her conscience accusing her as the origin of it. + +'Did Dr. Shrapnel, to your belief, intentionally hurt your feelings or +your dignity?' said Beauchamp, and made the answer easier: + +'Not intentionally, surely: not... I certainly do not accuse him.' + +'Can you tell me you feel that he wounded you in the smallest degree? +And if so, how? I ask you this, because he is anxious, if he lives, to +apologize to you for any offence that he may have been guilty of: he was +ignorant of it. I have his word for that, and his commands to me to bear +it to you. I may tell you I have never known him injure the most feeble +thing--anything alive, or wish to.' + +Beauchamp's voice choked. Rosamund saw tears leap out of the stern face +of her dearest now in wrath with her. + +'Is he ill?' she faltered. + +'He is. You own to a strong dislike of him, do you not?' + +'But not to desire any harm to him.' + +'Not a whipping,' Mr. Culbrett murmured. + +Everard Romfrey overheard it. + +He had allowed Mrs. Culling to be sent for, that she might with a bare +affirmative silence Nevil, when his conduct was becoming intolerable +before the guests of the house. + +'That will do, ma'am,' he dismissed her. + +Beauchamp would not let her depart. + +'I must have your distinct reply, and in Mr. Romfrey's presence:--say, +that if you accused him you were mistaken, or that they were mistaken +who supposed you had accused him. I must have the answer before you go.' + +'Sir, will you learn manners!' Mr. Romfrey said to him, with a rattle of +the throat. + +Beauchamp turned his face from-her. + +Colonel Halkett offered her his arm to lead her away. + +'What is it? Oh, what is it?' she whispered, scarcely able to walk, but +declining the colonel's arm. + +'You ought not to have been dragged out here,' said he. 'Any one might +have known there would be no convincing of Captain Beauchamp. That old +rascal in Bevisham has been having a beating; that's all. And a very +beautiful day it is!--a little too hot, though. Before we leave, you +must give me a lesson or two in gardening.' + +'Dr. Shrapnel--Mr. Romfrey!' said Rosamund half audibly under the +oppression of the more she saw than what she said. + +The colonel talked of her renown in landscape-gardening. He added +casually: 'They met the other day.' + +'By accident?' + +'By chance, I suppose. Shrapnel defends one of your Steynham poaching +vermin.' + +'Mr. Romfrey struck him?--for that? Oh, never!' Rosamund exclaimed. + +'I suppose he had a long account to settle.' + +She fetched her breath painfully. 'I shall never be forgiven.' + +'And I say that a gentleman has no business with idols,' the colonel +fumed as he spoke. 'Those letters of Shrapnel to Nevil Beauchamp are a +scandal on the name of Englishman.' + +'You have read that shocking one, Colonel Halkett?' + +'Captain Baskelett read it out to us.' + +'He? Oh! then...' She stopped:--Then the author of this mischief is +clear to me! her divining hatred of Cecil would have said, but her +humble position did not warrant such speech. A consideration of the +lowliness necessitating this restraint at a moment when loudly to +denounce another's infamy with triumphant insight would have solaced and +supported her, kept Rosamund dumb. + +She could not bear to think of her part in the mischief. + +She was not bound to think of it, knowing actually nothing of the +occurrence. + +Still she felt that she was on her trial. She detected herself running +in and out of her nature to fortify it against accusations rather +than cleanse it for inspection. It was narrowing in her own sight. The +prospect of her having to submit to a further interrogatory, shut it up +entrenched in the declaration that Dr. Shrapnel had so far outraged her +sentiments as to be said to have offended her: not insulted, perhaps, +but certainly offended. + +And this was a generous distinction. It was generous; and, having +recognized the generosity, she was unable to go beyond it. + +She was presently making the distinction to Miss Halkett. The colonel +had left her at the door of the house: Miss Halkett sought admission +to her private room on an errand of condolence, for she had sympathized +with her very much in the semi-indignity Nevil had forced her to +undergo: and very little indeed had she been able to sympathize with +Nevil, who had been guilty of the serious fault of allowing himself to +appear moved by his own commonplace utterances; or, in other words, the +theme being hostile to his audience, he had betrayed emotion over it +without first evoking the spirit of pathos. + +'As for me,' Rosamund replied, to some comforting remarks of Miss +Halkett's, 'I do not understand why I should be mixed up in Dr. +Shrapnel's misfortunes: I really am quite unable to recollect his words +to me or his behaviour: I have only a positive impression that I left +his house, where I had gone to see Captain Beauchamp, in utter disgust, +so repelled by his language that I could hardly trust myself to speak of +the man to Mr. Romfrey when he questioned me. I did not volunteer it. +I am ready to say that I believe Dr. Shrapnel did not intend to be +insulting. I cannot say that he was not offensive. + +You know, Miss Halkett, I would willingly, gladly have saved him from +anything like punishment.' + +'You are too gentle to have thought of it,' said Cecilia. + +'But I shall never be forgiven by Captain Beauchamp. I see in his eyes +that he accuses me and despises me.' + +'He will not be so unjust, Mrs. Culling.' + +Rosamund begged that she might hear what Nevil had first said on his +arrival. + +Cecilia related that they had seen him walking swiftly across the park, +and that Mr. Romfrey had hailed him, and held his hand out; and that +Captain Beauchamp had overlooked it, saying he feared Mr. Romfrey's work +was complete. He had taken her father's hand and hers and his touch was +like ice. + +'His worship of that Dr. Shrapnel is extraordinary,' quoth Rosamund. +'And how did Mr. Romfrey behave to him?' + +'My father thinks, very forbearingly.' + +Rosamund sighed and made a semblance of wringing her hands. 'It seems to +me that I anticipated ever since I heard of the man... or at least ever +since I saw him and heard him, he would be the evil genius of us all: +if I dare include myself. But I am not permitted to escape! And, +Miss Halkett, can you tell me how it was that my name--that I became +involved? I cannot imagine the circumstances which would bring me +forward in this unhappy affair.' + +Cecilia replied: 'The occasion was, that Captain Beauchamp so scornfully +contrasted the sort of injury done by Dr. Shrapnel's defence of a +poacher on his uncle's estate, with the severe chastisement inflicted by +Mr. Romfrey in revenge for it. He would not leave the subject.' + +'I see him--see his eyes!' cried Rosamund, her bosom heaving and sinking +deep, as her conscience quavered within her. 'At last Mr. Romfrey +mentioned me?' + +'He stood up and said you had been personally insulted by Dr. Shrapnel.' + +Rosamund meditated in a distressing doubt of her conscientious +truthfulness. + +'Captain Beauchamp will be coming to me; and how can I answer him? +Heaven knows I would have shielded the poor man, if possible--poor +wretch! Wicked though he is, one has only to hear of him suffering! But +what can I answer? I do recollect now that Mr. Romfrey compelled me from +question to question to confess that the man had vexed me. Insulted, I +never said. At the worst, I said vexed. I would not have said insulted, +or even offended, because Mr. Romfrey... ah! we know him. What I did +say, I forget. I have no guide to what I said but my present feelings, +and they are pity for the unfortunate man much more than dislike.--Well, +I must go through the scene with Nevil!' Rosamund concluded her outcry +of ostensible exculpation. + +She asked in a cooler moment how it was that Captain Beauchamp had so +far forgotten himself as to burst out on his uncle before the guests +of the house. It appeared that he had wished his uncle to withdraw with +him, and Mr. Romfrey had bidden him postpone private communications. +Rosamund gathered from one or two words of Cecilia's that Mr. Romfrey, +until finally stung by Nevil, had indulged in his best-humoured banter. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV. THE FACE OF RENEE + +Shortly before the ringing of the dinner-bell Rosamund knocked at +Beauchamp's dressing-room door, the bearer of a telegram from Bevisham. +He read it in one swift run of the eyes, and said: 'Come in, ma'am, I +have something for you. Madame de Rouaillout sends you this.' + +Rosamund saw her name written in a French hand on the back of the card. + +'You stay with us, Nevil?' + +'To-night and to-morrow, perhaps. The danger seems to be over.' + +'Has Dr. Shrapnel been in danger?' + +'He has. If it's quite over now!' + +'I declare to you, Nevil...' + +'Listen to me, ma'am; I'm in the dark about this murderous business:--an +old man, defenceless, harmless as a child!--but I know this, that you +are somewhere in it.' + +'Nevil, do you not guess at some one else?' + +'He! yes, he! But Cecil Baskelett led no blind man to Dr. Shrapnel's +gate.' + +'Nevil, as I live, I knew nothing of it!' + +'No, but you set fire to the train. You hated the old man, and you +taught Mr. Romfrey to think that you had been insulted. I see it all. +Now you must have the courage to tell him of your error. There's no +other course for you. I mean to take Mr. Romfrey to Dr. Shrapnel, to +save the honour of our family, as far as it can be saved.' + +'What? Nevil!' exclaimed Rosamund, gaping. + +'It seems little enough, ma'am. But he must go. I will have the apology +spoken, and man to man.' + +'But you would never tell your uncle that?' + +He laughed in his uncle's manner. + +'But, Nevil, my dearest, forgive me, I think of you--why are the +Halketts here? It is not entirely with Colonel Halkett's consent. It is +your uncle's influence with him that gives you your chance. Do you not +care to avail yourself of it? Ever since he heard Dr. Shrapnel's letter +to you, Colonel Halkett has, I am sure, been tempted to confound you +with him in his mind: ah! Nevil, but recollect that it is only Mr. +Romfrey who can help to give you your Cecilia. There is no dispensing +with him. Postpone your attempt to humiliate--I mean, that is, Oh! +Nevil, whatever you intend to do to overcome your uncle, trust to time, +be friends with him; be a little worldly! for her sake! to ensure her +happiness!' + +Beauchamp obtained the information that his cousin Cecil had read out +the letter of Dr. Shrapnel at Mount Laurels. + +The bell rang. + +'Do you imagine I should sit at my uncle's table if I did not intend +to force him to repair the wrong he has done to himself and to us?' he +said. + +'Oh! Nevil, do you not see Captain Baskelett at work here?' + +'What amends can Cecil Baskelett make? My uncle is a man of honour: +it is in his power. There, I leave you to speak to him; you will do it +to-night, after we break up in the drawing-room.' + +Rosamund groaned: 'An apology to Dr. Shrapnel from Mr. Romfrey! It is an +impossibility, Nevil! utter!' + +'So you say to sit idle: but do as I tell you.' + +He went downstairs. + +He had barely reproached her. She wondered at that; and then remembered +his alien sad half-smile in quitting the room. + +Rosamund would not present herself at her lord's dinner-table when there +were any guests at Steynham. She prepared to receive Miss Halkett in the +drawing-room, as the guests of the house this evening chanced to be her +friends. + +Madame de Rouaillout's present to her was a photograph of M. de +Croisnel, his daughter and son in a group. Rosamund could not bear to +look at the face of Renee, and she put it out of sight. But she had +looked. She was reduced to look again. + +Roland stood beside his father's chair; Renee sat at his feet, clasping +his right hand. M. de Croisnel's fallen eyelids and unshorn white chin +told the story of the family reunion. He was dying: his two children +were nursing him to the end. + +Decidedly Cecilia was a more beautiful woman than Renee: but on which +does the eye linger longest--which draws the heart? a radiant landscape, +where the tall ripe wheat flashes between shadow and shine in the +stately march of Summer, or the peep into dewy woodland on to dark +water? + +Dark-eyed Renee was not beauty but attraction; she touched the double +chords within us which are we know not whether harmony or discord, but +a divine discord if an uncertified harmony, memorable beyond plain +sweetness or majesty. There are touches of bliss in anguish that +superhumanize bliss, touches of mystery in simplicity, of the eternal +in the variable. These two chords of poignant antiphony she struck +throughout the range of the hearts of men, and strangely intervolved +them in vibrating unison. Only to look at her face, without hearing her +voice, without the charm of her speech, was to feel it. On Cecilia's +entering the drawing-room sofa, while the gentlemen drank claret, +Rosamund handed her the card of the photographic artist of Tours, +mentioning no names. + +'I should say the portrait is correct. A want of spirituality,' Rosamund +said critically, using one of the insular commonplaces, after that +manner of fastening upon what there is not in a piece of Art or nature. + +Cecilia's avidity to see and study the face preserved her at a higher +mark. + +She knew the person instantly; had no occasion to ask who this was. She +sat over the portrait blushing burningly: 'And that is a brother?' she +said. + +'That is her brother Roland, and very like her, except in complexion,' +said Rosamund. + +Cecilia murmured of a general resemblance in the features. Renee +enchained her. Though but a sun-shadow, the vividness of this French +face came out surprisingly; air was in the nostrils and speech flew from +the tremulous mouth. The eyes? were they quivering with internal light, +or were they set to seem so in the sensitive strange curves of the +eyelids whose awakened lashes appeared to tremble on some borderland +between lustreful significance and the mists? She caught at the nerves +like certain aoristic combinations in music, like tones of a stringed +instrument swept by the wind, enticing, unseizable. Yet she sat there at +her father's feet gazing out into the world indifferent to spectators, +indifferent even to the common sentiment of gracefulness. Her left hand +clasped his right, and she supported herself on the floor with the other +hand leaning away from him, to the destruction of conventional symmetry +in the picture. None but a woman of consummate breeding dared have +done as she did. It was not Southern suppleness that saved her from the +charge of harsh audacity, but something of the kind of genius in her +mood which has hurried the greater poets of sound and speech to impose +their naturalness upon accepted laws, or show the laws to have been our +meagre limitations. + +The writer in this country will, however, be made safest, and the +excellent body of self-appointed thongmen, who walk up and down our +ranks flapping their leathern straps to terrorize us from experiments +in imagery, will best be satisfied, by the statement that she was +indescribable: a term that exacts no labour of mind from him or from +them, for it flows off the pen as readily as it fills a vacuum. + +That posture of Renee displeased Cecilia and fascinated her. In an +exhibition of paintings she would have passed by it in pure displeasure: +but here was Nevil's first love, the woman who loved him; and she +was French. After a continued study of her Cecilia's growing jealousy +betrayed itself in a conscious rivalry of race, coming to the admission +that Englishwomen cannot fling themselves about on the floor without +agonizing the graces: possibly, too, they cannot look singularly +without risks in the direction of slyness and brazen archness; or talk +animatedly without dipping in slang. Conventional situations preserve +them and interchange dignity with them; still life befits them; +pre-eminently that judicial seat from which in briefest speech they +deliver their judgements upon their foreign sisters. Jealousy it was +that plucked Cecilia from her majestic place and caused her to envy in +Renee things she would otherwise have disapproved. + +At last she had seen the French lady's likeness! The effect of it was a +horrid trouble in Cecilia's cool blood, abasement, a sense of eclipse, +hardly any sense of deserving worthiness: 'What am I but an heiress!' +Nevil had once called her beautiful; his praise had given her beauty. +But what is beauty when it is outshone! Ask the owners of gems. You +think them rich; they are pining. + +Then, too, this Renee, who looked electrical in repose, might +really love Nevil with a love that sent her heart out to him in his +enterprises, justifying and adoring him, piercing to the hero in +his very thoughts. Would she not see that his championship of the +unfortunate man Dr. Shrapnel was heroic? + +Cecilia surrendered the card to Rosamund, and it was out of sight when +Beauchamp stepped in the drawing-room. His cheeks were flushed; he had +been one against three for the better part of an hour. + +'Are you going to show me the downs to-morrow morning?' Cecilia said to +him; and he replied, 'You will have to be up early.' + +'What's that?' asked the colonel, at Beauchamp's heels. + +He was volunteering to join the party of two for the early morning's +ride to the downs. Mr. Romfrey pressed his shoulder, saying, 'There's no +third horse can do it in my stables.' + +Colonel Halkett turned to him. + +'I had your promise to come over the kennels with me and see how I treat +a cry of mad dog, which is ninety-nine times out of a hundred mad fool +man,' Mr. Romfrey added. + +By that the colonel knew he meant to stand by Nevil still and offer him +his chance of winning Cecilia. + +Having pledged his word not to interfere, Colonel Halkett submitted, +and muttered, 'Ah! the kennels.' Considering however what he had been +witnessing of Nevil's behaviour to his uncle, the colonel was amazed at +Mr. Romfrey's magnanimity in not cutting him off and disowning him. + +'Why the downs?' he said. + +'Why the deuce, colonel?' A question quite as reasonable, and Mr. +Romfrey laughed under his breath. To relieve an uncertainty in Cecilia's +face, that might soon have become confusion, he described the downs +fronting the paleness of earliest dawn, and then their arch and curve +and dip against the pearly grey of the half-glow; and then, among their +hollows, lo, the illumination of the East all around, and up and away, +and a gallop for miles along the turfy thymy rolling billows, land to +left, sea to right, below you. 'It's the nearest hit to wings we can +make, Cecilia.' He surprised her with her Christian name, which kindled +in her the secret of something he expected from that ride on the downs. +Compare you the Alps with them? If you could jump on the back of an +eagle, you might. The Alps have height. But the downs have swiftness. +Those long stretching lines of the downs are greyhounds in full career. +To look at them is to set the blood racing! Speed is on the downs, +glorious motion, odorous air of sea and herb, exquisite as in the isles +of Greece. And the Continental travelling ninnies leave England for +health!--run off and forth from the downs to the steamboat, the railway, +the steaming hotel, the tourist's shivering mountain-top, in search of +sensations! There on the downs the finest and liveliest are at their +bidding ready to fly through them like hosts of angels. + +He spoke somewhat in that strain, either to relieve Cecilia or prepare +the road for Nevil, not in his ordinary style; on the contrary, with a +swing of enthusiasm that seemed to spring of ancient heartfelt fervours. +And indeed soon afterward he was telling her that there on those downs, +in full view of Steynham, he and his wife had first joined hands. + +Beauchamp sat silent. Mr. Romfrey despatched orders to the stables, +and Rosamund to the kitchen. Cecilia was rather dismayed by the formal +preparations for the ride. She declined the early cup of coffee. Mr. +Romfrey begged her to take it. 'Who knows the hour when you 'll be +back?' he said. Beauchamp said nothing. + +The room grew insufferable to Cecilia. She would have liked to be wafted +to her chamber in a veil, so shamefully unveiled did she seem to be. But +the French lady would have been happy in her place! Her father kissed +her as fathers do when they hand the bride into the travelling-carriage. +His 'Good-night, my darling!' was in the voice of a soldier on duty. +For a concluding sign that her dim apprehensions pointed correctly, Mr. +Romfrey kissed her on the forehead. She could not understand how it +had come to pass that she found herself suddenly on this incline, +precipitated whither she would fain be going, only less hurriedly, less +openly, and with her secret merely peeping, like a dove in the breast. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV. THE RIDE IN THE WRONG DIRECTION + +That pure opaque of the line of downs ran luminously edged against the +pearly morning sky, with its dark landward face crepusculine yet clear +in every combe, every dotting copse and furze-bush, every wavy fall, +and the ripple, crease, and rill-like descent of the turf. Beauty of +darkness was there, as well as beauty of light above. + +Beauchamp and Cecilia rode forth before the sun was over the line, while +the West and North-west sides of the rolling downs were stamped with +such firmness of dusky feature as you see on the indentations of a +shield of tarnished silver. The mounting of the sun behind threw an +obscurer gloom, and gradually a black mask overcame them, until the +rays shot among their folds and windings, and shadows rich as the black +pansy, steady as on a dialplate rounded with the hour. + +Mr. Everard Romfrey embraced this view from Steynham windows, and loved +it. The lengths of gigantic 'greyhound backs' coursing along the South +were his vision of delight; no image of repose for him, but of the life +in swiftness. He had known them when the great bird of the downs was not +a mere tradition, and though he owned conscientiously to never having +beheld the bird, a certain mystery of holiness hung about the region +where the bird had been in his time. There, too, with a timely word +he had gained a wealthy and good wife. He had now sent Nevil to do the +same. + +This astute gentleman had caught at the idea of a ride of the young +couple to the downs with his customary alacrity of perception as being +the very best arrangement for hurrying them to the point. At Steynham +Nevil was sure to be howling all day over his tumbled joss Shrapnel. +Once away in the heart of the downs, and Cecilia beside him, it was +a matter of calculation that two or three hours of the sharpening air +would screw his human nature to the pitch. In fact, unless each of them +was reluctant, they could hardly return unbetrothed. Cecilia's consent +was foreshadowed by her submission in going: Mr. Romfrey had noticed her +fright at the suggestive formalities he cast round the expedition, and +felt sure of her. Taking Nevil for a man who could smell the perfume of +a ripe affirmative on the sweetest of lips, he was pretty well sure +of him likewise. And then a truce to all that Radical rageing and +hot-pokering of the country! and lie in peace, old Shrapnel! and get on +your legs when you can, and offend no more; especially be mindful not to +let fly one word against a woman! With Cecilia for wife, and a year of +marriage devoted to a son and heir, Nevil might be expected to resume +his duties as a naval officer, and win an honourable name for the +inheritance of the young one he kissed. + +There was benevolence in these previsions of Mr. Romfrey, proving how +good it is for us to bow to despotic authority, if only we will bring +ourselves unquestioningly to accept the previous deeds of the directing +hand. + +Colonel Halkett gave up his daughter for lost when she did not appear at +the breakfast-table: for yet more decidedly lost when the luncheon saw +her empty place; and as time drew on toward the dinner-hour, he began to +think her lost beyond hope, embarked for good and all with the madbrain. +Some little hope of a dissension between the pair, arising from the +natural antagonism of her strong sense to Nevil's extravagance, had +buoyed him until it was evident that they must have alighted at an +inn to eat, which signified that they had overleaped the world and its +hurdles, and were as dreamy a leash of lovers as ever made a dreamland +of hard earth. The downs looked like dreamland through the long +afternoon. They shone as in a veil of silk-softly fair, softly dark. No +spot of harshness was on them save where a quarry South-westward gaped +at the evening sun. + +Red light struck into that round chalk maw, and the green slopes and +channels and half-circle hollows were brought a mile-stride higher +Steynham by the level beams. + +The poor old colonel fell to a more frequent repetition of the 'Well!' +with which he had been unconsciously expressing his perplexed mind in +the kennels and through the covers during the day. None of the gentlemen +went to dress. Mr. Culbrett was indoors conversing with Rosamund +Culling. + +'What's come to them?' the colonel asked of Mr. Romfrey, who said +shrugging, 'Something wrong with one of the horses.' It had happened to +him on one occasion to set foot in the hole of a baked hedgehog that +had furnished a repast, not without succulence, to some shepherd of the +downs. Such a case might have recurred; it was more likely to cause an +upset at a walk than at a gallop: or perhaps a shoe had been cast; and +young people break no bones at a walking fall; ten to one if they do at +their top speed. Horses manage to kill their seniors for them: the young +are exempt from accident. + +Colonel Halkett nodded and sighed: 'I daresay they're safe. It's that +man Shrapnel's letter--that letter, Romfrey! A private letter, I know; +but I've not heard Nevil disown the opinions expressed in it. I submit. +It's no use resisting. I treat my daughter as a woman capable of judging +for herself. I repeat, I submit. I haven't a word against Nevil except +on the score of his politics. I like him. All I have to say is, I don't +approve of a republican and a sceptic for my son-in-law. I yield to you, +and my daughter, if she...!' + +'I think she does, colonel. Marriage 'll cure the fellow. Nevil will +slough his craze. Off! old coat. Cissy will drive him in strings. "My +wife!" I hear him.' Mr. Romfrey laughed quietly. 'It's all "my country," +now. The dog'll be uxorious. He wants fixing; nothing worse.' + +'How he goes on about Shrapnel!' + +'I shouldn't think much of him if he didn't.' + +'You're one in a thousand, Romfrey. I object to seeing a man +worshipped.' + +'It's Nevil's green-sickness, and Shrapnel's the god of it.' + +'I trust to heaven you're right. It seems to me young fellows ought to +be out of it earlier.' + +'They generally are.' Mr. Romfrey named some of the processes by which +they are relieved of brain-flightiness, adding philosophically, 'This +way or that.' + +His quick ear caught a sound of hoofs cantering down the avenue on the +Northern front of the house. + +He consulted his watch. 'Ten minutes to eight. Say a quarter-past for +dinner. They're here, colonel.' + +Mr. Romfrey met Nevil returning from the stables. Cecilia had +disappeared. + +'Had a good day?' said Mr. Romfrey. + +Beauchamp replied: 'I'll tell you of it after dinner,' and passed by +him. + +Mr. Romfrey edged round to Colonel Halkett, conjecturing in his mind: +They have not hit it; as he remarked: 'Breakfast and luncheon have +been omitted in this day's fare,' which appeared to the colonel a +confirmation of his worst fears, or rather the extinction of his last +spark of hope. + +He knocked at his daughter's door in going upstairs to dress. + +Cecilia presented herself and kissed him. + +'Well?' said he. + +'By-and-by, papa,' she answered. 'I have a headache. Beg Mr. Romfrey to +excuse me.' + +'No news for me?' + +She had no news. + +Mrs. Culling was with her. The colonel stepped on mystified to his room. + +When the door had closed Cecilia turned to Rosamund and burst into +tears. Rosamund felt that it must be something grave indeed for the +proud young lady so to betray a troubled spirit. + +'He is ill--Dr. Shrapnel is very ill,' Cecilia responded to one or two +subdued inquiries in as clear a voice as she could command. + +'Where have you heard of him?' Rosamund asked. + +'We have been there.' + +'Bevisham? to Bevisham?' Rosamund was considering the opinion Mr. +Romfrey would form of the matter from the point of view of his horses. + +'It was Nevil's wish,' said Cecilia. + +'Yes? and you went with him,' Rosamund encouraged her to proceed, +gladdened at hearing her speak of Nevil by that name; 'you have not been +on the downs at all?' + +Cecilia mentioned a junction railway station they had ridden to; and +thence, boxing the horses, by train to Bevisham. Rosamund understood +that some haunting anxiety had fretted Nevil during the night; in the +morning he could not withstand it, and he begged Cecilia to change +their destination, apparently with a vehemence of entreaty that had been +irresistible, or else it was utter affection for him had reduced her +to undertake the distasteful journey. She admitted that she was not the +most sympathetic companion Nevil could have had on the way, either going +or coming. She had not entered Dr. Shrapnel's cottage. Remaining on +horseback she had seen the poor man reclining in his garden chair. +Mr. Lydiard was with him, and also his ward Miss Denham, who had been +summoned by telegraph by one of the servants from Switzerland. And +Cecilia had heard Nevil speak of his uncle to her, and too humbly, she +hinted. Nor had the expression of Miss Denham's countenance in listening +to him pleased her; but it was true that a heavily burdened heart cannot +be expected to look pleasing. On the way home Cecilia had been compelled +in some degree to defend Mr. Romfrey. Blushing through her tears at the +remembrance of a past emotion that had been mixed with foresight, she +confessed to Rosamund she thought it now too late to prevent a rupture +between Nevil and his uncle. Had some one whom Nevil trusted and cared +for taken counsel with him and advised him before uncle and nephew met +to discuss this most unhappy matter, then there might have been hope. As +it was, the fate of Dr. Shrapnel had gained entire possession of Nevil. +Every retort of his uncle's in reference to it rose up in him: he used +language of contempt neighbouring abhorrence: he stipulated for one sole +thing to win back his esteem for his uncle; and that was, the apology to +Dr. Shrapnel. + +'And to-night,' Cecilia concluded, 'he will request Mr. Romfrey to +accompany him to Bevisham to-morrow morning, to make the apology in +person. He will not accept the slightest evasion. He thinks Dr. Shrapnel +may die, and the honour of the family--what is it he says of it?' +Cecilia raised her eyes to the ceiling, while Rosamund blinked in +impatience and grief, just apprehending the alien state of the young +lady's mind in her absence of recollection, as well as her bondage in +the effort to recollect accurately. + +'Have you not eaten any food to-day, Miss Halkett?' she said; for it +might be the want of food which had broken her and changed her manner. + +Cecilia replied that she had ridden for an hour to Mount Laurels. + +'Alone? Mr. Romfrey must not hear of that,' said Rosamund. + +Cecilia consented to lie down on her bed. She declined the dainties +Rosamund pressed on her. She was feverish with a deep and unconcealed +affliction, and behaved as if her pride had gone. But if her pride +had gone she would have eased her heart by sobbing outright. A similar +division harassed her as when her friend Nevil was the candidate for +Bevisham. She condemned his extreme wrath with his uncle, yet was +attracted and enchained by the fire of passionate attachment which +aroused it: and she was conscious that she had but shown obedience to +his wishes throughout the day, not sympathy with his feelings. Under +cover of a patient desire to please she had nursed irritation and +jealousy; the degradation of the sense of jealousy increasing the +irritation. Having consented to the ride to Dr. Shrapnel, should she +not, to be consistent, have dismounted there? O half heart! A whole +one, though it be an erring, like that of the French lady, does at least +live, and has a history, and makes music: but the faint and uncertain +is jarred in action, jarred in memory, ever behind the day and in the +shadow of it! Cecilia reviewed herself: jealous, disappointed, vexed, +ashamed, she had been all day a graceless companion, a bad actress: +and at the day's close she was loving Nevil the better for what had +dissatisfied, distressed, and wounded her. She was loving him in +emulation of his devotedness to another person: and that other was +a revolutionary common people's doctor! an infidel, a traitor to his +country's dearest interests! But Nevil loved him, and it had become +impossible for her not to covet the love, or to think of the old +offender without the halo cast by Nevil's attachment being upon him. +So intensely was she moved by her intertwisting reflections that in +an access of bodily fever she stood up and moved before the glass, to +behold the image of the woman who could be the victim of these childish +emotions: and no wonderful contrast struck her eyes; she appeared to +herself as poor and small as they. How could she aspire to a man like +Nevil Beauchamp? If he had made her happy by wooing her she would not +have adored him as she did now. He likes my hair, she said, smoothing +it out, and then pressing her temples, like one insane. Two minutes +afterward she was telling Rosamund her head ached less. + +'This terrible Dr. Shrapnel!' Rosamund exclaimed, but reported that no +loud voices were raised in the dining-room. + +Colonel Halkett came to see his daughter, full of anxiety and curiosity. +Affairs had been peaceful below, for he was ignorant of the expedition +to Bevisham. On hearing of it he frowned, questioned Cecilia as to +whether she had set foot on that man's grounds, then said: 'Ah! well, we +leave to-morrow: I must go, I have business at home; I can't delay it. +I sanctioned no calling there, nothing of the kind. From Steynham to +Bevisham? Goodness, it's rank madness. I'm not astonished you're sick +and ill.' + +He waited till he was assured Cecilia had no special matter to relate, +and recommending her to drink the tea Mrs. Culling had made for her, and +then go to bed and sleep, he went down to the drawing-room, charged with +the worst form of hostility toward Nevil, the partly diplomatic. + +Cecilia smiled at her father's mention of sleep. She was in the contest +of the two men, however inanimately she might be lying overhead, and the +assurance in her mind that neither of them would give ground, so similar +were they in their tenacity of will, dissimilar in all else, dragged her +this way and that till she swayed lifeless between them. One may be as +a weed of the sea while one's fate is being decided. To love is to be on +the sea, out of sight of land: to love a man like Nevil Beauchamp is to +be on the sea in tempest. Still to persist in loving would be noble, and +but for this humiliation of utter helplessness an enviable power. Her +thoughts ran thus in shame and yearning and regret, dimly discerning +where her heart failed in the strength which was Nevil's, though it was +a full heart, faithful and not void of courage. But he never brooded, he +never blushed from insufficiency-the faintness of a desire, the callow +passion that cannot fly and feed itself: he never tottered; he walked +straight to his mark. She set up his image and Renee's, and cowered +under the heroical shapes till she felt almost extinct. With her weak +limbs and head worthlessly paining, the little infantile I within her +ceased to wail, dwindled beyond sensation. Rosamund, waiting on her +in the place of her maid, saw two big drops come through her closed +eyelids, and thought that if it could be granted to Nevil to look for a +moment on this fair and proud young lady's loveliness in abandonment, +it would tame, melt, and save him. The Gods presiding over custom do not +permit such renovating sights to men. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI. PURSUIT OF THE APOLOGY OF Mr. ROMFREY TO DR. SHRAPNEL + +The contest, which was an alternation of hard hitting and close +wrestling, had recommenced when Colonel Halkett stepped into the +drawing-room. + +'Colonel, I find they've been galloping to Bevisham and back,' said Mr. +Romfrey. + +'I've heard of it,' the colonel replied. Not perceiving a sign of +dissatisfaction on his friend's face, he continued: 'To that man +Shrapnel.' + +'Cecilia did not dismount,' said Beauchamp. + +'You took her to that man's gate. It was not with my sanction. You know +my ideas of the man.' + +'If you were to see him now, colonel, I don't think you would speak +harshly of him.' + +'We 're not obliged to go and look on men who have, had their measure +dealt them.' + +'Barbarously,' said Beauchamp. + +Mr. Romfrey in the most placid manner took a chair. 'Windy talk, that!' +he said. + +Colonel Halkett seated himself. Stukely Culbrett turned a sheet of +manuscript he was reading. + +Beauchamp began a caged lion's walk on the rug under the mantelpiece. + +'I shall not spare you from hearing what I think of it, sir.' + +'We 've had what you think of it twice over,' said Mr. Romfrey. 'I +suppose it was the first time for information, the second time for +emphasis, and the rest counts to keep it alive in your recollection.' + +'This is what you have to take to heart, sir; that Dr. Shrapnel is now +seriously ill.' + +'I'm sorry for it, and I'll pay the doctor's bill.' + +'You make it hard for me to treat you with respect.' + +'Fire away. Those Radical friends of yours have to learn a lesson, and +it's worth a purse to teach them that a lady, however feeble she +may seem to them, is exactly of the strength of the best man of her +acquaintance.' + +'That's well said!' came from Colonel Halkett. + +Beauchamp stared at him, amazed by the commendation of empty language. + +'You acted in error; barbarously, but in error,' he addressed his uncle. + +'And you have got a fine topic for mouthing,' Mr. Romfrey rejoined. + +'You mean to sit still under Dr. Shrapnel's forgiveness?' + +'He's taken to copy the Christian religion, has he?' + +'You know you were deluded when you struck him.' + +'Not a whit.' + +'Yes, you know it now: Mrs. Culling--' + +'Drag in no woman, Nevil Beauchamp!' + +'She has confessed to you that Dr. Shrapnel neither insulted her nor +meant to ruffle her.' + +'She has done no such nonsense.' + +'If she has not!--but I trust her to have done it.' + +'You play the trumpeter, you terrorize her.' + +'Into opening her lips wider; nothing else. I'll have the truth from +her, and no mincing: and from Cecil Baskelett and Palmet.' + +'Give Cecil a second licking, if you can, and have him off to Shrapnel.' + +'You!' cried Beauchamp. + +At this juncture Stukely Culbrett closed the manuscript in his hands, +and holding it out to Beauchamp, said: + +'Here's your letter, Nevil. It's tolerably hard to decipher. It's mild +enough; it's middling good pulpit. I like it.' + +'What have you got there?' Colonel Halkett asked him. + +'A letter of his friend Dr. Shrapnel on the Country. Read a bit, +colonel.' + +'I? That letter! Mild, do you call it?' The colonel started back his +chair in declining to touch the letter. + +'Try it,' said Stukely. 'It's the letter they have been making the noise +about. It ought to be printed. There's a hit or two at the middle-class +that I should like to see in print. It's really not bad pulpit; and +I suspect that what you object to, colonel, is only the dust of a +well-thumped cushion. Shrapnel thumps with his fist. He doesn't say much +that's new. If the parsons were men they'd be saying it every Sunday. If +they did, colonel, I should hear you saying, amen.' + +'Wait till they do say it.' + +'That's a long stretch. They're turn-cocks of one Water-company--to wash +the greasy citizens!' + +'You're keeping Nevil on the gape;' said Mr. Romfrey, with a whimsical +shrewd cast of the eye at Beauchamp, who stood alert not to be foiled, +arrow-like in look and readiness to repeat his home-shot. Mr. Romfrey +wanted to hear more of that unintelligible 'You!' of Beauchamp's. But +Stukely Culbrett intended that the latter should be foiled, and he +continued his diversion from the angry subject. + +'We'll drop the sacerdotals,' he said. 'They're behind a veil for us, +and so are we for them. I'm with you, colonel; I wouldn't have them +persecuted; they sting fearfully when whipped. No one listens to them +now except the class that goes to sleep under them, to "set an example" +to the class that can't understand them. Shrapnel is like the breeze +shaking the turf-grass outside the church-doors; a trifle fresher. He +knocks nothing down.' + +'He can't!' ejaculated the colonel. + +'He sermonizes to shake, that's all. I know the kind of man.' + +'Thank heaven, it's not a common species in England!' + +'Common enough to be classed.' + +Beauchamp struck through the conversation of the pair: 'Can I see you +alone to-night, sir, or to-morrow morning?' + +'You may catch me where you can,' was Mr. Romfrey's answer. + +'Where's that? It's for your sake and mine, not for Dr. Shrapnel's. I +have to speak to you, and must. You have done your worst with him; you +can't undo it. You have to think of your honour as a gentleman. I intend +to treat you with respect, but wolf is the title now, whether I say it +or not.' + +'Shrapnel's a rather long-legged sheep?' + +'He asks for nothing from you.' + +'He would have got nothing, at a cry of peccavi!' + +'He was innocent, perfectly blameless; he would not lie to save himself. +You mistook that for--but you were an engine shot along a line of rails. +He does you the justice to say you acted in error.' + +'And you're his parrot.' + +'He pardons you.' + +'Ha! t' other cheek!' + +'You went on that brute's errand in ignorance. Will you keep to the +character now you know the truth? Hesitation about it doubles the +infamy. An old man! the best of men! the kindest and truest! the most +unselfish!' + +'He tops me by half a head, and he's my junior.' + +Beauchamp suffered himself to give out a groan of sick derision: 'Ah!' + +'And it was no joke holding him tight,' said Mr. Romfrey, 'I 'd as lief +snap an ash. The fellow (he leaned round to Colonel Halkett) must be a +fellow of a fine constitution. And he took his punishment like a man. +I've known worse: and far worse: gentlemen by birth. There's the choice +of taking it upright or fighting like a rabbit with a weasel in his +hole. Leave him to think it over, he'll come right. I think no harm of +him, I've no animus. A man must have his lesson at some time of life. I +did what I had to do.' + +'Look here, Nevil,' Stukely Culbrett checked Beauchamp in season: 'I +beg to inquire what Dr. Shrapnel means by "the people." We have in our +country the nobles and the squires, and after them, as I understand it, +the people: that's to say, the middle-class and the working-class--fat +and lean. I'm quite with Shrapnel when he lashes the fleshpots. They +want it, and they don't get it from "their organ," the Press. I fancy +you and I agree about their organ; the dismallest organ that ever ground +a hackneyed set of songs and hymns to madden the thoroughfares.' + +'The Press of our country!' interjected Colonel Halkett in moaning +parenthesis. + +'It's the week-day Parson of the middle-class, colonel. They have their +thinking done for them as the Chinese have their dancing. But, Nevil, +your Dr. Shrapnel seems to treat the traders as identical with the +aristocracy in opposition to his "people." The traders are the cursed +middlemen, bad friends of the "people," and infernally treacherous to +the nobles till money hoists them. It's they who pull down the country. +They hold up the nobles to the hatred of the democracy, and the +democracy to scare the nobles. One's when they want to swallow a +privilege, and the other's when they want to ring-fence their gains. How +is it Shrapnel doesn't expose the trick? He must see through it. I like +that letter of his. People is one of your Radical big words that +burst at a query. He can't mean Quince, and Bottom, and Starveling, +Christopher Sly, Jack Cade, Caliban, and poor old Hodge? No, no, Nevil. +Our clowns are the stupidest in Europe. They can't cook their meals. +They can't spell; they can scarcely speak. They haven't a jig in their +legs. And I believe they're losing their grin! They're nasty when their +blood's up. Shakespeare's Cade tells you what he thought of Radicalizing +the people. "And as for your mother, I 'll make her a duke"; that 's one +of their songs. The word people, in England, is a dyspeptic agitator's +dream when he falls nodding over the red chapter of French history. Who +won the great liberties for England? My book says, the nobles. And who +made the great stand later?--the squires. What have the middlemen done +but bid for the people they despise and fear, dishonour us abroad and +make a hash of us at home? Shrapnel sees that. Only he has got the +word people in his mouth. The people of England, my dear fellow, want +heading. Since the traders obtained power we have been a country on all +fours. Of course Shrapnel sees it: I say so. But talk to him and teach +him where to look for the rescue.' + +Colonel Halkett said to Stukely: 'If you have had a clear idea in what +you have just spoken, my head's no place for it!' + +Stukely's unusually lengthy observations had somewhat heated him, and he +protested with earnestness: 'It was pure Tory, my dear colonel.' + +But the habitually and professedly cynical should not deliver themselves +at length: for as soon as they miss their customary incision of speech +they are apt to aim to recover it in loquacity, and thus it may be that +the survey of their ideas becomes disordered. + +Mr. Culbrett endangered his reputation for epigram in a good cause, it +shall be said. + +These interruptions were torture to Beauchamp. Nevertheless the end was +gained. He sank into a chair silent. + +Mr. Romfrey wished to have it out with his nephew, of whose comic +appearance as a man full of thunder, and occasionally rattling, yet all +the while trying to be decorous and politic, he was getting tired. He +foresaw that a tussle between them in private would possibly be too hot +for his temper, admirably under control though it was. + +'Why not drag Cecil to Shrapnel?' he said, for a provocation. + +Beauchamp would not be goaded. + +Colonel Halkett remarked that he would have to leave Steynham the next +day. His host remonstrated with him. The colonel said: 'Early.' He had +very particular business at home. He was positive, and declined every +inducement to stay. Mr. Romfrey glanced at Nevil, thinking, You poor +fool! And then he determined to let the fellow have five minutes alone +with him. + +This occurred at midnight, in that half-armoury, half-library, which was +his private room. + +Rosamund heard their voices below. She cried out to herself that it was +her doing, and blamed her beloved, and her master, and Dr. Shrapnel, +in the breath of her self-recrimination. The demagogue, the +over-punctilious gentleman, the faint lover, surely it must be reason +wanting in the three for each of them in turn to lead the other, by an +excess of some sort of the quality constituting their men's natures, to +wreck a calm life and stand in contention! Had Shrapnel been commonly +reasonable he would have apologized to Mr. Romfrey, or had Mr. Romfrey, +he would not have resorted to force to punish the supposed offender, or +had Nevil, he would have held his peace until he had gained his bride. +As it was; the folly of the three knocked at her heart, uniting to bring +the heavy accusation against one poor woman, quite in the old way: the +Who is she? of the mocking Spaniard at mention of a social catastrophe. +Rosamund had a great deal of the pride of her sex, and she resented any +slur on it. She felt almost superciliously toward Mr. Romfrey and Nevil +for their not taking hands to denounce the plotter, Cecil Baskelett. +They seemed a pair of victims to him, nearly as much so as the wretched +man Shrapnel. It was their senselessness which made her guilty! And +simply because she had uttered two or three exclamations of dislike of +a revolutionary and infidel she was compelled to groan under her present +oppression! Is there anything to be hoped of men? Rosamund thought +bitterly of Nevil's idea of their progress. Heaven help them! But the +unhappy creatures have ceased to look to a heaven for help. + +We see the consequence of it in this Shrapnel complication. + +Three men: and one struck down; the other defeated in his benevolent +intentions; the third sacrificing fortune and happiness: all three owing +their mischance to one or other of the vague ideas disturbing men's +heads! Where shall we look for mother wit?--or say, common suckling's +instinct? Not to men, thought Rosamund. + +She was listening to the voices of Mr. Romfrey and Beauchamp in a fever. +Ordinarily the lord of Steynham was not out of his bed later than twelve +o'clock at night. His door opened at half-past one. Not a syllable was +exchanged by the couple in the hall. They had fought it out. Mr. Romfrey +came upstairs alone, and on the closing of his chamber-door she slipped +down to Beauchamp and had a dreadful hour with him that subdued her +disposition to sit in judgement upon men. The unavailing attempt to move +his uncle had wrought him to the state in which passionate thoughts pass +into speech like heat to flame. Rosamund strained her mental sight +to gain a conception of his prodigious horror of the treatment of Dr. +Shrapnel that she might think him sane: and to retain a vestige of +comfort in her bosom she tried to moderate and make light of as much as +she could conceive. Between the two efforts she had no sense but that of +helplessness. Once more she was reduced to promise that she would +speak the whole truth to Mr. Romfrey, even to the fact that she had +experienced a common woman's jealousy of Dr. Shrapnel's influence, and +had alluded to him jealously, spitefully, and falsely. There was no +mercy in Beauchamp. He was for action at any cost, with all the forces +he could gather, and without delays. He talked of Cecilia as his uncle's +bride to him. Rosamund could hardly trust her ears when he informed her +he had told his uncle of his determination to compel him to accomplish +the act of penitence. 'Was it prudent to say it, Nevil?' she asked. But, +as in his politics, he disdained prudence. A monstrous crime had +been committed, involving the honour of the family. No subtlety of +insinuation, no suggestion, could wean him from the fixed idea that the +apology to Dr. Shrapnel must be spoken by his uncle in person. + +'If one could only imagine Mr. Romfrey doing it!' Rosamund groaned. + +'He shall: and you will help him,' said Beauchamp. + +'If you loved a woman half as much as you do that man!' + +'If I knew a woman as good, as wise, as noble as he!' + +'You are losing her.' + +'You expect me to go through ceremonies of courtship at a time like +this! If she cares for me she will feel with me. Simple compassion--but +let Miss Halkett be. I'm afraid I overtasked her in taking her to +Bevisham. She remained outside the garden. Ma'am, she is unsullied by +contact with a single shrub of Dr. Shrapnel's territory.' + +'Do not be so bitterly ironical, Nevil. You have not seen her as I +have.' + +Rosamund essayed a tender sketch of the fair young lady, and fancied +that she drew forth a sigh; she would have coloured the sketch, but he +commanded her to hurry off to bed, and think of her morning's work. + +A commission of which we feel we can accurately forecast the +unsuccessful end is not likely to be undertaken with an ardour that +might perhaps astound the presageing mind with unexpected issues. +Rosamund fulfilled hers in the style of one who has learnt a lesson, +and, exactly as she had anticipated, Mr. Romfrey accused her of coming +to him from a conversation with that fellow Nevil overnight. He shrugged +and left the house for his morning's walk across the fields. + +Colonel Halkett and Cecilia beheld him from the breakfast-room returning +with Beauchamp, who had waylaid him and was hammering his part in the +now endless altercation. It could be descried at any distance; and how +fine was Mr. Romfrey's bearing!--truly noble by contrast, as of a grave +big dog worried by a small barking dog. There is to an unsympathetic +observer an intense vexatiousness in the exhibition of such pertinacity. +To a soldier accustomed at a glance to estimate powers of attack and +defence, this repeated puny assailing of a fortress that required years +of siege was in addition ridiculous. Mr. Romfrey appeared impregnable, +and Beauchamp mad. 'He's foaming again!' said the colonel, and was only +ultra-pictorial. 'Before breakfast!' was a further slur on Beauchamp. + +Mr. Romfrey was elevated by the extraordinary comicality of the notion +of the proposed apology to heights of humour beyond laughter, whence +we see the unbounded capacity of the general man for folly, and rather +commiserate than deride him. He was quite untroubled. It demanded +a steady view of the other side of the case to suppose of one whose +control of his temper was perfect, that he could be in the wrong. He at +least did not think so, and Colonel Halkett relied on his common sense. +Beauchamp's brows were smouldering heavily, except when he had to talk. +He looked paleish and worn, and said he had been up early. Cecilia +guessed that he had not been to bed. + +It was dexterously contrived by her host, in spite of the colonel's +manifest anxiety to keep them asunder, that she should have some minutes +with Beauchamp out in the gardens. Mr. Romfrey led them out, and then +led the colonel away to offer him a choice of pups of rare breed. + +'Nevil,' said Cecilia, 'you will not think it presumption in me to give +you advice?' + +Her counsel to him was, that he should leave Steynham immediately, and +trust to time for his uncle to reconsider his conduct. + +Beauchamp urged the counter-argument of the stain on the family honour. + +She hinted at expediency; he frankly repudiated it. + +The downs faced them, where the heavenly vast 'might have been' of +yesterday wandered thinner than a shadow of to-day; weaving a story +without beginning, crisis, or conclusion, flowerless and fruitless, but +with something of infinite in it sweeter to brood on than the future of +her life to Cecilia. + +'If meanwhile Dr. Shrapnel should die, and repentance comes too late!' +said Beauchamp. + +She had no clear answer to that, save the hope of its being an unfounded +apprehension. 'As far as it is in my power, Nevil, I will avoid +injustice to him in my thoughts.' + +He gazed at her thankfully. 'Well,' said he, 'that's like sighting the +cliffs. But I don't feel home round me while the colonel is so strangely +prepossessed. For a high-spirited gentleman like your father to approve, +or at least accept, an act so barbarous is incomprehensible. Speak to +him, Cecilia, will you? Let him know your ideas.' + +She assented. He said instantly, 'Persuade him to speak to my uncle +Everard.' + +She was tempted to smile. + +'I must do only what I think wise, if I am to be of service, Nevil.' + +'True, but paint that scene to him. An old man, utterly defenceless, +making no defence! a cruel error. The colonel can't, or he doesn't, +clearly get it inside him, otherwise I'm certain it would revolt him: +just as I am certain my uncle Everard is at this moment a stone-blind +man. If he has done a thing, he can't question it, won't examine it. The +thing becomes a part of him, as much as his hand or his head. He 's a +man of the twelfth century. Your father might be helped to understand +him first.' + +'Yes,' she said, not very warmly, though sadly. + +'Tell the colonel how it must have been brought about. For Cecil +Baskelett called on Dr. Shrapnel two days before Mr. Romfrey stood at +his gate.' + +The name of Cecil caused her to draw in her shoulders in a half-shudder. +'It may indeed be Captain Baskelett who set this cruel thing in motion!' + +'Then point that out to your father, said he, perceiving a chance of +winning her to his views through a concrete object of her dislike, and +cooling toward the woman who betrayed a vulgar characteristic of her +sex; who was merely woman, unable sternly to recognize the doing of a +foul wrong because of her antipathy, until another antipathy enlightened +her. + +He wanted in fact a ready-made heroine, and did not give her credit +for the absence of fire in her blood, as well as for the unexercised +imagination which excludes young women from the power to realize +unwonted circumstances. We men walking about the world have perhaps no +more imagination of matters not domestic than they; but what we have is +quick with experience: we see the thing we hear of: women come to it how +they can. + +Cecilia was recommended to weave a narrative for her father, and +ultimately induce him, if she could, to give a gentleman's opinion of +the case to Mr. Romfrey. + +Her sensitive ear caught a change of tone in the directions she +received. 'Your father will say so and so: answer him with this and +that.' Beauchamp supplied her with phrases. She was to renew and renew +the attack; hammer as he did. Yesterday she had followed him: to-day she +was to march beside him--hardly as an equal. Patience! was the word she +would have uttered in her detection of the one frailty in his nature +which this hurrying of her off her feet opened her eyes to with unusual +perspicacity. Still she leaned to him sufficiently to admit that he had +grounds for a deep disturbance of his feelings. + +He said: 'I go to Dr. Shrapnel's cottage, and don't know how to hold +up my head before Miss Denham. She confided him to me when she left for +Switzerland!' + +There was that to be thought of, certainly. + +Colonel Halkett came round a box-bush and discovered them pacing +together in a fashion to satisfy his paternal scrutiny. + +'I've been calling you several times, my dear,' he complained. 'We start +in seven minutes. Bustle, and bonnet at once. Nevil, I'm sorry for this +business. Good-bye. Be a good boy, Nevil,' he murmured kindheartedly, +and shook Beauchamp's hand with the cordiality of an extreme relief in +leaving him behind. + +The colonel and Mr. Romfrey and Beauchamp were standing on the +hall-steps when Rosamund beckoned the latter and whispered a request for +that letter of Dr. Shrapnel's. 'It is for Miss Halkett, Nevil.' + +He plucked the famous epistle from his bulging pocketbook, and added a +couple of others in the same handwriting. + +'Tell her, a first reading--it's difficult to read at first,' he said, +and burned to read it to Cecilia himself: to read it to her with his +comments and explanations appeared imperative. It struck him in a flash +that Cecilia's counsel to him to quit Steynham for awhile was good. And +if he went to Bevisham he would be assured of Dr. Shrapnel's condition: +notes and telegrams from the cottage were too much tempered to console +and deceive him. + +'Send my portmanteau and bag after me to Bevisham,' he said Rosamund, +and announced to the woefully astonish colonel that he would have the +pleasure of journeying in his company as far as the town. + +'Are you ready? No packing?' said the colonel. + +'It's better to have your impediments in the rear of you, and march!' +said Mr. Romfrey. + +Colonel Halkett declined to wait for anybody. He shouted for his +daughter. The lady's maid appeared, and then Cecilia with Rosamund. + +'We can't entertain you, Nevil; we're away to the island: I'm sorry,' +said the colonel; and observing Cecilia's face in full crimson, he +looked at her as if he had lost a battle by the turn of events at the +final moment. + +Mr. Romfrey handed Cecilia into the carriage. He exchanged a friendly +squeeze with the colonel, and offered his hand to his nephew. Beauchamp +passed him with a nod and 'Good-bye, sir.' + +'Have ready at Holdesbury for the middle of the month,' said Mr. +Romfrey, unruffled, and bowed to Cecilia. + +'If you think of bringing my cousin Baskelett, give me warning, sir,' +cried Beauchamp. + +'Give me warning, if you want the house for Shrapnel,' replied his +uncle, and remarked to Rosamund, as the carriage wheeled round the +mounded laurels to the avenue, 'He mayn't be quite cracked. The fellow +seems to have a turn for catching his opportunity by the tail. He had +better hold fast, for it's his last.' + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII. CECILIA CONQUERED + +The carriage rolled out of the avenue and through the park, for some +time parallel with the wavy downs. Once away from Steynham Colonel +Halkett breathed freely, as if he had dropped a load: he was free of his +bond to Mr. Romfrey, and so great was the sense of relief in him that he +resolved to do battle against his daughter, supposing her still lively +blush to be the sign of the enemy's flag run up on a surrendered +citadel. His authority was now to be thought of: his paternal sanction +was in his own keeping. Beautiful as she looked, it was hardly credible +that a fellow in possession of his reason could have let slip his chance +of such a prize; but whether he had or had not, the colonel felt that +he occupied a position enabling him either to out-manoeuvre, or, if need +were, interpose forcibly and punish him for his half-heartedness. + +Cecilia looked the loveliest of women to Beauchamp's eyes, with her +blush, and the letters of Dr. Shrapnel in her custody, at her express +desire. Certain terms in the letters here and there, unsweet to ladies, +began to trouble his mind. + +'By the way, colonel,' he said, 'you had a letter of Dr. Shrapnel's read +to you by Captain Baskelett.' + +'Iniquitous rubbish!' + +'With his comments on it, I dare say you thought it so. I won't speak of +his right to make it public. He wanted to produce his impressions of it +and me, and that is a matter between him and me. Dr. Shrapnel makes +use of strong words now and then, but I undertake to produce a totally +different impression on you by reading the letter myself--sparing you' +(he turned to Cecilia) 'a word or two, common enough to men who write +in black earnest and have humour.' He cited his old favourite, the black +and bright lecturer on Heroes. 'You have read him, I know, Cecilia. +Well, Dr. Shrapnel is another, who writes in his own style, not the +leading-article style or modern pulpit stuff. He writes to rouse.' + +'He does that to my temper,' said the colonel. + +'Perhaps here and there he might offend Cecilia's taste,' Beauchamp +pursued for her behoof. 'Everything depends on the mouthpiece. I should +not like the letter to be read without my being by;--except by men: any +just-minded man may read it: Seymour Austin, for example. Every line is +a text to the mind of the writer. Let me call on you to-morrow.' + +'To-morrow?' Colonel Halkett put on a thoughtful air. 'To-morrow we're +off to the island for a couple of days; and there's Lord Croyston's +garden party, and the Yacht Ball. Come this evening-dine with us. No +reading of letters, please. I can't stand it, Nevil.' + +The invitation was necessarily declined by a gentleman who could not +expect to be followed by supplies of clothes and linen for evening wear +that day. + +'Ah, we shall see you some day or other,' said the colonel. + +Cecilia was less alive to Beauchamp's endeavour to prepare her for the +harsh words in the letter than to her father's insincerity. She would +have asked her friend to come in the morning next day, but for the dread +of deepening her blush. + +'Do you intend to start so early in the morning, papa?' she ventured to +say; and he replied, 'As early as possible.' + +'I don't know what news I shall have in Bevisham, or I would engage to +run over to the island,' said Beauchamp, with a flattering persistency +or singular obtuseness. + +'You will dance,' he subsequently observed to Cecilia, out of the heart +of some reverie. He had been her admiring partner on the night before +the drive from Itchincope into Bevisham, and perhaps thought of her +graceful dancing at the Yacht Ball, and the contrast it would present to +his watch beside a sick man-struck down by one of his own family. + +She could have answered, 'Not if you wish me not to'; while smiling at +the quaint sorrowfulness of his tone. + +'Dance!' quoth Colonel Halkett, whose present temper discerned a healthy +antagonism to misanthropic Radicals in the performance, 'all young +people dance. Have you given over dancing?' + +'Not entirely, colonel.' + +Cecilia danced with Mr. Tuckham at the Yacht Ball, and was vividly +mindful of every slight incident leading to and succeeding her lover's +abrupt, 'You will dance' which had all passed by her dream-like up to +that hour his attempt to forewarn her of the phrases she would deem +objectionable in Dr. Shrapnel's letter; his mild acceptation of her +father's hostility; his adieu to her, and his melancholy departure on +foot from the station, as she drove away to Mount Laurels and gaiety. +Why do I dance? she asked herself. It was not in the spirit of +happiness. Her heart was not with Dr. Shrapnel, but very near him, +and heavy as a chamber of the sick. She was afraid of her father's +favourite, imagining, from the colonel's unconcealed opposition to +Beauchamp, that he had designs in the interests of Mr. Tuckham. But +the hearty gentleman scattered her secret terrors by his bluffness +and openness. He asked her to remember that she had recommended him to +listen to Seymour Austin, and he had done so, he said. Undoubtedly he +was much improved, much less overbearing. + +He won her confidence by praising and loving her father, and when she +alluded to the wonderful services he had rendered on the Welsh estate, +he said simply that her father's thanks repaid him. He recalled his +former downrightness only in speaking of the case of Dr. Shrapnel, +upon which, both with the colonel and with her, he was unreservedly +condemnatory of Mr. Romfrey. Colonel Halkett's defence of the true +knight and guardian of the reputation of ladies, fell to pieces in the +presence of Mr. Tuckham. He had seen Dr. Shrapnel, on a visit to Mr. +Lydiard, whom he described as hanging about Bevisham, philandering as +a married man should not, though in truth he might soon expect to be +released by the death of his crazy wife. The doctor, he said, had been +severely shaken by the monstrous assault made on him, and had been most +unrighteously handled. The doctor was an inoffensive man in his private +life, detestable and dangerous though his teachings were. Outside +politics Mr. Tuckham went altogether with Beauchamp. He promised also +that old Mrs. Beauchamp should be accurately informed of the state of +matters between Captain Beauchamp and Mr. Romfrey. He left Mount Laurels +to go back in attendance on the venerable lady, without once afflicting +Cecilia with a shiver of well-founded apprehension, and she was grateful +to him almost to friendly affection in the vanishing of her unjust +suspicion, until her father hinted that there was the man of his heart. +Then she closed all avenues to her own. + +A period of maidenly distress not previously unknown to her ensued. +Proposals of marriage were addressed to her by two untitled gentlemen, +and by the Earl of Lockrace: three within a fortnight. The recognition +of the young heiress's beauty at the Yacht Ball was accountable for +the bursting out of these fires. Her father would not have deplored +her acceptance of the title of Countess of Lockrace. In the matter of +rejections, however, her will was paramount, and he was on her side +against relatives when the subject was debated among them. He called her +attention to the fact impressively, telling her that she should not +hear a syllable from him to persuade her to marry: the emphasis of which +struck the unspoken warning on her intelligence: Bring no man to me of +whom I do not approve! + +'Worthier of you, as I hope to become,' Beauchamp had said. Cecilia lit +on that part of Dr. Shrapnel's letter where 'Fight this out within you,' +distinctly alluded to the unholy love. Could she think ill of the man +who thus advised him? She shared Beauchamp's painful feeling for him in +a sudden tremour of her frame; as it were through his touch. To the rest +of the letter her judgement stood opposed, save when a sentence here and +there reminded her of Captain Baskelett's insolent sing-song declamation +of it: and that would have turned Sacred Writing to absurdity. + +Beauchamp had mentioned Seymour Austin as one to whom he would willingly +grant a perusal of the letter. Mr. Austin came to Mount Laurels about +the close of the yachting season, shortly after Colonel Halkett had +spent his customary days of September shooting at Steynham. Beauchamp's +folly was the colonel's theme, for the fellow had dragged Lord Palmet +there, and driven his uncle out of patience. Mr. Romfrey's monumental +patience had been exhausted by him. The colonel boiled over with +accounts of Beauchamp's behaviour toward his uncle, and Palmet, and +Baskelett, and Mrs. Culling: how he flew at and worried everybody who +seemed to him to have had a hand in the proper chastisement of that man +Shrapnel. That pestiferous letter of Shrapnel's was animadverted on, of +course; and, 'I should like you to have heard it, Austin,' the colonel +said, 'just for you to have a notion of the kind of universal blow-up +those men are scheming, and would hoist us with, if they could get a +little more blasting-powder than they mill in their lunatic heads.' + +Now Cecilia wished for Mr. Austin's opinion of Dr. Shrapnel; and as the +delicate state of her inclinations made her conscious that to give him +the letter covertly would be to betray them to him, who had once, not +knowing it, moved her to think of a possible great change in her life, +she mustered courage to say, 'Captain Beauchamp at my request lent me +the letter to read; I have it, and others written by Dr. Shrapnel.' + +Her father hummed to himself, and immediately begged Seymour Austin not +to waste his time on the stuff, though he had no idea that a perusal +of it could awaken other than the gravest reprehension in so rational a +Tory gentleman. + +Mr. Austin read the letter through. He asked to see the other letters +mentioned by Cecilia, and read them calmly, without a frown or an +interjection. She sat sketching, her father devouring newspaper columns. + +'It's the writing of a man who means well,' Mr. Austin delivered his +opinion. + +'Why, the man's an infidel!' Colonel Halkett exclaimed. + +'There are numbers.' + +'They have the grace not to confess, then.' + +'It's as well to know what the world's made of, colonel. The clergy shut +their eyes. There's no treating a disease without reading it; and if we +are to acknowledge a "vice," as Dr. Shrapnel would say of the so-called +middle-class, it is the smirking over what they think, or their not +caring to think at all. Too many time-servers rot the State. I +can understand the effect of such writing on a mind like Captain +Beauchamp's. It would do no harm to our young men to have those letters +read publicly and lectured on-by competent persons. Half the thinking +world may think pretty much the same on some points as Dr. Shrapnel; +they are too wise or too indolent to say it: and of the other half, +about a dozen members would be competent to reply to him. He is the +earnest man, and flies at politics as uneasy young brains fly to +literature, fancying they can write because they can write with a pen. +He perceives a bad adjustment of things: which is correct. He is honest, +and takes his honesty for a virtue: and that entitles him to believe in +himself: and that belief causes him to see in all opposition to him the +wrong he has perceived in existing circumstances: and so in a dream +of power he invokes the people: and as they do not stir, he takes to +prophecy. This is the round of the politics of impatience. The study of +politics should be guided by some light of statesmanship, otherwise it +comes to this wild preaching. + +These men are theory-tailors, not politicians. They are the men who +make the "strait-waistcoat for humanity." They would fix us to first +principles like tethered sheep or hobbled horses. I should enjoy +replying to him, if I had time. The whole letter is composed of +variations upon one idea. Still I must say the man interests me; I +should like to talk to him.' + +Mr. Austin paid no heed to the colonel's 'Dear me! dear me!' of +amazement. He said of the style of the letters, that it was the puffing +of a giant: a strong wind rather than speech: and begged Cecilia to note +that men who labour to force their dreams on mankind and turn vapour +into fact, usually adopt such a style. Hearing that this private letter +had been deliberately read through by Mr. Romfrey, and handed by him +to Captain Baskelett, who had read it out in various places, Mr. Austin +said: + +'A strange couple!' He appeared perplexed by his old friend's approval +of them. 'There we decidedly differ,' said he, when the case of Dr. +Shrapnel was related by the colonel, with a refusal to condemn Mr. +Romfrey. He pronounced Mr. Romfrey's charges against Dr. Shrapnel, taken +in conjunction with his conduct, to be baseless, childish, and wanton. +The colonel would not see the case in that light; but Cecilia did. It +was a justification of Beauchamp; and how could she ever have been blind +to it?--scarcely blind, she remembered, but sensitively blinking her +eyelids to distract her sight in contemplating it, and to preserve her +repose. As to Beauchamp's demand of the apology, Mr. Austin considered +that it might be an instance of his want of knowledge of men, yet +could not be called silly, and to call it insane was the rhetoric of an +adversary. + +'I do call it insane,' said the colonel. + +He separated himself from his daughter by a sharp division. + +Had Beauchamp appeared at Mount Laurels, Cecilia would have been ready +to support and encourage him, boldly. Backed by Mr. Austin, she saw +some good in Dr. Shrapnel's writing, much in Beauchamp's devotedness. +He shone clear to her reason, at last: partly because her father in his +opposition to him did not, but was on the contrary unreasonable, cased +in mail, mentally clouded. She sat with Mr. Austin and her father, +trying repeatedly, in obedience to Beauchamp's commands, to bring the +latter to a just contemplation of the unhappy case; behaviour on her +part which rendered the colonel inveterate. + +Beauchamp at this moment was occupied in doing secretary's work for +Dr. Shrapnel. So Cecilia learnt from Mr. Lydiard, who came to pay his +respects to Mrs. Wardour-Devereux at Mount Laurels. The pursuit of the +apology was continued in letters to his uncle and occasional interviews +with him, which were by no means instigated by the doctor, Mr. Lydiard +informed the ladies. He described Beauchamp as acting in the spirit of +a man who has sworn an oath to abandon every pleasure in life, that he +may, as far as it lies in his power, indemnify his friend for the wrong +done to him. + +'Such men are too terrible for me,' said Mrs. Devereux. + +Cecilia thought the reverse: Not for me! But she felt a strain upon her +nature, and she was miserable in her alienation from her father. +Kissing him one night, she laid her head on his breast, and begged his +forgiveness. He embraced her tenderly. 'Wait, only wait; you will see I +am right,' he said, and prudently said no more, and did not ask her to +speak. + +She was glad that she had sought the reconciliation from her heart's +natural warmth, on hearing some time later that M. de Croisnel was dead, +and that Beauchamp meditated starting for France to console his Renee. +Her continual agitations made her doubtful of her human feelings: she +clung to that instance of her filial stedfastness. + +The day before Cecilia and her father left Mount Laurels for their +season in Wales, Mr. Tuckham and Beauchamp came together to the +house, and were closeted an hour with her father. Cecilia sat in the +drawing-room, thinking that she did indeed wait, and had great patience. +Beauchamp entered the room alone. He looked worn and thin, of a leaden +colour, like the cloud that bears the bolt. News had reached him of +the death of Lord Avonley in the hunting-field, and he was going on to +Steynham to persuade his uncle to accompany him to Bevisham and wash +the guilt of his wrong-doing off him before applying for the title. 'You +would advise me not to go?' he said. 'I must. I should be dishonoured +myself if I let a chance pass. I run the risk of being a beggar: I'm all +but one now.' + +Cecilia faltered: 'Do you see a chance?' + +'Hardly more than an excuse for trying it,' he replied. + +She gave him back Dr. Shrapnel's letters. 'I have read them,' was all +she said. For he might have just returned from France, with the breath +of Renee about him, and her pride would not suffer her to melt him in +rivalry by saying what she had been led to think of the letters. + +Hearing nothing from her, he silently put them in his pocket. The +struggle with his uncle seemed to be souring him or deadening him. + +They were not alone for long. Mr. Tuckham presented himself to take +his leave of her. Old Mrs. Beauchamp was dying, and he had only come +to Mount Laurels on special business. Beauchamp was just as anxious to +hurry away. + +Her father found her sitting in the solitude of a drawing-room at +midday, pale-faced, with unoccupied fingers, not even a book in her lap. + +He walked up and down the room until Cecilia, to say something, said: +'Mr. Tuckham could not stay.' + +'No,' said her father; 'he could not. He has to be back as quick as he +can to cut his legacy in halves!' + +Cecilia looked perplexed. + +'I'll speak plainly,' said the colonel. 'He sees that Nevil has ruined +himself with his uncle. The old lady won't allow Nevil to visit her; in +her condition it would be an excitement beyond her strength to bear. She +sent Blackburn to bring Nevil here, and give him the option of stating +before me whether those reports about his misconduct in France were true +or not. He demurred at first: however, he says they are not true. He +would have run away with the Frenchwoman, and he would have fought the +duel: but he did neither. Her brother ran ahead of him and fought for +him: so he declares and she wouldn't run. So the reports are false. We +shall know what Blackburn makes of the story when we hear of the legacy. +I have been obliged to write word to Mrs. Beauchamp that I believe Nevil +to have made a true statement of the facts. But I distinctly say, and +so I told Blackburn, I don't think money will do Nevil Beauchamp a +farthing's worth of good. Blackburn follows his own counsel. He induced +the old lady to send him; so I suppose he intends to let her share the +money between them. I thought better of him; I thought him a wiser man.' + +Gratitude to Mr. Tuckham on Beauchamp's behalf caused Cecilia to praise +him, in the tone of compliments. The difficulty of seriously admiring +two gentlemen at once is a feminine dilemma, with the maidenly among +women. + +'He has disappointed me,' said Colonel Halkett. + +'Would you have had him allow a falsehood to enrich him and ruin Nevil, +papa?' + +'My dear child, I'm sick to death of romantic fellows. I took Blackburn +for one of our solid young men. Why should he share his aunt's fortune?' + +'You mean, why should Nevil have money?' + +'Well, I do mean that. Besides, the story was not false as far as +his intentions went: he confessed it, and I ought to have put it in a +postscript. If Nevil wants money, let him learn to behave himself like a +gentleman at Steynham.' + +'He has not failed.' + +'I'll say, then, behave himself, simply. He considers it a point of +honour to get his uncle Everard to go down on his knees to Shrapnel. But +he has no moral sense where I should like to see it: none: he confessed +it.' + +'What were his words, papa?' + +'I don't remember words. He runs over to France, whenever it suits him, +to carry on there...' The colonel ended in a hum and buzz. + +'Has he been to France lately?' asked Cecilia. + +Her breath hung for the answer, sedately though she sat. + +'The woman's father is dead, I hear,' Colonel Halkett remarked. + +'But he has not been there?' + +'How can I tell? He's anywhere, wherever his passions whisk him.' + +'No!' + +'I say, yes. And if he has money, we shall see him going sky-high and +scattering it in sparks, not merely spending; I mean living immorally, +infidelizing, republicanizing, scandalizing his class and his country.' + +'Oh no!' exclaimed Cecilia, rising and moving to the window to feast her +eyes on driving clouds, in a strange exaltation of mind, secretly sure +now that her idea of Nevil's having gone over to France was groundless; +and feeling that she had been unworthy of him who strove to be 'worthier +of her, as he hoped to become.' + +Colonel Halkett scoffed at her 'Oh no,' and called it woman's logic. + +She could not restrain herself. 'Have you forgotten Mr. Austin, papa? It +is Nevil's perfect truthfulness that makes him appear worse to you than +men who are timeservers. Too many time-servers rot the State, Mr. Austin +said. Nevil is not one of them. I am not able to judge or speculate +whether he has a great brain or is likely to distinguish himself out +of his profession: I would rather he did not abandon it: but Mr. Austin +said to me in talking of him...' + +'That notion of Austin's of screwing women's minds up to the pitch of +men's!' interjected the colonel with a despairing flap of his arm. + +'He said, papa, that honestly active men in a country, who decline to +practise hypocrisy, show that the blood runs, and are a sign of health.' + +'You misunderstood him, my dear.' + +'I think I thoroughly understood him. He did not call them wise. He said +they might be dangerous if they were not met in debate. But he said, and +I presume to think truly, that the reason why they are decried is, that +it is too great a trouble for a lazy world to meet them. And, he said, +the reason why the honest factions agitate is because they encounter +sneers until they appear in force. If they were met earlier, and +fairly--I am only quoting him--they would not, I think he said, or would +hardly, or would not generally, fall into professional agitation.' + +'Austin's a speculative Tory, I know; and that's his weakness,' observed +the colonel. 'But I'm certain you misunderstood him. He never would have +called us a lazy people.' + +'Not in matters of business: in matters of thought.' + +'My dear Cecilia! You've got hold of a language!... a way of speaking! +.... Who set you thinking on these things?' + +'That I owe to Nevil Beauchamp! + +Colonel Halkett indulged in a turn or two up and down the room. He threw +open a window, sniffed the moist air, and went to his daughter to speak +to her resolutely. + +'Between a Radical and a Tory, I don't know where your head has been +whirled to, my dear. Your heart seems to be gone: more sorrow for us! +And for Nevil Beauchamp to be pretending to love you while carrying on +with this Frenchwoman!' + +'He has never said that he loved me.' + +The splendour of her beauty in humility flashed on her father, and he +cried out: 'You are too good for any man on earth! We won't talk in the +dark, my darling. You tell me he has never, as they say, made love to +you?' + +'Never, papa.' + +'Well, that proves the French story. At any rate, he 's a man of honour. +But you love him?' + +'The French story is untrue, papa.' + +Cecilia stood in a blush like the burning cloud of the sunset.' + +'Tell me frankly: I'm your father, your old dada, your friend, my dear +girl! do you think the man cares for you, loves you?' + +She replied: 'I know, papa, the French story is untrue.' + +'But when I tell you, silly woman, he confessed it to me out of his own +mouth!' + +'It is not true now.' + +'It's not going on, you mean? How do you know?' + +'I know.' + +'Has he been swearing it?' + +'He has not spoken of it to me.' + +'Here I am in a woman's web!' cried the colonel. 'Is it your instinct +tells you it's not true? or what? what? You have not denied that you +love the man.' + +'I know he is not immoral.' + +'There you shoot again! Haven't you a yes or a no for your father?' + +Cecilia cast her arms round his neck, and sobbed. + +She could not bring it to her lips to say (she would have shunned the +hearing) that her defence of Beauchamp, which was a shadowed avowal +of the state of her heart, was based on his desire to read to her the +conclusion of Dr. Shrapnel's letter touching a passion to be overcome; +necessarily therefore a passion that was vanquished, and the fullest +and bravest explanation of his shifting treatment of her: nor would she +condescend to urge that her lover would have said he loved her when they +were at Steynham, but for the misery and despair of a soul too noble +to be diverted from his grief and sense of duty, and, as she believed, +unwilling to speak to win her while his material fortune was in +jeopardy. + +The colonel cherished her on his breast, with one hand regularly patting +her shoulder: a form of consolation that cures the disposition to sob as +quickly as would the drip of water. + +Cecilia looked up into his eyes, and said, 'We will not be parted, papa, +ever.' + +The colonel said absently: 'No'; and, surprised at himself, added: 'No, +certainly not. How can we be parted? You won't run away from me? No, you +know too well I can't resist you. I appeal to your judgement, and I +must accept what you decide. But he is immoral. I repeat that. He has no +roots. We shall discover it before it's too late, I hope.' + +Cecilia gazed away, breathing through tremulous dilating nostrils. + +'One night after dinner at Steynham,' pursued the colonel, 'Nevil was +rattling against the Press, with Stukely Culbrett to prime him: and he +said editors of papers were growing to be like priests, and as timid as +priests, and arrogant: and for one thing, it was because they supposed +themselves to be guardians of the national morality. I forget exactly +what the matter was: but he sneered at priests and morality.' + +A smile wove round Cecilia's lips, and in her towering superiority +to one who talked nonsense, she slipped out of maiden shame and said: +'Attack Nevil for his political heresies and his wrath with the Press +for not printing him. The rest concerns his honour, where he is quite +safe, and all are who trust him.' + +'If you find out you're wrong?' + +She shook her head. + +'But if you find out you're wrong about him,' her father reiterated +piteously, 'you won't tear me to strips to have him in spite of it?' + +'No, papa, not I. I will not.' + +'Well, that's something for me to hold fast to,' said Colonel Halkett, +sighing. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII. LORD AVONLEY + +Mr. Everard Romfrey was now, by consent, Lord Avonley, mounted on his +direct heirship and riding hard at the earldom. His elevation occurred +at a period of life that would have been a season of decay with most +men; but the prolonged and lusty Autumn of the veteran took new fires +from a tangible object to live for. His brother Craven's death had +slightly stupefied, and it had grieved him: it seemed to him peculiarly +pathetic; for as he never calculated on the happening of mortal +accidents to men of sound constitution, the circumstance imparted a +curious shake to his own solidity. It was like the quaking of earth, +which tries the balance of the strongest. If he had not been raised +to so splendid a survey of the actual world, he might have been led to +think of the imaginary, where perchance a man may meet his old dogs +and a few other favourites, in a dim perpetual twilight. Thither at all +events Craven had gone, and goodnight to him! The earl was a rapidly +lapsing invalid. There could be no doubt that Everard was to be the head +of his House. + +Outwardly he was the same tolerant gentleman who put aside the poor +fools of the world to walk undisturbed by them in the paths he had +chosen: in this aspect he knew himself: nor was the change so great +within him as to make him cognizant of a change. It was only a secret +turn in the bent of the mind, imperceptible as the touch of the cunning +artist's brush on a finished portrait, which will alter the expression +without discomposing a feature, so that you cannot say it is another +face, yet it is not the former one. His habits were invariable, as were +his meditations. He thought less of Romfrey Castle than of his dogs and +his devices for trapping vermin; his interest in birds and beasts +and herbs, 'what ninnies call Nature in books,' to quote him, was +undiminished; imagination he had none to clap wings to his head and be +off with it. He betrayed as little as he felt that the coming Earl of +Romfrey was different from the cadet of the family. + +A novel sharpness in the 'Stop that,' with which he crushed Beauchamp's +affectedly gentle and unusually roundabout opening of the vexed Shrapnel +question, rang like a shot in the room at Steynham, and breathed a +different spirit from his customary easy pugnacity that welcomed and +lured on an adversary to wild outhitting. Some sorrowful preoccupation +is, however, to be expected in the man who has lost a brother, and some +degree of irritability at the intrusion of past disputes. He chose to +repeat a similar brief forbidding of the subject before they started +together for the scene of the accident and Romfrey Castle. No notice was +taken of Beauchamp's remark, that he consented to go though his duty lay +elsewhere. Beauchamp had not the faculty of reading inside men, or he +would have apprehended that his uncle was engaged in silently heaping +aggravations to shoot forth one fine day a thundering and astonishing +counterstroke. + +He should have known his uncle Everard better. + +In this respect he seemed to have no memory. But who has much that has +given up his brains for a lodging to a single idea? It is at once a +devouring dragon, and an intractable steamforce; it is a tyrant that +has eaten up a senate, and a prophet with a message. Inspired of +solitariness and gigantic size, it claims divine origin. The world can +have no peace for it. + +Cecilia had not pleased him; none had. He did not bear in mind that the +sight of Dr. Shrapnel sick and weak, which constantly reanimated his +feelings of pity and of wrath, was not given to the others of whom he +demanded a corresponding energy of just indignation and sympathy. The +sense that he was left unaided to the task of bending his tough uncle, +combined with his appreciation of the righteousness of the task to +embitter him and set him on a pedestal, from which he descended at every +sign of an opportunity for striking, and to which he retired continually +baffled and wrathful, in isolation. + +Then ensued the dreadful division in his conception of his powers: +for he who alone saw the just and right thing to do, was incapable of +compelling it to be done. Lay on to his uncle as he would, that wrestler +shook him off. And here was one man whom he could not move! How move a +nation? + +There came on him a thirst for the haranguing of crowds. They agree with +you or they disagree; exciting you to activity in either case. They do +not interpose cold Tory exclusiveness and inaccessibility. You have +them in the rough; you have nature in them, and all that is hopeful in +nature. You drive at, over, and through them, for their good; you plough +them. You sow them too. Some of them perceive that it is for their good, +and what if they be a minority? Ghastly as a minority is in an Election, +in a lifelong struggle it is refreshing and encouraging. The young world +and its triumph is with the minority. Oh to be speaking! Condemned to +silence beside his uncle, Beauchamp chafed for a loosed tongue and an +audience tossing like the well-whipped ocean, or open as the smooth +sea-surface to the marks of the breeze. Let them be hostile or amicable, +he wanted an audience as hotly as the humped Richard a horse. + +At Romfrey Castle he fell upon an audience that became transformed into +a swarm of chatterers, advisers, and reprovers the instant his lips were +parted. The ladies of the family declared his pursuit of the Apology to +be worse and vainer than his politics. The gentlemen said the same, but +they were not so outspoken to him personally, and indulged in asides, +with quotations of some of his uncle Everard's recent observations +concerning him: as for example, 'Politically he's a mad harlequin +jumping his tights and spangles when nobody asks him to jump; and in +private life he's a mad dentist poking his tongs at my sound tooth:' +a highly ludicrous image of the persistent fellow, and a reminder of +situations in Moliere, as it was acted by Cecil Baskelett and Lord +Welshpool. Beauchamp had to a certain extent restored himself to favour +with his uncle Everard by offering a fair suggestion on the fatal field +to account for the accident, after the latter had taken measurements +and examined the place in perplexity. His elucidation of the puzzle was +referred to by Lord Avonley at Romfrey, and finally accepted as possible +and this from a wiseacre who went quacking about the county, expecting +to upset the order of things in England! Such a mixing of sense and +nonsense in a fellow's noddle was never before met with, Lord Avonley +said. Cecil took the hint. He had been unworried by Beauchamp: Dr. +Shrapnel had not been mentioned: and it delighted Cecil to let it be +known that he thought old Nevil had some good notions, particularly +as to the duties of the aristocracy--that first war-cry of his when +a midshipman. News of another fatal accident in the hunting-field +confirmed Cecil's higher opinion of his cousin. On the day of Craven's +funeral they heard at Romfrey that Mr. Wardour-Devereux had been killed +by a fall from his horse. Two English gentlemen despatched by the same +agency within a fortnight! 'He smoked,' Lord Avonley said of the second +departure, to allay some perturbation in the bosoms of the ladies who +had ceased to ride, by accounting for this particular mishap in the +most reassuring fashion. Cecil's immediate reflection was that the +unfortunate smoker had left a rich widow. Far behind in the race for +Miss Halkett, and uncertain of a settled advantage in his other rivalry +with Beauchamp, he fixed his mind on the widow, and as Beauchamp did not +stand in his way, but on the contrary might help him--for she, like the +generality of women, admired Nevil Beauchamp in spite of her feminine +good sense and conservatism--Cecil began to regard the man he felt +less opposed to with some recognition of his merits. The two nephews +accompanied Lord Avonley to London, and slept at his town-house. + +They breakfasted together the next morning on friendly terms. Half an +hour afterward there was an explosion; uncle and nephews were scattered +fragments: and if Cecil was the first to return to cohesion with his +lord and chief, it was, he protested energetically, common policy in +a man in his position to do so: all that he looked for being a decent +pension and a share in the use of the town-house. Old Nevil, he related, +began cross-examining him and entangling him with the cunning of the +deuce, in my lord's presence, and having got him to make an admission, +old Nevil flung it at the baron, and even crossed him and stood before +him when he was walking out of the room. A furious wrangle took place. +Nevil and the baron gave it to one another unmercifully. The end of it +was that all three flew apart, for Cecil confessed to having a temper, +and in contempt of him for the admission wrung out of him, Lord Avonley +had pricked it. My lord went down to Steynham, Beauchamp to Holdesbury, +and Captain Baskelett to his quarters; whence in a few days he repaired +penitently to my lord--the most placable of men when a full submission +was offered to him. + +Beauchamp did nothing of the kind. He wrote a letter to Steynham in the +form of an ultimatum. + +This egregious letter was handed to Rosamund for a proof of +her darling's lunacy. She in conversation with Stukely Culbrett +unhesitatingly accused Cecil of plotting his cousin's ruin. + +Mr. Culbrett thought it possible that Cecil had been a little more than +humorous in the part he had played in the dispute, and spoke to him. + +Then it came out that Lord Avonley had also delivered an ultimatum to +Beauchamp. + +Time enough had gone by for Cecil to forget his ruffling, and relish the +baron's grandly comic spirit in appropriating that big word Apology, and +demanding it from Beauchamp on behalf of the lady ruling his household. +What could be funnier than the knocking of Beauchamp's blunderbuss out +of his hands, and pointing the muzzle at him! + +Cecil dramatized the fun to amuse Mr. Culbrett. Apparently Beauchamp +had been staggered on hearing himself asked for the definite article he +claimed. He had made a point of speaking of the Apology. Lord Avonley +did likewise. And each professed to exact it for a deeply aggrieved +person: each put it on the ground that it involved the other's rightful +ownership of the title of gentleman. + +"'An apology to the amiable and virtuous Mistress Culling?" says old +Nevil: "an apology? what for?"--"For unbecoming and insolent behaviour," +says my lord.' + +'I am that lady's friend,' Stukely warned Captain Baskelett. 'Don't let +us have a third apology in the field.' + +'Perfectly true; you are her friend, and you know what a friend of mine +she is,' rejoined Cecil. 'I could swear "that lady" flings the whole +affair at me. I give you my word, old Nevil and I were on a capital +footing before he and the baron broke up. I praised him for tickling the +aristocracy. I backed him heartily; I do now; I'll do it in Parliament. +I know a case of a noble lord, a General in the army, and he received an +intimation that he might as well attend the Prussian cavalry manoeuvres +last Autumn on the Lower Rhine or in Silesia--no matter where. He +couldn't go: he was engaged to shoot birds! I give you my word. Now +there I see old Nevil 's right. It 's as well we should know something +about the Prussian and Austrian cavalry, and if our aristocracy won't go +abroad to study cavalry, who is to? no class in the kingdom understands +horses as they do. My opinion is, they're asleep. Nevil should have +stuck to that, instead of trying to galvanize the country and turning +against his class. But fancy old Nevil asked for the Apology! It +petrified him. "I've told her nothing but the truth," says Nevil. +"Telling the truth to women is an impertinence," says my lord. Nevil +swore he'd have a revolution in the country before he apologized.' + +Mr. Culbrett smiled at the absurdity of the change of positions between +Beauchamp and his uncle Everard, which reminded him somewhat of the old +story of the highwayman innkeeper and the market farmer who had been +thoughtful enough to recharge his pistols after quitting the inn at +midnight. A practical 'tu quoque' is astonishingly laughable, and backed +by a high figure and manner it had the flavour of triumphant repartee. +Lord Avonley did not speak of it as a retort upon Nevil, though he +reiterated the word Apology amusingly. He put it as due to the lady +governing his household; and his ultimatum was, that the Apology should +be delivered in terms to satisfy him within three months of the date of +the demand for it: otherwise blank; but the shadowy index pointed to the +destitution of Nevil Beauchamp. + +No stroke of retributive misfortune could have been severer to Rosamund +than to be thrust forward as the object of humiliation for the man she +loved. She saw at a glance how much more likely it was (remote as the +possibility appeared) that her lord would perform the act of penitence +than her beloved Nevil. And she had no occasion to ask herself why. Lord +Avonley had done wrong, and Nevil had not. It was inconceivable that +Nevil should apologize to her. It was horrible to picture the act in +her mind. She was a very rational woman, quite a woman of the world, yet +such was her situation between these two men that the childish tale of +a close and consecutive punishment for sins, down to our little +naughtinesses and naturalnesses, enslaved her intelligence, and amazed +her with the example made of her, as it were to prove the tale true of +our being surely hauled back like domestic animals learning the habits +of good society, to the rueful contemplation of certain of our deeds, +however wildly we appeal to nature to stand up for them. + +But is it so with all of us? No, thought Rosamund, sinking dejectedly +from a recognition of the heavenliness of the justice which lashed +her and Nevil, and did not scourge Cecil Baskelett. That fine eye for +celestially directed consequences is ever haunted by shadows of unfaith +likely to obscure it completely when chastisement is not seen to fall +on the person whose wickedness is evident to us. It has been established +that we do not wax diviner by dragging down the Gods to our level. + +Rosamund knew Lord Avonley too well to harass him with further petitions +and explanations. Equally vain was it to attempt to persuade Beauchamp. +He made use of the house in London, where he met his uncle occasionally, +and he called at Steynham for money, that he could have obtained upon +the one condition, which was no sooner mentioned than fiery words +flew in the room, and the two separated. The leaden look in Beauchamp, +noticed by Cecilia Halkett in their latest interview, was deepening, +and was of itself a displeasure to Lord Avonley, who liked flourishing +faces, and said: 'That fellow's getting the look of a sweating smith': +presumptively in the act of heating his poker at the furnace to stir the +country. + +It now became an offence to him that Beauchamp should continue doing +this in the speeches and lectures he was reported to be delivering; +he stamped his foot at the sight of his nephew's name in the daily +journals; a novel sentiment of social indignation was expressed by his +crying out, at the next request for money: 'Money to prime you to +turn the country into a rat-hole? Not a square inch of Pennsylvanian +paper-bonds! What right have you to be lecturing and orationing? You've +no knowledge. All you've got is your instincts, and that you show in +your readiness to exhibit them like a monkey. You ought to be turned +inside out on your own stage. You've lumped your brains on a point or +two about Land, and Commonland, and the Suffrage, and you pound away +upon them, as if you had the key of the difficulty. It's the Scotchman's +metaphysics; you know nothing clear, and your working-classes know +nothing at all; and you blow them with wind like an over-stuffed cow. +What you're driving at is to get hob-nail boots to dance on our heads. +Stukely says you should be off over to Ireland. There you'd swim in your +element, and have speechifying from instinct, and howling and pummelling +too, enough to last you out. I 'll hand you money for that expedition. +You're one above the number wanted here. You've a look of bad powder fit +only to flash in the pan. I saved you from the post of public donkey, by +keeping you out of Parliament. You're braying and kicking your worst +for it still at these meetings of yours. A naval officer preaching about +Republicanism and parcelling out the Land!' + +Beauchamp replied quietly, 'The lectures I read are Dr. Shrapnel's. When +I speak I have his knowledge to back my deficiencies. He is too ill +to work, and I consider it my duty to do as much of his work as I can +undertake.' + +'Ha! You're the old infidel's Amen clerk. It would rather astonish +orthodox congregations to see clerks in our churches getting into the +pulpit to read the sermon for sick clergymen,' said Lord Avonley. His +countenance furrowed. 'I'll pay that bill,' he added. + +'Pay down half a million!' thundered Beauchamp; and dropping his voice, +'or go to him.' + +'You remind me,' his uncle observed. 'I recommend you to ring that bell, +and have Mrs. Culling here.' + +'If she comes she will hear what I think of her.' + +'Then, out of the house!' + +'Very well, sir. You decline to supply me with money?' + +'I do.' + +'I must have it!' + +'I dare say. Money's a chain-cable for holding men to their senses.' + +'I ask you, my lord, how I am to carry on Holdesbury?' + +'Give it up.' + +'I shall have to,' said Beauchamp, striving to be prudent. + +'There isn't a doubt of it,' said his uncle, upon a series of nods +diminishing in their depth until his head assumed a droll interrogative +fixity, with an air of 'What next?' + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX. BETWEEN BEAUCHAMP AND CECILIA + +Beauchamp quitted the house without answering as to what next, and +without seeing Rosamund. + +In the matter of money, as of his physical health, he wanted to do too +much at once; he had spent largely of both in his efforts to repair +the injury done to Dr. Shrapnel. He was overworked, anxious, restless, +craving for a holiday somewhere in France, possibly; he was all but +leaping on board the boat at times, and, unwilling to leave his dear +old friend who clung to him, he stayed, keeping his impulses below the +tide-mark which leads to action, but where they do not yield peace of +spirit. The tone of Renee's letters filled him with misgivings. She +wrote word that she had seen M. d'Henriel for the first time since his +return from Italy, and he was much changed, and inclined to thank Roland +for the lesson he had received from him at the sword's point. And next +she urged Beauchamp to marry, so that he and she might meet, as if she +felt a necessity for it. 'I shall love your wife; teach her to think +amiably of me,' she said. And her letter contained womanly sympathy for +him in his battle with his uncle. Beauchamp thought of his experiences +of Cecilia's comparative coldness. He replied that there was no prospect +of his marrying; he wished there were one of meeting! He forbore from +writing too fervently, but he alluded to happy days in Normandy, +and proposed to renew them if she would say she had need of him. He +entreated her to deal with him frankly; he reminded her that she must +constantly look to him, as she had vowed she would, when in any kind of +trouble; and he declared to her that he was unchanged. He meant, of an +unchanged disposition to shield and serve her; but the review of her +situation, and his knowledge of her quick blood, wrought him to some +jealous lover's throbs, which led him to impress his unchangeableness +upon her, to bind her to that standard. + +She declined his visit: not now; 'not yet': and for that he presumed to +chide her, half-sincerely. As far as he knew he stood against everybody +save his old friend and Renee; and she certainly would have refreshed +his heart for a day. In writing, however, he had an ominous vision of +the morrow to the day; and, both for her sake and his own, he was not +unrejoiced to hear that she was engaged day and night in nursing her +husband. Pursuing his vision of the morrow of an unreproachful day with +Renee, the madness of taking her to himself, should she surrender at +last to a third persuasion, struck him sharply, now that he and his +uncle were foot to foot in downright conflict, and money was the +question. He had not much remaining of his inheritance--about fifteen +hundred pounds. He would have to vacate Holdesbury and his uncle's +town-house in a month. Let his passion be never so desperate, for a +beggared man to think of running away with a wife, or of marrying one, +the folly is as big as the worldly offence: no justification is to be +imagined. Nay, and there is no justification for the breach of a moral +law. Beauchamp owned it, and felt that Renee's resistance to him in +Normandy placed her above him. He remembered a saying of his moralist: +'We who interpret things heavenly by things earthly must not hope to +juggle with them for our pleasures, and can look to no absolution of +evil acts.' The school was a hard one. It denied him holidays; it cut +him off from dreams. It ran him in heavy harness on a rough highroad, +allowing no turnings to right or left, no wayside croppings; with the +simple permission to him that he should daily get thoroughly tired. And +what was it Jenny Denham had said on the election day? 'Does incessant +battling keep the intellect clear?' + +His mind was clear enough to put the case, that either he beheld a +tremendous magnification of things, or else that other men did not +attach common importance to them; and he decided that the latter was the +fact. + +An incessant struggle of one man with the world, which position usually +ranks his relatives against him, does not conduce to soundness of +judgement. He may nevertheless be right in considering that he is right +in the main. The world in motion is not so wise that it can pretend to +silence the outcry of an ordinarily generous heart even--the very infant +of antagonism to its methods and establishments. It is not so difficult +to be right against the world when the heart is really active; but the +world is our book of humanity, and before insisting that his handwriting +shall occupy the next blank page of it, the noble rebel is bound for the +sake of his aim to ask himself how much of a giant he is, lest he fall +like a blot on the page, instead of inscribing intelligible characters +there. + +Moreover, his relatives are present to assure him that he did not jump +out of Jupiter's head or come of the doctor. They hang on him like an +ill-conditioned prickly garment; and if he complains of the irritation +they cause him, they one and all denounce his irritable skin. + +Fretted by his relatives he cannot be much of a giant. + +Beauchamp looked from Dr. Shrapnel in his invalid's chair to his uncle +Everard breathing robustly, and mixed his uncle's errors with those of +the world which honoured and upheld him. His remainder of equability +departed; his impatience increased. His appetite for work at Dr. +Shrapnel's writing-desk was voracious. He was ready for any labour, +the transcribing of papers, writing from dictation, whatsoever was of +service to Lord Avonley's victim: and he was not like the Spartan boy +with the wolf at his vitals; he betrayed it in the hue his uncle Everard +detested, in a visible nervousness, and indulgence in fits of scorn. +Sharp epigrams and notes of irony provoked his laughter more than fun. +He seemed to acquiesce in some of the current contemporary despair of +our immoveable England, though he winced at a satire on his country, and +attempted to show that the dull dominant class of moneymakers was the +ruin of her. Wherever he stood to represent Dr. Shrapnel, as against +Mr. Grancey Lespel on account of the Itchincope encroachments, he left a +sting that spread the rumour of his having become not only a black +torch of Radicalism--our modern provincial estateholders and their +wives bestow that reputation lightly--but a gentleman with the polish +scratched off him in parts. And he, though individually he did not +understand how there was to be game in the land if game-preserving was +abolished, signed his name R. C. S. NEVIL BEAUCHAMP for Dr. SHRAPNEL, +in the communications directed to solicitors of the persecutors of +poachers. + +His behaviour to Grancey Lespel was eclipsed by his treatment of Captain +Baskelett. Cecil had ample reason to suppose his cousin to be friendly +with him. He himself had forgotten Dr. Shrapnel, and all other +dissensions, in a supremely Christian spirit. He paid his cousin the +compliment to think that he had done likewise. At Romfrey and in London +he had spoken to Nevil of his designs upon the widow: Nevil said nothing +against it and it was under Mrs. Wardour-Devereux's eyes, and before a +man named Lydiard, that, never calling to him to put him on his guard, +Nevil fell foul of him with every capital charge that can be brought +against a gentleman, and did so abuse, worry, and disgrace him as to +reduce him to quit the house to avoid the scandal of a resort to a +gentleman's last appeal in vindication of his character. Mrs. Devereux +spoke of the terrible scene to Cecilia, and Lydiard to Miss Denham. The +injured person communicated it to Lord Avonley, who told Colonel Halkett +emphatically that his nephew Cecil deserved well of him in having kept +command of his temper out of consideration for the family. There was a +general murmur of the family over this incident. The widow was rich, and +it ranked among the unwritten crimes against blood for one offshoot of a +great house wantonly to thwart another in the wooing of her by humbling +him in her presence, doing his utmost to expose him as a schemer, a +culprit, and a poltroon. + +Could it be that Beauchamp had reserved his wrath with his cousin to +avenge Dr. Shrapnel upon him signally? Miss Denham feared her guardian +was the cause. Lydiard was indefinitely of her opinion. The idea struck +Cecilia Halkett, and as an example of Beauchamp's tenacity of purpose +and sureness of aim it fascinated her. But Mrs. Wardour-Devereux did +not appear to share it. She objected to Beauchamp's intemperateness +and unsparingness, as if she was for conveying a sisterly warning to +Cecilia; and that being off her mind, she added, smiling a little and +colouring a little: 'We learn only from men what men are.' How the scene +commenced and whether it was provoked, she failed to recollect. She +described Beauchamp as very self-contained in manner throughout his +tongue was the scorpion. Cecilia fancied he must have resembled his +uncle Everard. + +Cecilia was conquered, but unclaimed. While supporting and approving +him in her heart she was dreading to receive some new problem of his +conduct; and still while she blamed him for not seeking an interview +with her, she liked him for this instance of delicacy in the present +state of his relations with Lord Avonley. + +A problem of her own conduct disturbed the young lady's clear conception +of herself: and this was a ruffling of unfaithfulness in her love of +Beauchamp, that was betrayed to her by her forgetfulness of him whenever +she chanced to be with Seymour Austin. In Mr. Austin's company she +recovered her forfeited repose, her poetry of life, her image of the +independent Cecilia throned above our dust of battle, gazing on +broad heaven. She carried the feeling so far that Blackburn Tuckham's +enthusiasm for Mr. Austin gave him grace in her sight, and praise of her +father's favourite from Mr. Austin's mouth made him welcome to her. The +image of that grave capable head, dusty-grey about the temples, and +the darkly sanguine face of the tried man, which was that of a seasoned +warrior and inspired full trust in him, with his vivid look, his +personal distinction, his plain devotion to the country's business, and +the domestic solitude he lived in, admired, esteemed, loved perhaps, but +unpartnered, was often her refuge and haven from tempestuous Beauchamp. +She could see in vision the pride of Seymour Austin's mate. It flushed +her reflectively. Conquered but not claimed, Cecilia was like the frozen +earth insensibly moving round to sunshine in nature, with one white +flower in her breast as innocent a sign of strong sweet blood as a woman +may wear. She ascribed to that fair mate of Seymour Austin's many lofty +charms of womanhood; above all, stateliness: her especial dream of an +attainable superlative beauty in women. And supposing that lady to be +accused of the fickle breaking of another love, who walked beside him, +matched with his calm heart and one with him in counsel, would the +accusation be repeated by them that beheld her husband? might it not +rather be said that she had not deviated, but had only stepped higher? +She chose no youth, no glistener, no idler: it was her soul striving +upward to air like a seed in the earth that raised her to him: and she +could say to the man once enchaining her: Friend, by the good you taught +me I was led to this! + +Cecilia's reveries fled like columns of mist before the gale when +tidings reached her of a positive rupture between Lord Avonley and Nevil +Beauchamp, and of the mandate to him to quit possession of Holdesbury +and the London house within a certain number of days, because of his +refusal to utter an apology to Mrs. Culling. Angrily on his behalf she +prepared to humble herself to him. Louise Wardour-Devereux brought them +to a meeting, at which Cecilia, with her heart in her hand, was icy. +Mr. Lydiard, prompted by Mrs. Devereux, gave him better reasons for +her singular coldness than Cecilia could give to herself, and some time +afterward Beauchamp went to Mount Laurels, where Colonel Halkett mounted +guard over his daughter, and behaved, to her thinking, cruelly. 'Now +you have ruined yourself there's nothing ahead for you but to go to the +Admiralty and apply for a ship,' he said, sugaring the unkindness with +the remark that the country would be the gainer. He let fly a side-shot +at London men calling themselves military men who sought to repair their +fortunes by chasing wealthy widows, and complimented Beauchamp: 'You're +not one of that sort.' + +Cecilia looked at Beauchamp stedfastly. 'Speak,' said the look. + +But he, though not blind, was keenly wounded. + +'Money I must have,' he said, half to the colonel, half to himself. + +Colonel Halkett shrugged. Cecilia waited for a directness in Beauchamp's +eyes. + +Her father was too wary to leave them. + +Cecilia's intuition told her that by leading to a discussion of +politics, and adopting Beauchamp's views, she could kindle him. Why did +she refrain? It was that the conquered young lady was a captive, not an +ally. To touch the subject in cold blood, voluntarily to launch on those +vexed waters, as if his cause were her heart's, as much as her heart was +the man's, she felt to be impossible. He at the same time felt that the +heiress, endowing him with money to speed the good cause, should be +his match in ardour for it, otherwise he was but a common adventurer, +winning and despoiling an heiress. + +They met in London. Beauchamp had not vacated either Holdesbury or the +town-house; he was defying his uncle Everard, and Cecilia thought +with him that it was a wise temerity. She thought with him passively +altogether. On this occasion she had not to wait for directness in his +eyes; she had to parry it. They were at a dinner-party at Lady Elsea's, +generally the last place for seeing Lord Palmet, but he was present, and +arranged things neatly for them, telling Beauchamp that he acted +under Mrs. Wardour-Devereux's orders. Never was an opportunity, more +propitious for a desperate lover. Had it been Renee next him, no petty +worldly scruples of honour would have held him back. And if Cecilia +had spoken feelingly of Dr. Shrapnel, or had she simulated a thoughtful +interest in his pursuits, his hesitations would have vanished. As it +was, he dared to look what he did not permit himself to speak. She was +nobly lovely, and the palpable envy of men around cried fool at his +delays. Beggar and heiress he said in his heart, to vitalize the +three-parts fiction of the point of honour which Cecilia's beauty was +fast submerging. When she was leaving he named a day for calling to see +her. Colonel Halkett stood by, and she answered, 'Come.' + +Beauchamp kept the appointment. Cecilia was absent. + +He was unaware that her father had taken her to old Mrs. Beauchamp's +death-bed. Her absence, after she had said, 'Come,' appeared a +confirmation of her glacial manner when they met at the house of Mrs. +Wardour-Devereux; and he charged her with waywardness. A wound of the +same kind that we are inflicting is about the severest we can feel. + +Beauchamp received intelligence of his venerable great-aunt's death from +Blackburn Tuckham, and after the funeral he was informed that eighty +thousand pounds had been bequeathed to him: a goodly sum of money for a +gentleman recently beggared; yet, as the political enthusiast could not +help reckoning (apart from a fervent sentiment of gratitude toward his +benefactress), scarcely enough to do much more than start and push for +three or more years a commanding daily newspaper, devoted to Radical +interests, and to be entitled THE DAWN. + +True, he might now conscientiously approach the heiress, take her hand +with an open countenance, and retain it. + +Could he do so quite conscientiously? The point of honour had been +centred in his condition of beggary. Something still was in his way. A +quick spring of his blood for air, motion, excitement, holiday freedom, +sent his thoughts travelling whither they always shot away when his +redoubtable natural temper broke loose. + +In the case of any other woman than Cecilia Halkett he would not have +been obstructed by the minor consideration as to whether he was wholly +heart-free to ask her in marriage that instant; for there was no +hindrance, and she was beautiful. She was exceedingly beautiful; and she +was an unequalled heiress. She would be able with her wealth to +float his newspaper, THE DAWN, so desired of Dr. Shrapnel!--the +best restorative that could be applied to him! Every temptation came +supplicating him to take the step which indeed he wished for: one +feeling opposed. He really respected Cecilia: it is not too much to say +that he worshipped her with the devout worship rendered to the ideal +Englishwoman by the heart of the nation. For him she was purity, +charity, the keeper of the keys of whatsoever is held precious by men; +she was a midway saint, a light between day and darkness, in whom the +spirit in the flesh shone like the growing star amid thin sanguine +colour, the sweeter, the brighter, the more translucent the longer +known. And if the image will allow it, the nearer down to him the holier +she seemed. + +How offer himself when he was not perfectly certain that he was worthy +of her? + +Some jugglery was played by the adept male heart in these later +hesitations. Up to the extent of his knowledge of himself, the man was +fairly sincere. Passion would have sped him to Cecilia, but passion is +not invariably love; and we know what it can be. + +The glance he cast over the water at Normandy was withdrawn. He went +to Bevisham to consult with Dr. Shrapnel about the starting of a weekly +journal, instead of a daily, and a name for it--a serious question: +for though it is oftener weekly than daily that the dawn is visible +in England, titles must not invite the public jest; and the glorious +project of the daily DAWN was prudently abandoned for by-and-by. He +thought himself rich enough to put a Radical champion weekly in the +field and this matter, excepting the title, was arranged in Bevisham. +Thence he proceeded to Holdesbury, where he heard that the house, +grounds, and farm were let to a tenant preparing to enter. Indifferent +to the blow, he kept an engagement to deliver a speech at the great +manufacturing town of Gunningham, and then went to London, visiting his +uncle's town-house for recent letters. Not one was from Renee: she had +not written for six weeks, not once for his thrice! A letter from Cecil +Baskelett informed him that 'my lord' had placed the town-house at his +disposal. Returning to dress for dinner on a thick and murky evening +of February, Beauchamp encountered his cousin on the steps. He said to +Cecil, 'I sleep here to-night: I leave the house to you tomorrow.' + +Cecil struck out his underjaw to reply: 'Oh! good. You sleep here +to-night. You are a fortunate man. I congratulate you. I shall not +disturb you. I have just entered on my occupation of the house. I have +my key. Allow me to recommend you to go straight to the drawing-room. +And I may inform you that the Earl of Romfrey is at the point of death. +My lord is at the castle.' + +Cecil accompanied his descent of the steps with the humming of an opera +melody: Beauchamp tripped into the hall-passage. A young maid-servant +held the door open, and she accosted him: 'If you please, there is a +lady up-stairs in the drawing-room; she speaks foreign English, sir.' + +Beauchamp asked if the lady was alone, and not waiting for the answer, +though he listened while writing, and heard that she was heavily veiled, +he tore a strip from his notebook, and carefully traced half-a-dozen +telegraphic words to Mrs. Culling at Steynham. His rarely failing +promptness, which was like an inspiration, to conceive and execute +measures for averting peril, set him on the thought of possibly +counteracting his cousin Cecil's malignant tongue by means of a message +to Rosamund, summoning her by telegraph to come to town by the next +train that night. He despatched the old woman keeping the house, as +trustier than the young one, to the nearest office, and went up to +the drawing-room, with a quick thumping heart that was nevertheless as +little apprehensive of an especial trial and danger as if he had done +nothing at all to obviate it. Indeed he forgot that he had done anything +when he turned the handle of the drawing-room door. + + + + +CHAPTER XL. A TRIAL OF HIM + +A low-burning lamp and fire cast a narrow ring on the shadows of the +dusky London room. One of the window-blinds was drawn up. Beauchamp +discerned a shape at that window, and the fear seized him that it might +be Madame d'Auffray with evil news of Renee: but it was Renee's name he +called. She rose from her chair, saying, 'I!' + +She was trembling. + +Beauchamp asked her whisperingly if she had come alone. + +'Alone; without even a maid,' she murmured. + +He pulled down the blind of the window exposing them to the square, and +led her into the light to see her face. + +The dimness of light annoyed him, and the miserable reception of her; +this English weather, and the gloomy house! And how long had she been +waiting for him? and what was the mystery? Renee in England seemed +magical; yet it was nothing stranger than an old dream realized. He +wound up the lamp, holding her still with one hand. She was woefully +pale; scarcely able to bear the increase of light. + +'It is I who come to you': she was half audible. + +'This time!' said he. 'You have been suffering?' + +'No.' + +Her tone was brief; not reassuring. + +'You came straight to me?' + +'Without a deviation that I know of.' + +'From Tourdestelle?' + +'You have not forgotten Tourdestelle, Nevil?' + +The memory of it quickened his rapture in reading her features. It was +his first love, his enchantress, who was here: and how? Conjectures shot +through him like lightnings in the dark. + +Irrationally, at a moment when reason stood in awe, he fancied it must +be that her husband was dead. He forced himself to think it, and could +have smiled at the hurry of her coming, one, without even a maid: and +deeper down in him the devouring question burned which dreaded the +answer. + +But of old, in Normandy, she had pledged herself to join him with no +delay when free, if ever free! + +So now she was free. + +One side of him glowed in illumination; the other was black as Winter +night; but light subdues darkness; and in a situation like Beauchamp's, +the blood is livelier than the prophetic mind. + +'Why did you tell me to marry? What did that mean?' said he. 'Did you +wish me to be the one in chains? And you have come quite alone!--you +will give me an account of everything presently:--You are here! in +England! and what a welcome for you! You are cold.' + +'I am warmly clad,' said Renee, suffering her hand to be drawn to his +breast at her arm's-length, not bending with it. + +Alive to his own indirectness, he was conscious at once of the slight +sign of reservation, and said: 'Tell me...' and swerved sheer away from +his question: 'how is Madame d'Auffray?' + +'Agnes? I left her at Tourdestelle,' said Renee. + +'And Roland? He never writes to me.' + +'Neither he nor I write much. He is at the military camp of instruction +in the North.' + +'He will run over to us.' + +'Do not expect it.' + +'Why not?' + +Renee sighed. 'We shall have to live longer than I look for...' she +stopped. 'Why do you ask me why not? He is fond of us both, and sorry +for us; but have you forgotten Roland that morning on the Adriatic?' + +Beauchamp pressed her hand. The stroke of Then and Now rang in his +breast like a bell instead of a bounding heart. Something had stunned +his heart. He had no clear central feeling; he tried to gather it from +her touch, from his joy in beholding her and sitting with her alone, +from the grace of her figure, the wild sweetness of her eyes, and the +beloved foreign lips bewitching him with their exquisite French and +perfection of speech. + +His nature was too prompt in responding to such a call on it for +resolute warmth. + +'If I had been firmer then, or you one year older!' he said. + +'That girl in Venice had no courage,' said Renee. + +She raised her head and looked about the room. + +Her instinct of love sounded her lover through, and felt the deficiency +or the contrariety in him, as surely as musical ears are pained by +a discord that they require no touchstone to detect. Passion has the +sensitiveness of fever, and is as cruelly chilled by a tepid air. + +'Yes, a London house after Venice and Normandy!' said Beauchamp, +following her look. + +'Sicily: do not omit Syracuse; you were in your naval uniform: Normandy +was our third meeting,' said Renee. 'This is the fourth. I should have +reckoned that.' + +'Why? Superstitiously?' + +'We cannot be entirely wise when we have staked our fate. Sailors are +credulous: you know them. Women are like them when they embark... Three +chances! Who can boast of so many, and expect one more! Will you take me +to my hotel, Nevil?' + +The fiction of her being free could not be sustained. + +'Take you and leave you? I am absolutely at your command. But leave you? +You are alone: and you have told me nothing.' + +What was there to tell? The desperate act was apparent, and told all. + +Renee's dark eyelashes lifted on him, and dropped. + +'Then things are as I left them in Normandy?' said he. + +She replied: 'Almost.' + +He quivered at the solitary word; for his conscience was on edge. It ran +the shrewdest irony through him, inexplicably. 'Almost': that is, 'with +this poor difference of one person, now finding herself worthless, +subtracted from the list; no other; it should be little to them as it +is little to you': or, reversing it, the substance of the word became +magnified and intensified by its humble slightness: 'Things are the +same, but for the jewel of the province, a lustre of France, lured +hither to her eclipse'--meanings various, indistinguishable, thrilling +and piercing sad as the half-tones humming round the note of a strung +wire, which is a blunt single note to the common ear. + +Beauchamp sprang to his feet and bent above her: 'You have come to me, +for the love of me, to give yourself to me, and for ever, for good, till +death? Speak, my beloved Renee.' + +Her eyes were raised to his: 'You see me here. It is for you to speak.' + +'I do. There's nothing I ask for now--if the step can't be retrieved.' + +'The step retrieved, my friend? There is no step backward in life.' + +'I am thinking of you, Renee.' + +'Yes, I know,' she answered hurriedly. + +'If we discover that the step is a wrong one?' he pursued: 'why is there +no step backward?' + +'I am talking of women,' said Renee. + +'Why not for women?' + +'Honourable women, I mean,' said Renee. + +Beauchamp inclined to forget his position in finding matter to contest. + +Yet it is beyond contest that there is no step backward in life. She +spoke well; better than he, and she won his deference by it. Not only +she spoke better: she was truer, distincter, braver: and a man ever on +the look-out for superior qualities, and ready to bow to them, could not +refuse her homage. With that a saving sense of power quitted him. + +'You wrote to me that you were unchanged, Nevil.' + +'I am.' + +'So, then, I came.' + +His rejoinder was the dumb one, commonly eloquent and satisfactory. + +Renee shut her eyes with a painful rigour of endurance. She opened them +to look at him steadily. + +The desperate act of her flight demanded immediate recognition from him +in simple language and a practical seconding of it. There was the test. + +'I cannot stay in this house, Nevil; take me away.' + +She named her hotel in her French English, and the sound of it +penetrated him with remorseful pity. It was for him, and of his doing, +that she was in an alien land and an outcast! + +'This house is wretched for you,' said he: 'and you must be hungry. Let +me...' + +'I cannot eat. I will ask you': she paused, drawing on her energies, and +keeping down the throbs of her heart: 'this: do you love me?' + +'I love you with all my heart and soul.' + +'As in Normandy?' + +'Yes.' + +'In Venice?' + +'As from the first, Renee! That I can swear.' + +'Oaths are foolish. I meant to ask you--my friend, there is no question +in my mind of any other woman: I see you love me: I am so used to +consider myself the vain and cowardly creature, and you the boldest and +faithfullest of men, that I could not abandon the habit if I would: I +started confiding in you, sure that I should come to land. But I have to +ask you: to me you are truth: I have no claim on my lover for anything +but the answer to this:--Am I a burden to you?' + +His brows flew up in furrows. He drew a heavy breath, for never had he +loved her more admiringly, and never on such equal terms. She was his +mate in love and daring at least. A sorrowful comparison struck him, of +a little boat sailing out to a vessel in deep seas and left to founder. + +Without knotting his mind to acknowledge or deny the burden, for he +could do neither, he stood silent, staring at her, not so much in +weakness as in positive mental division. No, would be false; and Yes, +not less false; and if the step was irretrievable, to say Yes would be +to plunge a dagger in her bosom; but No was a vain deceit involving +a double wreck. Assuredly a man standing against the world in a good +cause, with a runaway wife on his hands, carries a burden, however +precious it be to him. + +A smile of her lips, parted in an anguish of expectancy, went to death +over Renee's face. She looked at him tenderly. 'The truth,' she murmured +to herself, and her eyelids fell. + +'I am ready to bear anything,' said Beauchamp. 'I weigh what you ask me, +that is all. You a burden to me? But when you ask me, you make me turn +round and inquire how we stand before the world.' + +'The world does not stone men,' said Renee. + +'Can't I make you feel that I am not thinking of myself?' Beauchamp +stamped in his extreme perplexity. He was gagged; he could not possibly +talk to her, who had cast the die, of his later notions of morality and +the world's dues, fees, and claims on us. + +'No, friend, I am not complaining.' Renee put out her hand to him; with +compassionate irony feigning to have heard excuses. 'What right have +I to complain? I have not the sensation. I could not expect you to be +everlastingly the sentinel of love. Three times I rejected you! Now +that I have lost my father--Oh! poor father: I trifled with my lover, I +tricked him that my father might live in peace. He is dead. I wished +you to marry one of your own countrywomen, Nevil. You said it was +impossible; and I, with my snake at my heart, and a husband grateful for +nursing and whimpering to me for his youth like a beggar on the road, +I thought I owed you this debt of body and soul, to prove to you I have +some courage; and for myself, to reward myself for my long captivity and +misery with one year of life: and adieu to Roland my brother! adieu to +friends! adieu to France! Italy was our home. I dreamed of one year +in Italy; I fancied it might be two; more than that was unimaginable. +Prisoners of long date do not hope; they do not calculate: air, light, +they say; to breathe freely and drop down! They are reduced to the +instincts of the beasts. I thought I might give you happiness, pay part +of my debt to you. Are you remembering Count Henri? That paints what +I was! I could fly to that for a taste of life! a dance to death! And +again you ask: Why, if I loved you then, not turn to you in preference? +No, you have answered it yourself, Nevil;--on that day in the boat, when +generosity in a man so surprised me, it seemed a miracle to me; and it +was, in its divination. How I thank my dear brother Roland for saving me +the sight of you condemned to fight, against your conscience! He taught +poor M. d'Henriel his lesson. You, Nevil, were my teacher. And see how +it hangs: there was mercy for me in not having drawn down my father's +anger on my heart's beloved. He loved you. He pitied us. He reproached +himself. In his last days he was taught to suspect our story: perhaps +from Roland; perhaps I breathed it without speaking. He called heaven's +blessings on you. He spoke of you with tears, clutching my hand. He +made me feel he would have cried out: "If I were leaving her with Nevil +Beauchamp!" and "Beauchamp," I heard him murmuring once: "take down +Froissart": he named a chapter. It was curious: if he uttered my name +Renee, yours, "Nevil," soon followed. That was noticed by Roland. Hope +for us, he could not have had; as little as I! But we were his two: his +children. I buried him--I thought he would know our innocence, and now +pardon our love. I read your letters, from my name at the beginning, to +yours at the end, and from yours back to mine, and between the lines, +for any doubtful spot: and oh, rash! But I would not retrace the step +for my own sake. I am certain of your love for me, though...' She +paused: 'Yes, I am certain of it. And if I am a burden to you?' + +'About as much as the air, which I can't do without since I began to +breathe it,' said Beauchamp, more clear-mindedly now that he supposed +he was addressing a mind, and with a peril to himself that escaped +his vigilance. There was a secret intoxication for him already in the +half-certainty that the step could not be retraced. The idea that he +might reason with her, made her seductive to the heart and head of him. + +'I am passably rich, Nevil,' she said. 'I do not care for money, except +that it gives wings. Roland inherits the chateau in Touraine. I have one +in Burgundy, and rentes and shares, my notary informs me.' + +'I have money,' said he. His heart began beating violently. He lost +sight of his intention of reasoning. 'Good God! if you were free!' + +She faltered: 'At Tourdestelle...' + +'Yes, and I am unchanged,' Beauchamp cried out. 'Your life there was +horrible, and mine's intolerable.' He stretched his arms cramped like +the yawning of a wretch in fetters. That which he would and would not +became so intervolved that he deemed it reasonable to instance their +common misery as a ground for their union against the world. And +what has that world done for us, that a joy so immeasurable should be +rejected on its behalf? And what have we succeeded in doing, that the +childish effort to move it should be continued at such a cost? + +For years, down to one year back, and less--yesterday, it could be +said--all human blessedness appeared to him in the person of Renee, +given him under any condition whatsoever. She was not less adorable now. +In her decision, and a courage that he especially prized in women, she +was a sweeter to him than when he was with her in France: too sweet to +be looked at and refused. + +'But we must live in England,' he cried abruptly out of his inner mind. + +'Oh! not England, Italy, Italy!' Renee exclaimed: 'Italy, or Greece: +anywhere where we have sunlight. Mountains and valleys are my dream. +Promise it, Nevil. I will obey you; but this is my wish. Take me through +Venice, that I may look at myself and wonder. We can live at sea, in a +yacht; anywhere with you but in England. This country frowns on me; I +can hardly fetch my breath here, I am suffocated. The people all walk in +lines in England. Not here, Nevil! They are good people, I am sure; +and it is your country: but their faces chill me, their voices grate; +I should never understand them; they would be to me like their fogs +eternally; and I to them? O me! it would be like hearing sentence in the +dampness of the shroud perpetually. Again I say I do not doubt that they +are very good: they claim to be; they judge others; they may know how to +make themselves happy in their climate; it is common to most creatures +to do so, or to imagine it. Nevil! not England!' + +Truly 'the mad commander and his French marquise' of the Bevisham +Election ballad would make a pretty figure in England! + +His friends of his own class would be mouthing it. The story would be +a dogging shadow of his public life, and, quite as bad, a reflection +on his party. He heard the yelping tongues of the cynics. He saw the +consternation and grief of his old Bevisham hero, his leader and his +teacher. + +'Florence,' he said, musing on the prospect of exile and idleness: +'there's a kind of society to be had in Florence.' + +Renee asked him if he cared so much for society. + +He replied that women must have it, just as men must have exercise. + +'Old women, Nevil; intriguers, tattlers.' + +'Young women, Renee.' + +She signified no. + +He shook the head of superior knowledge paternally. + +Her instinct of comedy set a dimple faintly working in her cheek. + +'Not if they love, Nevil.' + +'At least,' said he, 'a man does not like to see the woman he loves +banished by society and browbeaten.' + +'Putting me aside, do you care for it, Nevil?' + +'Personally not a jot.' + +'I am convinced of that,' said Renee. + +She spoke suspiciously sweetly, appearing perfect candour. + +The change in him was perceptible to her. The nature of the change was +unfathomable. + +She tried her wits at the riddle. But though she could be an actress +before him with little difficulty, the torment of her situation roused +the fever within her at a bare effort to think acutely. Scarlet suffused +her face: her brain whirled. + +'Remember, dearest, I have but offered myself: you have your choice. +I can pass on. Yes, I know well I speak to Nevil Beauchamp; you have +drilled me to trust you and your word as a soldier trusts to his +officer--once a faint-hearted soldier! I need not remind you: fronting +the enemy now, in hard truth. But I want your whole heart to decide. +Give me no silly, compassion! Would it have been better to me to have +written to you? If I had written I should have clipped my glorious +impulse, brought myself down to earth with my own arrow. I did not +write, for I believed in you.' + +So firm had been her faith in him that her visions of him on the passage +to England had resolved all to one flash of blood-warm welcome awaiting +her: and it says much for her natural generosity that the savage +delicacy of a woman placed as she now was, did not take a mortal hurt +from the apparent voidness of this home of his bosom. The passionate +gladness of the lover was wanting: the chivalrous valiancy of manful +joy. + +Renee shivered at the cloud thickening over her new light of intrepid +defiant life. + +'Think it not improbable that I have weighed everything I surrender in +quitting France,' she said. + +Remorse wrestled with Beauchamp and flung him at her feet. + +Renee remarked on the lateness of the hour. + +He promised to conduct her to her hotel immediately. + +'And to-morrow?' said Renee, simply, but breathlessly. + +'To-morrow, let it be Italy! But first I telegraph to Roland and +Tourdestelle. I can't run and hide. The step may be retrieved: or no, +you are right; the step cannot, but the next to it may be stopped--that +was the meaning I had! I 'll try. It 's cutting my hand off, tearing my +heart out; but I will. O that you were free! You left your husband at +Tourdestelle?' + +'I presume he is there at present: he was in Paris when I left.' + +Beauchamp spoke hoarsely and incoherently in contrast with her +composure: 'You will misunderstand me for a day or two, Renee. I say if +you were free I should have my first love mine for ever. Don't fear me: +I have no right even to press your fingers. He may throw you into my +arms. Now you are the same as if you were in your own home: and you +must accept me for your guide. By all I hope for in life, I'll see you +through it, and keep the dogs from barking, if I can. Thousands are +ready to give tongue. And if they can get me in the character of a +law-breaker!--I hear them.' + +'Are you imagining, Nevil, that there is a possibility of my returning +to him?' + +'To your place in the world! You have not had to endure tyranny?' + +'I should have had a certain respect for a tyrant, Nevil. At least I +should have had an occupation in mocking him and conspiring against him. +Tyranny! There would have been some amusement to me in that.' + +'It was neglect.' + +'If I could still charge it on neglect, Nevil! Neglect is very +endurable. He rewards me for nursing him... he rewards me with a little +persecution: wives should be flattered by it: it comes late.' + +'What?' cried Beauchamp, oppressed and impatient. + +Renee sank her voice. + +Something in the run of the unaccented French: 'Son amour, mon ami': +drove the significance of the bitterness of the life she had left behind +her burningly through him. This was to have fled from a dragon! was the +lover's thought: he perceived the motive of her flight: and it was a +vindication of it that appealed to him irresistibly. The proposal for +her return grew hideous: and this ever multiplying horror and sting of +the love of a married woman came on him with a fresh throbbing shock, +more venom. + +He felt for himself now, and now he was full of feeling for her. +Impossible that she should return! Tourdestelle shone to him like a +gaping chasm of fire. And becoming entirely selfish he impressed his +total abnegation of self upon Renee so that she could have worshipped +him. A lover that was like a starry frost, froze her veins, bewildered +her intelligence. She yearned for meridian warmth, for repose in a +directing hand; and let it be hard as one that grasps a sword: what +matter? unhesitatingness was the warrior virtue of her desire. And for +herself the worst might happen if only she were borne along. Let her +life be torn and streaming like the flag of battle, it must be forward +to the end. + +That was a quality of godless young heroism not unexhausted in +Beauchamp's blood. Reanimated by him, she awakened his imagination of +the vagrant splendours of existence and the rebel delights which have +their own laws and 'nature' for an applauding mother. Radiant Alps rose +in his eyes, and the morning born in the night suns that from mountain +and valley, over sea and desert, called on all earth to witness their +death. The magnificence of the contempt of humanity posed before him +superbly satanesque, grand as thunder among the crags and it was not +a sensual cry that summoned him from his pedlar labours, pack on back +along the level road, to live and breathe deep, gloriously mated: Renee +kindled his romantic spirit, and could strike the feeling into him that +to be proud of his possession of her was to conquer the fretful vanity +to possess. She was not a woman of wiles and lures. + +Once or twice she consulted her watch: but as she professed to have no +hunger, Beauchamp's entreaty to her to stay prevailed, and the subtle +form of compliment to his knightly manliness in her remaining with +him, gave him a new sense of pleasure that hung round her companionable +conversation, deepening the meaning of the words, or sometimes +contrasting the sweet surface commonplace with the undercurrent of +strangeness in their hearts, and the reality of a tragic position. Her +musical volubility flowed to entrance and divert him, as it did. + +Suddenly Beauchamp glanced upward. + +Renee turned from a startled contemplation of his frown, and beheld Mrs. +Rosamund Culling in the room. + + + + +CHAPTER XLI. A LAME VICTORY + +The intruder was not a person that had power to divide them; yet she +came between their hearts with a touch of steel. + +'I am here in obedience to your commands in your telegram of this +evening,' Rosamund replied to Beauchamp's hard stare at her; she +courteously spoke French, and acquitted herself demurely of a bow to the +lady present. + +Renee withdrew her serious eyes from Beauchamp. She rose and +acknowledged the bow. + +'It is my first visit to England, madame! + +'I could have desired, Madame la marquise, more agreeable weather for +you.' + +'My friends in England will dispel the bad weather for me, madame'; +Renee smiled softly: 'I have been studying my French-English +phrase-book, that I may learn how dialogues are conducted in your +country to lead to certain ceremonies when old friends meet, and without +my book I am at fault. I am longing to be embraced by you... if it will +not be offending your rules?' + +Rosamund succumbed to the seductive woman, whose gentle tooth bit +through her tutored simplicity of manner and natural graciousness, +administering its reproof, and eluding a retort or an excuse. + +She gave the embrace. In doing so she fell upon her conscious +awkwardness for an expression of reserve that should be as good as irony +for irony, though where Madame de Rouaillout's irony lay, or whether +it was irony at all, our excellent English dame could not have stated, +after the feeling of indignant prudery responding to it so guiltily had +subsided. + +Beauchamp asked her if she had brought servants with her; and it +gratified her to see that he was no actor fitted to carry a scene +through in virtue's name and vice's mask with this actress. + +She replied, 'I have brought a man and a maid-servant. The establishment +will be in town the day after tomorrow, in time for my lord's return +from the Castle.' + +'You can have them up to-morrow morning.' + +'I could,' Rosamund admitted the possibility. Her idolatry of him was +tried on hearing him press the hospitality of the house upon Madame de +Rouaillout, and observing the lady's transparent feint of a reluctant +yielding. For the voluble Frenchwoman scarcely found a word to utter: +she protested languidly that she preferred the independence of her +hotel, and fluttered a singular look at him, as if overcome by his +vehement determination to have her in the house. Undoubtedly she had +a taking face and style. His infatuation, nevertheless, appeared to +Rosamund utter dementedness, considering this woman's position, and +Cecilia Halkett's beauty and wealth, and that the house was no longer +at his disposal. He was really distracted, to judge by his forehead, or +else he was over-acting his part. + +The absence of a cook in the house, Rosamund remarked, must prevent her +from seconding Captain Beauchamp's invitation. + +He turned on her witheringly. 'The telegraph will do that. You're in +London; cooks can be had by dozens. Madame de Rouaillout is alone here; +she has come to see a little of England, and you will do the honours of +the house.' + +'M. le marquis is not in London?' said Rosamund, disregarding the dumb +imprecation she saw on Beauchamp's features. + +'No, madame, my husband is not in London,' Renee rejoined collectedly. + +'See to the necessary comforts of the house instantly,' said Beauchamp, +and telling Renee, without listening to her, that he had to issue +orders, he led Rosamund, who was out of breath at the effrontery of the +pair, toward the door. 'Are you blind, ma'am? Have you gone foolish? +What should I have sent for you for, but to protect her? I see your +mind; and off with the prude, pray! Madame will have my room; clear away +every sign of me there. I sleep out; I can find a bed anywhere. And bolt +and chain the house-door to-night against Cecil Baskelett; he informs me +that he has taken possession.' + +Rosamund's countenance had become less austere. + +'Captain Baskelett!' she exclaimed, leaning to Beauchamp's views on the +side of her animosity to Cecil; 'he has been promised by his uncle the +use of a set of rooms during the year, when the mistress of the house +is not in occupation. I stipulated expressly that he was to see you and +suit himself to your convenience, and to let me hear that you and he had +agreed to an arrangement, before he entered the house. He has no right +to be here, and I shall have no hesitation in locking him out.' + +Beauchamp bade her go, and not be away more than five minutes; and then +he would drive to the hotel for the luggage. + +She scanned him for a look of ingenuousness that might be trusted, and +laughed in her heart at her credulity for expecting it of a man in such +a case. She saw Renee sitting stonily, too proudly self-respecting to +put on a mask of flippant ease. These lovers might be accomplices in +deceiving her; they were not happy ones, and that appeared to her to be +some assurance that she did well in obeying him. + +Beauchamp closed the door on her. He walked back to Renee with a +thoughtful air that was consciously acted; his only thought being--now +she knows me! + +Renee looked up at him once. Her eyes were unaccusing, unquestioning. + +With the violation of the secresy of her flight she had lost her +initiative and her intrepidity. The world of human eyes glared on her +through the windows of the two she had been exposed to, paralyzing her +brain and caging her spirit of revolt. That keen wakefulness of her +self-defensive social instinct helped her to an understanding of her +lover's plan to preserve her reputation, or rather to give her a corner +of retreat in shielding the worthless thing--twice detested as her cloak +of slavery coming from him! She comprehended no more. She was a house of +nerves crowding in against her soul like fiery thorns, and had no +space within her torture for a sensation of gratitude or suspicion; but +feeling herself hurried along at lightning speed to some dreadful shock, +her witless imagination apprehended it in his voice: not what he might +say, only the sound. She feared to hear him speak, as the shrinking +ear fears a thunder at the cavity; yet suspense was worse than the +downward-driving silence. + +The pang struck her when he uttered some words about Mrs. Culling, and +protection, and Roland. + +She thanked him. + +So have common executioners been thanked by queenly ladies baring their +necks to the axe. + +He called up the pain he suffered to vindicate him; and it was really an +agony of a man torn to pieces. + +'I have done the best.' + +This dogged and stupid piece of speech was pitiable to hear from Nevil +Beauchamp. + +'You think so?' said she; and her glass-like voice rang a tremour in its +mildness that swelled through him on the plain submissive note, which +was more assent than question. + +'I am sure of it. I believe it. I see it. At least I hope so.' + +'We are chiefly led by hope,' said Renee. + +'At least, if not!' Beauchamp cried. 'And it's not too late. I have no +right--I do what I can. I am at your mercy. Judge me later. If I am ever +to know what happiness is, it will be with you. It's not too late either +way. There is Roland--my brother as much as if you were my wife!' + +He begged her to let him have Roland's exact address. + +She named the regiment, the corps d'armee, the postal town, and the +department. + +'Roland will come at a signal,' he pursued; 'we are not bound to consult +others.' + +Renee formed the French word of 'we' on her tongue. + +He talked of Roland and Roland, his affection for him as a brother and +as a friend, and Roland's love of them both. + +'It is true,' said Renee. + +'We owe him this; he represents your father.' + +'All that you say is true, my friend.' + +'Thus, you have come on a visit to madame, your old friend here--oh! +your hand. What have I done?' + +Renee motioned her hand as if it were free to be taken, and smiled +faintly to make light of it, but did not give it. + +'If you had been widowed!' he broke down to the lover again. + +'That man is attached to the remnant of his life: I could not wish him +dispossessed of it,' said Rende. + +'Parted! who parts us? It's for a night. Tomorrow!' + +She breathed: 'To-morrow.' + +To his hearing it craved an answer. He had none. To talk like a lover, +or like a man of honour, was to lie. Falsehood hemmed him in to the +narrowest ring that ever statue stood on, if he meant to be stone. + +'That woman will be returning,' he muttered, frowning at the vacant +door. 'I could lay out my whole life before your eyes, and show you I am +unchanged in my love of you since the night when Roland and I walked on +the Piazzetta...' + +'Do not remind me; let those days lie black!' A sympathetic vision +of her maiden's tears on the night of wonderful moonlight when, as it +seemed to her now, San Giorgio stood like a dark prophet of her present +abasement and chastisement, sprang tears of a different character, and +weak as she was with her soul's fever and for want of food, she was +piteously shaken. She said with some calmness: 'It is useless to look +back. I have no reproaches but for myself. Explain nothing to me. Things +that are not comprehended by one like me are riddles I must put aside. I +know where I am: I scarcely know more. Here is madame.' + +The door had not opened, and it did not open immediately. + +Beauchamp had time to say, 'Believe in me.' Even that was false to +his own hearing, and in a struggle with the painful impression of +insincerity which was denied and scorned by his impulse to fling his +arms round her and have her his for ever, he found himself deferentially +accepting her brief directions concerning her boxes at the hotel, with +Rosamund Culling to witness. + +She gave him her hand. + +He bowed over the fingers. 'Until to-morrow, madame.' + +'Adieu!' said Renee. + + + + +CHAPTER XLII. THE TWO PASSIONS + +The foggy February night refreshed his head, and the business of +fetching the luggage from the hotel--a commission that necessitated the +delivery of his card and some very commanding language--kept his mind +in order. Subsequently he drove to his cousin Baskelett's Club, where he +left a short note to say the house was engaged for the night and perhaps +a week further. Concise, but sufficient: and he stated a hope to his +cousin that he would not be inconvenienced. This was courteous. + +He had taken a bed at Renee's hotel, after wresting her boxes from the +vanquished hotel proprietor, and lay there, hearing the clear sound +of every little sentence of hers during the absence of Rosamund: her +'Adieu,' and the strange 'Do you think so?' and 'I know where I am; I +scarcely know more.' Her eyes and their darker lashes, and the fitful +little sensitive dimples of a smile without joy, came with her voice, +but hardened to an aspect unlike her. Not a word could he recover of +what she had spoken before Rosamund's intervention. He fancied she must +have related details of her journey. Especially there must have been +mention, he thought, of her drive to the station from Tourdestelle; +and this flashed on him the scene of his ride to the chateau, and the +meeting her on the road, and the white light on the branching river, and +all that was Renee in the spirit of the place she had abandoned for him, +believing in him. She had proved that she believed in him. What in the +name of sanity had been the meaning of his language? and what was it +between them that arrested him and caused him to mumble absurdly of +'doing best,' when in fact he was her bondman, rejoiced to be so, by +his pledged word? and when she, for some reason that he was sure she had +stated, though he could recollect no more than the formless hideousness +of it, was debarred from returning to Tourdestelle? + +He tossed in his bed as over a furnace, in the extremity of perplexity +of one accustomed to think himself ever demonstrably in the right, and +now with his whole nature in insurrection against that legitimate claim. +It led him to accuse her of a want of passionate warmth, in her not +having supplicated and upbraided him--not behaving theatrically, in +fine, as the ranting pen has made us expect of emergent ladies that they +will naturally do. Concerning himself, he thought commendingly, a tear +would have overcome him. She had not wept. The kaleidoscope was shaken +in his fragmentary mind, and she appeared thrice adorable for this noble +composure, he brutish. + +Conscience and reason had resolved to a dead weight in him, like an +inanimate force, governing his acts despite the man, while he was +with Renee. Now his wishes and waverings conjured up a semblance of a +conscience and much reason to assure him that he had done foolishly as +well as unkindly, most unkindly: that he was even the ghastly spectacle +of a creature attempting to be more than he can be. Are we never to +embrace our inclinations? Are the laws regulating an old dry man like +his teacher and guide to be the same for the young and vigorous? + +Is a good gift to be refused? And this was his first love! The brilliant +Renee, many-hued as a tropic bird! his lady of shining grace, with her +sole fault of want of courage devotedly amended! his pupil, he might +say, of whom he had foretold that she must come to such a pass, at the +same time prefixing his fidelity. And he was handing her over knowingly +to one kind of wretchedness--'son amour, mon ami,' shot through him, +lighting up the gulfs of a mind in wreck;--and one kind of happiness +could certainly be promised her! + +All these and innumerable other handsome pleadings of the simulacra +of the powers he had set up to rule, were crushed at daybreak by the +realities in a sense of weight that pushed him mechanically on. He +telegraphed to Roland, and mentally gave chase to the message to recall +it. The slumberer roused in darkness by the relentless insane-seeming +bell which hales him to duty, melts at the charms of sleep, and feels +that logic is with him in his preference of his pillow; but the tireless +revolving world outside, nature's pitiless antagonist, has hung one of +its balances about him, and his actions are directed by the state of the +scales, wherein duty weighs deep and desireability swings like a pendant +doll: so he throws on his harness, astounded, till his blood quickens +with work, at the round of sacrifices demanded of nature: which is +indeed curious considering what we are taught here and there as to the +infallibility of our august mother. Well, the world of humanity had done +this for Beauchamp. His afflicted historian is compelled to fling his +net among prosaic similitudes for an illustration of one thus degradedly +in its grip. If he had been off with his love like the rover! why, then +the Muse would have loosened her lap like May showering flower-buds, and +we might have knocked great nature up from her sleep to embellish his +desperate proceedings with hurricanes to be danced over, to say nothing +of imitative spheres dashing out into hurly-burly after his example. + +Conscious rectitude, too, after the pattern of the well-behaved AEneas +quitting the fair bosom of Carthage in obedience to the Gods, for an +example to his Roman progeny, might have stiffened his backbone and put +a crown upon his brows. It happened with him that his original training +rather imposed the idea that he was a figure to be derided. The approval +of him by the prudent was a disgust, and by the pious tasteless. He had +not any consolation in reverting to Dr. Shrapnel's heavy Puritanism. On +the contrary, such a general proposition as that of the sage of Bevisham +could not for a moment stand against the pathetic special case of Renee: +and as far as Beauchamp's active mind went, he was for demanding that +Society should take a new position in morality, considerably broader, +and adapted to very special cases. + +Nevertheless he was hardly grieved in missing Renee at Rosamund's +breakfast-table. Rosamund informed him that Madame de Rouaillout's door +was locked. Her particular news for him was of a disgraceful alarum +raised by Captain Baskelett in the night, to obtain admission; and of an +interview she had with him in the early morning, when he subjected her +to great insolence. Beauchamp's attention was drawn to her repetition +of the phrase 'mistress of the house.' However, she did him justice +in regard to Renee, and thoroughly entered into the fiction of Renee's +visit to her as her guest: he passed over everything else. + +To stop the mouth of a scandal-monger, he drove full speed to Cecil's +Club, where he heard that the captain had breakfasted and had just +departed for Romfrey Castle. He followed to the station. The train had +started. So mischief was rolling in that direction. + +Late at night Rosamund was allowed to enter the chill unlighted chamber, +where the unhappy lady had been lying for hours in the gloom of a London +Winter's daylight and gaslight. + +'Madame de Rouaillout is indisposed with headache,' was her report to +Beauchamp. + +The conventional phraseology appeased him, though he saw his grief +behind it. + +Presently he asked if Renee had taken food. + +'No: you know what a headache is,' Rosamund replied. + +It is true that we do not care to eat when we are in pain. + +He asked if she looked ill. + +'She will not have lights in the room,' said Rosamund. + +Piecemeal he gained the picture of Renee in an image of the death within +which welcomed a death without. + +Rosamund was impatient with him for speaking of medical aid. These men! +She remarked very honestly: + +'Oh, no; doctors are not needed.' + +'Has she mentioned me?' + +'Not once.' + +'Why do you swing your watch-chain, ma'am?' cried Beauchamp, bounding +off his chair. + +He reproached her with either pretending to indifference or feeling it; +and then insisted on his privilege of going up-stairs-accompanied by +her, of course; and then it was to be only to the door; then an answer +to a message was to satisfy him. + +'Any message would trouble her: what message would you send?' Rosamund +asked him. + +The weighty and the trivial contended; no fitting message could be +thought of. + +'You are unused to real suffering--that is for women!--and want to be +doing instead of enduring,' said Rosamund. + +She was beginning to put faith in the innocence of these two mortally +sick lovers. Beauchamp's outcries against himself gave her the shadows +of their story. He stood in tears--a thing to see to believe of Nevil +Beauchamp; and plainly he did not know it, or else he would have taken +her advice to him to leave the house at an hour that was long past +midnight. Her method for inducing him to go was based on her intimate +knowledge of him: she made as if to soothe and kiss him compassionately. + +In the morning there was a flying word from Roland, on his way to +England. Rosamund tempered her report of Renee by saying of her, that +she was very quiet. He turned to the window. + +'Look, what a climate ours is!' Beauchamp abused the persistent fog. +'Dull, cold, no sky, a horrible air to breathe! This is what she has +come to! Has she spoken of me yet?' + +'No.' + +'Is she dead silent?' + +'She answers, if I speak to her.' + +'I believe, ma'am,' said Beauchamp, 'that we are the coldest-hearted +people in Europe.' + +Rosamund did not defend us, or the fog. Consequently nothing was left +for him to abuse but himself. In that she tried to moderate him, and +drew forth a torrent of self-vituperation, after which he sank into the +speechless misery he had been evading; until sophistical fancy, another +evolution of his nature, persuaded him that Roland, seeing Renee, would +for love's sake be friendly to them. + +'I should have told you, Nevil, by the way, that the earl is dead,' said +Rosamund. + +'Her brother will be here to-day; he can't be later than the evening,' +said Beauchamp. 'Get her to eat, ma'am; you must. Command her to eat. +This terrible starvation!' + +'You ate nothing yourself, Nevil, all day yesterday.' + +He surveyed the table. 'You have your cook in town, I see. Here's a +breakfast to feed twenty hungry families in Spitalfields. Where does +the mass of meat go? One excess feeds another. You're overdone with +servants. Gluttony, laziness, and pilfering come of your host of +unmanageable footmen and maids; you stuff them, and wonder they're idle +and immoral. If--I suppose I must call him the earl now, or Colonel +Halkett, or any one of the army of rich men, hear of an increase of the +income-tax, or some poor wretch hints at a sliding scale of taxation, +they yell as if they were thumb-screwed: but five shillings in the pound +goes to the kitchen as a matter of course--to puff those pompous idiots! +and the parsons, who should be preaching against this sheer waste of +food and perversion of the strength of the nation, as a public sin, +are maundering about schism. There's another idle army! Then we have +artists, authors, lawyers, doctors--the honourable professions! all +hanging upon wealth, all ageing the rich, and all bearing upon labour! +it's incubus on incubus. In point of fact, the rider's too heavy for the +horse in England.' + +He began to nibble at bread. + +Rosamund pushed over to him a plate of the celebrated Steynham pie, +of her own invention, such as no douse in the county of Sussex could +produce or imitate. + +'What would you have the parsons do?' she said. + +'Take the rich by the throat and show them in the kitchen-mirror that +they're swine running down to the sea with a devil in them.' She had set +him off again, but she had enticed him to eating. 'Pooh! it has all +been said before. Stones are easier to move than your English. May I be +forgiven for saying it! an invasion is what they want to bring them to +their senses. I'm sick of the work. Why should I be denied--am I to +kill the woman I love that I may go on hammering at them? Their idea +of liberty is, an evasion of public duty. Dr. Shrapnel's right--it's a +money-logged Island! Men like the Earl of Romfrey, who have never done +work in their days except to kill bears and birds, I say they're stifled +by wealth: and he at least would have made an Admiral of mark, or a +General: not of much value, but useful in case of need. But he, like +a pretty woman, was under no obligation to contribute more than an +ornamental person to the common good. As to that, we count him by tens +of thousands now, and his footmen and maids by hundreds of thousands. +The rich love the nation through their possessions; otherwise they have +no country. If they loved the country they would care for the people. +Their hearts are eaten up by property. I am bidden to hold my tongue +because I have no knowledge. When men who have this "knowledge" will go +down to the people, speak to them, consult and argue with them, and come +into suitable relations with them--I don't say of lords and retainers, +but of knowers and doers, leaders and followers--out of consideration +for public safety, if not for the common good, I shall hang back gladly; +though I won't hear misstatements. My fault is, that I am too moderate. +I should respect myself more if I deserved their hatred. This flood of +luxury, which is, as Dr. Shrapnel says, the body's drunkenness and the +soul's death, cries for execration. I'm too moderate. But I shall quit +the country: I've no place here.' + +Rosamund ahemed. 'France, Nevil? I should hardly think that France would +please you, in the present state of things over there.' + +Half cynically, with great satisfaction, she had watched him fretting +at the savoury morsels of her pie with a fork like a sparrow-beak +during the monologue that would have been so dreary to her but for her +appreciation of the wholesome effect of the letting off of steam, and +her admiration of the fire of his eyes. After finishing his plate he had +less the look of a ship driving on to reef--some of his images of the +country. He called for claret and water, sighing as he munched bread in +vast portions, evidently conceiving that to eat unbuttered bread was to +abstain from luxury. He praised passingly the quality of the bread. It +came from Steynham, and so did the milk and cream, the butter, chicken +and eggs. He was good enough not to object to the expenditure upon the +transmission of the accustomed dainties. Altogether the gradual act of +nibbling had conduced to his eating remarkably well-royally. Rosamund's +more than half-cynical ideas of men, and her custom of wringing +unanimous verdicts from a jury of temporary impressions, inclined her to +imagine him a lover that had not to be so very much condoled with, and +a politician less alarming in practice than in theory:--somewhat a +gentleman of domestic tirades on politics: as it is observed of your +generous young Radical of birth and fortune, that he will become on the +old high road to a round Conservatism. + +He pitched one of the morning papers to the floor in disorderly sheets, +muttering: 'So they're at me!' + +'Is Dr. Shrapnel better?' she asked. 'I hold to a good appetite as a +sign of a man's recovery.' + +Beauchamp was confronting the fog at the window. He swung round: 'Dr. +Shrapnel is better. He has a particularly clever young female cook.' + +'Ah! then...' + +'Yes, then, naturally! He would naturally hasten to recover to partake +of the viands, ma'am.' + +Rosamund murmured of her gladness that he should be able to enjoy them. + +'Oddly enough, he is not an eater of meat,' said Beauchamp. + +'A vegetarian!' + +'I beg you not to mention the fact to my lord. You see, you yourself can +scarcely pardon it. He does not exclude flesh from his table. Blackburn +Tuckham dined there once. "You are a thorough revolutionist, Dr. +Shrapnel," he observed. The doctor does not exclude wine, but he does +not drink it. Poor Tuckham went away entirely opposed to a Radical he +could not even meet as a boon-fellow. I begged him not to mention the +circumstances, as I have begged you. He pledged me his word to that +effect solemnly; he correctly felt that if the truth were known, there +would be further cause for the reprobation of the man who had been his +host.' + +'And that poor girl, Nevil?' + +'Miss Denham? She contracted the habit of eating meat at school, +and drinking wine in Paris, and continues it, occasionally. Now run +upstairs. Insist on food. Inform Madame de Rouaillout that her brother +M. le comte de Croisnel will soon be here, and should not find her ill. +Talk to her as you women can talk. Keep the blinds down in her room; +light a dozen wax-candles. Tell her I have no thought but of her. It's +a lie: of no woman but of her: that you may say. But that you can't +say. You can say I am devoted--ha, what stuff! I've only to open my +mouth!--say nothing of me: let her think the worst--unless it comes to a +question of her life: then be a merciful good woman...' He squeezed her +fingers, communicating his muscular tremble to her sensitive woman's +frame, and electrically convincing her that he was a lover. + +She went up-stairs. In ten minutes she descended, and found him pacing +up and down the hall. 'Madame de Rouaillout is much the same,' she said. +He nodded, looked up the stairs, and about for his hat and gloves, drew +on the gloves, fixed the buttons, blinked at his watch, and settled his +hat as he was accustomed to wear it, all very methodically, and talking +rapidly, but except for certain precise directions, which were not +needed by so careful a housekeeper and nurse as Rosamund was known to +be, she could not catch a word of meaning. He had some appointment, +it seemed; perhaps he was off for a doctor--a fresh instance of his +masculine incapacity to understand patient endurance. After opening +the housedoor, and returning to the foot of the stairs, listening and +sighing, he disappeared. + +It struck her that he was trying to be two men at once. + +The litter of newspaper sheets in the morning-room brought his +exclamation to her mind: 'They're at me!' Her eyes ran down the columns, +and were seized by the print of his name in large type. A leading +article was devoted to Commander's Beauchamp's recent speech delivered +in the great manufacturing town of Gunningham, at a meeting under +the presidency of the mayor, and his replies to particular questions +addressed to him; one being, what right did he conceive himself to +have to wear the Sovereign's uniform in professing Republican opinions? +Rosamund winced for her darling during her first perusal of the article. +It was of the sarcastically caressing kind, masterly in ease of style, +as the flourish of the executioner well may be with poor Bare-back hung +up to a leisurely administration of the scourge. An allusion to 'Jack +on shore' almost persuaded her that his uncle Everard had inspired the +writer of the article. Beauchamp's reply to the question of his loyalty +was not quoted: he was, however, complimented on his frankness. At the +same time he was assured that his error lay in a too great proneness to +make distinctions, and that there was no distinction between sovereign +and country in a loyal and contented land, which could thank him for +gallant services in war, while taking him for the solitary example to be +cited at the present period of the evils of a comparatively long peace. + +'Doubtless the tedium of such a state to a man of the temperament of the +gallant commander,' etc., the termination of the article was indulgent. +Rosamund recurred to the final paragraph for comfort, and though she +loved Beauchamp, the test of her representative feminine sentiment +regarding his political career, when personal feeling on his behalf +had subsided, was, that the writer of the article must have received an +intimation to deal both smartly and forbearingly with the offender: and +from whom but her lord? Her notions of the conduct of the Press were +primitive. In a summary of the article Beauchamp was treated as naughty +boy, formerly brave boy, and likely by-and-by to be good boy. Her secret +heart would have spoken similarly, with more emphasis on the flattering +terms. + +A telegram arrived from her lord. She was bidden to have the house clear +for him by noon of the next day. + +How could that be done? + +But to write blankly to inform the Earl of Romfrey that he was excluded +from his own house was another impossibility. + +'Hateful man!' she apostrophized Captain Baskelett, and sat down, +supporting her chin in a prolonged meditation. + +The card of a French lady, bearing the name of Madame d'Auffray, was +handed to her. + +Beauchamp had gone off to his friend Lydiard, to fortify himself in his +resolve to reply to that newspaper article by eliciting counsel to +the contrary. Phrase by phrase he fought through the first half of his +composition of the reply against Lydiard, yielding to him on a point +or two of literary judgement, only the more vehemently to maintain his +ideas of discretion, which were, that he would not take shelter behind +a single subterfuge; that he would try this question nakedly, though +he should stand alone; that he would stake his position on it, and +establish his right to speak his opinions: and as for unseasonable +times, he protested it was the cry of a gorged middle-class, frightened +of further action, and making snug with compromise. Would it be a +seasonable time when there was uproar? Then it would be a time to be +silent on such themes: they could be discussed calmly now, and without +danger; and whether he was hunted or not, he cared nothing. He declined +to consider the peculiar nature of Englishmen: they must hear truth or +perish. + +Knowing the difficulty once afflicting Beauchamp in the art of speaking +on politics tersely, Lydiard was rather astonished at his well-delivered +cannonade; and he fancied that his modesty had been displaced by the new +acquirement; not knowing the nervous fever of his friend's condition, +for which the rattle of speech was balm, and contention a native +element, and the assumption of truth a necessity. Beauchamp hugged +his politics like some who show their love of the pleasures of life by +taking to them angrily. It was all he had: he had given up all for it. +He forced Lydiard to lay down his pen and walk back to the square with +him, and went on arguing, interjecting, sneering, thumping the old +country, raising and oversetting her, treating her alternately like a +disrespected grandmother, and like a woman anciently beloved; as a +dead lump, and as a garden of seeds; reviewing prominent political men, +laughing at the dwarf-giants; finally casting anchor on a Mechanics' +Institute that he had recently heard of, where working men met weekly +for the purpose of reading the British poets. + +'That's the best thing I've heard of late,' he said, shaking Lydiard's +hand on the door-steps. + +'Ah! You're Commander Beauchamp; I think I know you. I've seen you on a +platform,' cried a fresh-faced man in decent clothes, halting on his +way along the pavement; 'and if you were in your uniform, you damned +Republican dog! I'd strip you with my own hands, for the disloyal +scoundrel you are, with your pimping Republicanism and capsizing +everything in a country like Old England. It's the cat-o'-nine-tails you +want, and the bosen to lay on; and I'd do it myself. And mind me, when +next I catch sight of you in blue and gold lace, I'll compel you to show +cause why you wear it, and prove your case, or else I'll make a Cupid of +you, and no joke about it. I don't pay money for a nincompoop to outrage +my feelings of respect and loyalty, when he's in my pay, d' ye hear? +You're in my pay: and you do your duty, or I 'll kick ye out of it. +It's no empty threat. You look out for your next public speech, if it's +anywhere within forty mile of London. Get along.' + +With a scowl, and a very ugly 'yah!' worthy of cannibal jaws, the man +passed off. + +Beauchamp kept eye on him. 'What class does a fellow like that come of?' + +'He's a harmless enthusiast,' said Lydiard. 'He has been reading the +article, and has got excited over it.' + +'I wish I had the fellow's address.' Beauchamp looked wistfully at +Lydiard, but he did not stimulate the generous offer to obtain it for +him. Perhaps it was as well to forget the fellow. + +'You see the effect of those articles,' he said. + +'You see what I mean by unseasonable times,' Lydiard retorted. + +'He didn't talk like a tradesman,' Beauchamp mused. + +'He may be one, for all that. It's better to class him as an +enthusiast.' + +'An enthusiast!' Beauchamp stamped: 'for what?' + +'For the existing order of things; for his beef and ale; for the +titles he is accustomed to read in the papers. You don't study your +countrymen.' + +'I'd study that fellow, if I had the chance.' + +'You would probably find him one of the emptiest, with a rather worse +temper than most of them.' + +Beauchamp shook Lydiard's hand, saying, 'The widow?' + +'There's no woman like her!' + +'Well, now you're free--why not? I think I put one man out of the +field.' + +'Too early! Besides--' + +'Repeat that, and you may have to say too late.' + +'When shall you go down to Bevisham?' + +'When? I can't tell: when I've gone through fire. There never was a home +for me like the cottage, and the old man, and the dear good girl--the +best of girls! if you hadn't a little spoilt her with your philosophy of +the two sides of the case.' + +'I've not given her the brains.' + +'She's always doubtful of doing, doubtful of action: she has no will. So +she is fatalistic, and an argument between us ends in her submitting, as +if she must submit to me, because I'm overbearing, instead of accepting +the fact.' + +'She feels your influence.' + +'She's against the publication of THE DAWN--for the present. It's an +"unseasonable time." I argue with her: I don't get hold of her mind a +bit; but at last she says, "very well." She has your head.' + +And you have her heart, Lydiard could have rejoined. + +They said good-bye, neither of them aware of the other's task of +endurance. + +As they were parting, Beauchamp perceived his old comrade Jack Wilmore +walking past. + +'Jack!' he called. + +Wilmore glanced round. 'How do you do, Beauchamp?' + +'Where are you off to, Jack?' + +'Down to the Admiralty. I'm rather in a hurry; I have an appointment.' + +'Can't you stop just a minute?' + +'I'm afraid I can't. Good morning.' + +It was incredible; but this old friend, the simplest heart alive, +retreated without a touch of his hand, and with a sorely wounded air. + +'That newspaper article appears to have been generally read,' Beauchamp +said to Lydiard, who answered: + +'The article did not put the idea of you into men's minds, but gave +tongue to it: you may take it for an instance of the sagacity of the +Press.' + +'You wouldn't take that man and me to have been messmates for years! Old +Jack Wilmore! Don't go, Lydiard.' + +Lydiard declared that he was bound to go: he was engaged to read Italian +for an hour with Mrs. Wardour-Devereux. + +'Then go, by all means,' Beauchamp dismissed him. + +He felt as if he had held a review of his friends and enemies on the +door-step, and found them of one colour. If it was an accident befalling +him in a London square during a space of a quarter of an hour, what of +the sentiments of universal England? Lady Barbara's elopement with Lord +Alfred last year did not rouse much execration; hardly worse than gossip +and compassion. Beauchamp drank a great deal of bitterness from his +reflections. + +They who provoke huge battles, and gain but lame victories over +themselves, insensibly harden to the habit of distilling sour thoughts +from their mischances and from most occurrences. So does the world they +combat win on them. + +'For,' says Dr. Shrapnel, 'the world and nature, which are opposed in +relation to our vital interests, each agrees to demand of us a perfect +victory, on pain otherwise of proving it a stage performance; and the +victory over the world, as over nature, is over self: and this victory +lies in yielding perpetual service to the world, and none to nature: for +the world has to be wrought out, nature to be subdued.' + +The interior of the house was like a change of elements to Beauchamp. +He had never before said to himself, 'I have done my best, and I am +beaten!' Outside of it, his native pugnacity had been stimulated; +but here, within the walls where Renee lay silently breathing, +barely breathing, it might be dying, he was overcome, and left it to +circumstance to carry him to a conclusion. He went up-stairs to the +drawing-room, where he beheld Madame d'Auffray in conversation with +Rosamund. + +'I was assured by Madame la Comtesse that I should see you to-day,' the +French lady said as she swam to meet him; 'it is a real pleasure': and +pressing his hand she continued, 'but I fear you will be disappointed of +seeing my sister. She would rashly try your climate at its worst period. +Believe me, I do not join in decrying it, except on her account: I could +have forewarned her of an English Winter and early Spring. You know her +impetuosity; suddenly she decided on accepting the invitation of Madame +la Comtesse; and though I have no fears of her health, she is at present +a victim of the inclement weather.' + +'You have seen her, madame?' said Beauchamp. So well had the clever lady +played the dupe that he forgot there was a part for him to play. Even +the acquiescence of Rosamund in the title of countess bewildered him. + +'Madame d'Auffray has been sitting for an hour with Madame de +Rouaillout,' said Rosamund. + +He spoke of Roland's coming. + +'Ah?' said Madame d'Auffray, and turned to Rosamund: 'you have +determined to surprise us: then you will have a gathering of the whole +family in your hospitable house, Madame la Comtesse! + +'If M. la Marquis will do it that honour, madame! + +'My brother is in London,' Madame d'Auffray said to Beauchamp. + +The shattering blow was merited by one who could not rejoice that he had +acted rightly. + + + + +CHAPTER XLIII. THE EARL OF ROMFREY AND THE COUNTESS + +An extraordinary telegraphic message, followed by a still more +extraordinary letter the next morning, from Rosamund Culling, all but +interdicted the immediate occupation of his house in town to Everard, +now Earl of Romfrey. She begged him briefly not to come until after the +funeral, and proposed to give him good reasons for her request at their +meeting. 'I repeat, I pledge myself to satisfy you on this point,' she +wrote. Her tone was that of one of your heroic women of history refusing +to surrender a fortress. + +Everard's wrath was ever of a complexion that could suffer postponements +without his having to fear an abatement of it. He had no business to +transact in London, and he had much at the Castle, so he yielded +himself up to his new sensations, which are not commonly the portion of +gentlemen of his years. He anticipated that Nevil would at least come +down to the funeral, but there was no appearance of him, nor a word to +excuse his absence. Cecil was his only supporter. They walked together +between the double ranks of bare polls of the tenantry and peasantry, +resembling in a fashion old Froissart engravings the earl used to dote +on in his boyhood, representing bodies of manacled citizens, whose +humbled heads looked like nuts to be cracked, outside the gates of +captured French towns, awaiting the disposition of their conqueror, with +his banner above him and prancing knights around. That was a glory +of the past. He had no successor. The thought was chilling; the +solitariness of childlessness to an aged man, chief of a most ancient +and martial House, and proud of his blood, gave him the statue's outlook +on a desert, and made him feel that he was no more than a whirl of the +dust, settling to the dust. + +He listened to the parson curiously and consentingly. We are ashes. Ten +centuries had come to an end in him to prove the formula correct. The +chronicle of the House would state that the last Earl of Romfrey left no +heir. + +Cecil was a fine figure walking beside him. Measured by feet, he might +be a worthy holder of great lands. But so heartily did the earl despise +this nephew that he never thought of trying strength with the fellow, +and hardly cared to know what his value was, beyond his immediate uses +as an instrument to strike with. Beauchamp of Romfrey had been his +dream, not Baskelett: and it increased his disgust of Beauchamp that +Baskelett should step forward as the man. No doubt Cecil would hunt +the county famously: he would preserve game with the sleepless eye of a +General of the Jesuits. These things were to be considered. + +Two days after the funeral Lord Romfrey proceeded to London. He was +met at the station by Rosamund, and informed that his house was not yet +vacated by the French family. + +'And where have you arranged for me to go, ma'am?' he asked her +complacently. + +She named an hotel where she had taken rooms for him. + +He nodded, and was driven to the hotel, saying little on the road. + +As she expected, he was heavily armed against her and Nevil. + +'You're the slave of the fellow, ma'am. You are so infatuated that you +second his amours, in my house. I must wait for a clearance, it seems.' + +He cast a comical glance of disapprobation on the fittings of the hotel +apartment, abhorring gilt. + +'They leave us the day after to-morrow,' said Rosamund, out of breath +with nervousness at the commencement of the fray, and skipping over the +opening ground of a bold statement of facts. 'Madame de Rouaillout +has been unwell. She is not yet recovered; she has just risen. Her +sister-in-law has nursed her. Her husband seems much broken in health; +he is perfect on the points of courtesy.' + +'That is lucky, ma'am.' + +'Her brother, Nevil's comrade in the war, was there also.' + +'Who came first?' + +'My lord, you have only heard Captain Baskelett's version of the story. +She has been my guest since the first day of her landing in England. +There cannot possibly be an imputation on her.' + +'Ma'am, if her husband manages to be satisfied, what on earth have I to +do with it?' + +'I am thinking of Nevil, my lord.' + +'You're never thinking of any one else, ma'am.' + +'He sleeps here, at this hotel. He left the house to Madame de +Rouaillout. I bear witness to that.' + +'You two seem to have made your preparations to stand a criminal trial.' + +'It is pure truth, my lord.' + +'Do you take me to be anxious about the fellow's virtue?' + +'She is a lady who would please you.' + +'A scandal in my house does not please me.' + +'The only approach to a scandal was made by Captain Baskelett.' + +'A poor devil locked out of his bed on a Winter's night hullabaloos with +pretty good reason. I suppose he felt the contrast.' + +'My lord, this lady did me the honour to come to me on a visit. I have +not previously presumed to entertain a friend. She probably formed no +estimate of my exact position.' + +The earl with a gesture implied Rosamund's privilege to act the hostess +to friends. + +'You invited her?' he said. + +'That is, I had told her I hoped she would come to England.' + +'She expected you to be at the house in town on her arrival?' + +'It was her impulse to come.' + +'She came alone?' + +'She may have desired to be away from her own people for a time: there +may have been domestic differences. These cases are delicate.' + +'This case appears to have been so delicate that you had to lock out a +fourth party.' + +'It is indelicate and base of Captain Baskelett to complain and to hint. +Nevil had to submit to the same; and Captain Baskelett took his revenge +on the housedoor and the bells. The house was visited by the police next +morning.' + +'Do you suspect him to have known you were inside the house that night?' + +She could not say so: but hatred of Cecil urged her past the bounds +of habitual reticence to put it to her lord whether he, imagining the +worst, would have behaved like Cecil. + +To this he did not reply, but remarked, 'I am sorry he annoyed you, +ma'am.' + +'It is not the annoyance to me; it is the shocking, the unmanly +insolence to a lady, and a foreign lady.' + +'That's a matter between him and Nevil. I uphold him.' + +'Then, my lord, I am silent.' + +Silent she remained; but Lord Romfrey was also silent: and silence being +a weapon of offence only when it is practised by one out of two, she had +to reflect whether in speaking no further she had finished her business. + +'Captain Baskelett stays at the Castle?' she asked. + +'He likes his quarters there.' + +'Nevil could not go down to Romfrey, my lord. He was obliged to wait, +and see, and help me to entertain, her brother and her husband.' + +'Why, ma'am? But I have no objection to his making the marquis a happy +husband.' + +'He has done what few men would have done, that she may be a +self-respecting wife.' + +'The parson's in that fellow!' Lord Romfrey exclaimed. 'Now I have the +story. She came to him, he declined the gift, and you were turned into +the curtain for them. If he had only been off with her, he would have +done the country good service. Here he's a failure and a nuisance; he's +a common cock-shy for the journals. I'm tired of hearing of him; he's a +stench in our nostrils. He's tired of the woman.' + +'He loves her.' + +'Ma'am, you're hoodwinked. If he refused to have her, there 's a +something he loves better. I don't believe we've bred a downright +lackadaisical donkey in our family: I know him. He's not a fellow for +abstract morality: I know him. It's bargain against bargain with him; +I'll do him that justice. I hear he has ordered the removal of the +Jersey bull from Holdesbury, and the beast is mine,' Lord Romfrey +concluded in a lower key. + +'Nevil has taken him.' + +'Ha! pull and pull, then!' + +'He contends that he is bound by a promise to give an American gentleman +the refusal of the bull, and you must sign an engagement to keep the +animal no longer than two years.' + +'I sign no engagement. I stick to the bull.' + +'Consent to see Nevil to-night, my lord.' + +'When he has apologized to you, I may, ma'am.' + +'Surely he did more, in requesting me to render him a service.' + +'There's not a creature living that fellow wouldn't get to serve him, +if he knew the trick. We should all of us be marching on London +at Shrapnel's heels. The political mania is just as incurable as +hydrophobia, and he's bitten. That's clear.' + +'Bitten perhaps: but not mad. As you have always contended, the true +case is incurable, but it is very rare: and is this one?' + +'It's uncommonly like a true case, though I haven't seen him foam at the +mouth, and shun water-as his mob does.' + +Rosamund restrained some tears, betraying the effort to hide the +moisture. 'I am no match for you, my lord. I try to plead on his +behalf;--I do worse than if I were dumb. This I most earnestly say: he +is the Nevil Beauchamp who fought for his country, and did not abandon +her cause, though he stood there--we had it from Colonel Halkett--a +skeleton: and he is the Nevil who--I am poorly paying my debt to +him!--defended me from the aspersions of his cousin.' + +'Boys!' Lord Romfrey ejaculated. + +'It is the same dispute between them as men.' + +'Have you forgotten my proposal to shield you from liars and +scandalmongers?' + +'Could I ever forget it?' Rosamund appeared to come shining out of a +cloud. 'Princeliest and truest gentleman, I thought you then, and I know +you to be, my dear lord. I fancied I had lived the scandal down. I was +under the delusion that I had grown to be past backbiting: and that no +man could stand before me to insult and vilify me. But, for a woman in +any so-called doubtful position, it seems that the coward will not be +wanting to strike her. In quitting your service, I am able to +affirm that only once during the whole term of it have I consciously +overstepped the line of my duties: it was for Nevil: and Captain +Baskelett undertook to defend your reputation, in consequence.' + +'Has the rascal been questioning your conduct?' The earl frowned. + +'Oh, no! not questioning: he does not question, he accuses: he never +doubted: and what he went shouting as a boy, is plain matter of fact to +him now. He is devoted to you. It was for your sake that he desired +me to keep my name from being mixed up in a scandal he foresaw the +occurrence of in your house.' + +'He permitted himself to sneer at you?' + +'He has the art of sneering. On this occasion he wished to be direct and +personal.' + +'What sort of hints were they?' + +Lord Romfrey strode away from her chair that the answer might be easy +to her, for she was red, and evidently suffering from shame as well as +indignation. + +'The hints we call distinct.' said Rosamund. + +'In words?' + +'In hard words.' + +'Then you won't meet Cecil?' + +Such a question, and the tone of indifference in which it came, +surprised and revolted her so that the unreflecting reply leapt out: + +'I would rather meet a devil.' + +Of how tremblingly, vehemently, and hastily she had said it, she was +unaware. To her lord it was an outcry of nature, astutely touched by him +to put her to proof. + +He continued his long leisurely strides, nodding over his feet. + +Rosamund stood up. She looked a very noble figure in her broad +black-furred robe. 'I have one serious confession to make, sir.' + +'What's that?' said he. + +'I would avoid it, for it cannot lead to particular harm; but I have +an enemy who may poison your ear in my absence. And first I resign my +position. I have forfeited it.' + +'Time goes forward, ma'am, and you go round. Speak to the point. Do you +mean that you toss up the reins of my household?' + +'I do. You trace it to Nevil immediately?' + +'I do. The fellow wants to upset the country, and he begins with me.' + +'You are wrong, my lord. What I have done places me at Captain +Baskelett's mercy. It is too loathsome to think of: worse than the whip; +worse than your displeasure. It might never be known; but the thought +that it might gives me courage. You have said that to protect a woman +everything is permissible. It is your creed, my lord, and because the +world, I have heard you say, is unjust and implacable to women. In some +cases, I think so too. In reality I followed your instructions; I mean, +your example. Cheap chivalry on my part! But it pained me not a little. +I beg to urge that in my defence.' + +'Well, ma'am, you have tied the knot tight enough; perhaps now you'll +cut it,' said the earl. + +Rosamund gasped softly. 'M. le Marquis is a gentleman who, after a life +of dissipation, has been reminded by bad health that he has a young and +beautiful wife.' + +'He dug his pit to fall into it:--he's jealous?' + +She shook her head to indicate the immeasurable. + +'Senile jealousy is anxious to be deceived. He could hardly be deceived +so far as to imagine that Madame la Marquise would visit me, such as I +am, as my guest. Knowingly or not, his very clever sister, a good woman, +and a friend to husband and wife--a Frenchwoman of the purest type--gave +me the title. She insisted on it, and I presumed to guess that she +deemed it necessary for the sake of peace in that home.' + +Lord Romfrey appeared merely inquisitive; his eyebrows were lifted in +permanence; his eyes were mild. + +She continued: 'They leave England in a few hours. They are not likely +to return. I permitted him to address me with the title of countess.' + +'Of Romfrey?' said the earl. + +Rosamund bowed. + +His mouth contracted. She did not expect thunder to issue from it, +but she did fear to hear a sarcasm, or that she would have to endure a +deadly silence: and she was gathering her own lips in imitation of +his, to nerve herself for some stroke to come, when he laughed in his +peculiar close-mouthed manner. + +'I'm afraid you've dished yourself.' + +'You cannot forgive me, my lord?' + +He indulged in more of his laughter, and abruptly summoning gravity, +bade her talk to him of affairs. He himself talked of the condition of +the Castle, and with a certain off-hand contempt of the ladies of the +family, and Cecil's father, Sir John. 'What are they to me?' said he, +and he complained of having been called Last Earl of Romfrey. + +'The line ends undegenerate,' said Rosamund fervidly, though she knew +not where she stood. + +'Ends!' quoth the earl. + +'I must see Stukely,' he added briskly, and stooped to her: 'I beg you +to drive me to my Club, countess.' + +'Oh! sir.' + +'Once a countess, always a countess!' + +'But once an impostor, my lord?' + +'Not always, we'll hope.' + +He enjoyed this little variation in the language of comedy; letting it +drop, to say: 'Be here to-morrow early. Don't chase that family away +from the house. Do as you will, but not a word of Nevil to me: he's a +bad mess in any man's porringer; it's time for me to claim exemption of +him from mine.' + +She dared not let her thoughts flow, for to think was to triumph, and +possibly to be deluded. They came in copious volumes when Lord Romfrey, +alighting at his Club, called to the coachman: 'Drive the countess +home.' + +They were not thoughts of triumph absolutely. In her cooler mind she +felt that it was a bad finish of a gallant battle. Few women had risen +against a tattling and pelting world so stedfastly; and would it not +have been better to keep her own ground, which she had won with tears +and some natural strength, and therewith her liberty, which she prized? +The hateful Cecil, a reminder of whom set her cheeks burning and turned +her heart to serpent, had forced her to it. So she honestly conceived, +owing to the circumstance of her honestly disliking the pomps of life +and not desiring to occupy any position of brilliancy. She thought +assuredly of her hoard of animosity toward the scandalmongers, and of +the quiet glance she would cast behind on them, and below. That thought +came as a fruit, not as a reflection. + +But if ever two offending young gentlemen, nephews of a long-suffering +uncle, were circumvented, undermined, and struck to earth, with one +blow, here was the instance. This was accomplished by Lord Romfrey's +resolution to make the lady he had learnt to esteem his countess: and +more, it fixed to him for life one whom he could not bear to think of +losing: and still more, it might be; but what more was unwritten on his +tablets. + +Rosamund failed to recollect that Everard Romfrey never took a step +without seeing a combination of objects to be gained by it. + + + + +CHAPTER XLIV. THE NEPHEWS OF THE EARL, AND ANOTHER EXHIBITION OF THE TWO +PASSIONS IN BEAUCHAMP + +It was now the season when London is as a lighted tower to her +provinces, and, among other gentlemen hurried thither by attraction, +Captain Baskelett arrived. Although not a personage in the House of +Commons, he was a vote; and if he never committed himself to the perils +of a speech, he made himself heard. His was the part of chorus, which he +performed with a fairly close imitation of the original cries of periods +before parliaments were instituted, thus representing a stage in the +human development besides the borough of Bevisham. He arrived in the +best of moods for the emission of high-pitched vowel-sounds; otherwise +in the worst of tempers. His uncle had notified an addition of his +income to him at Romfrey, together with commands that he should quit +the castle instantly: and there did that woman, Mistress Culling, do the +honours to Nevil Beauchamp's French party. He assured Lord Palmet of +his positive knowledge of the fact, incredible as the sanction of such +immoral proceedings by the Earl of Romfrey must appear to that young +nobleman. Additions to income are of course acceptable, but in the form +of a palpable stipulation for silence, they neither awaken gratitude nor +effect their purpose. Quite the contrary; they prick the moral mind to +sit in judgement on the donor. It means, she fears me! Cecil confidently +thought and said of the intriguing woman who managed his patron. + +The town-house was open to him. Lord Romfrey was at Steynham. Cecil +could not suppose that he was falling into a pit in entering it. He +happened to be the favourite of the old housekeeper, who liked him for +his haughtiness, which was to her thinking the sign of real English +nobility, and perhaps it is the popular sign, and a tonic to the people. +She raised lamentations over the shame of the locking of the door +against him that awful night, declaring she had almost mustered courage +to go down to him herself, in spite of Mrs. Calling's orders. The old +woman lowered her voice to tell him that her official superior had +permitted the French gentleman and ladies to call her countess. This she +knew for a certainty, though she knew nothing of French; but the French +lady who came second brought a maid who knew English a little, and she +said the very words--the countess, and said also that her party took +Mrs. Culling for the Countess of Romfrey. What was more, my lord's +coachman caught it up, and he called her countess, and he had a quarrel +about it with the footman Kendall; and the day after a dreadful affair +between them in the mews, home drives madam, and Kendall is to go up to +her, and down the poor man comes, and not a word to be got out of him, +but as if he had seen a ghost. 'She have such power,' Cecil's admirer +concluded. + +'I wager I match her,' Cecil said to himself, pulling at his wristbands +and letting his lower teeth shine out. The means of matching her +were not so palpable as the resolution. First he took men into his +confidence. Then he touched lightly on the story to ladies, with the +question, 'What ought I to do?' In consideration for the Earl of Romfrey +he ought not to pass it over, he suggested. The ladies of the family +urged him to go to Steynham and boldly confront the woman. He was not +prepared for that. Better, it seemed to him, to blow the rumour, and +make it the topic of the season, until Lord Romfrey should hear of it. +Cecil had the ear of the town for a month. He was in the act of slicing +the air with his right hand in his accustomed style, one evening at Lady +Elsea's, to protest how vast was the dishonour done to the family by +Mistress Culling, when Stukely Culbrett stopped him, saying, 'The lady +you speak of is the Countess of Romfrey. I was present at the marriage.' + +Cecil received the shock in the attitude of those martial figures we see +wielding two wooden swords in provincial gardens to tell the disposition +of the wind: abruptly abandoned by it, they stand transfixed, one +sword aloft, the other at their heels. The resemblance extended to his +astonished countenance. His big chest heaved. Like many another wounded +giant before him, he experienced the insufficiency of interjections to +solace pain. For them, however, the rocks were handy to fling, the trees +to uproot; heaven's concave resounded companionably to their bellowings. +Relief of so concrete a kind is not to be obtained in crowded London +assemblies. + +'You are jesting?--you are a jester,' he contrived to say. + +'It was a private marriage, and I was a witness,' replied Stukely. + +'Lord Romfrey has made an honest woman of her, has he?' + +'A peeress, you mean.' + +Cecil bowed. 'Exactly. I am corrected. I mean a peeress.' + +He got out of the room with as high an air as he could command, feeling +as if a bar of iron had flattened his head. + +Next day it was intimated to him by one of the Steynham servants that +apartments were ready for him at the residence of the late earl: Lord +Romfrey's house was about to be occupied by the Countess of Romfrey. +Cecil had to quit, and he chose to be enamoured of that dignity of +sulking so seductive to the wounded spirit of man. + +Rosamund, Countess of Romfrey, had worse to endure from Beauchamp. +He indeed came to the house, and he went through the formalities of +congratulation, but his opinion of her step was unconcealed, that she +had taken it for the title. He distressed her by reviving the case of +Dr. Shrapnel, as though it were a matter of yesterday, telling her +she had married a man with a stain on him; she should have exacted the +Apology as a nuptial present; ay, and she would have done it if she had +cared for the earl's honour or her own. So little did he understand men! +so tenacious was he of his ideas! She had almost forgotten the case of +Dr. Shrapnel, and to see it shooting up again in the new path of her +life was really irritating. + +Rosamund did not defend herself. + +'I am very glad you have come, Nevil,' she said; 'your uncle holds to +the ceremony. I may be of real use to you now; I wish to be.' + +'You have only to prove it,' said he. 'If you can turn his mind to +marriage, you can send him to Bevisham.' + +'My chief thought is to serve you.' + +'I know it is, I know it is,' he rejoined with some fervour. 'You have +served me, and made me miserable for life, and rightly. Never mind, +all's well while the hand's to the axe.' Beauchamp smoothed his forehead +roughly, trying hard to inspire himself with the tonic draughts of +sentiments cast in the form of proverbs. 'Lord Romfrey saw her, you +say?' + +'He did, Nevil, and admired her.' + +'Well, if I suffer, let me think of her! For courage and nobleness I +shall never find her equal. Have you changed your ideas of Frenchwomen +now? Not a word, you say, not a look, to show her disdain of me whenever +my name was mentioned!' + +'She could scarcely feel disdain. She was guilty of a sad error.' + +'Through trusting in me. Will nothing teach you where the fault lies? +You women have no mercy for women. She went through the parade to +Romfrey Castle and back, and she must have been perishing at heart. +That, you English call acting. In history you have a respect for such +acting up to the scaffold. Good-bye to her! There's a story ended. +One thing you must promise: you're a peeress, ma'am: the story's out, +everybody has heard of it; that babbler has done his worst: if you have +a becoming appreciation of your title, you will promise me honestly--no, +give me your word as a woman I can esteem--that you will not run about +excusing me. Whatever you hear said or suggested, say nothing yourself. +I insist on your keeping silence. Press my hand.' + +'Nevil, how foolish!' + +'It's my will.' + +'It is unreasonable. You give your enemies licence.' + +'I know what's in your head. Take my hand, and let me have your word for +it.' + +'But if persons you like very much, Nevil, should hear?' + +'Promise. You are a woman not to break your word.' + +'If I decline?' + +'Your hand! I'll kiss it.' + +'Oh! my darling.' Rosamund flung her arms round him and strained him an +instant to her bosom. 'What have I but you in the world? My comfort was +the hope that I might serve you.' + +'Yes! by slaying one woman as an offering to another. It would be +impossible for you to speak the truth. Don't you see, it would be a lie +against her, and making a figure of me that a man would rather drop to +the ground than have shown of him? I was to blame, and only I. Madame de +Rouaillout was as utterly deceived by me as ever a trusting woman by a +brute. I look at myself and hardly believe it 's the same man. I +wrote to her that I was unchanged--and I was entirely changed, another +creature, anything Lord Romfrey may please to call me.' + +'But, Nevil, I repeat, if Miss Halkett should hear...?' + +'She knows by this time.' + +'At present she is ignorant of it.' + +'And what is Miss Halkett to me?' + +'More than you imagined in that struggle you underwent, I think, Nevil. +Oh! if only to save her from Captain Baskelett! He gained your uncle's +consent when they were at the Castle, to support him in proposing for +her. He is persistent. Women have been snared without loving. She is a +great heiress. Reflect on his use of her wealth. You respect her, if you +have no warmer feeling. Let me assure you that the husband of Cecilia, +if he is of Romfrey blood, has the fairest chance of the estates. That +man will employ every weapon. He will soon be here bowing to me to turn +me to his purposes.' + +'Cecilia can see through Baskelett,' said Beauchamp. + +'Single-mindedly selfish men may be seen through and through, and still +be dangerous, Nevil. The supposition is, that we know the worst of them. +He carries a story to poison her mind. She could resist it, if you and +she were in full confidence together. If she did not love you, she could +resist it. She does, and for some strange reason beyond my capacity to +fathom, you have not come to an understanding. Sanction my speaking to +her, just to put her on her guard, privately: not to injure that poor +lady, but to explain. Shall she not know the truth? I need say but very +little. Indeed, all I can say is, that finding the marquise in London +one evening, you telegraphed for me to attend on her, and I joined you. +You shake your head. But surely it is due to Miss Halkett. She should +be protected from what will certainly wound her deeply. Her father is +afraid of you, on the score of your theories. I foresee it: he will hear +the scandal: he will imagine you as bad in morals as in politics. And +you have lost your friend in Lord Romfrey--though he shall not be your +enemy. Colonel Halkett and Cecilia called on us at Steynham. She was +looking beautiful; a trifle melancholy. The talk was of your--that--I +do not like it, but you hold those opinions--the Republicanism. She had +read your published letters. She spoke to me of your sincerity. Colonel +Halkett of course was vexed. + +It is the same with all your friends. She, however, by her tone, led me +to think that she sees you as you are, more than in what you do. They +are now in Wales. They will be in town after Easter. Then you must +expect that her feeling for you will be tried, unless but you will! You +will let me speak to her, Nevil. My position allows me certain liberties +I was previously debarred from. You have not been so very tender to +your Cecilia that you can afford to give her fresh reasons for sorrowful +perplexity. And why should you stand to be blackened by scandalmongers +when a few words of mine will prove that instead of weak you have been +strong, instead of libertine blameless? I am not using fine phrases: I +would not. I would be as thoughtful of you as if you were present. And +for her sake, I repeat, the truth should be told to her. I have a lock +of her hair.' + +'Cecilia's? Where?' said Beauchamp. + +'It is at Steynham.' Rosamund primmed her lips at the success of her +probing touch; but she was unaware of the chief reason for his doting on +those fair locks, and how they coloured his imagination since the day of +the drive into Bevisham. + +'Now leave me, my dear Nevil,' she said. 'Lord Romfrey will soon be +here, and it is as well for the moment that you should not meet him, if +it can be avoided.' + +Beauchamp left her, like a man out-argued and overcome. He had no wish +to meet his uncle, whose behaviour in contracting a misalliance and +casting a shadow on the family, in a manner so perfectly objectless +and senseless, appeared to him to call for the reverse of compliments. +Cecilia's lock of hair lying at Steynham hung in his mind. He saw the +smooth flat curl lying secret like a smile. + +The graceful head it had fallen from was dimmer in his mental eye. He +went so far in this charmed meditation as to feel envy of the possessor +of the severed lock: passingly he wondered, with the wonder of reproach, +that the possessor should deem it enough to possess the lock, and resign +it to a drawer or a desk. And as when life rolls back on us after the +long ebb of illness, little whispers and diminutive images of the old +joys and prizes of life arrest and fill our hearts; or as, to men who +have been beaten down by storms, the opening of a daisy is dearer +than the blazing orient which bids it open; so the visionary lock of +Cecilia's hair became Cecilia's self to Beauchamp, yielding him as much +of her as he could bear to think of, for his heart was shattered. + +Why had she given it to his warmest friend? For the asking, probably. + +This question was the first ripple of the breeze from other emotions +beginning to flow fast. + +He walked out of London, to be alone, and to think and from the palings +of a road on a South-western run of high land, he gazed, at the +great city--a place conquerable yet, with the proper appliances for +subjugating it: the starting of his daily newspaper, THE DAWN, say, as +a commencement. It began to seem a possible enterprise. It soon seemed +a proximate one. If Cecilia! He left the exclamation a blank, but not an +empty dash in the brain; rather like the shroud of night on a vast and +gloriously imagined land. + +Nay, the prospect was partly visible, as the unknown country becomes by +degrees to the traveller's optics on the dark hill-tops. It is much, of +course, to be domestically well-mated: but to be fortified and armed +by one's wife with a weapon to fight the world, is rare good fortune; a +rapturous and an infinite satisfaction. He could now support of his own +resources a weekly paper. A paper published weekly, however, is a poor +thing, out of the tide, behind the date, mainly a literary periodical, +no foremost combatant in politics, no champion in the arena; hardly +better than a commentator on the events of the six past days; an echo, +not a voice. It sits on a Saturday bench and pretends to sum up. Who +listens? The verdict knocks dust out of a cushion. It has no steady +continuous pressure of influence. It is the organ of sleepers. Of all +the bigger instruments of money, it is the feeblest, Beauchamp thought. +His constant faith in the good effects of utterance naturally inclined +him to value six occasions per week above one; and in the fight he was +for waging, it was necessary that he should enter the ring and hit blow +for blow sans intermission. A statement that he could call false must +be challenged hot the next morning. The covert Toryism, the fits of +flunkeyism, the cowardice, of the relapsing middle-class, which is now +England before mankind, because it fills the sails of the Press, must be +exposed. It supports the Press in its own interests, affecting to speak +for the people. It belies the people. And this Press, declaring itself +independent, can hardly walk for fear of treading on an interest here, +an interest there. It cannot have a conscience. It is a bad guide, +a false guardian; its abject claim to be our national and popular +interpreter-even that is hollow and a mockery! It is powerful only +while subservient. An engine of money, appealing to the sensitiveness of +money, it has no connection with the mind of the nation. And that it is +not of, but apart from, the people, may be seen when great crises come. +Can it stop a war? The people would, and with thunder, had they the +medium. But in strong gales the power of the Press collapses; it wheezes +like a pricked pigskin of a piper. At its best Beauchamp regarded our +lordly Press as a curiously diapered curtain and delusive mask, behind +which the country struggles vainly to show an honest feature; and as +a trumpet that deafened and terrorized the people; a mere engine of +leaguers banded to keep a smooth face upon affairs, quite soullessly: he +meanwhile having to be dumb. + +But a Journal that should be actually independent of circulation and +advertisements: a popular journal in the true sense, very lungs to the +people, for them to breathe freely through at last, and be heard out of +it, with well-paid men of mark to head and aid them;--the establishment +of such a Journal seemed to him brave work of a life, though one should +die early. The money launching it would be coin washed pure of its +iniquity of selfish reproduction, by service to mankind. This DAWN of +his conception stood over him like a rosier Aurora for the country. He +beheld it in imagination as a new light rising above hugeous London. +You turn the sheets of THE DAWN, and it is the manhood of the land +addressing you, no longer that alternately puling and insolent cry of +the coffers. The health, wealth, comfort, contentment of the greater +number are there to be striven for, in contempt of compromise and +'unseasonable times.' + +Beauchamp's illuminated dream of the power of his DAWN to vitalize +old England, liberated him singularly from his wearing regrets and +heart-sickness. + +Surely Cecilia, who judged him sincere, might be bent to join hands +with him for so good a work! She would bring riches to her husband: +sufficient. He required the ablest men of the country to write for him, +and it was just that they should be largely paid. They at least in their +present public apathy would demand it. To fight the brewers, distillers, +publicans, the shopkeepers, the parsons, the landlords, the law limpets, +and also the indifferents, the logs, the cravens and the fools, high +talent was needed, and an ardour stimulated by rates of pay outdoing the +offers of the lucre-journals. A large annual outlay would therefore be +needed; possibly for as long as a quarter of a century. Cecilia and +her husband would have to live modestly. But her inheritance would be +immense. Colonel Halkett had never spent a tenth of his income. In time +he might be taught to perceive in THE DAWN the one greatly beneficent +enterprise of his day. He might through his daughter's eyes, and +the growing success of the Journal. Benevolent and gallant old man, +patriotic as he was, and kind at heart, he might learn to see in THE +DAWN a broader channel of philanthropy and chivalry than any we have +yet had a notion of in England!--a school of popular education into the +bargain. + +Beauchamp reverted to the shining curl. It could not have been clearer +to vision if it had lain under his eyes. + +Ay, that first wild life of his was dead. He had slain it. Now for the +second and sober life! Who can say? The Countess of Romfrey suggested +it:--Cecilia may have prompted him in his unknown heart to the sacrifice +of a lawless love, though he took it for simply barren iron duty. +Brooding on her, he began to fancy the victory over himself less +and less a lame one: for it waxed less and less difficult in his +contemplation of it. He was looking forward instead of back. + +Who cut off the lock? Probably Cecilia herself; and thinking at the +moment that he would see it, perhaps beg for it. The lustrous little +ring of hair wound round his heart; smiled both on its emotions and its +aims; bound them in one. + +But proportionately as he grew tender to Cecilia, his consideration +for Renee increased; that became a law to him: pity nourished it, +and glimpses of self-contempt, and something like worship of her +high-heartedness. + +He wrote to the countess, forbidding her sharply and absolutely to +attempt a vindication of him by explanations to any persons whomsoever; +and stating that he would have no falsehoods told, he desired her to +keep to the original tale of the visit of the French family to her as +guests of the Countess of Romfrey. Contradictory indeed. Rosamund shook +her head over him. For a wilful character that is guilty of issuing +contradictory commands to friends who would be friends in spite of him, +appears to be expressly angling for the cynical spirit, so surely does +it rise and snap at such provocation. He was even more emphatic when +they next met. He would not listen to a remonstrance; and though, of +course, her love of him granted him the liberty to speak to her in what +tone he pleased, there were sensations proper to her new rank which his +intemperateness wounded and tempted to revolt when he vexed her with +unreason. She had a glimpse of the face he might wear to his enemies. + +He was quite as resolute, too, about that slight matter of the Jersey +bull. He had the bull in Bevisham, and would not give him up without the +sign manual of Lord Romfrey to an agreement to resign him over to the +American Quaker gentleman, after a certain term. Moreover, not once had +he, by exclamation or innuendo, during the period of his recent grief +for the loss of his first love, complained of his uncle Everard's +refusal in the old days to aid him in suing for Renee. Rosamund had +expected that he would. She thought it unloverlike in him not to stir +the past, and to bow to intolerable facts. This idea of him, coming in +conjunction with his present behaviour, convinced her that there existed +a contradiction in his nature: whence it ensued that she lost her warmth +as an advocate designing to intercede for him with Cecilia; and warmth +being gone, the power of the scandal seemed to her unassailable. How +she could ever have presumed to combat it, was an astonishment to her. +Cecilia might be indulgent, she might have faith in Nevil. Little else +could be hoped for. + +The occupations, duties, and ceremonies of her new position contributed +to the lassitude into which Rosamund sank. And she soon had a +communication to make to her lord, the nature of which was more +startling to herself, even tragic. The bondwoman is a free woman +compared with the wife. + +Lord Romfrey's friends noticed a glow of hearty health in the splendid +old man, and a prouder animation of eye and stature; and it was agreed +that matrimony suited him well. Luckily for Cecil he did not sulk very +long. A spectator of the earl's first introduction to the House of +Peers, he called on his uncle the following day, and Rosamund accepted +his homage in her husband's presence. He vowed that my lord was the +noblest figure in the whole assembly; that it had been to him the most +moving sight he had ever witnessed; that Nevil should have been there +to see it and experience what he had felt; it would have done old +Nevil incalculable good! and as far as his grief at the idea and some +reticence would let him venture, he sighed to think of the last Earl of +Romfrey having been seen by him taking the seat of his fathers. + +Lord Romfrey shouted 'Ha!' like a checked peal of laughter, and glanced +at his wife. + + + + +CHAPTER XLV. A LITTLE PLOT AGAINST CECILIA + +Some days before Easter week Seymour Austin went to Mount Laurels +for rest, at an express invitation from Colonel Halkett. The working +barrister, who is also a working member of Parliament, is occasionally +reminded that this mortal machine cannot adapt itself in perpetuity to +the long hours of labour by night in the House of Commons as well as by +day in the Courts, which would seem to have been arranged by a compliant +country for the purpose of aiding his particular, and most honourable, +ambition to climb, while continuing to fill his purse. Mr. Austin broke +down early in the year. He attributed it to a cold. Other representative +gentlemen were on their backs, of whom he could admit that the +protracted nightwork had done them harm, with the reservation that +their constitutions were originally unsound. But the House cannot get on +without lawyers, and lawyers must practise their profession, and if they +manage both to practise all day and sit half the night, others should +be able to do the simple late sitting; and we English are an energetic +people, we must toil or be beaten: and besides, 'night brings counsel,' +men are cooler and wiser by night. Any amount of work can be performed +by careful feeders: it is the stomach that kills the Englishman. Brains +are never the worse for activity; they subsist on it. + +These arguments and citations, good and absurd, of a man more at home +in his harness than out of it, were addressed to the colonel to stop his +remonstrances and idle talk about burning the candle at both ends. To +that illustration Mr. Austin replied that he did not burn it in the +middle. + +'But you don't want money, Austin.' + +'No; but since I've had the habit of making it I have taken to like it.' + +'But you're not ambitious.' + +'Very little; but I should be sorry to be out of the tideway.' + +'I call it a system of slaughter,' said the colonel; and Mr. Austin +said, 'The world goes in that way--love and slaughter.' + +'Not suicide though,' Colonel Halkett muttered. + +'No, that's only incidental.' + +The casual word 'love' led Colonel Halkett to speak to Cecilia of an old +love-affair of Seymour Austin's, in discussing the state of his health +with her. The lady was the daughter of a famous admiral, handsome, and +latterly of light fame. Mr. Austin had nothing to regret in her having +married a man richer than himself. + +'I wish he had married a good woman,' said the colonel. + +'He looks unwell, papa.' + +'He thinks you're looking unwell, my dear.' + +'He thinks that of me?' + +Cecilia prepared a radiant face for Mr. Austin. + +She forgot to keep it kindled, and he suspected her to be a victim of +one of the forms of youthful melancholy, and laid stress on the benefit +to health of a change of scene. + +'We have just returned from Wales,' she said. + +He remarked that it was hardly a change to be within shot of our +newspapers. + +The colour left her cheeks. She fancied her father had betrayed her to +the last man who should know her secret. Beauchamp and the newspapers +were rolled together in her mind by the fever of apprehension wasting +her ever since his declaration of Republicanism, and defence of it, and +an allusion to one must imply the other, she feared: feared, but far +from quailingly. She had come to think that she could read the man she +loved, and detect a reasonableness in his extravagance. Her father had +discovered the impolicy of attacking Beauchamp in her hearing. The fever +by which Cecilia was possessed on her lover's behalf, often overcame +discretion, set her judgement in a whirl, was like a delirium. How it +had happened she knew not. She knew only her wretched state; a frenzy +seized her whenever his name was uttered, to excuse, account for, +all but glorify him publicly. And the immodesty of her conduct was +perceptible to her while she thus made her heart bare. She exposed +herself once of late at Itchincope, and had tried to school her tongue +before she went there. She felt that she should inevitably be seen +through by Seymour Austin if he took the world's view of Beauchamp, and +this to her was like a descent on the rapids to an end one shuts eyes +from. + +He noticed her perturbation, and spoke of it to her father. + +'Yes, I'm very miserable about her,' the colonel confessed. 'Girls don't +see... they can't guess... they have no idea of the right kind of man +for them. A man like Blackburn Tuckham, now, a man a father could leave +his girl to, with confidence! He works for me like a slave; I can't +guess why. He doesn't look as if he were attracted. There's a man! but, +no; harum-scarum fellows take their fancy.' + +'Is she that kind of young lady?' said Mr. Austin. + +'No one would have thought so. She pretends to have opinions upon +politics now. It's of no use to talk of it!' + +But Beauchamp was fully indicated. + +Mr. Austin proposed to Cecilia that they should spend Easter week in +Rome. + +Her face lighted and clouded. + +'I should like it,' she said, negatively. + +'What's the objection?' + +'None, except that Mount Laurels in Spring has grown dear to me; and we +have engagements in London. I am not quick, I suppose, at new +projects. I have ordered the yacht to be fitted out for a cruise in +the Mediterranean early in the Summer. There is an objection, I am +sure--yes; papa has invited Mr. Tuckham here for Easter.' + +'We could carry him with us.' + +'Yes, but I should wish to be entirely under your tutelage in Rome.' + +'We would pair: your father and he; you and I.' + +'We might do that. But Mr. Tuckham is like you, devoted to work; and, +unlike you, careless of Antiquities and Art.' + +'He is a hard and serious worker, and therefore the best of companions +for a holiday. At present he is working for the colonel, who would +easily persuade him to give over, and come with us.' + +'He certainly does love papa,' said Cecilia. + +Mr. Austin dwelt on that subject. + +Cecilia perceived that she had praised Mr. Tuckham for his devotedness +to her father without recognizing the beauty of nature in the young +man who could voluntarily take service under the elder he esteemed, in +simple admiration of him. Mr. Austin scarcely said so much, or expected +her to see the half of it, but she wished to be extremely grateful, and +could only see at all by kindling altogether. + +'He does himself injustice in his manner,' said Cecilia. + +'That has become somewhat tempered,' Mr. Austin assured her, and he +acknowledged what it had been with a smile that she reciprocated. + +A rough man of rare quality civilizing under various influences, and +half ludicrous, a little irritating, wholly estimable, has frequently +won the benign approbation of the sex. In addition, this rough man over +whom she smiled was one of the few that never worried her concerning her +hand. There was not a whisper of it in him. He simply loved her father. + +Cecilia welcomed him to Mount Laurels with grateful gladness. The +colonel had hastened Mr. Tuckham's visit in view of the expedition to +Rome, and they discoursed of it at the luncheon table. Mr. Tuckham let +fall that he had just seen Beauchamp. + +'Did he thank you for his inheritance?' Colonel Halkett inquired. + +'Not he!' Tuckham replied jovially. + +Cecilia's eyes, quick to flash, were dropped. + +The colonel said: 'I suppose you told him nothing of what you had done +for him?' and said Tuckham: 'Oh no: what anybody else would have done'; +and proceeded to recount that he had called at Dr. Shrapnel's on the +chance of an interview with his friend Lydiard, who used generally to be +hanging about the cottage. 'But now he's free: his lunatic wife is dead, +and I'm happy to think I was mistaken as to Miss Denham. Men practising +literature should marry women with money. The poor girl changed colour +when I informed her he had been released for upwards of three months. +The old Radical's not the thing in health. He's anxious about leaving +her alone in the world; he said so to me. Beauchamp's for rigging out +a yacht to give him a sail. It seems that salt water did him some good +last year. They're both of them rather the worse for a row at one of +their meetings in the North in support of that public nuisance, the +democrat and atheist Roughleigh. The Radical doctor lost a hat, and +Beauchamp almost lost an eye. He would have been a Nelson of politics, +if he had been a monops, with an excuse for not seeing. It's a trifle to +them; part of their education. They call themselves students. Rome will +be capital, Miss Halkett. You're an Italian scholar, and I beg to be +accepted as a pupil.' + +'I fear we have postponed the expedition too long,' said Cecilia. She +could have sunk with languor. + +'Too long?' cried Colonel Halkett, mystified. + +'Until too late, I mean, papa. Do you not think, Mr. Austin, that a +fortnight in Rome is too short a time?' + +'Not if we make it a month, my dear Cecilia.' + +'Is not our salt air better for you? The yacht shall be fitted out.' + +'I'm a poor sailor!' + +'Besides, a hasty excursion to Italy brings one's anticipated regrets +at the farewell too close to the pleasure of beholding it, for the +enjoyment of that luxury of delight which I associate with the name of +Italy.' + +'Why, my dear child,' said her father, 'you were all for going, the +other day.' + +'I do not remember it,' said she. 'One plans agreeable schemes. At least +we need not hurry from home so very soon after our return. We have been +travelling incessantly. The cottage in Wales is not home. It is hardly +fair to Mount Laurels to quit it without observing the changes of the +season in our flowers and birds here. And we have visitors coming. Of +course, papa, I would not chain you to England. If I am not well enough +to accompany you, I can go to Louise for a few weeks.' + +Was ever transparency so threadbare? Cecilia shrank from herself +in contemplating it when she was alone; and Colonel Halkett put the +question to Mr. Austin, saying to him privately, with no further +reserve: 'It's that fellow Beauchamp in the neighbourhood; I'm not so +blind. He'll be knocking at my door, and I can't lock him out. Austin, +would you guess it was my girl speaking? I never in my life had such +an example of intoxication before me. I 'm perfectly miserable at the +sight. You know her; she was the proudest girl living. Her ideas were +orderly and sound; she had a good intellect. Now she more than half +defends him--a naval officer! good Lord!--for getting up in a public +room to announce that he 's a Republican, and writing heaps of mad +letters to justify himself. He's ruined in his profession: hopeless! He +can never get a ship: his career's cut short, he's a rudderless boat. A +gentleman drifting to Bedlam, his uncle calls him. I call his treatment +of Grancey Lespel anything but gentlemanly. This is the sort of fellow +my girl worships! What can I do? I can't interdict the house to him: it +would only make matters worse. Thank God, the fellow hangs fire somehow, +and doesn't come to me. I expect it every day, either in a letter or the +man in person. And I declare to heaven I'd rather be threading a Khyber +Pass with my poor old friend who fell to a shot there.' + +'She certainly has another voice,' Mr. Austin assented gravely. + +He did not look on Beauchamp as the best of possible husbands for +Cecilia. + +'Let her see that you're anxious, Austin,' said the colonel. 'I'm her +old opponent in this affair. She loves me, but she's accustomed to think +me prejudiced: you she won't. You may have a good effect.' + +'Not by speaking.' + +'No, no; no assault: not a word, and not a word against him. Lay the +wind to catch a gossamer. I've had my experience of blowing cold, and +trying to run her down. He's at Shrapnel's. He'll be up here to-day, and +I have an engagement in the town. Don't quit her side. Let her fancy you +are interested in some discussion--Radicalism, if you like.' + +Mr. Austin readily undertook to mount guard over her while her father +rode into Bevisham on business. + +The enemy appeared. + +Cecilia saw him, and could not step to meet him for trouble of heart. It +was bliss to know that he lived and was near. + +A transient coldness following the fit of ecstasy enabled her to swin +through the terrible first minutes face to face with him. + +He folded her round like a mist; but it grew a problem to understand why +Mr. Austin should be perpetually at hand, in the garden, in the woods, +in the drawing-room, wheresoever she wakened up from one of her trances +to see things as they were. + +Yet Beauchamp, with a daring and cunning at which her soul exulted, and +her feminine nature trembled, as at the divinely terrible, had managed +to convey to her no less than if they had been alone together. + +His parting words were: 'I must have five minutes with your father +to-morrow.' + +How had she behaved? What could be Seymour Austin's idea of her? + +She saw the blind thing that she was, the senseless thing, the +shameless; and vulture-like in her scorn of herself, she alighted on +that disgraced Cecilia and picked her to pieces hungrily. It was clear: +Beauchamp had meant nothing beyond friendly civility: it was only her +abject greediness pecking at crumbs. No! he loved her. Could a woman's +heart be mistaken? She melted and wept, thanking him: she offered him +her remnant of pride, pitiful to behold. + +And still she asked herself between-whiles whether it could be true of +an English lady of our day, that she, the fairest stature under sun, was +ever knowingly twisted to this convulsion. She seemed to look forth from +a barred window on flower, and field, and hill. Quietness existed as +a vision. Was it impossible to embrace it? How pass into it? By +surrendering herself to the flames, like a soul unto death! For why, +if they were overpowering, attempt to resist them? It flattered her to +imagine that she had been resisting them in their present burning might +ever since her lover stepped on the Esperanza's deck at the mouth +of Otley River. How foolish, seeing that they are fatal! A thrill of +satisfaction swept her in reflecting that her ability to reason was thus +active. And she was instantly rewarded for surrendering; pain fled, to +prove her reasoning good; the flames devoured her gently they cared not +to torture so long as they had her to themselves. + +At night, candle in hand, on the corridor, her father told her he had +come across Grancey Lespel in Bevisham, and heard what he had not quite +relished of the Countess of Romfrey. The glittering of Cecilia's eyes +frightened him. Taking her for the moment to know almost as much as he, +the colonel doubted the weight his communication would have on her; he +talked obscurely of a scandalous affair at Lord Romfrey's house in town, +and Beauchamp and that Frenchwoman. 'But,' said he, 'Mrs. Grancey will +be here to-morrow.' + +'So will Nevil, papa,' said Cecilia. + +'Ah! he's coming, yes; well!' the colonel puffed. 'Well, I shall see +him, of course, but I... I can only say that if his oath 's worth +having, I ... and I think you too, my dear, if you... but it's no use +anticipating. I shall stand out for your honour and happiness. There, +your cheeks are flushed. Go and sleep.' + +Some idle tale! Cecilia murmured to herself a dozen times, undisturbed +by the recurrence of it. Nevil was coming to speak to her father +tomorrow! Adieu to doubt and division! Happy to-morrow! and dear Mount +Laurels! The primroses were still fair in the woods: and soon the +cowslips would come, and the nightingale; she lay lapt in images of +everything innocently pleasing to Nevil. Soon the Esperanza would be +spreading wings. She revelled in a picture of the yacht on a tumbling +Mediterranean Sea, meditating on the two specks near the tiller,--who +were blissful human creatures, blest by heaven and in themselves--with +luxurious Olympian benevolence. + +For all that, she awoke, starting up in the first cold circle of +twilight, her heart in violent action. She had dreamed that the vessel +was wrecked. 'I did not think myself so cowardly,' she said aloud, +pressing her side and then, with the dream in her eyes, she gasped: 'It +would be together!' + +Strangely chilled, she tried to recover some fallen load. The birds of +the dawn twittered, chirped, dived aslant her window, fluttered +back. Instead of a fallen load, she fancied presently that it was +an expectation she was desiring to realize: but what? What could be +expected at that hour? She quitted her bed, and paced up and down the +room beneath a gold-starred ceiling. Her expectation, she resolved to +think, was of a splendid day of the young Spring at Mount Laurels--a day +to praise to Nevil. + +She raised her window-blind at a window letting in sweet air, to gather +indications of promising weather. Her lover stood on the grass-plot +among the flower-beds below, looking up, as though it had been his +expectation to see her which had drawn her to gaze out with an idea of +some expectation of her own. So visionary was his figure in the grey +solitariness of the moveless morning that she stared at the apparition, +scarce putting faith in him as man, until he kissed his hand to her, and +had softly called her name. + +Impulsively she waved a hand from her lips. + +Now there was no retreat for either of them! + +She awoke to this conviction after a flight of blushes that burnt her +thoughts to ashes as they sprang. Thoughts born blushing, all of the +crimson colour, a rose-garden, succeeded, and corresponding with their +speed her feet paced the room, both slender hands crossed at her throat +under an uplifted chin, and the curves of her dark eyelashes dropped as +in a swoon. + +'He loves me!' The attestation of it had been visible. 'No one but me!' +Was that so evident? + +Her father picked up silly stories of him--a man who made enemies +recklessly! + +Cecilia was petrified by a gentle tapping at her door. Her father called +to her, and she threw on her dressing-gown, and opened the door. + +The colonel was in his riding-suit. + +'I haven't slept a wink, and I find it's the same with you,' he said, +paining her with his distressed kind eyes. 'I ought not to have hinted +anything last night without proofs. Austin's as unhappy as I am.' + +'At what, my dear papa, at what?' cried Cecilia. + +'I ride over to Steynham this morning, and I shall bring you proofs, my +poor child, proofs. That foreign tangle of his...' + +'You speak of Nevil, papa?' + +'It's a common scandal over London. That Frenchwoman was found at Lord +Romfrey's house; Lady Romfrey cloaked it. I believe the woman would +swear black's white to make Nevil Beauchamp appear an angel; and he's a +desperately cunning hand with women. You doubt that.' + +She had shuddered slightly. + +'You won't doubt if I bring you proofs. Till I come back from Steynham, +I ask you not to see him alone: not to go out to him.' + +The colonel glanced at her windows. + +Cecilia submitted to the request, out of breath, consenting to feel like +a tutored girl, that she might conceal her guilty knowledge of what was +to be seen through the windows. + +'Now I'm off,' said he, and kissed her. + +'If you would accept Nevil's word!' she murmured. + +'Not where women are concerned!' + +He left her with this remark, which found no jealous response in her +heart, yet ranged over certain dispersed inflammable grains, like a +match applied to damp powder; again and again running in little leaps +of harmless firm keeping her alive to its existence, and surprising her +that it should not have been extinguished. + +Beauchamp presented himself rather late in the afternoon, when Mr. +Austin and Blackburn Tuckham were sipping tea in Cecilia's boudoir with +that lady, and a cousin of her sex, by whom she was led to notice a +faint discoloration over one of his eyes, that was, considering whence +it came, repulsive to compassion. A blow at a Radical meeting! He spoke +of Dr. Shrapnel to Tuckham, and assuredly could not complain that the +latter was unsympathetic in regard to the old man's health, though when +he said, 'Poor old man! he fears he will die!' Tuckham rejoined: 'He had +better make his peace.' + +'He fears he will die, because of his leaving Miss Denham unprotected,' +said Beauchamp. + +'Well, she's a good-looking girl: he'll be able to leave her something, +and he might easily get her married, I should think,' said Tuckham. + +'He's not satisfied with handing her to any kind of man.' + +'If the choice is to be among Radicals and infidels, I don't wonder. He +has come to one of the tests.' + +Cecilia heard Beauchamp speaking of a newspaper. A great Radical +Journal, unmatched in sincerity, superior in ability, soon to be equal +in power, to the leader and exemplar of the lucre-Press, would some day +see the light. + +'You'll want money for that,' said Tuckham. + +'I know,' said Beauchamp. + +'Are you prepared to stand forty or fifty thousand a year?' + +'It need not be half so much.' + +'Counting the libels, I rate the outlay rather low.' + +'Yes, lawyers, judges, and juries of tradesmen, dealing justice to a +Radical print!' + +Tuckham brushed his hand over his mouth and ahemed. 'It's to be a penny +journal?' + +'Yes, a penny. I'd make it a farthing--' + +'Pay to have it read?' + +'Willingly.' + +Tuckham did some mental arithmetic, quaintly, with rapidly blinking +eyelids and open mouth. 'You may count it at the cost of two paying +mines,' he said firmly. 'That is, if it's to be a consistently Radical +Journal, at law with everybody all round the year. And by the time it +has won a reputation, it will be undermined by a radicaller Radical +Journal. That's how we've lowered the country to this level. That's an +Inferno of Circles, down to the ultimate mire. And what on earth are you +contending for?' + +'Freedom of thought, for one thing.' + +'We have quite enough free-thinking.' + +'There's not enough if there's not perfect freedom.' + +'Dangerous!' quoth Mr. Austin. + +'But it's that danger which makes men, sir; and it's fear of the danger +that makes our modern Englishman.' + +'Oh! Oh!' cried Tuckham in the voice of a Parliamentary Opposition. +'Well, you start your paper, we'll assume it: what class of men will you +get to write?' + +'I shall get good men for the hire.' + +'You won't get the best men; you may catch a clever youngster or +two, and an old rogue of talent; you won't get men of weight. They're +prejudiced, I dare say. The Journals which are commercial speculations +give us a guarantee that they mean to be respectable; they must, if they +wouldn't collapse. That's why the best men consent to write for them.' + +'Money will do it,' said Beauchamp. + +Mr. Austin disagreed with that observation. + +'Some patriotic spirit, I may hope, sir.' + +Mr. Austin shook his head. 'We put different constructions upon +patriotism.' + +'Besides--fiddle! nonsense!' exclaimed Tuckham in the mildest +interjections he could summon for a vent in society to his offended +common sense; 'the better your men the worse your mark. You're not +dealing with an intelligent people.' + +'There's the old charge against the people.' + +'But they're not. You can madden, you can't elevate them by writing and +writing. Defend us from the uneducated English! The common English are +doltish; except in the North, where you won't do much with them. Compare +them with the Yankees for shrewdness, the Spaniards for sobriety, the +French for ingenuity, the Germans for enlightenment, the Italians in the +Arts; yes, the Russians for good-humour and obedience--where are they? +They're only worth something when they're led. They fight well; there's +good stuff in them.' + +'I've heard all that before,' returned Beauchamp, unruffled. 'You don't +know them. I mean to educate them by giving them an interest in their +country. At present they have next to none. Our governing class is +decidedly unintelligent, in my opinion brutish, for it's indifferent. +My paper shall render your traders justice for what they do, and justice +for what they don't do.' + +'My traders, as you call them, are the soundest foundation for a +civilized state that the world has yet seen.' + +'What is your paper to be called?' said Cecilia. + +'The DAWN,' Beauchamp answered. + +She blushed fiery red, and turned the leaves of a portfolio of drawings. + +'The DAWN!' ejaculated Tuckham. 'The grey-eyed, or the red? +Extraordinary name for a paper, upon my word!' + +'A paper that doesn't devote half its columns to the vices of the +rich--to money-getting, spending and betting--will be an extraordinary +paper.' + +'I have it before me now!--two doses of flattery to one of the whip. No, +no; you haven't hit the disease. We want union, not division. Turn your +mind to being a moralist, instead of a politician.' + +'The distinction shouldn't exist!' + +'Only it does!' + +Mrs. Grancey Lespel's entrance diverted their dialogue from a theme +wearisome to Cecilia, for Beauchamp shone but darkly in it, and Mr. +Austin did not join in it. Mrs. Grancey touched Beauchamp's fingers. +'Still political?' she said. 'You have been seen about London with a +French officer in uniform.' + +'It was M. le comte de Croisnel, a very old friend and comrade of mine,' +Beauchamp replied. + +'Why do those Frenchmen everlastingly wear their uniforms?--tell me! +Don't you think it detestable style?' + +'He came over in a hurry.' + +'Now, don't be huffed. I know you, for defending your friends, Captain +Beauchamp! Did he not come over with ladies?' + +'With relatives, yes.' + +'Relatives of course. But when British officers travel with ladies, +relatives or other, they prefer the simplicity of mufti, and so do I, as +a question of taste, I must say.' + +'It was quite by misadventure that M. de Croisnel chanced to come in his +uniform.' + +'Ah! I know you, for defending your friends, Captain Beauchamp. He was +in too great a hurry to change his uniform before he started, or en +route?' + +'So it happened.' + +Mrs. Grancey let a lingering eye dwell maliciously on Beauchamp, who +said, to shift the burden of it: 'The French are not so jealous of +military uniforms as we are. M. de Croisnel lost his portmanteau.' + +'Ah! lost it! Then of course he is excuseable, except to the naked eye. +Dear me! you have had a bruise on yours. Was Monsieur votre ami in the +Italian campaign?' + +'No, poor fellow, he was not. He is not an Imperialist; he had to remain +in garrison.' + +'He wore a multitude of medals, I have been told. A cup of tea, Cecilia. +And how long did he stay in England with his relatives?' + +'Two days.' + +'Only two days! A very short visit indeed--singularly short. Somebody +informed me of their having been seen at Romfrey Castle, which cannot +have been true.' + +She turned her eyes from Beauchamp silent to Cecilia's hand on the +teapot. 'Half a cup,' she said mildly, to spare the poor hand its +betrayal of nervousness, and relapsed from her air of mistress of the +situation to chatter to Mr. Austin. + +Beauchamp continued silent. He took up a book, and presently a pencil +from his pocket, then talked of the book to Cecilia's cousin; and +leaving a paper-cutter between the leaves, he looked at Cecilia and laid +the book down. + +She proceeded to conduct Mrs. Grancey Lespel to her room. + +'I do admire Captain Beauchamp's cleverness; he is as good as a French +romance!' Mrs. Grancey exclaimed on the stairs. 'He fibs charmingly. I +could not help drawing him out. Two days! Why, my dear, his French party +were a fortnight in the country. It was the marquise, you know--the old +affair; and one may say he's a constant man.' + +'I have not heard Captain Beauchamp's cleverness much praised,' said +Cecilia. 'This is your room, Mrs. Grancey.' + +'Stay with me a moment. It is the room I like. Are we to have him at +dinner?' + +Cecilia did not suppose that Captain Beauchamp would remain to dine. +Feeling herself in the clutches of a gossip, she would fain have gone. + +'I am just one bit glad of it, though I can't dislike him personally,' +said Mrs. Grancey, detaining her and beginning to whisper. 'It was +really too bad. There was a French party at the end, but there was only +one at the commencement. The brother was got over for a curtain, before +the husband arrived in pursuit. They say the trick Captain Beauchamp +played his cousin Cecil, to get him out of the house when he had made a +discovery, was monstrous--fiendishly cunning. However, Lady Romfrey, as +that woman appears to be at last, covered it all. You know she has one +of those passions for Captain Beauchamp which completely blind women to +right and wrong. He is her saint, let him sin ever so! The story's in +everybody's mouth. By the way, Palmet saw her. He describes her pale as +marble, with dark long eyes, the most innocent look in the world, and +a walk, the absurd fellow says, like a statue set gliding. No doubt +Frenchwomen do walk well. He says her eyes are terrible traitors; I need +not quote Palmet. The sort of eyes that would look fondly on a stone, +you know. What her reputation is in France I have only indistinctly +heard. She has one in England by this time, I can assure you. She found +her match in Captain Beauchamp for boldness. Where any other couple +would have seen danger, they saw safety; and they contrived to +accomplish it, according to those horrid talebearers. You have plenty of +time to dress, my dear; I have an immense deal to talk about. There are +half-a-dozen scandals in London already, and you ought to know them, +or you will be behind the tittle-tattle when you go to town; and I +remember, as a girl, I knew nothing so excruciating as to hear blanks, +dashes, initials, and half words, without the key. Nothing makes a +girl look so silly and unpalatable. Naturally, the reason why Captain +Beauchamp is more talked about than the rest is the politics. Your grand +reformer should be careful. Doubly heterodox will not do! It makes him +interesting to women, if you like, but he won't soon hear the last of +it, if he is for a public career. Grancey literally crowed at the story. +And the wonderful part of it is, that Captain Beauchamp refused to be +present at the earl's first ceremonial dinner in honour of his countess. +Now, that, we all think, was particularly ungrateful: now, was it not?' + +'If the countess--if ingratitude had anything to do with it,' said +Cecilia. + +She escaped to her room and dressed impatiently. + +Her boudoir was empty: Beauchamp had departed. She recollected his +look at her, and turned over the leaves of the book he had been hastily +scanning, and had condescended to approve of. On the two pages where +the paper-cutter was fixed she perceived small pencil dots under certain +words. Read consecutively, with a participle termination struck out to +convey his meaning, they formed the pathetically ungrammatical line: + +'Hear: none: but: accused: false.' + +Treble dots were under the word 'to-morrow.' He had scored the margin of +the sentences containing his dotted words, as if in admiration of their +peculiar wisdom. + +She thought it piteous that he should be reduced to such means of +communication. The next instant Cecilia was shrinking from the adept +intriguer--French-taught! + +In the course of the evening her cousin remarked: + +'Captain Beauchamp must see merit in things undiscoverable by my poor +faculties. I will show you a book he has marked.' + +'Did you see it? I was curious to examine it,' interposed Cecilia; 'and +I am as much at a loss as you to understand what could have attracted +him. One sentence...' + +'About the sheikh in the stables, where he accused the pretended +physician? Yes, what was there in that?' + +'Where is the book?' said Mrs. Grancey. + +'Not here, I think.' Cecilia glanced at the drawing-room book-table, +and then at Mr. Austin, the victim of an unhappy love in his youth, and +unhappy about her, as her father had said. Seymour Austin was not one +to spread the contagion of intrigue! She felt herself caught by it, even +melting to feel enamoured of herself in consequence, though not loving +Beauchamp the more. + +'This newspaper, if it's not merely an airy project, will be ruination,' +said Tuckham. 'The fact is, Beauchamp has no bend in him. He can't meet +a man without trying a wrestle, and as long as he keeps his stiffness, +he believes he has won. I've heard an oculist say that the eye that +doesn't blink ends in blindness, and he who won't bend breaks. It's +a pity, for he's a fine fellow. A Radical daily Journal of Shrapnel's +colour, to educate the people by giving them an interest in the country! +Goodness, what a delusion! and what a waste of money! He'll not be able +to carry it on a couple of years. And there goes his eighty thousand!' + +Cecilia's heart beat fast. She had no defined cause for its excitement. + +Colonel Halkett returned to Mount Laurels close upon midnight, very +tired, coughing and complaining of the bitter blowing East. His guests +shook hands with him, and went to bed. + +'I think I'll follow their example,' he said to Cecilia, after drinking +a tumbler of mulled wine. + +'Have you nothing to tell me, dear papa?' said she, caressing him +timidly. + +'A confirmation of the whole story from Lord Romfrey in person--that's +all. He says Beauchamp's mad. I begin to believe it. You must use your +judgement. I suppose I must not expect you to consider me. You might +open your heart to Austin. As to my consent, knowing what I do, you will +have to tear it out of me. Here's a country perfectly contented, and +that fellow at work digging up grievances to persuade the people they're +oppressed by us. Why should I talk of it? He can't do much harm; unless +he has money--money! Romfrey says he means to start a furious paper. +He'll make a bonfire of himself. I can't stand by and see you in it too. +I may die; I may be spared the sight.' + +Cecilia flung her arms round his neck. 'Oh! papa.' + +'I don't want to make him out worse than he is, my dear. I own to his +gallantry--in the French sense as well as the English, it seems! It's +natural that Romfrey should excuse his wife. She's another of the women +who are crazy about Nevil Beauchamp. She spoke to me of the "pleasant +visit of her French friends," and would have enlarged on it, but Romfrey +stopped her. By the way, he proposes Captain Baskelett for you, and +we're to look for Baskelett's coming here, backed by his uncle. There's +no end to it; there never will be till you're married: and no peace for +me! I hope I shan't find myself with a cold to-morrow.' + +The colonel coughed, and perhaps exaggerated the premonitory symptoms of +a cold. + +'Italy, papa, would do you good,' said Cecilia. + +'It might,' said he. + +'If we go immediately, papa; to-morrow, early in the morning, before +there is a chance of any visitors coming to the house.' + +'From Bevisham?' + +'From Steynham. I cannot endure a second persecution.' + +'But you have a world of packing, my dear.' + +'An hour before breakfast will be sufficient for me.' + +'In that case, we might be off early, as you say, and have part of the +Easter week in Rome.' + +'Mr. Austin wishes it greatly, papa, though he has not mentioned it.' + +'Austin, my darling girl, is not one of your impatient men who burst +with everything they have in their heads or their hearts.' + +'Oh! but I know him so well,' said Cecilia, conjuring up that innocent +enthusiasm of hers for Mr. Austin as an antidote to her sharp suffering. +The next minute she looked on her father as the key of an enigma +concerning Seymour Austin, whom, she imagined, possibly she had not +hitherto known at all. Her curiosity to pierce it faded. She and her +maid were packing through the night. At dawn she requested her maid to +lift the window-blind and give her an opinion of the weather. 'Grey, +Miss,' the maid reported. It signified to Cecilia: no one roaming +outside. + +The step she was taking was a desperate attempt at a cure; and +she commenced it, though sorely wounded, with pity for Nevil's +disappointment, and a singularly clear-eyed perception of his aims and +motives.--'I am rich, and he wants riches; he likes me, and he reads +my weakness.'--Jealousy shook her by fits, but she had no right to be +jealous, nor any right to reproach him. Her task was to climb back to +those heavenly heights she sat on before he distracted her and drew her +down. + +Beauchamp came to a vacated house that day. + + + + +CHAPTER XLVI. AS IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN FORESEEN + +It was in Italy that Cecilia's maiden dreams of life had opened. +She hoped to recover them in Italy, and the calm security of a mind +untainted. Italy was to be her reviving air. + +While this idea of a specific for her malady endured travelling at +speed to the ridges of the Italian frontier, across France--she simply +remembered Nevil: he was distant; he had no place in the storied +landscape, among the images of Art and the names of patient great men +who bear, as they bestow, an atmosphere other than earth's for those +adoring them. If at night, in her sleep, he was a memory that conducted +her through scenes which were lightnings, the cool swift morning of +her flight released her. France, too, her rival!--the land of France, +personified by her instinctively, though she had no vivid imaginative +gift, did not wound her with a poisoned dart.--'She knew him first: she +was his first love.' The Alps, and the sense of having Italy below them, +renewed Cecilia's lofty-perching youth. Then--I am in Italy! she sighed +with rapture. The wine of delight and oblivion was at her lips. + +But thirst is not enjoyment, and a satiated thirst that we insist on +over-satisfying to drown the recollection of past anguish, is baneful to +the soul. In Rome Cecilia's vision of her track to Rome was of a run of +fire over a heath. She could scarcely feel common pleasure in Rome. It +seemed burnt out. + +Flung back on herself, she was condemned to undergo the bitter torment +she had flown from: jealous love, and reproachful; and a shame in it +like nothing she had yet experienced. Previous pains were but Summer +lightnings, passing shadows. She could have believed in sorcery: the man +had eaten her heart! + +A disposition to mocking humour, foreign to her nature, gave her the +notion of being off her feet, in the claws of a fabulous bird. It served +to veil her dulness. An ultra-English family in Rome, composed, shocking +to relate, of a baronet banker and his wife, two faint-faced girls, and +a young gentleman of our country, once perhaps a light-limbed boy, chose +to be followed by their footman in the melancholy pomp of state livery. +Wherever she encountered them Cecilia talked Nevil Beauchamp. Even Mr. +Tuckham perceived it. She was extremely uncharitable: she extended her +ungenerous criticism to the institution of the footman: England, and the +English, were lashed. + +'These people are caricatures,' Tuckham said, in apology for poor +England burlesqued abroad. 'You must not generalize on them. Footmen are +footmen all the world over. The cardinals have a fine set of footmen.' + +'They are at home. Those English sow contempt of us all over Europe. +We cannot but be despised. One comes abroad foredoomed to share the +sentiment. This is your middle-class! What society can they move in, +that sanctions a vulgarity so perplexing? They have the air of ornaments +on a cottager's parlour mantelpiece.' + +Tuckham laughed. 'Something of that,' he said. + +'Evidently they seek distinction, and they have it, of that kind,' she +continued. 'It is not wonderful that we have so much satirical writing +in England, with such objects of satire. It may be as little wonderful +that the satire has no effect. Immense wealth and native obtuseness +combine to disfigure us with this aspect of overripeness, not to say +monstrosity. I fall in love with the poor, and think they have a cause +to be pleaded, when I look at those people. We scoff at the vanity of +the French, but it is a graceful vanity; pardonable compared with ours.' + +'I've read all that a hundred times,' quoth Tuckham bluntly. + +'So have I. I speak of it because I see it. We scoff at the simplicity +of the Germans.' + +'The Germans live in simple fashion, because they're poor. French +vanity's pretty and amusing. I don't know whether it's deep in them, for +I doubt their depth; but I know it's in their joints. The first spring +of a Frenchman comes of vanity. That you can't say of the English. Peace +to all! but I abhor cosmopolitanism. No man has a firm foothold who +pretends to it. None despises the English in reality. Don't be misled, +Miss Halkett. We're solid: that is the main point. The world feels our +power, and has confidence in our good faith. I ask for no more.' + +'With Germans we are supercilious Celts; with Frenchmen we are sneering +Teutons:--Can we be loved, Mr. Tuckham?' + +'That's a quotation from my friend Lydiard. Loved? No nation ever was +loved while it lived. As Lydiard says, it may be a good beast or a bad, +but a beast it is. A nation's much too big for refined feelings and +affections. It must be powerful or out of the way, or down it goes. When +a nation's dead you may love it; but I don't see the use of dying to +be loved. My aim for my country is to have the land respected. For that +purpose we must have power; for power wealth; for wealth industry; +for industry internal peace: therefore no agitation, no artificial +divisions. All's plain in history and fact, so long as we do not obtrude +sentimentalism. Nothing mixes well with that stuff--except poetical +ideas!' + +Contrary to her anticipation, Cecilia was thrown more into companionship +with Mr. Tuckham than with Mr. Austin; and though it often vexed her, +she acknowledged that she derived a benefit from his robust antagonism +of opinion. And Italy had grown tasteless to her. She could hardly +simulate sufficient curiosity to serve for a vacant echo to Mr. Austin's +historic ardour. Pliny the Younger might indeed be the model of +a gentleman of old Rome; there might be a scholarly pleasure in +calculating, as Mr. Austin did, the length of time it took Pliny to +journey from the city to his paternal farm, or villa overlooking the +lake, or villa overlooking the bay, and some abstruse fun in the tender +ridicule of his readings of his poems to friends; for Mr. Austin smiled +effusively in alluding to the illustrious Roman pleader's foible of +verse: but Pliny bore no resemblance to that island barbarian Nevil +Beauchamp: she could not realize the friend of Trajan, orator, lawyer, +student, statesman, benefactor of his kind, and model of her own modern +English gentleman, though he was. 'Yes!' she would reply encouragingly +to Seymour Austin's fond brooding hum about his hero; and 'Yes!' +conclusively: like an incarnation of stupidity dealing in monosyllables. +She was unworthy of the society of a scholar. Nor could she kneel at +the feet of her especial heroes: Dante, Raphael, Buonarotti: she was +unworthy of them. She longed to be at Mount Laurels. Mr. Tuckham's +conversation was the nearest approach to it--as it were round by +Greenland; but it was homeward. + +She was really grieved to lose him. Business called him to England. + +'What business can it be, papa?' she inquired: and the colonel replied +briefly: 'Ours.' + +Mr. Austin now devoted much of his time to the instruction of her in +the ancient life of the Eternal City. He had certain volumes of Livy, +Niebuhr, and Gibbon, from which he read her extracts at night, shunning +the scepticism and the irony of the moderns, so that there should be no +jar on the awakening interest of his fair pupil and patient. A gentle +cross-hauling ensued between them, that they grew conscious of and +laughed over during their peregrinations in and out of Rome: she pulled +for the Republic of the Scipios; his predilections were toward the Rome +of the wise and clement emperors. To Cecilia's mind Rome rocked at a +period so closely neighbouring her decay: to him, with an imagination +brooding on the fuller knowledge of it, the city breathed securely, the +sky was clear; jurisprudence, rhetoric, statesmanship, then flourished +supreme, and men eminent for culture: the finest flowers of our race, he +thought them: and he thought their Age the manhood of Rome. + +Struck suddenly by a feminine subtle comparison that she could not +have framed in speech, Cecilia bowed to his views of the happiness and +elevation proper to the sway of a sagacious and magnanimous Imperialism +of the Roman pattern:--he rejected the French. She mused on dim +old thoughts of the gracious dignity of a woman's life under high +governorship. Turbulent young men imperilled it at every step. The +trained, the grave, the partly grey, were fitting lords and mates for +women aspiring to moral beauty and distinction. Beside such they should +be planted, if they would climb! Her walks and conversations with +Seymour Austin charmed her as the haze of a summer evening charms the +sight. + +Upon the conclusion of her term of exile Cecilia would gladly have +remained in Italy another month. An appointment of her father's with +Mr. Tuckham at Mount Laurels on a particular day she considered as of no +consequence whatever, and she said so, in response to a meaningless nod. +But Mr. Austin was obliged to return to work. She set her face homeward +with his immediately, and he looked pleased: he did not try to dissuade +her from accompanying him by affecting to think it a sacrifice: clearly +he knew that to be near him was her greatest delight. + +Thus do we round the perilous headland called love by wooing a good man +for his friendship, and requiting him with faithful esteem for the grief +of an ill-fortuned passion of his youth! + +Cecilia would not suffer her fancy to go very far in pursuit of the +secret of Mr. Austin's present feelings. Until she reached Mount Laurels +she barely examined her own. The sight of the house warned her instantly +that she must have a defence: and then, in desperation but with +perfect distinctness, she entertained the hope of hearing him speak the +protecting words which could not be broken through when wedded to her +consent. + +If Mr. Austin had no intentions, it was at least strange that he did not +part from her in London. + +He whose coming she dreaded had been made aware of the hour of her +return, as his card, with the pencilled line, 'Will call on the 17th,' +informed her. The 17th was the morrow. + +After breakfast on the morning of the 17th Seymour Austin looked her +in the eyes longer than it is customary for ladies to have to submit to +keen inspection. + +'Will you come into the library?' he said. + +She went with him into the library. + +Was it to speak of his anxiousness as to the state of her father's +health that he had led her there, and that he held her hand? He alarmed +her, and he pacified her alarm, yet bade her reflect on the matter, +saying that her father, like other fathers, would be more at peace upon +the establishment of his daughter. Mr. Austin remarked that the colonel +was troubled. + +'Does he wish for my pledge never to marry without his approval? I will +give it,' said Cecilia. + +'He would like you to undertake to marry the man of his choice.' +Cecilia's features hung on an expression equivalent to:--I could almost +do that.' + +At the same time she felt it was not Seymour Austin's manner of +speaking. He seemed to be praising an unknown person--some gentleman who +was rough, but of solid promise and singular strength of character. + +The house-bell rang. Believing that Beauchamp had now come, she showed a +painful ridging of the brows, and Mr. Austin considerately mentioned the +name of the person he had in his mind. + +She readily agreed with him regarding Mr. Tuckham's excellent +qualities--if that was indeed the name; and she hastened to recollect +how little she had forgotten Mr. Tuckham's generosity to Beauchamp, and +confessed to herself it might as well have been forgotten utterly +for the thanks he had received. While revolving these ideas she was +listening to Mr. Austin; gradually she was beginning to understand that +she was parting company with her original conjectures, but going at +so swift a pace in so supple and sure a grasp, that, like the speeding +train slipped on new lines of rails by the pointsman, her hurrying +sensibility was not shocked, or the shock was imperceptible, when she +heard him proposing Mr. Tuckham to her for a husband, by her father's +authority, and with his own warm seconding. He had not dropped her +hand: he was very eloquent, a masterly advocate: he pleaded her father's +cause; it was not put to her as Mr. Tuckham's: her father had set his +heart on this union he was awaiting her decision. + +'Is it so urgent?' she asked. + +'It is urgent. It saves him from an annoyance. He requires a son-in-law +whom he can confidently rely on to manage the estates, which you are +woman of the world enough to know should be in strong hands. He gives +you to a man of settled principles. It is urgent, because he may wish to +be armed with your answer at any instant.' + +Her father entered the library. He embraced her, and 'Well?' he said. + +'I must think, papa, I must think.' + +She pressed her hand across her eyes. Disillusioned by Seymour Austin, +she was utterly defenceless before Beauchamp: and possibly Beauchamp +was in the house. She fancied he was, by the impatient brevity of her +father's voice. + +Seymour Austin and Colonel Halkett left the room, and Blackburn Tuckham +walked in, not the most entirely self-possessed of suitors, puffing +softly under his breath, and blinking eyes as rapidly as a skylark claps +wings on the ascent. + +Half an hour later Beauchamp appeared. He asked to see the colonel, +delivered himself of his pretensions and wishes to the colonel, and +was referred to Cecilia; but Colonel Halkett declined to send for her. +Beauchamp declined to postpone his proposal until the following day. He +went outside the house and walked up and down the grass-plot. + +Cecilia came to him at last. + +'I hear, Nevil, that you are waiting to speak to me.' + +'I've been waiting some weeks. Shall I speak here?' + +'Yes, here, quickly.' + +'Before the house? I have come to ask you for your hand.' + +'Mine? I cannot...' + +'Step into the park with me. I ask you to marry me.' + +'It is too late.' + + + + +CHAPTER XLVII. THE REFUSAL OF HIM + +Passing from one scene of excitement to another, Cecilia was perfectly +steeled for her bitter task; and having done that which separated her a +sphere's distance from Beauchamp, she was cold, inaccessible to the face +of him who had swayed her on flood and ebb so long, incapable of tender +pity, even for herself. All she could feel was a harsh joy to have +struck off her tyrant's fetters, with a determination to cherish it +passionately lest she should presently be hating herself: for the +shadow of such a possibility fell within the narrow circle of her strung +sensations. But for the moment her delusion reached to the idea that +she had escaped from him into freedom, when she said, 'It is too late.' +Those words were the sum and voice of her long term of endurance. She +said them hurriedly, almost in a whisper, in the manner of one changeing +a theme of conversation for subjects happier and livelier, though none +followed. + +The silence bore back on her a suspicion of a faint reproachfulness +in the words; and perhaps they carried a poetical tone, still more +distasteful. + +'You have been listening to tales of me,' said Beauchamp. + +'Nevil, we can always be friends, the best of friends.' + +'Were you astonished at my asking you for your hand? You said "mine?" as +if you wondered. You have known my feelings for you. Can you deny that? +I have reckoned on yours--too long?--But not falsely? No, hear me out. +The truth is, I cannot lose you. And don't look so resolute. Overlook +little wounds: I was never indifferent to you. How could I be--with eyes +in my head? The colonel is opposed to me of course: he will learn to +understand me better: but you and I! we cannot be mere friends. It's +like daylight blotted out--or the eyes gone blind:--Too late? Can you +repeat it? I tried to warn you before you left England: I should have +written a letter to put you on your guard against my enemies:--I find I +have some: but a letter is sure to stumble; I should have been obliged +to tell you that I do not stand on my defence; and I thought I should +see you the next day. You went: and not a word for me! You gave me no +chance. If you have no confidence in me I must bear it. I may say the +story is false. With your hand in mine I would swear it.' + +'Let it be forgotten,' said Cecilia, surprised and shaken to think that +her situation required further explanations; fascinated and unnerved by +simply hearing him. 'We are now--we are walking away from the house.' + +'Do you object to a walk with me?' + +They had crossed the garden plot and were at the gate of the park +leading to the Western wood. Beauchamp swung the gate open. He cast a +look at the clouds coming up from the South-west in folds of grey and +silver. + +'Like the day of our drive into Bevisham!--without the storm behind,' +he said, and doated on her soft shut lips, and the mild sun-rays of +her hair in sunless light. 'There are flowers that grow only in certain +valleys, and your home is Mount Laurels, whatever your fancy may be for +Italy. You colour the whole region for me. When you were absent, you +were here. I called here six times, and walked and talked with you.' + +Cecilia set her face to the garden. Her heart had entered on a course of +heavy thumping, like a sapper in the mine. + +Pain was not unwelcome to her, but this threatened weakness. + +What plain words could she use? If Mr. Tuckham had been away from the +house, she would have found it easier to speak of her engagement; +she knew not why. Or if the imperative communication could have been +delivered in Italian or French, she was as little able to say why it +should have slipped from her tongue without a critic shudder to arrest +it. She was cold enough to revolve the words: betrothed, affianced, +plighted: and reject them, pretty words as they are. Between the +vulgarity of romantic language, and the baldness of commonplace, it +seemed to her that our English gives us no choice; that we cannot be +dignified in simplicity. And for some reason, feminine and remote, she +now detested her 'hand' so much as to be unable to bring herself to the +metonymic mention of it. The lady's difficulty was peculiar to sweet +natures that have no great warmth of passion; it can only be indicated. +Like others of the kind, it is traceable to the most delicate of +sentiments, and to the flattest:--for Mr. Blackburn's Tuckham's figure +was (she thought of it with no personal objection) not of the graceful +order, neither cavalierly nor kingly: and imagining himself to say, 'I +am engaged,' and he suddenly appearing on the field, Cecilia's whole +mind was shocked in so marked a way did he contrast with Beauchamp. + +This was the effect of Beauchamp's latest words on her. He had disarmed +her anger. + +'We must have a walk to-day,' he said commandingly, but it had stolen +into him that he and she were not walking on the same bank of the river, +though they were side by side: a chill water ran between them. As in +other days, there hung her hand: but not to be taken. Incredible as it +was, the icy sense of his having lost her benumbed him. Her beautiful +face and beautiful tall figure, so familiar to him that they were like a +possession, protested in his favour while they snatched her from him all +the distance of the words 'too late.' + +'Will you not give me one half-hour?' + +'I am engaged,' Cecilia plunged and extricated herself, 'I am engaged to +walk with Mr. Austin and papa.' + +Beauchamp tossed his head. Something induced him to speak of Mr. +Tuckham. 'The colonel has discovered his Tory young man! It's an object +as incomprehensible to me as a Tory working-man. I suppose I must take +it that they exist. As for Blackburn Tuckham, I have nothing against +him. He's an honourable fellow enough, and would govern Great Britain as +men of that rich middle-class rule their wives--with a strict regard +for ostensible humanity and what the law allows them. His manners have +improved. Your cousin Mary seems to like him: it struck me when I saw +them together. Cecilia! one half-hour! You refuse me: you have not heard +me. You will not say too late.' + +'Nevil, I have said it finally. I have no longer the right to conceive +it unsaid.' + +'So we speak! It's the language of indolence, temper, faint hearts. +"Too late" has no meaning. Turn back with me to the park. I offer you my +whole heart; I love you. There's no woman living who could be to me the +wife you would be. I'm like your male nightingale that you told me of: +I must have my mate to sing to--that is, work for and live for; and she +must not delay too long. Did I? Pardon me if you think I did. You have +known I love you. I have been distracted by things that kept me from +thinking of myself and my wishes: and love's a selfish business while... +while one has work in hand. It's clear I can't do two things at a +time--make love and carry on my taskwork. I have been idle for weeks. +I believed you were mine and wanted no lovemaking. There's no folly +in that, if you understand me at all. As for vanity about women, I +'ve outlived it. In comparison with you I'm poor, I know:--you look +distressed, but one has to allude to it:--I admit that wealth would help +me. To see wealth supporting the cause of the people for once would--but +you say, too late! Well, I don't renounce you till I see you giving your +hand to a man who's not myself. You have been offended: groundlessly, on +my honour! You are the woman of all women in the world to hold me fast +in faith and pride in you. It's useless to look icy: you feel what I +say.' + +'Nevil, I feel grief, and beg you to cease. I am----It is-----' + +'"Too late" has not a rag of meaning, Cecilia! I love your name. I love +this too: this is mine, and no one can rob me of it.' + +He drew forth a golden locket and showed her a curl of her hair. + +Crimsoning, she said instantly: 'Language of the kind I used is open to +misconstruction, I fear. I have not even the right to listen to you. I +am ... You ask me for what I have it no longer in my power to give. I am +engaged.' + +The shot rang through him and partly stunned him; but incredulity made +a mocking effort to sustain him. The greater wounds do not immediately +convince us of our fate, though we may be conscious that we have been +hit. + +'Engaged in earnest?' said he. + +'Yes.' + +'Of your free will?' + +'Yes.' + +Her father stepped out on the terrace, from one of the open windows, +trailing a newspaper like a pocket-handkerchief. Cecilia threaded the +flower-beds to meet him. + +'Here's an accident to one of our ironclads,' he called to Beauchamp. + +'Lives lost, sir?' + +'No, thank heaven! but, upon my word, it's a warning. Read the telegram; +it's the Hastings. If these are our defences, at a cost of half a +million of money, each of them, the sooner we look to our land forces +the better.' + +'The Shop will not be considered safe!' said Beauchamp, taking in the +telegram at a glance. 'Peppel's a first-rate officer too: she couldn't +have had a better captain. Ship seriously damaged!' + +He handed back the paper to the colonel. + +Cecilia expected him to say that he had foreseen such an event. + +He said nothing; and with a singular contraction of the heart she +recollected how he had denounced our system of preparing mainly for +the defensive in war, on a day when they stood together in the park, +watching the slow passage of that very ship, the Hastings, along +the broad water, distant below them. The 'swarms of swift vessels of +attack,' she recollected particularly, and 'small wasps and rams under +mighty steam-power,' that he used to harp on when declaring that +England must be known for the assailant in war: she was to 'ray out' her +worrying fleets. 'The defensive is perilous policy in war': he had +said it. She recollected also her childish ridicule of his excess of +emphasis: he certainly had foresight.' + +Mr. Austin and Mr. Tuckham came strolling in conversation round the +house to the terrace. Beauchamp bowed to the former, nodded to the +latter, scrutinizing him after he had done so, as if the flash of a +thought were in his mind. Tuckham's radiant aspect possibly excited it: +'Congratulate me!' was the honest outcry of his face and frame. He +was as over-flowingly rosy as a victorious candidate at the hustings +commencing a speech. Cecilia laid her hand on an urn, in dread of the +next words from either of the persons present. Her father put an arm in +hers, and leaned on her. She gazed at her chamber window above, wishing +to be wafted thither to her seclusion within. The trembling limbs of +physical irresoluteness was a new experience to her. + +'Anything else in the paper, colonel? I've not seen it to-day,' said +Beauchamp, for the sake of speaking. + +'No, I don't think there's anything,' Colonel Halkett replied. 'Our +diplomatists haven't been shining much: that 's not our forte.' + +'No: it's our field for younger sons.' + +'Is it? Ah! There's an expedition against the hilltribes in India, +and we're such a peaceful nation, eh? We look as if we were in for a +complication with China.' + +'Well, sir, we must sell our opium.' + +'Of course we must. There's a man writing about surrendering Gibraltar!' + +'I'm afraid we can't do that.' + +'But where do you draw the line?' quoth Tuckham, very susceptible to +a sneer at the colonel, and entirely ignorant of the circumstances +attending Beauchamp's position before him. 'You defend the Chinaman; and +it's questionable if his case is as good as the Spaniard's.' + +'The Chinaman has a case against our traders. Gibraltar concerns our +imperial policy.' + +'As to the case against the English merchants, the Chinaman is for +shutting up his millions of acres of productive land, and the action of +commerce is merely a declaration of a universal public right, to which +all States must submit.' + +'Immorality brings its punishment, be sure of that. Some day we shall +have enough of China. As to the Rock, I know the argument; I may be +wrong. I've had the habit of regarding it as necessary to our naval +supremacy.' + +'Come! there we agree.' + +'I'm not so certain.' + +'The counter-argument, I call treason.' + +'Well,' said Beauchamp, 'there's a broad policy, and a narrow. There's +the Spanish view of the matter--if you are for peace and harmony and +disarmament.' + +'I'm not.' + +'Then strengthen your forces.' + +'Not a bit of it!' + +'Then bully the feeble and truckle to the strong; consent to be hated +till you have to stand your ground.' + +'Talk!' + +'It seems to me logical.' + +'That's the French notion--c'est lodgique!' + +Tuckham's pronunciation caused Cecilia to level her eyes at him +passingly. + +'By the way,' said Colonel Halkett, 'there are lots of horrors in the +paper to-day; wife kickings, and starvations--oh, dear me! and the +murder of a woman: two columns to that.' + +'That, the Tory reaction is responsible for!' said Tuckham, rather by +way of a joke than a challenge. + +Beauchamp accepted it as a challenge. Much to the benevolent amusement +of Mr. Austin and Colonel Halkett, he charged the responsibility of +every crime committed in the country, and every condition of misery, +upon the party which declined to move in advance, and which therefore +apologized for the perpetuation of knavery, villany, brutality, +injustice, and foul dealing. + +'Stick to your laws and systems and institutions, and so long as you +won't stir to amend them, I hold you accountable for that long newspaper +list daily.' + +He said this with a visible fire of conviction. + +Tuckham stood bursting at the monstrousness of such a statement. + +He condensed his indignant rejoinder to: 'Madness can't go farther!' + +'There's an idea in it,' said Mr. Austin. + +'It's an idea foaming at the mouth, then.' + +'Perhaps it has no worse fault than that of not marching parallel with +the truth,' said Mr. Austin, smiling. 'The party accusing in those terms +... what do you say, Captain Beauchamp?--supposing us to be pleading +before a tribunal?' + +Beauchamp admitted as much as that he had made the case gigantic, +though he stuck to his charge against the Tory party. And moreover: +the Tories-and the old Whigs, now Liberals, ranked under the heading +of Tories--those Tories possessing and representing the wealth of the +country, yet had not started one respectable journal that a lady could +read through without offence to her, or a gentleman without disgust! +If there was not one English newspaper in existence independent of +circulation and advertisements, and of the tricks to win them, the +Tories were answerable for the vacancy. They, being the rich who, if +they chose, could set an example to our Press by subscribing to maintain +a Journal superior to the flattering of vile appetites--'all that +nauseous matter,' Beauchamp stretched his fingers at the sheets Colonel +Halkett was holding, and which he had not read--'those Tories,' he bowed +to the colonel, 'I'm afraid I must say you, sir, are answerable for it.' + +'I am very well satisfied with my paper,' said the colonel. + +Beauchamp sighed to himself. 'We choose to be satisfied,' he said. His +pure and mighty DAWN was in his thoughts: the unborn light of a day +denied to earth! + +One of the doctors of Bevisham, visiting a sick maid of the house, +trotted up the terrace to make his report to her master of the state of +her health. He hoped to pull her through with the aid of high feeding. +He alluded cursorily to a young girl living on the outskirts of the +town, whom he had been called in to see at the eleventh hour, and had +lost, owing to the lowering of his patient from a prescription of a +vegetable diet by a certain Dr. Shrapnel. + +That ever-explosive name precipitated Beauchamp to the front rank of the +defence. + +'I happen to be staying with Dr. Shrapnel,' he observed. 'I don't +eat meat there because he doesn't, and I am certain I take no harm by +avoiding it. I think vegetarianism a humaner system, and hope it may be +wise. I should like to set the poor practising it, for their own sakes; +and I have half an opinion that it would be good for the rich--if we are +to condemn gluttony.' + +'Ah? Captain Beauchamp!' the doctor bowed to him. 'But my case was one +of poor blood requiring to be strengthened. The girl was allowed to sink +so low that stimulants were ineffective when I stepped in. There's the +point. It 's all very well while you are in health. You may do without +meat till your system demands the stimulant, or else--as with this poor +girl! And, indeed, Captain Beauchamp, if I may venture the remark--I had +the pleasure of seeing you during the last Election in our town--and if +I may be so bold, I should venture to hint that the avoidance of animal +food--to judge by appearances--has not been quite wholesome for you.' + +Eyes were turned on Beauchamp. + + + + +CHAPTER XLVIII. OF THE TRIAL AWAITING THE EARL OF ROMFREY + +Cecilia softly dropped her father's arm, and went into the house. The +exceeding pallor of Beauchamp's face haunted her in her room. She +heard the controversy proceeding below, and an exclamation of Blackburn +Tuckham's: 'Immorality of meat-eating? What nonsense are they up to +now?' + +Beauchamp was inaudible, save in a word or two. As usual, he was the +solitary minority. + +But how mournfully changed he was! She had not noticed it, agitated by +her own emotions as she had been, and at one time three parts frozen. He +was the ghost of the Nevil Beauchamp who had sprung on the deck of the +Esperanza out of Lieutenant Wilmore's boat, that sunny breezy day which +was the bright first chapter of her new life--of her late life, as it +seemed to her now, for she was dead to it, and another creature, the +coldest of the women of earth. She felt sensibly cold, coveted warmth, +flung a shawl on her shoulders, and sat in a corner of her room, hidden +and shivering beside the open window, till long after the gentlemen had +ceased to speak. + +How much he must have suffered of late! The room she had looked to as +a refuge from Nevil was now her stronghold against the man whom she had +incredibly accepted. She remained there, the victim of a heart malady, +under the term of headache. Feeling entrapped, she considered that she +must have been encircled and betrayed. She looked back on herself as a +giddy figure falling into a pit: and in the pit she lay. + +And how vile to have suspected of unfaithfulness and sordidness +the generous and stedfast man of earth! He never abandoned a common +friendship. His love of his country was love still, whatever the form it +had taken. His childlike reliance on effort and outspeaking, for which +men laughed at him, was beautiful. + +Where am I? she cried amid her melting images of him, all dominated by +his wan features. She was bound fast, imprisoned and a slave. Even Mr. +Austin had conspired against him: for only she read Nevil justly. His +defence of Dr. Shrapnel filled her with an envy that no longer maligned +the object of it, but was humble, and like the desire of the sick to +creep into sunshine. + +The only worthy thing she could think of doing was (it must be mentioned +for a revelation of her fallen state, and, moreover, she was not lusty +of health at the moment) to abjure meat. The body loathed it, and +consequently the mind of the invalided lady shrank away in horror of the +bleeding joints, and the increasingly fierce scramble of Christian souls +for the dismembered animals: she saw the innocent pasturing beasts, she +saw the act of slaughter. She had actually sweeping before her sight a +spectacle of the ludicrous-terrific, in the shape of an entire community +pursuing countless herds of poor scampering animal life for blood: she, +meanwhile, with Nevil and Dr. Shrapnel, stood apart contemning. For +whoso would not partake of flesh in this kingdom of roast beef must be +of the sparse number of Nevil's execrated minority in politics. + +The example will show that she touched the borders of delirium. +Physically, the doctor pronounces her bilious. She was in earnest so far +as to send down to the library for medical books, and books upon diet. +These, however, did not plead for the beasts. They treated the subject +without question of man's taking that which he has conquered. Poets and +philosophers did the same. Again she beheld Nevil Beauchamp solitary in +the adverse rank to the world;--to his countrymen especially. But that +it was no material cause which had wasted his cheeks and lined his +forehead, she was sure: and to starve with him, to embark with him in +his little boat on the seas he whipped to frenzy, would have been a +dream of bliss, had she dared to contemplate herself in a dream as his +companion. + +It was not to be thought of. + +No: but this was, and to be thought of seriously: Cecilia had said to +herself for consolation that Beauchamp was no spiritual guide; he had +her heart within her to plead for him, and the reflection came to her, +like a bubble up from the heart, that most of our spiritual guides +neglect the root to trim the flower: and thence, turning sharply on +herself, she obtained a sudden view of her allurement and her sin +in worshipping herself, and recognized that the aim at an ideal life +closely approaches, or easily inclines, to self-worship; to which the +lady was woman and artist enough to have had no objection, but that +therein visibly she discerned the retributive vain longings, in the +guise of high individual superiority and distinction, that had thwarted +her with Nevil Beauchamp, never permitting her to love single-mindedly +or whole-heartedly, but always in reclaiming her rights and sighing +for the loss of her ideal; adoring her own image, in fact, when she +pretended to cherish, and regret that she could not sufficiently +cherish, the finer elements of nature. What was this ideal she had +complained of losing? It was a broken mirror: she could think of it in +no other form. + +Dr. Shrapnel's 'Ego-Ego' yelped and gave chase to her through the pure +beatitudes of her earlier days down to her present regrets. It hunted +all the saints in the calendar till their haloes top-sided on their +heads-her favourite St. Francis of Assisi excepted. + +The doctor was called up from Bevisham next day, and pronounced her +bilious. He was humorous over Captain Beauchamp, who had gone to the +parents of the dead girl, and gathered the information that they were +a consumptive family, to vindicate Dr. Shrapnel. 'The very family to +require strong nourishment,' said the doctor. + +Cecilia did not rest in her sick-room before, hunting through one book +and another, she had found arguments on the contrary side; a waste of +labour that heaped oppression on her chest, as with the world's weight. +Apparently one had only to be in Beauchamp's track to experience +that. She horrified her father by asking questions about consumption. +Homoeopathy, hydropathy,--the revolutionaries of medicine attracted +her. Blackburn Tuckham, a model for an elected lover who is not beloved, +promised to procure all sorts of treatises for her: no man could have +been so deferential to a diseased mind. Beyond calling her by her +Christian name, he did nothing to distress her with the broad aspect +of their new relations together. He and Mr. Austin departed from +Mount Laurels, leaving her to sink into an agreeable stupor, like one +deposited on a mudbank after buffeting the waves. She learnt that her +father had seen Captain Baskelett, and remembered, marvelling, how her +personal dread of an interview, that threatened to compromise her ideal +of her feminine and peculiar dignity, had assisted to precipitate her +where she now lay helpless, almost inanimate. + +She was unaware of the passage of time save when her father spoke of +a marriage-day. It told her that she lived and was moving. The fear +of death is not stronger in us, nor the desire to put it off, than +Cecilia's shunning of such a day. The naming of it numbed her blood like +a snakebite. Yet she openly acknowledged her engagement; and, happily +for Tuckham, his visits, both in London and at Mount Laurels, were few +and short, and he inflicted no foretaste of her coming subjection to him +to alarm her. + +Under her air of calm abstraction she watched him rigorously for some +sign of his ownership that should tempt her to revolt from her pledge, +or at least dream of breaking loose: the dream would have sufficed. +He was never intrusive, never pressing. He did not vex, because he +absolutely trusted to the noble loyalty which made her admit to herself +that she belonged irrevocably to him, while her thoughts were upon +Beauchamp. With a respectful gravity he submitted to her perusal a +collection of treatises on diet, classed pro and con., and paged and +pencil-marked to simplify her study of the question. They sketched in +company; she played music to him, he read poetry to her, and read +it well. He seemed to feel the beauty of it sensitively, as she did +critically. In other days the positions had been reversed. He invariably +talked of Beauchamp with kindness, deploring only that he should be +squandering his money on workmen's halls and other hazy projects down in +Bevisham. + +'Lydiard tells me he has a very sound idea of the value of money, +and has actually made money by cattle breeding; but he has flung ten +thousand pounds on a single building outside the town, and he'll have +to endow it to support it--a Club to educate Radicals. The fact is, he +wants to jam the business of two or three centuries into a life-time. +These men of their so-called progress are like the majority of religious +minds: they can't believe without seeing and touching. That is to say, +they don't believe in the abstract at all, but they go to work blindly +by agitating, and proselytizing, and persecuting to get together a mass +they can believe in. You see it in their way of arguing; it's half +done with the fist. Lydiard tells me he left him last in a horrible +despondency about progress. Ha! ha! Beauchamp's no Radical. He hasn't +forgiven the Countess of Romfrey for marrying above her rank. He may +be a bit of a Republican: but really in this country Republicans are +fighting with the shadow of an old hat and a cockhorse. I beg to state +that I have a reverence for constituted authority: I speak of what those +fellows are contending with.' + +'Right,' said Colonel Halkett. 'But "the shadow of an old hat and a +cockhorse": what does that mean?' + +'That's what our Republicans are hitting at, sir.' + +'Ah! so; yes,' quoth the colonel. 'And I say this to Nevil Beauchamp, +that what we've grown up well with, powerfully with, it's base +ingratitude and dangerous folly to throw over.' + +He blamed Beauchamp for ingratitude to the countess, who had, he +affirmed of his own knowledge, married Lord Romfrey to protect +Beauchamp's interests. + +A curious comment on this allegation was furnished by the announcement +of the earl's expectations of a son and heir. The earl wrote to Colonel +Halkett from Romfrey Castle inviting him to come and spend some time +there. + +'Now, that's brave news!' the colonel exclaimed. + +He proposed a cruise round by the Cornish coast to the Severn, and so to +Romfrey Castle, to squeeze the old lord's hand and congratulate him with +all his heart. Cecilia was glad to acquiesce, for an expedition of any +description was a lull in the storm that hummed about her ears in the +peace of home, where her father would perpetually speak of the day to +be fixed. Sailing the sea on a cruise was like the gazing at wonderful +colours of a Western sky: an oblivion of earthly dates and obligations. +What mattered it that there were gales in August? She loved the sea, and +the stinging salt spray, and circling gull and plunging gannet, the +sun on the waves, and the torn cloud. The revelling libertine open sea +wedded her to Beauchamp in that veiled cold spiritual manner she could +muse on as a circumstance out of her life. + +Fair companies of racing yachts were left behind. The gales of August +mattered frightfully to poor Blackburn Tuckham, who was to be dropped +at a town in South Wales, and descended greenish to his cabin as soon +as they had crashed on the first wall-waves of the chalk-race, a throw +beyond the peaked cliffs edged with cormorants, and were really tasting +sea. Cecilia reclined on deck, wrapped in shawl and waterproof. As the +Alpine climber claims the upper air, she had the wild sea to herself +through her love of it; quite to herself. It was delicious to look round +and ahead, and the perturbation was just enough to preserve her from +thoughts too deep inward in a scene where the ghost of Nevil was abroad. + +The hard dry gale increased. Her father, stretched beside her, drew her +attention to a small cutter under double-reefed main-sail and small jib +on the Esperanza's weather bow--a gallant boat carefully handled. She +watched it with some anxiety, but the Esperanza was bound for a Devon +bay, and bore away from the black Dorsetshire headland, leaving the +little cutter to run into haven if she pleased. The passing her was no +event.--In a representation of the common events befalling us in these +times, upon an appreciation of which this history depends, one turns at +whiles a languishing glance toward the vast potential mood, pluperfect +tense. For Nevil Beauchamp was on board the cutter, steering her, with +Dr. Shrapnel and Lydiard in the well, and if an accident had happened to +cutter or schooner, what else might not have happened? Cecilia gathered +it from Mrs. Wardour-Devereux, whom, to her surprise and pleasure, she +found at Romfrey Castle. Her friend Louise received a letter from Mr. +Lydiard, containing a literary amateur seaman's log of a cruise of a +fifteen-ton cutter in a gale, and a pure literary sketch of Beauchamp +standing drenched at the helm from five in the morning up to nine at +night, munching a biscuit for nourishment. The beautiful widow prepared +the way for what was very soon to be publicly known concerning herself +by reading out this passage of her correspondent's letter in the +breakfast room. + +'Yes, the fellow's a sailor!' said Lord Romfrey. + +The countess rose from her chair and walked out. + +'Now, was that abuse of the fellow?' the old lord asked Colonel Halkett. +'I said he was a sailor, I said nothing else. He is a sailor, and he's +fit for nothing else, and no ship will he get unless he bends his neck +never 's nearer it.' + +He hesitated a moment, and went after his wife. + +Cecilia sat with the countess, in the afternoon, at a window overlooking +the swelling woods of Romfrey. She praised the loveliness of the view. + +'It is fire to me,' said Rosamund. + +Cecilia looked at her, startled. Rosamund said no more. + +She was an excellent hostess, nevertheless, unpretending and simple in +company; and only when it chanced that Beauchamp's name was mentioned +did she cast that quick supplicating nervous glance at the earl, with +a shadow of an elevation of her shoulders, as if in apprehension of +mordant pain. + +We will make no mystery about it. I would I could. Those happy tales of +mystery are as much my envy as the popular narratives of the deeds +of bread and cheese people, for they both create a tide-way in the +attentive mind; the mysterious pricking our credulous flesh to creep, +the familiar urging our obese imagination to constitutional exercise. +And oh, the refreshment there is in dealing with characters either +contemptibly beneath us or supernaturally above! My way is like a Rhone +island in the summer drought, stony, unattractive and difficult between +the two forceful streams of the unreal and the over-real, which delight +mankind--honour to the conjurors! My people conquer nothing, win none; +they are actual, yet uncommon. It is the clock-work of the brain that +they are directed to set in motion, and--poor troop of actors to vacant +benches!--the conscience residing in thoughtfulness which they would +appeal to; and if you are there impervious to them, we are lost: back I +go to my wilderness, where, as you perceive, I have contracted the habit +of listening to my own voice more than is good: The burden of a child in +her bosom had come upon Rosamund with the visage of the Angel of Death +fronting her in her path. She believed that she would die; but like much +that we call belief, there was a kernel of doubt in it, which was lively +when her frame was enlivened, and she then thought of the giving birth +to this unloved child, which was to disinherit the man she loved, in +whose interest solely (so she could presume to think, because it had +been her motive reason) she had married the earl. She had no wish to be +a mother; but that prospect, and the dread attaching to it at her time +of life, she could have submitted to for Lord Romfrey's sake. It struck +her like a scoffer's blow that she, the one woman on earth loving Nevil, +should have become the instrument for dispossessing him. The revulsion +of her feelings enlightened her so far as to suggest, without enabling +her to fathom him, that instead of having cleverly swayed Lord Romfrey, +she had been his dupe, or a blind accomplice; and though she was too +humane a woman to think of punishing him, she had so much to forgive +that the trifles daily and at any instant added to the load, flushed +her resentment, like fresh lights showing new features and gigantic +outlines. Nevil's loss of Cecilia she had anticipated; she had heard of +it when she was lying in physical and mental apathy at Steynham. Lord +Romfrey had repeated to her the nature of his replies to the searching +parental questions of Colonel Halkett, and having foreseen it all, +and what was more, foretold it, she was not aroused from her torpor. +Latterly, with the return of her natural strength, she had shown herself +incapable of hearing her husband speak of Nevil; nor was the earl tardy +in taking the hint to spare the mother of his child allusions that +vexed her. Now and then they occurred perforce. The presence of Cecilia +exasperated Rosamund's peculiar sensitiveness. It required Louise +Wardour-Devereux's apologies and interpretations to account for what +appeared to Cecilia strangely ill-conditioned, if not insane, in Lady +Romfrey's behaviour. The most astonishing thing to hear was, that Lady +Romfrey had paid Mrs. Devereux a visit at her Surrey house unexpectedly +one Sunday in the London season, for the purpose, as it became evident, +of meeting Mr. Blackburn Tuckham: and how she could have known that Mr. +Tuckham would be there, Mrs. Devereux could not tell, for it was, Louise +assured Cecilia, purely by chance that he and Mr. Lydiard were present: +but the countess obtained an interview with him alone, and Mr. Tuckham +came from it declaring it to have been more terrible than any he had +ever been called upon to endure. The object of the countess was to +persuade him to renounce his bride. + +Louise replied to the natural inquiry--'Upon what plea?' with a +significant evasiveness. She put her arms round Cecilia's neck: 'I trust +you are not unhappy. You will get no release from him.' + +'I am not unhappy,' said Cecilia, musically clear to convince her +friend. + +She was indeed glad to feel the stout chains of her anchor restraining +her when Lady Romfrey talked of Nevil; they were like the safety of +marriage without the dreaded ceremony, and with solitude to let her +weep. Bound thus to a weaker man than Blackburn Tuckham, though he had +been more warmly esteemed, her fancy would have drifted away over +the deeps, perhaps her cherished loyalty would have drowned in her +tears--for Lady Romfrey tasked it very severely: but he from whom she +could hope for no release, gave her some of the firmness which her +nature craved in this trial. + +From saying quietly to her: 'I thought once you loved him,' when +alluding to Nevil, Lady Romfrey passed to mournful exclamations, and by +degrees on to direct entreaties. She related the whole story of Renee +in England, and appeared distressed with a desperate wonderment at +Cecilia's mildness after hearing it. Her hearer would have imagined that +she had no moral sense, if it had not been so perceptible that the +poor lady's mind was distempered on the one subject of Nevil Beauchamp. +Cecilia's high conception of duty, wherein she was a peerless flower of +our English civilization, was incommunicable: she could practise, not +explain it. She bowed to Lady Romfrey's praises of Nevil, suffered her +hands to be wrung, her heart to be touched, all but an avowal of her +love of him to be wrested from her, and not the less did she retain her +cold resolution to marry to please her father and fulfil her pledge. In +truth, it was too late to speak of Renee to her now. It did not beseem +Cecilia to remember that she had ever been a victim of jealousy; and +while confessing to many errors, because she felt them, and gained a +necessary strength from them--in the comfort of the consciousness of +pain, for example, which she sorely needed, that the pain in her own +breast might deaden her to Nevil's jealousy, the meanest of the errors +of a lofty soul, yielded no extract beyond the bare humiliation +proper to an acknowledgement that it had existed: so she discarded the +recollection of the passion which had wrought the mischief. Since we +cannot have a peerless flower of civilization without artificial aid, it +may be understood how it was that Cecilia could extinguish some lights +in her mind and kindle others, and wherefore what it was not natural for +her to do, she did. She had, briefly, a certain control of herself. + +Our common readings in the fictitious romances which mark out a plot and +measure their characters to fit into it, had made Rosamund hopeful of +the effect of that story of Renee. A wooden young woman, or a galvanized +(sweet to the writer, either of them, as to the reader--so moveable +they are!) would have seen her business at this point, and have glided +melting to reconciliation and the chamber where romantic fiction ends +joyously. Rosamund had counted on it. + +She looked intently at Cecilia. 'He is ruined, wasted, ill, unloved; he +has lost you--I am the cause!' she cried in a convulsion of grief. + +'Dear Lady Romfrey!' Cecilia would have consoled her. 'There is nothing +to lead us to suppose that Nevil is unwell, and you are not to blame for +anything: how can you be?' + +'I spoke falsely of Dr. Shrapnel; I am the cause. It lies on me! it +pursues me. Let me give to the poor as I may, and feel for the poor, as +I do, to get nearer to Nevil--I cannot have peace! His heart has turned +from me. He despises me. If I had spoken to Lord Romfrey at Steynham, +as he commanded me, you and he--Oh! cowardice: he is right, cowardice is +the chief evil in the world. He is ill; he is desperately ill; he will +die.' + +'Have you heard he is very ill, Lady Romfrey?' + +'No! no!' Rosamund exclaimed; 'it is by not hearing that I know it!' + +With the assistance of Louise Devereux, Cecilia gradually awakened to +what was going on in the house. There had been a correspondence between +Miss Denham and the countess. Letters from Bevisham had suddenly ceased. +Presumably the earl had stopped them: and if so it must have been for a +tragic reason. + +Cecilia hinted some blame of Lord Romfrey to her father. + +He pressed her hand and said: 'You don't know what that man suffers. +Romfrey is fond of Nevil too, but he must guard his wife; and the fact +is Nevil is down with fever. It 's in the papers now; he may be able to +conceal it, and I hope he will. There'll be a crisis, and then he can +tell her good news--a little illness and all right now! Of course,' +the colonel continued buoyantly, 'Nevil will recover; he's a tough wiry +young fellow, but poor Romfrey's fears are natural enough about the +countess. Her mind seems to be haunted by the doctor there--Shrapnel, I +mean; and she's exciteable to a degree that threatens the worst--in case +of any accident in Bevisham.' + +'Is it not a kind of cowardice to conceal it?' Cecilia suggested. + +'It saves her from fretting,' said the colonel. + +'But she is fretting! If Lord Romfrey would confide in her and trust to +her courage, papa, it would be best.' + +Colonel Halkett thought that Lord Romfrey was the judge. + +Cecilia wished to leave a place where this visible torture of a human +soul was proceeding, and to no purpose. She pointed out to her father, +by a variety of signs, that Lady Romfrey either knew or suspected the +state of affairs in Bevisham, and repeated her remarks upon Nevil's +illness. But Colonel Halkett was restrained from departing by the earl's +constant request to him to stay. Old friendship demanded it of him. He +began to share his daughter's feelings at the sight of Lady Romfrey. She +was outwardly patient and submissive; by nature she was a strong healthy +woman; and she attended to all her husband's prescriptions for the +regulating of her habits, walked with him, lay down for the afternoon's +rest, appeared amused when he laboured to that effect, and did her +utmost to subdue the worm devouring her heart but the hours of the +delivery of the letter-post were fatal to her. Her woeful: 'No letter +for me!' was piteous. When that was heard no longer, her silence and +famished gaze chilled Cecilia. At night Rosamund eyed her husband +expressionlessly, with her head leaning back in her chair, to the sorrow +of the ladies beholding her. Ultimately the contagion of her settled +misery took hold of Cecilia. Colonel Halkett was induced by his daughter +and Mrs. Devereux to endeavour to combat a system that threatened +consequences worse than those it was planned to avert. He by this time +was aware of the serious character of the malady which had prostrated +Nevil. Lord Romfrey had directed his own medical man to go down to +Bevisham, and Dr. Gannet's report of Nevil was grave. The colonel made +light of it to his daughter, after the fashion he condemned in Lord +Romfrey, to whom however he spoke earnestly of the necessity for +partially taking his wife into his confidence to the extent of letting +her know that a slight fever was running its course with Nevil. + +'There will be no slight fever in my wife's blood,' said the earl. 'I +stand to weather the cape or run to wreck, and it won't do to be taking +in reefs on a lee-shore. You don't see what frets her, colonel. For +years she has been bent on Nevil's marriage. It's off: but if you +catch Cecilia by the hand and bring her to us--I swear she loves the +fellow!--that's the medicine for my wife. Say: will you do it? Tell Lady +Romfrey it shall be done. We shall stand upright again!' + +'I'm afraid that's impossible, Romfrey,' said the colonel. + +'Play at it, then! Let her think it. You're helping me treat an invalid. +Colonel! my old friend! You save my house and name if you do that. It's +a hand round a candle in a burst of wind. There's Nevil dragged by +a woman into one of their reeking hovels--so that Miss Denham at +Shrapnel's writes to Lady Romfrey--because the woman's drunken husband +voted for him at the Election, and was kicked out of employment, and +fell upon the gin-bottle, and the brats of the den died starving, and +the man sickened of a fever; and Nevil goes in and sits with him! Out of +that tangle of folly is my house to be struck down? It looks as if +the fellow with his infernal "humanity," were the bad genius of an old +nurse's tale. He's a good fellow, colonel, he means well. This fever +will cure him, they say it sobers like bloodletting. He's a gallant +fellow; you know that. He fought to the skeleton in our last big war. +On my soul, I believe he's good for a husband. Frenchwoman or not, that +affair's over. He shall have Steynham and Holdesbury. Can I say more? +Now, colonel, you go in to the countess. Grasp my hand. Give me that +help, and God bless you! You light up my old days. She's a noble woman: +I would not change her against the best in the land. She has this craze +about Nevil. I suppose she'll never get over it. But there it is: and we +must feed her with the spoon.' + +Colonel Halkett argued stutteringly with the powerful man: 'It's the +truth she ought to hear, Romfrey; indeed it is, if you 'll believe me. +It 's his life she is fearing for. She knows half.' + +'She knows positively nothing, colonel. Miss Denham's first letter +spoke of the fellow's having headaches, and staggering. He was out on +a cruise, and saw your schooner pass, and put into some port, and began +falling right and left, and they got him back to Shrapnel's: and here +it is--that if you go to him you'll save him, and if you go to my wife +you'll save her: and there you have it: and I ask my old friend, I beg +him to go to them both.' + +'But you can't surely expect me to force my daughter's inclinations, my +dear Romfrey?' + +'Cecilia loves the fellow!' + +'She is engaged to Mr. Tuckham.' + +'I'll see the man Tuckham.' + +'Really, my dear lord!' + +'Play at it, Halkett, play at it! Tide us over this! Talk to her: hint +it and nod it. We have to round November. I could strangle the world +till that month's past. You'll own,' he added mildly after his thunder, +'I'm not much of the despot Nevil calls me. She has not a wish I don't +supply. I'm at her beck, and everything that's mine. She's a brave good +woman. I don't complain. I run my chance. But if we lose the child--good +night! Boy or girl!--boy!' + +Lord Romfrey flung an arm up. The child of his old age lived for him +already: he gave it all the life he had. This miracle, this young son +springing up on an earth decaying and dark, absorbed him. This reviver +of his ancient line must not be lost. Perish every consideration to +avert it! He was ready to fear, love, or hate terribly, according to the +prospects of his child. + +Colonel Halkett was obliged to enter into a consultation, of a shadowy +sort, with his daughter, whose only advice was that they should leave +the castle. The penetrable gloom there, and the growing apprehension +concerning the countess and Nevil, tore her to pieces. Even if she could +have conspired with the earl to hoodwink his wife, her strong sense told +her it would be fruitless, besides base. Father and daughter had to make +the stand against Lord Romfrey. He saw their departure from the castle +gates, and kissed his hand to Cecilia, courteously, without a smile. + +'He may well praise the countess, papa,' said Cecilia, while they were +looking back at the castle and the moveless flag that hung in folds by +the mast above it. 'She has given me her promise to avoid questioning +him and to accept his view of her duty. She said to me that if Nevil +should die she...' + +Cecilia herself broke down, and gave way to sobs in her father's arms. + + + + +CHAPTER XLIX. A FABRIC OF BARONIAL DESPOTISM CRUMBLE + +The earl's precautions did duty night and day in all the avenues leading +to the castle and his wife's apartments; and he could believe that he +had undertaken as good a defence as the mountain guarding the fertile +vale from storms: but him the elements pelted heavily. Letters from +acquaintances of Nevil, from old shipmates and from queer political +admirers and opponents, hailed on him; things not to be frigidly read +were related of the fellow. + +Lord Romfrey's faith in the power of constitution to beat disease +battled sturdily with the daily reports of his physician and friends, +whom he had directed to visit the cottage on the common outside +Bevisham, and with Miss Denham's intercepted letters to the countess. +Still he had to calculate on the various injuries Nevil had done to his +constitution, which had made of him another sort of man for a struggle +of life and death than when he stood like a riddled flag through the +war. That latest freak of the fellow's, the abandonment of our natural +and wholesome sustenance in animal food, was to be taken in the +reckoning. Dr. Gannet did not allude to it; the Bevisham doctor did; and +the earl meditated with a fury of wrath on the dismal chance that such +a folly as this of one old vegetable idiot influencing a younger noodle, +might strike his House to the dust. + +His watch over his wife had grown mechanical: he failed to observe that +her voice was missing. She rarely spoke. He lost the art of observing +himself: the wrinkling up and dropping of his brows became his habitual +language. So long as he had not to meet inquiries or face tears, he +enjoyed the sense of security. He never quitted his wife save to walk to +the Southern park lodge, where letters and telegrams were piled awaiting +him; and she was forbidden to take the air on the castle terrace without +his being beside her, lest a whisper, some accident of the kind that +donkeys who nod over their drowsy nose-length-ahead precautions call +fatality, should rouse her to suspect, and in a turn of the hand undo +his labour: for the race was getting terrible: Death had not yet stepped +out of that evil chamber in Dr. Shrapnel's cottage to aim his javelin at +the bosom containing the prized young life to come, but, like the smoke +of waxing fire, he shadowed forth his presence in wreaths blacker and +thicker day by day: and Everard Romfrey knew that the hideous beast of +darkness had only to spring up and pass his guard to deal a blow to his +House the direr from all he supposed himself to have gained by masking +it hitherto. The young life he looked to for renewal swallowed him: +he partly lost human feeling for his wife in the tremendous watch and +strain to hurry her as a vessel round the dangerous headland. He was +oblivious that his eyebrows talked, that his head was bent low, that his +mouth was shut, and that where a doubt had been sown, silence and such +signs are like revelations in black night to the spirit of a woman who +loves. + +One morning after breakfast Rosamund hung on his arm, eyeing him neither +questioningly nor invitingly, but long. He kissed her forehead. She +clung to him and closed her eyes, showing him a face of slumber, like a +mask of the dead. + +Mrs. Devereux was present. Cecilia had entreated her to stay with Lady +Romfrey. She stole away, for the time had come which any close observer +of the countess must have expected. + +The earl lifted his wife, and carried her to her sitting-room. A sunless +weltering September day whipped the window-panes and brought the roar +of the beaten woods to her ears. He was booted and gaitered for his +customary walk to the park lodge, and as he bent a knee beside her, she +murmured: 'Don't wait; return soon.' + +He placed a cord attached to the bellrope within her reach. This utter +love of Nevil Beauchamp was beyond his comprehension, but there it was, +and he had to submit to it and manoeuvre. His letters and telegrams +told the daily tale. 'He's better,' said the earl, preparing himself to +answer what his wife's look had warned him would come. + +She was an image of peace, in the same posture on the couch where he had +left her, when he returned. She did not open her eyes, but felt about +for his hand, and touching it, she seemed to weigh the fingers. + +At last she said: 'The fever should be at its height.' + +'Why, my dear brave girl, what ails you?' said he. + +'Ignorance.' + +She raised her eyelids. His head was bent down over her, like a raven's +watching, a picture of gravest vigilance. + +Her bosom rose and sank. 'What has Miss Denham written to-day?' + +'To-day?' he asked her gently. + +'I shall bear it,' she answered. 'You were my master before you were my +husband. I bear anything you think is good for my government. Only, my +ignorance is fever; I share Nevil's.' + +'Have you been to my desk at all?' + +'No. I read your eyes and your hands: I have been living on them. To-day +I find that I have not gained by it, as I hoped I should. Ignorance +kills me. I really have courage to bear to hear just at this moment I +have.' + +'There's no bad news, my love,' said the earl. + +'High fever, is it?' + +'The usual fever. Gannet's with him. I sent for Gannet to go there, to +satisfy you.' + +'Nevil is not dead?' + +'Lord! ma'am, my dear soul!' + +'He is alive?' + +'Quite: certainly alive; as much alive as I am; only going a little +faster, as fellows do in the jumps of a fever. The best doctor in +England is by his bed. He 's doing fairly. You should have let me know +you were fretting, my Rosamund.' + +'I did not wish to tempt you to lie, my dear lord.' + +'Well, there are times when a woman... as you are: but you're a brave +woman, a strong heart, and my wife. You want some one to sit with you, +don't you? Louise Devereux is a pleasant person, but you want a man +to amuse you. I'd have sent to Stukely, but you want a serious man, I +fancy.' + +So much had the earl been thrown out of his plan for protecting his +wife, that he felt helpless, and hinted at the aids and comforts of +religion. He had not rejected the official Church, and regarding it now +as in alliance with great Houses, he considered that its ministers might +also be useful to the troubled women of noble families. He offered, if +she pleased, to call in the rector to sit with her--the bishop of the +diocese, if she liked. + +'But just as you like, my love,' he added. 'You know you have to avoid +fretting. I've heard my sisters talk of the parson doing them good off +and on about the time of their being brought to bed. He elevated their +minds, they said. I'm sure I've no objection. If he can doctor the minds +of women he's got a profession worth something.' + +Rosamund smothered an outcry. 'You mean that Nevil is past hope!' + +'Not if he's got a fair half of our blood in him. And Richard Beauchamp +gave the fellow good stock. He has about the best blood in England. +That's not saying much when they've taken to breed as they build--stuff +to keep the plasterers at work; devil a thought of posterity!' + +'There I see you and Nevil one, my dear lord,' said Rosamund. 'You think +of those that are to follow us. Talk to me of him. Do not say, "the +fellow." Say "Nevil." No, no; call him "the fellow." He was alive and +well when you used to say it. But smile kindly, as if he made you love +him down in your heart, in spite of you. We have both known that love, +and that opposition to him; not liking his ideas, yet liking him so: we +were obliged to laugh--I have seen you! as love does laugh! If I am not +crying over his grave, Everard? Oh!' + +The earl smoothed her forehead. All her suspicions were rekindled. +'Truth! truth! give me truth. Let me know what world I am in.' + +'My dear, a ship's not lost because she's caught in a squall; nor a man +buffeting the waves for an hour. He's all right: he keeps up.' + +'He is delirious? I ask you--I have fancied I heard him.' + +Lord Romfrey puffed from his nostrils: but in affecting to blow to the +winds her foolish woman's wildness of fancy, his mind rested on Nevil, +and he said: 'Poor boy! It seems he's chattering hundreds to the +minute.' + +His wife's looks alarmed him after he had said it, and he was for toning +it and modifying it, when she gasped to him to help her to her feet; +and standing up, she exclaimed: 'O heaven! now I hear you; now I know he +lives. See how much better it is for me to know the real truth. It takes +me to his bedside. Ignorance and suspense have been poison. I have been +washed about like a dead body. Let me read all my letters now. Nothing +will harm me now. You will do your best for me, my husband, will you +not?' She tore at her dress at her throat for coolness, panting and +smiling. 'For me--us--yours--ours! Give me my letters, lunch with me, +and start for Bevisham. Now you see how good it is for me to hear the +very truth, you will give me your own report, and I shall absolutely +trust in it, and go down with it if it's false! But you see I am +perfectly strong for the truth. It must be you or I to go. I burn to go; +but your going will satisfy me. If you look on him, I look. I feel as if +I had been nailed down in a coffin, and have got fresh air. I pledge you +my word, sir, my honour, my dear husband, that I will think first of my +duty. I know it would be Nevil's wish. He has not quite forgiven me--he +thought me ambitious--ah! stop: he said that the birth of our child +would give him greater happiness than he had known for years: he begged +me to persuade you to call a boy Nevil Beauchamp, and a girl Renee. He +has never believed in his own long living.' + +Rosamund refreshed her lord's heart by smiling archly as she said: 'The +boy to be educated to take the side of the people, of course! The girl +is to learn a profession.' + +'Ha! bless the fellow!' Lord Romfrey interjected. 'Well, I might go +there for an hour. Promise me, no fretting! You have hollows in your +cheeks, and your underlip hangs: I don't like it. I haven't seen that +before.' + +'We do not see clearly when we are trying to deceive,' said Rosamund. +'My letters! my letters!' + +Lord Romfrey went to fetch them. They were intact in his desk. His wife, +then, had actually been reading the facts through a wall! For he was +convinced of Mrs. Devereux's fidelity, as well as of the colonel's and +Cecilia's. He was not a man to be disobeyed: nor was his wife the woman +to court or to acquiesce in trifling acts of disobedience to him. He +received the impression, consequently, that this matter of the visit to +Nevil was one in which the poor loving soul might be allowed to guide +him, singular as the intensity of her love of Nevil Beauchamp was, +considering that they were not of kindred blood. + +He endeavoured to tone her mind for the sadder items in Miss Denham's +letters. + +'Oh!' said Rosamund, 'what if I shed the "screaming eyedrops," as you +call them? They will not hurt me, but relieve. I was sure I should +someday envy that girl! If he dies she will have nursed him and had the +last of him.' + +'He's not going to die!' said Everard powerfully. + +'We must be prepared. These letters will do that for me. I have written +out the hours of your trains. Stanton will attend on you. I have +directed him to telegraph to the Dolphin in Bevisham for rooms for the +night: that is to-morrow night. To-night you sleep at your hotel in +London, which will be ready to receive you, and is more comfortable than +the empty house. Stanton takes wine, madeira and claret, and other small +necessaries. If Nevil should be very unwell, you will not leave him +immediately. I shall look to the supplies. You will telegraph to me +twice a day, and write once. We lunch at half-past twelve, so that you +may hit the twenty-minutes-to-two o'clock train. And now I go to see +that the packing is done.' + +She carried off her letters to her bedroom, where she fell upon the bed, +shutting her eyelids hard before she could suffer her eyes to be the +intermediaries of that fever-chamber in Bevisham and her bursting heart. +But she had not positively deceived her husband in the reassurance she +had given him by her collectedness and by the precise directions she had +issued for his comforts, indicating a mind so much more at ease. She was +firmer to meet the peril of her beloved: and being indeed, when thrown +on her internal resources, one among the brave women of earth, though +also one who required a lift from circumstances to take her stand calmly +fronting a menace to her heart, she saw the evidence of her influence +with Lord Romfrey: the level she could feel that they were on together +so long as she was courageous, inspirited her sovereignly. + +He departed at the hour settled for him. Rosamund sat at her boudoir +window, watching the carriage that was conducting him to the railway +station. Neither of them had touched on the necessity of his presenting +himself at the door of Dr. Shrapnel's house. That, and the disgust +belonging to it, was a secondary consideration with Lord Romfrey, +after he had once resolved on it as the right thing to do: and his wife +admired and respected him for so supreme a loftiness. And fervently she +prayed that it might not be her evil fate to disappoint his hopes. Never +had she experienced so strong a sense of devotedness to him as when she +saw the carriage winding past the middle oak-wood of the park, under a +wet sky brightened from the West, and on out of sight. + + + + +CHAPTER L. AT THE COTTAGE ON THE COMMON + +Rain went with Lord Romfrey in a pursuing cloud all the way to +Bevisham, and across the common to the long garden and plain little +green-shuttered, neat white cottage of Dr. Shrapnel. Carriages were +driving from the door; idle men with hands deep in their pockets hung +near it, some women pointing their shoulders under wet shawls, and boys. +The earl was on foot. With no sign of discomposure, he stood at the +half-open door and sent in his card, bearing the request for permission +to visit his nephew. The reply failing to come to him immediately, he +began striding to and fro. That garden gate where he had flourished +the righteous whip was wide. Foot-farers over the sodden common were +attracted to the gateway, and lingered in it, looking at the long, +green-extended windows, apparently listening, before they broke away to +exchange undertone speech here and there. Boys had pushed up through +the garden to the kitchen area. From time to time a woman in a dripping +bonnet whimpered aloud. + +An air of a country churchyard on a Sunday morning when the curate has +commenced the service prevailed. The boys were subdued by the moisture, +as they are when they sit in the church aisle or organ-loft, before +their members have been much cramped. + +The whole scene, and especially the behaviour of the boys, betokened to +Lord Romfrey that an event had come to pass. + +In the chronicle of a sickness the event is death. + +He bethought him of various means of stopping the telegraph and +smothering the tale, if matters should have touched the worst here. He +calculated abstrusely the practicable shortness of the two routes from +Bevisham to Romfrey, by post-horses on the straightest line of road, or +by express train on the triangle of railway, in case of an extreme need +requiring him to hasten back to his wife and renew his paternal-despotic +system with her. She had but persuaded him of the policy of a liberal +openness and confidence for the moment's occasion: she could not turn +his nature, which ran to strokes of craft and blunt decision whenever +the emergency smote him and he felt himself hailed to show generalship. + +While thus occupied in thoughtfulness he became aware of the monotony +of a tuneless chant, as if, it struck him, an insane young chorister or +canon were galloping straight on end hippomaniacally through the Psalms. +There was a creak at intervals, leading him to think it a machine that +might have run away with the winder's arm. + +The earl's humour proposed the notion to him that this perhaps was one +of the forms of Radical lamentation, ululation, possibly practised by a +veteran impietist like Dr. Shrapnel for the loss of his youngster, his +political cub--poor lad! + +Deriding any such paganry, and aught that could be set howling, Lord +Romfrey was presently moved to ask of the small crowd at the gate what +that sound was. + +'It's the poor commander, sir,' said a wet-shawled woman, shivering. + +'He's been at it twenty hours already, sir,' said one of the boys. + +'Twenty-foor hour he 've been at it,' said another. + +A short dispute grew over the exact number of hours. One boy declared +that thirty hours had been reached. 'Father heerd'n yesterday morning as +he was aff to 's work in the town afore six: that brings 't nigh thirty +and he ha'n't stopped yet.' + +The earl was invited to step inside the gate, a little way up to the +house, and under the commander's window, that he might obtain a better +hearing. + +He swung round, walked away, walked back, and listened. + +If it was indeed a voice, the voice, he would have said, was travelling +high in air along the sky. + +Yesterday he had described to his wife Nevil's chattering of hundreds to +the minute. He had not realized the description, which had been only his +manner of painting delirium: there had been no warrant for it. He heard +the wild scudding voice imperfectly: it reminded him of a string of +winter geese changeing waters. Shower gusts, and the wail and hiss of +the rows of fir-trees bordering the garden, came between, and allowed +him a moment's incredulity as to its being a human voice. Such a cry +will often haunt the moors and wolds from above at nightfall. The voice +hied on, sank, seemed swallowed; it rose, as if above water, in a +hush of wind and trees. The trees bowed their heads rageing, the voice +drowned; once more to rise, chattering thrice rapidly, in a high-pitched +key, thin, shrill, weird, interminable, like winds through a crazy +chamber-door at midnight. + +The voice of a broomstick-witch in the clouds could not be thinner and +stranger: Lord Romfrey had some such thought. + +Dr. Gannet was the bearer of Miss Denham's excuses to Lord Romfrey for +the delay in begging him to enter the house: in the confusion of the +household his lordship's card had been laid on the table below, and she +was in the sick-room. + +'Is my nephew a dead man?' said the earl. + +The doctor weighed his reply. 'He lives. Whether he will, after the +exhaustion of this prolonged fit of raving, I don't dare to predict. +In the course of my experience I have never known anything like it. He +lives: there's the miracle, but he lives.' + +'On brandy?' + +'That would soon have sped him.' + +'Ha. You have everything here that you want?' + +'Everything.' + +'He's in your hands, Gannet.' + +The earl was conducted to a sitting-room, where Dr. Gannet left him for +a while. + +Mindful that he was under the roof of his enemy, he remained standing, +observing nothing. + +The voice overheard was off at a prodigious rate, like the far sound of +a yell ringing on and on. + +The earl unconsciously sought a refuge from it by turning the leaves of +a book upon the table, which was a complete edition of Harry Denham's +Poems, with a preface by a man named Lydiard; and really, to read the +preface one would suppose that these poets were the princes of the +earth. Lord Romfrey closed the volume. It was exquisitely bound, +and presented to Miss Denham by the Mr. Lydiard. 'The works of your +illustrious father,' was written on the title-page. These writers deal +queerly with their words of praise of one another. There is no law to +restrain them. Perhaps it is the consolation they take for the poor +devil's life they lead! + +A lady addressing him familiarly, invited him to go upstairs. + +He thanked her. At the foot of the stairs he turned; he had recognized +Cecilia Halkett. + +Seeing her there was more strange to him than being there himself; but +he bowed to facts. + +'What do you think?' he said. + +She did not answer intelligibly. + +He walked up. + +The crazed gabbling tongue had entire possession of the house, and rang +through it at an amazing pitch to sustain for a single minute. + +A reflection to the effect that dogs die more decently than we men, +saddened the earl. But, then, it is true, we shorten their pangs by +shooting them. + +A dismal figure loomed above him at the head of the stairs. + +He distinguished it in the vast lean length he had once whipped and +flung to earth. + +Dr. Shrapnel was planted against the wall outside that raving chamber, +at the salient angle of a common prop or buttress. The edge of a +shoulder and a heel were the supports to him sideways in his distorted +attitude. His wall arm hung dead beside his pendent frock-coat; the +hair of his head had gone to wildness, like a field of barley whipped by +tempest. One hand pressed his eyeballs: his unshaven jaw dropped. + +Lord Romfrey passed him by. + +The dumb consent of all present affirmed the creature lying on the bed +to be Nevil Beauchamp. + +Face, voice, lank arms, chicken neck: what a sepulchral sketch of him! + +It was the revelry of a corpse. + +Shudders of alarm for his wife seized Lord Romfrey at the sight. He +thought the poor thing on the bed must be going, resolving to a cry, +unwinding itself violently in its hurricane of speech, that was not +speech nor exclamation, rather the tongue let loose to run to the death. +It seemed to be out in mid-sea, up wave and down wave. + +A nurse was at the pillow smoothing it. Miss Denham stood at the foot of +the bed. + +'Is that pain?' Lord Romfrey said low to Dr. Gannet. + +'Unconscious,' was the reply. + +Miss Denham glided about the room and disappeared. + +Her business was to remove Dr. Shrapnel, that he might be out of the +way when Lord Romfrey should pass him again: but Dr. Shrapnel heard one +voice only, and moaned, 'My Beauchamp!' She could not get him to stir. + +Miss Denham saw him start slightly as the earl stepped forth and, bowing +to him, said: 'I thank you, sir, for permitting me to visit my nephew.' + +Dr. Shrapnel made a motion of the hand, to signify freedom of access to +his house. He would have spoken the effort fetched a burst of terrible +chuckles. He covered his face. + +Lord Romfrey descended. The silly old wretch had disturbed his +equanimity as a composer of fiction for the comfort and sustainment +of his wife: and no sooner had he the front door in view than the +calculation of the three strides requisite to carry him out of the house +plucked at his legs, much as young people are affected by a dancing +measure; for he had, without deigning to think of matters disagreeable +to him in doing so, performed the duty imposed upon him by his wife, and +now it behoved him to ward off the coming blow from that double life at +Romfrey Castle. + +He was arrested in his hasty passage by Cecilia Halkett. + +She handed him a telegraphic message: Rosamund requested him to stay two +days in Bevisham. She said additionally: 'Perfectly well. Shall fear to +see you returning yet. Have sent to Tourdestelle. All his friends. +Ni espoir, ni crainte, mais point de deceptions. Lumiere. Ce sont les +tenebres qui tuent.' + +Her nimble wits had spied him on the road he was choosing, and outrun +him. + +He resigned himself to wait a couple of days at Bevisham. Cecilia begged +him to accept a bed at Mount Laurels. He declined, and asked her: 'How +is it you are here?' + +'I called here,' said she, compressing her eyelids in anguish at a +wilder cry of the voice overhead, and forgetting to state why she had +called at the house and what services she had undertaken. A heap of +letters in her handwriting explained the nature of her task. + +Lord Romfrey asked her where the colonel was. + +'He drives me down in the morning and back at night, but they will give +me a bed or a sofa here to-night--I can't...' Cecilia stretched her hand +out, blinded, to the earl. + +He squeezed her hand. + +'These letters take away my strength: crying is quite useless, I know +that,' said she, glancing at a pile of letters that she had partly +replied to. 'Some are from people who can hardly write. There were +people who distrusted him! Some are from people who abused him and +maltreated him. See those poor creatures out in the rain!' + +Lord Romfrey looked through the venetian blinds of the parlour window. + +'It's as good as a play to them,' he remarked. + +Cecilia lit a candle and applied a stick of black wax to the flame, +saying: 'Envelopes have fallen short. These letters will frighten the +receivers. I cannot help it.' + +'I will bring letter paper and envelopes in the afternoon,' said Lord +Romfrey. 'Don't use black wax, my dear.' + +'I can find no other: I do not like to trouble Miss Denham. Letter paper +has to be sealed. These letters must go by the afternoon post: I do not +like to rob the poor anxious people of a little hope while he lives. Let +me have note paper and envelopes quickly: not black-edged.' + +'Plain; that's right,' said Lord Romfrey. + +Black appeared to him like the torch of death flying over the country. + +'There may be hope,' he added. + +She sighed: 'Oh! yes.' + +'Gannet will do everything that man can do to save him.' + +'He will, I am sure.' + +'You don't keep watch in the room, my dear, do you?' + +'Miss Denham allows me an hour there in the day: it is the only rest she +takes. She gives me her bedroom.' + +'Ha: well: women!' ejaculated the earl, and paused. 'That sounded like +him!' + +'At times,' murmured Cecilia. 'All yesterday! all through the night! and +to-day!' + +'He'll be missed.' + +Any sudden light of happier expectation that might have animated him +was extinguished by the flight of chatter following the cry which had +sounded like Beauchamp. + +He went out into the rain, thinking that Beauchamp would be missed. The +fellow had bothered the world, but the world without him would be heavy +matter. + +The hour was mid-day, workmen's meal-time. A congregation of shipyard +workmen and a multitude of children crowded near the door. In passing +through them, Lord Romfrey was besought for the doctor's report of +Commander Beauchamp, variously named Beesham, Bosham, Bitcham, Bewsham. +The earl heard his own name pronounced as he particularly disliked to +hear it--Rumfree. Two or three men scowled at him. + +It had not occurred to him ever before in his meditations to separate +his blood and race from the common English; and he was not of a +character to dwell on fantastical and purposeless distinctions, but the +mispronunciation of his name and his nephew's at an instant when he was +thinking of Nevil's laying down his life for such men as these gross +excessive breeders, of ill shape and wooden countenance, pushed him to +reflections on the madness of Nevil in endeavouring to lift them up and +brush them up; and a curious tenderness for Nevil's madness worked in +his breast as he contrasted this much-abused nephew of his with our +general English--the so-called nobles, who were sunk in the mud of the +traders: the traders, who were sinking in the mud of the workmen: the +workmen, who were like harbour-flats at ebb tide round a stuck-fast +fleet of vessels big and little. + +Decidedly a fellow like Nevil would be missed by him! + +These English, huddling more and more in flocks, turning to lumps, +getting to be cut in a pattern and marked by a label--how they bark and +snap to rend an obnoxious original! One may chafe at the botheration +everlastingly raised by the fellow; but if our England is to keep her +place she must have him, and many of him. Have him? He's gone! + +Lord Romfrey reasoned himself into pathetic sentiment by degrees. + +He purchased the note paper and envelopes in the town for Cecilia. +Late in the afternoon he deposited them on the parlour table at Dr. +Shrapnel's. Miss Denham received him. She was about to lie down for her +hour of rest on the sofa. Cecilia was upstairs. He inquired if there was +any change in his nephew's condition. + +'Not any,' said Miss Denham. + +The voice was abroad for proof of that. + +He stood with a swelling heart. + +Jenny flung out a rug to its length beside the sofa, and; holding it by +one end, said: 'I must have my rest, to be of service, my lord.' + +He bowed. He was mute and surprised. + +The young lady was like no person of her age and sex that he remembered +ever to have met. + +'I will close the door,' he said, retiring softly. + +'Do not, my lord.' + +The rug was over her, up to her throat, and her eyes were shut. He +looked back through the doorway in going out. She was asleep. + +'Some delirium. Gannet of good hope. All in the usual course'; he +transmitted intelligence to his wife. + +A strong desire for wine at his dinner-table warned him of something +wrong with his iron nerves. + + + + +CHAPTER LI. IN THE NIGHT + +The delirious voice haunted him. It came no longer accompanied by images +and likenesses to this and that of animate nature, which were relieving +and distracting; it came to him in its mortal nakedness--an afflicting +incessant ringing peal, bare as death's ribs in telling of death. When +would it stop? And when it stopped, what would succeed? What ghastly +silence! + +He walked to within view of the lights of Dr. Shrapnel's at night: then +home to his hotel. + +Miss Denham's power of commanding sleep, as he could not, though +contrary to custom he tried it on the right side and the left, set him +thinking of her. He owned she was pretty. But that, he contended, was +not the word; and the word was undiscoverable. Not Cecilia Halkett +herself had so high-bred an air, for Cecilia had not her fineness of +feature and full quick eyes, of which the thin eyelids were part of +the expression. And Cecilia sobbed, snifed, was patched about the face, +reddish, bluish. This girl was pliable only to service, not to grief: +she did her work for three-and-twenty hours, and fell to her sleep of +one hour like a soldier. Lord Romfrey could not recollect anything in a +young woman that had taken him so much as the girl's tossing out of the +rug and covering herself, lying down and going to sleep under his nose, +absolutely independent of his presence. + +She had not betrayed any woman's petulance with him for his conduct to +her uncle or guardian. Nor had she hypocritically affected the reverse, +as ductile women do, when they feel wanting in force to do the other. +She was not unlike Nevil's marquise in face, he thought: less foreign of +course; looking thrice as firm. Both were delicately featured. + +He had a dream. + +It was of an interminable procession of that odd lot called the +People. All of them were quarrelling under a deluge. One party was +for umbrellas, one was against them: and sounding the dispute with a +question or two, Everard held it logical that there should be protection +from the wet: just as logical on the other hand that so frail a shelter +should be discarded, considering the tremendous downpour. But as +he himself was dry, save for two or three drops, he deemed them all +lunatics. He requested them to gag their empty chatter-boxes, and put +the mother upon that child's cry. + +He was now a simple unit of the procession. Asking naturally whither +they were going, he saw them point. 'St. Paul's,' he heard. In his own +bosom it was, and striking like the cathedral big bell. + +Several ladies addressed him sorrowfully. He stood alone. It had become +notorious that he was to do battle, and no one thought well of his +chances. Devil an enemy to be seen! he muttered. Yet they said the enemy +was close upon him. His right arm was paralyzed. There was the enemy +hard in front, mailed, vizored, gauntleted. He tried to lift his right +hand, and found it grasping an iron ring at the bottom of the deep +Steynham well, sunk one hundred feet through the chalk. But the +unexampled cunning of his left arm was his little secret; and, acting +upon this knowledge, he telegraphed to his first wife at Steynham that +Dr. Gannet was of good hope, and thereupon he re-entered the ranks of +the voluminous procession, already winding spirally round the dome of +St. Paul's. And there, said he, is the tomb of Beauchamp. Everything +occurred according to his predictions, and he was entirely devoid of +astonishment. Yet he would fain have known the titles of the slain +admiral's naval battles. He protested he had a right to know, for he was +the hero's uncle, and loved him. He assured the stupid scowling people +that he loved Nevil Beauchamp, always loved the boy, and was the +staunchest friend the fellow had. And saying that, he certainly felt +himself leaning up against the cathedral rails in the attitude of Dr. +Shrapnel, and crying, 'Beauchamp! Beauchamp!' And then he walked firmly +out of Romfrey oakwoods, and, at a mile's distance from her, related +to his countess Rosamund that the burial was over without much silly +ceremony, and that she needed to know nothing of it whatever. + +Rosamund's face awoke him. It was the face of a chalk-quarry, +featureless, hollowed, appalling. + +The hour was no later than three in the morning. He quitted the +detestable bed where a dream--one of some half-dozen in the course of +his life-had befallen him. For the maxim of the healthy man is: up, and +have it out in exercise when sleep is for foisting base coin of dreams +upon you! And as the healthy only are fit to live, their maxims should +be law. He dressed and directed his leisurely steps to the common, under +a black sky, and stars of lively brilliancy. The lights of a carriage +gleamed on Dr. Shrapnel's door. A footman informed Lord Romfrey that +Colonel Halkett was in the house, and soon afterward the colonel +appeared. + +'Is it over? I don't hear him,' said Lord Romfrey. + +Colonel Halkett grasped his hand. 'Not yet,' he said. 'Cissy can't be +got away. It's killing her. No, he's alive. You may hear him now.' + +Lord Romfrey bent his ear. + +'It's weaker,' the colonel resumed. 'By the way, Romfrey, step out with +me. My dear friend, the circumstances will excuse me: you know I'm not +a man to take liberties. I'm bound to tell you what your wife writes to +me. She says she has it on her conscience, and can't rest for it. You +know women. She wants you to speak to the man here--Shrapnel. She wants +Nevil to hear that you and he were friendly before he dies; thinks it +would console the poor dear fellow. That's only an idea; but it concerns +her, you see. I'm shocked to have to talk to you about it.' + +'My dear colonel, I have no feeling against the man,' Lord Romfrey +replied. 'I spoke to him when I saw him yesterday. I bear no grudges. +Where is he? You can send to her to say I have spoken to him twice.' + +'Yes, yes,' the colonel assented. + +He could not imagine that Lady Romfrey required more of her husband. +'Well, I must be off. I leave Blackburn Tuckham here, with a friend of +his; a man who seems to be very sweet with Mrs. Wardour-Devereux.' + +'Ha! Fetch him to me, colonel; I beg you to do that,' said Lord Romfrey. + +The colonel brought out Lydiard to the earl. + +'You have been at my nephew's bedside, Mr. Lydiard?' + +'Within ten minutes, my lord.' + +'What is your opinion of the case?' + +'My opinion is, the chances are in his favour.' + +'Lay me under obligation by communicating that to Romfrey Castle at the +first opening of the telegraph office to-morrow morning.' + +Lydiard promised. + +'The raving has ended?' + +'Hardly, sir, but the exhaustion is less than we feared it would be.' + +'Gannet is there?' + +'He is in an arm-chair in the room.' + +'And Dr. Shrapnel?' + +'He does not bear speaking to; he is quiet.' + +'He is attached to my nephew?' + +'As much as to life itself.' + +Lord Romfrey thanked Lydiard courteously. 'Let us hope, sir, that some +day I shall have the pleasure of entertaining you, as well as another +friend of yours.' + +'You are very kind, my lord.' + +The earl stood at the door to see Colonel Halkett drive off: he declined +to accompany him to Mount Laurels. + +In the place of the carriage stood a man, who growled 'Where's your +horsewhip, butcher?' + +He dogged the earl some steps across the common. Everard returned to his +hotel and slept soundly during the remainder of the dark hours. + + + + +CHAPTER LII. QUESTION OF A PILGRIMAGE AND AN ACT OF PENANCE + +Then came a glorious morning for sportsmen. One sniffed the dews, and +could fancy fresh smells of stubble earth and dank woodland grass in the +very streets of dirty Bevisham. Sound sleep, like hearty dining, endows +men with a sense of rectitude, and sunlight following the former, as a +pleasant spell of conversational ease or sweet music the latter, smiles +a celestial approval of the performance: Lord Romfrey dismissed his +anxieties. His lady slightly ruffled him at breakfast in a letter +saying that she wished to join him. He was annoyed at noon by a message, +wherein the wish was put as a request. And later arrived another +message, bearing the character of an urgent petition. True, it might be +laid to the account of telegraphic brevity. + +He saw Dr. Shrapnel, and spoke to him, as before, to thank him for the +permission to visit his nephew. Nevil he contemplated for the space +of five minutes. He cordially saluted Miss Denham. He kissed Cecilia's +hand. + +'All here is going on so well that I am with you for a day or two +to-morrow,' he despatched the message to his wife. + +Her case was now the gravest. He could not understand why she desired +to be in Bevisham. She must have had execrable dreams!--rank poison to +mothers. + +However, her constitutional strength was great, and his pride in the +restoration of his House by her agency flourished anew, what with fair +weather and a favourable report from Dr. Gannet: The weather was most +propitious to the hopes of any soul bent on dispersing the shadows of +death, and to sportsmen. From the windows of his railway carriage +he beheld the happy sportsmen stalking afield. The birds whirred and +dropped just where he counted on their dropping. The smoke of the guns +threaded to dazzling silver in the sunshine. Say what poor old Nevil +will, or did say, previous to the sobering of his blood, where is there +a land like England? Everard rejoiced in his country temperately. Having +Nevil as well,--of which fact the report he was framing in his mind +to deliver to his wife assured him--he was rich. And you that put +yourselves forward for republicans and democrats, do you deny the +aristocracy of an oaklike man who is young upon the verge of eighty? + +These were poetic flights, but he knew them not by name, and had not to +be ashamed of them. + +Rosamund met him in the hall of the castle. 'You have not deceived me, +my dear lord,' she said, embracing him. 'You have done what you could +for me. The rest is for me to do.' + +He reciprocated her embrace warmly, in commendation of her fresher good +looks. + +She asked him, 'You have spoken to Dr. Shrapnel?' + +He answered her, 'Twice.' + +The word seemed quaint. She recollected that he was quaint. + +He repeated, 'I spoke to him the first day I saw him, and the second.' + +'We are so much indebted to him,' said Rosamund. 'His love of Nevil +surpasses ours. Poor man! poor man! At least we may now hope the blow +will be spared him which would have carried off his life with Nevil's. I +have later news of Nevil than you.' + +'Good, of course?' + +'Ah me! the pleasure of the absence of pain. He is not gone.' + +Lord Romfrey liked her calm resignation. + +'There's a Mr. Lydiard,' he said, 'a friend of Nevil's, and a friend of +Louise Devereux's.' + +'Yes; we hear from him every four hours,' Rosamund rejoined. 'Mention +him to her before me.' + +'That's exactly what I was going to tell you to do before me,' said her +husband, smiling. + +'Because, Everard, is it not so?--widows... and she loves this +gentleman!' + +'Certainly, my dear; I think with you about widows. The world asks them +to practise its own hypocrisy. Louise Devereux was married to a pipe; +she's the widow of tobacco ash. We'll make daylight round her.' + +'How good, how kind you are, my lord! I did not think so shrewd! But +benevolence is almost all-seeing: You said you spoke to Dr. Shrapnel +twice. Was he... polite?' + +'Thoroughly upset, you know.' + +'What did he say?' + +'What was it? "Beauchamp! Beauchamp!" the first time; and the second +time he said he thought it had left off raining.' + +'Ah!' Rosamund drooped her head. + +She looked up. 'Here is Louise. My lord has had a long conversation with +Mr. Lydiard.' + +'I trust he will come here before you leave us,' added the earl. + +Rosamund took her hand. 'My lord has been more acute than I, or else +your friend is less guarded than you.' + +'What have you seen?' said the blushing lady. + +'Stay. I have an idea you are one of the women I promised to Cecil +Baskelett,' said the earl. 'Now may I tell him there's no chance?' + +'Oh! do.' + +They spent so very pleasant an evening that the earl settled down into +a comfortable expectation of the renewal of his old habits in the +September and October season. Nevil's frightful cry played on his +ear-drum at whiles, but not too affectingly. He conducted Rosamund to +her room, kissed her, hoped she would sleep well, and retired to his +good hard bachelor's bed, where he confidently supposed he would sleep. +The sleep of a dyspeptic, with a wilder than the monstrous Bevisham +dream, befell him, causing him to rise at three in the morning and +proceed to his lady's chamber, to assure himself that at least she slept +well. She was awake. + +'I thought you might come,' she said. + +He reproached her gently for indulging foolish nervous fears. + +She replied, 'No, I do not; I am easier about Nevil. I begin to think he +will live. I have something at my heart that prevents me from sleeping. +It concerns me. Whether he is to live or die, I should like him to know +he has not striven in vain--not in everything: not where my conscience +tells me he was right, and we, I, wrong--utterly wrong, wickedly wrong.' + +'My dear girl, you are exciting yourself.' + +'No; feel my pulse. The dead of night brings out Nevil to me like the +Writing on the Wall. It shall not be said he failed in everything. Shame +to us if it could be said! He tried to make me see what my duty was, and +my honour.' + +'He was at every man Jack of us.' + +'I speak of one thing. I thought I might not have to go. Now I feel I +must. I remember him at Steynham, when Colonel Halkett and Cecilia were +there. But for me, Cecilia would now be his wife. Of that there is +no doubt; that is not the point; regrets are fruitless. I see how the +struggle it cost him to break with his old love--that endearing Madame +de Rouaillout, his Renee--broke his heart; and then his loss of Cecilia +Halkett. But I do believe, true as that I am lying here, and you hold +my hand, my dear husband, those losses were not so fatal to him as his +sufferings he went through on account of his friend Dr. Shrapnel. I will +not keep you here. + +Go and have some rest. What I shall beg of you tomorrow will not injure +my health in the slightest: the reverse: it will raise me from a bitter +depression. It shall not be said that those who loved him were unmoved +by him. Before he comes back to life, or is carried to his grave, he +shall know that I was not false to my love of him.' + +'My dear, your pulse is at ninety,' said the earl. + +'Look lenient, be kind, be just, my husband. Oh! let us cleanse our +hearts. This great wrong was my doing. I am not only quite strong enough +to travel to Bevisham, I shall be happy in going: and when I have done +it--said: "The wrong was all mine," I shall rejoice like the pure in +spirit. Forgiveness does not matter, though I now believe that poor +loving old man who waits outside his door weeping, is wrong-headed only +in his political views. We women can read men by their power to love. +Where love exists there is goodness. But it is not for the sake of the +poor old man himself that I would go: it is for Nevil's; it is for ours, +chiefly for me, for my child's, if ever...!' Rosamund turned her head on +her pillow. + +The earl patted her cheek. 'We 'll talk it over in the morning,' he +said. 'Now go to sleep.' + +He could not say more, for he did not dare to attempt cajolery with +her. Shading his lamp he stepped softly away to wrestle with a worse +nightmare than sleep's. Her meaning was clear: and she was a woman +to insist on doing it. She was nevertheless a woman not impervious to +reason, if only he could shape her understanding to perceive that the +state of her nerves, incident to her delicate situation and the shock +of that fellow Nevil's illness--poor lad!--was acting on her mind, +rendering her a victim of exaggerated ideas of duty, and so forth. + +Naturally, apart from allowing her to undertake the journey by rail, +he could not sanction his lady's humbling of herself so egregiously and +unnecessarily. Shrapnel had behaved unbecomingly, and had been punished +for it. He had spoken to Shrapnel, and the affair was virtually at an +end. With his assistance she would see that, when less excited. Her +eternal brooding over Nevil was the cause of these mental vagaries. + +Lord Romfrey was for postponing the appointed discussion in the morning +after breakfast. He pleaded business engagements. + +'None so urgent as this of mine,' said Rosamund. + +'But we have excellent news of Nevil: you have Gannet's word for it,' he +argued. 'There's really nothing to distress you.' + +'My heart: I must be worthy of good news, to know happiness,' she +answered. 'I will say, let me go to Bevisham two, three, four days +hence, if you like, but there is peace for me, and nowhere else.' + +'My precious Rosamund! have you set your two eyes on it? What you are +asking, is for permission to make an apology to Shrapnel!' + +'That is the word.' + +'That's Nevil's word.' + +'It is a prescription to me.' + +'An apology?' + +The earl's gorge rose. Why, such an act was comparable to the circular +mission of the dog! + +'If I do not make the apology, the mother of your child is a coward,' +said Rosamund. + +'She's not.' + +'I trust not.' + +'You are a reasonable woman, my dear. Now listen the man insulted you. +It's past: done with. He insulted you...' + +'He did not.' + +'What?' + +'He was courteous to me, hospitable to me, kind to me. He did not insult +me. I belied him.' + +'My dear saint, you're dreaming. He spoke insultingly of you to Cecil.' + +'Is my lord that man's dupe? I would stand against him before the throne +of God, with what little I know of his interview with Dr. Shrapnel, to +confront him and expose his lie. Do not speak of him. He stirs my evil +passions, and makes me feel myself the creature I was when I returned to +Steynham from my first visit to Bevisham, enraged with jealousy of Dr. +Shrapnel's influence over Nevil, spiteful, malicious: Oh! such a nest of +vileness as I pray to heaven I am not now, if it is granted me to give +life to another. Nevil's misfortunes date from that,' she continued, +in reply to the earl's efforts to soothe her. 'Not the loss of the +Election: that was no misfortune, but a lesson. He would not have shone +in Parliament: he runs too much from first principles to extremes. You +see I am perfectly reasonable, Everard: 'I can form an exact estimate +of character and things.' She smiled in his face. 'And I know my husband +too: what he will grant; what he would not, and justly would not. I know +to a certainty that vexatious as I must be to you now, you are conscious +of my having reason for being so.' + +'You carry it so far--fifty miles beyond the mark,' said he. 'The man +roughed you, and I taught him manners.' + +'No!' she half screamed her interposition. 'I repeat, he was in no way +discourteous or disobliging to me. He offered me a seat at his table, +and, heaven forgive me! I believe a bed in his house, that I might wait +and be sure of seeing Nevil, because I was very anxious to see him.' + +'All the same, you can't go to the man.' + +'I should have said so too, before my destiny touched me.' + +'A certain dignity of position, my dear, demands a corresponding dignity +of conduct: you can't go.' + +'If I am walking in the very eye of heaven, and feeling it shining on me +where I go, there is no question for me of human dignity.' + +Such flighty talk offended Lord Romfrey. + +'It comes to this: you're in want of a parson.' + +Rosamund was too careful to hint that she would have expected succour +and seconding from one or other of the better order of clergymen. + +She shook her head. 'To this, my dear lord: I have a troubled mind; and +it is not to listen nor to talk, that I am in need of, but to act.' + +'Yes, my dear girl, but not to act insanely. I do love soundness of +head. You have it, only just now you're a little astray. We'll leave +this matter for another time.' + +Rosamund held him by the arm. 'Not too long!' + +Both of them applied privately to Mrs. Wardour-Devereux for her opinion +and counsel on the subject of the proposal to apologize to Dr. Shrapnel. +She was against it with the earl, and became Rosamund's echo when with +her. When alone, she was divided into two almost equal halves: deeming +that the countess should not insist, and the earl should not refuse: him +she condemned for lack of sufficient spiritual insight to perceive +the merits of his wife's request: her she accused of some vestige of +something underbred in her nature, for putting such fervid stress upon +the supplication: i.e. making too much of it--a trick of the vulgar: and +not known to the languid. + +She wrote to Lydiard for advice. + +He condensed a paragraph into a line: + +'It should be the earl. She is driving him to it, intentionally or not.' + +Mrs. Devereux doubted that the countess could have so false an idea of +her husband's character as to think it possible he would ever be bent +to humble himself to the man he had castigated. She was right. It was +by honestly presenting to his mind something more loathsome still, the +humbling of herself, that Rosamund succeeded in awakening some remote +thoughts of a compromise, in case of necessity. Better I than she! + +But the necessity was inconceivable. + +He had really done everything required of him, if anything was really +required, by speaking to Shrapnel civilly. He had spoken to Shrapnel +twice. + +Besides, the castle was being gladdened by happier tidings of Beauchamp. +Gannet now pledged his word to the poor fellow's recovery, and the +earl's particular friends arrived, and the countess entertained them. +October passed smoothly. + +She said once: 'Ancestresses of yours, my lord, have undertaken +pilgrimages as acts of penance for sin, to obtain heaven's intercession +in their extremity.' + +'I dare say they did,' he replied. 'The monks got round them.' + +'It is not to be laughed at, if it eased their hearts.' + +Timidly she renewed her request for permission to perform the pilgrimage +to Bevisham. + +'Wait,' said he, 'till Nevil is on his legs.' + +'Have you considered where I may then be, Everard?' + +'My love, you sleep well, don't you?' + +'You see me every night.' + +'I see you sound asleep.' + +'I see you watching me.' + +'Let's reason,' said the earl; and again they went through the argument +upon the apology to Dr. Shrapnel. + +He was willing to indulge her in any amount of it: and she perceived +why. Fox! she thought. Grand fox, but fox downright. For her time was +shortening to days that would leave her no free-will. + +On the other hand, the exercise of her free-will in a fast resolve, was +growing all the more a privilege that he was bound to respect. As she +became sacreder and doubly precious to him, the less would he venture +to thwart her, though he should think her mad. There would be an analogy +between his manner of regarding her and the way that superstitious +villagers look on their crazy innocents, she thought sadly. And she bled +for him too: she grieved to hurt his pride. But she had come to imagine +that there was no avoidance of this deed of personal humiliation. + +Nevil had scrawled a note to her. She had it in her hand one forenoon in +mid November, when she said to her husband: 'I have ordered the carriage +for two o'clock to meet the quarter to three train to London, and I have +sent Stanton on to get the house ready for us tonight.' + +Lord Romfrey levelled a marksman's eye at her. + +'Why London? You know my wish that it should be here at the castle.' + +'I have decided to go to Bevisham. I have little time left.' + +'None, to my thinking.' + +'Oh I yes; my heart will be light. I shall gain. You come with me to +London?' + +'You can't go.' + +'Don't attempt to reason with me, please, please!' + +'I command, madam.' + +'My lord, it is past the hour of commanding.' + +He nodded his head, with the eyes up amid the puckered brows, and +blowing one of his long nasal expirations, cried, 'Here we are, in for +another bout of argument.' + +'No; I can bear the journey, rejoice in confessing my fault, but more +argument I cannot bear. I will reason with you when I can: submit to me +in this.' + +'Feminine reasoning!' he interjected. + +'I have nothing better to offer. It will be prudent to attend to me. +Take my conduct for the portion I bring you. Before I put myself in +God's care I must be clean. I am unclean. Language like that offends +you. I have no better. My reasoning has not touched you; I am helpless, +except in this determination that my contrition shall be expressed to +Dr. Shrapnel. If I am to have life, to be worthy of living and being a +mother, it must be done. Now, my dear lord, see that, and submit. You're +but one voice: I am two.' + +He jumped off his chair, frowning up his forehead, and staring awfully +at the insulting prospect. 'An apology to the man? By you? Away with +it.' + +'Make allowances for me if you can, my dear lord that is what I am going +to do.' + +'My wife going there?' He strode along furiously. 'No!' + +'You will not stop her.' + +'There's a palsy in my arm if I don't.' + +She plucked at her watch. + +'Why, ma'am, I don't know you,' he said, coming close to her. 'Let +'s reason. Perhaps you overshot it; you were disgusted with Shrapnel. +Perhaps I was hasty; I get fired by an insult to a woman. There was a +rascal kissed a girl once against her will, and I heard her cry out; I +laid him on his back for six months; just to tell you; I'd do the same +to lord or beggar. Very well, my dear heart, we'll own I might have +looked into the case when that dog Cecil... what's the matter?' + +'Speak on, my dear husband,' said Rosamund, panting. + +'But your making the journey to Bevisham is a foolish notion.' + +'Yes? well?' + +'Well, we'll wait.' + +'Oh! have we to travel over it all again?' she exclaimed in despair at +the dashing out of a light she had fancied. 'You see the wrong. You know +the fever it is in my blood, and you bid me wait.' + +'Drop a line to Nevil.' + +'To trick my conscience! I might have done that, and done well, once. +Do you think I dislike the task I propose to myself? It is for your +sake that I would shun it. As for me, the thought of going there is an +ecstasy. I shall be with Nevil, and be able to look in his face. And how +can I be actually abasing you when I am so certain that I am worthier of +you in what I do?' + +Her exaltation swept her on. 'Hurry there, my lord, if you will. If you +think it prudent that you should go in my place, go: you deprive me of +a great joy, but I will not put myself in your way, and I consent. +The chief sin was mine; remember that. I rank it viler than Cecil +Baskelett's. And listen: when--can you reckon?--when will he confess his +wickedness? We separate ourselves from a wretch like that.' + +'Pooh,' quoth the earl. + +'But you will go?' She fastened her arms round the arm nearest: 'You +or I! Does it matter which? We are one. You speak for me; I should have +been forced to speak for you. You spare me the journey. I do not +in truth suppose it would have injured me; but I would not run one +unnecessary risk.' + +Lord Romfrey sighed profoundly. He could not shake her off. How could he +refuse her? + +How on earth had it come about that suddenly he was expected to be the +person to go? + +She would not let him elude her; and her stained cheeks and her +trembling on his arm pleaded most pressingly and masteringly. It might +be that she spoke with a knowledge of her case. Positive it undoubtedly +was that she meant to go if he did not. Perhaps the hopes of his House +hung on it. Having admitted that a wrong had been done, he was not the +man to leave it unamended; only he would have chosen his time, and the +manner. Since Nevil's illness, too, he had once or twice been clouded +with a little bit of regret at the recollection of poor innocent old +Shrapnel posted like a figure of total inebriation beside the doorway of +the dreadful sickroom. + +There had been women of the earl's illustrious House who would have +given their hands to the axe rather than conceal a stain and have to +dread a scandal. His Rosamund, after all, was of their pattern; even +though she blew that conscience she prattled of into trifles, and +swelled them, as women of high birth in this country, out of the +clutches of the priests, do not do. + +She clung to him for his promise to go. + +He said: 'Well, well.' + +'That means, you will,' said she. + +His not denying it passed for the affirmative. + +Then indeed she bloomed with love of him. + +'Yet do say yes,' she begged. + +'I'll go, ma'am,' shouted the earl. 'I'll go, my love,' he said softly. + + + + +CHAPTER LIII. THE APOLOGY TO DR. SHRAPNEL + +'You and Nevil are so alike,' Lady Romfrey said to her lord, at some +secret resemblance she detected and dwelt on fondly, when the earl was +on the point of starting a second time for Bevisham to perform what +she had prompted him to conceive his honourable duty, without a single +intimation that he loathed the task, neither shrug nor grimace. + +'Two ends of a stick are pretty much alike: they're all that length +apart,' said he, very little in the humour for compliments, however well +braced for his work. + +His wife's admiring love was pleasant enough. He preferred to have it +unspoken. Few of us care to be eulogized in the act of taking a nauseous +medical mixture. + +For him the thing was as good as done, on his deciding to think it both +adviseable and right: so he shouldered his load and marched off with +it. He could have postponed the right proceeding, even after the partial +recognition of his error:--one drops a word or two by hazard, one +expresses an anxiety to afford reparation, one sends a message, and so +forth, for the satisfaction of one's conventionally gentlemanly feeling: +but the adviseable proceeding under stress of peculiar circumstances, +his clearly-awakened recognition of that, impelled him unhesitatingly. +His wife had said it was the portion she brought him. Tears would not +have persuaded him so powerfully, that he might prove to her he was glad +of her whatever the portion she brought. She was a good wife, a brave +woman, likely to be an incomparable mother. At present her very virtues +excited her to fancifulness nevertheless she was in his charge, and he +was bound to break the neck of his will, to give her perfect peace of +wind. The child suffers from the mother's mental agitation. It might be +a question of a nervous or an idiot future Earl of Romfrey. Better death +to the House than such a mockery of his line! These reflections reminded +him of the heartiness of his whipping of that poor old tumbled signpost +Shrapnel, in the name of outraged womankind. If there was no outrage? + +Assuredly if there was no outrage, consideration for the state of his +wife would urge him to speak the apology in the most natural manner +possible. She vowed there was none. + +He never thought of blaming her for formerly deceiving him, nor of +blaming her for now expediting him. + +In the presence of Colonel Halkett, Mr. Tuckham, and Mr. Lydiard, on a +fine November afternoon, standing bareheaded in the fir-bordered garden +of the cottage on the common, Lord Romfrey delivered his apology to Dr. +Shrapnel, and he said: + +'I call you to witness, gentlemen, I offer Dr. Shrapnel the fullest +reparation he may think fit to demand of me for an unprovoked assault on +him, that I find was quite unjustified, and for which I am here to ask +his forgiveness.' + +Speech of man could not have been more nobly uttered. + +Dr. Shrapnel replied: + +'To the half of that, sir--'tis over! What remains is done with the +hand.' + +He stretched his hand out. + +Lord Romfrey closed his own on it. + +The antagonists, between whom was no pretence of their being other after +the performance of a creditable ceremony, bowed and exchanged civil +remarks: and then Lord Romfrey was invited to go into the house and see +Beauchamp, who happened to be sitting with Cecilia Halkett and Jenny +Denham. Beauchamp was thin, pale, and quiet; but the sight of him +standing and conversing after that scene of the skinny creature +struggling with bareribbed obstruction on the bed, was an example of +constitutional vigour and a compliment to the family very gratifying to +Lord Romfrey. Excepting by Cecilia, the earl was coldly received. He had +to leave early by special express for London to catch the last train +to Romfrey. Beauchamp declined to fix a day for his visit to the castle +with Lydiard, but proposed that Lydiard should accompany the earl on +his return. Lydiard was called in, and at once accepted the earl's +invitation, and quitted the room to pack his portmanteau. + +A faint sign of firm-shutting shadowed the corners of Jenny's lips. + +'You have brought my nephew to life,' Lord Romfrey said to her. + +'My share in it was very small, my lord.' + +'Gannet says that your share in it was very great.' + +'And I say so, with the authority of a witness,' added Cecilia. + +'And I, from my experience,' came from Beauchamp. + +His voice had a hollow sound, unlike his natural voice. + +The earl looked at him remembering the bright laughing lad he had once +been, and said: 'Why not try a month of Madeira? You have only to step +on board the boat.' + +'I don't want to lose a month of my friend,' said Beauchamp. + +'Take your friend with you. After these fevers our Winters are bad.' + +'I've been idle too long.' + +'But, Captain Beauchamp,' said Jenny, 'you proposed to do nothing but +read for a couple of years.' + +'Ay, there's the voyage!' sighed he, with a sailor-invalid's vision of +sunny seas dancing in the far sky. + +'You must persuade Dr. Shrapnel to come; and he will not come unless you +come too, and you won't go anywhere but to the Alps!' She bent her eyes +on the floor. Beauchamp remembered what had brought her home from the +Alps. He cast a cold look on his uncle talking with Cecilia: granite, as +he thought. And the reflux of that slight feeling of despair seemed to +tear down with it in wreckage every effort he had made in life, and +cry failure on him. Yet he was hoping that he had not been created for +failure. + +He touched his uncle's hand indifferently: 'My love to the countess: let +me hear of her, sir, if you please.' + +'You shall,' said the earl. 'But, off to Madeira, and up Teneriffe: sail +the Azores. I'll hire you a good-sized schooner.' + +'There is the Esperanza,' said Cecilia. 'And the vessel is lying idle, +Nevil! Can you allow it?' + +He consented to laugh at himself, and fell to coughing. + +Jenny Denham saw a real human expression of anxiety cross the features +of the earl at the sound of the cough. + +Lord Romfrey said 'Adieu,' to her. + +He offered her his hand, which she contrived to avoid taking by dropping +a formal half-reverence. + +'Think of the Esperanza; she will be coasting her nominal native land! +and adieu for to-day,' Cecilia said to Beauchamp. + +Jenny Denham and he stood at the window to watch the leave-taking in the +garden, for a distraction. They interchanged no remark of surprise +at seeing the earl and Dr. Shrapnel hand-locked: but Jenny's heart +reproached her uncle for being actually servile, and Beauchamp accused +the earl of aristocratic impudence. + +Both were overcome with remorse when Colonel Halkett, putting his head +into the room to say good-bye to Beauchamp and place the Esperanza at +his disposal for a Winter cruise, chanced to mention in two or three +half words the purpose of the earl's visit, and what had occurred. He +took it for known already. + +To Miss Denham he remarked: 'Lord Romfrey is very much concerned about +your health; he fears you have overdone it in nursing Captain Beauchamp! + +'I must be off after him,' said Beauchamp, and began trembling so that +he could not stir. + +The colonel knew the pain and shame of that condition of weakness to a +man who has been strong and swift, and said: 'Seven-league boots are not +to be caught. You'll see him soon. Why, I thought some letter of yours +had fetched him here! I gave you all the credit of it.' + +'No, he deserves it all himself--all,' said Beauchamp and with a dubious +eye on Jenny Denham: 'You see, we were unfair.' + +The 'we' meant 'you' to her sensitiveness; and probably he did mean it +for 'you': for as he would have felt, so he supposed that his uncle must +have felt, Jenny's coldness was much the crueller. Her features, which +in animation were summer light playing upon smooth water, could be +exceedingly cold in repose: the icier to those who knew her, because +they never expressed disdain. No expression of the baser sort belonged +to them. Beauchamp was intimate with these delicately-cut features; he +would have shuddered had they chilled on him. He had fallen in love with +his uncle; he fancied she ought to have done so too; and from his excess +of sympathy he found her deficient in it. + +He sat himself down to write a hearty letter to his 'dear old uncle +Everard.' + +Jenny left him, to go to her chamber and cry. + + + + +CHAPTER LIV. THE FRUITS OF THE APOLOGY + +This clear heart had cause for tears. Her just indignation with Lord +Romfrey had sustained her artificially hitherto now that it was erased, +she sank down to weep. Her sentiments toward Lydiard had been very like +Cecilia Halkett's in favour of Mr. Austin; with something more to warm +them on the part of the gentleman. He first had led her mind in the +direction of balanced thought, when, despite her affection for Dr. +Shrapnel, her timorous maiden wits, unable to contend with the copious +exclamatory old politician, opposed him silently. Lydiard had helped her +tongue to speak, as well as her mind to rational views; and there +had been a bond of union in common for them in his admiration of her +father's writings. She had known that he was miserably yoked, and had +respected him when he seemed inclined for compassion without wooing her +for tenderness. He had not trifled with her, hardly flattered; he had +done no more than kindle a young girl's imaginative liking. The pale +flower of imagination, fed by dews, not by sunshine, was born drooping, +and hung secret in her bosom, shy as a bell of the frail wood-sorrel. +Yet there was pain for her in the perishing of a thing so poor and +lowly. She had not observed the change in Lydiard after Beauchamp came +on the scene: and that may tell us how passionlessly pure the little +maidenly sentiment was. For do but look on the dewy wood-sorrel flower; +it is not violet or rose inviting hands to pluck it: still it is there, +happy in the woods. And Jenny's feeling was that a foot had crushed it. + +She wept, thinking confusedly of Lord Romfrey; trying to think he had +made his amends tardily, and that Beauchamp prized him too highly for +the act. She had no longer anything to resent: she was obliged to weep. +In truth, as the earl had noticed, she was physically depressed by +the strain of her protracted watch over Beauchamp, as well as rather +heartsick. + +But she had been of aid and use in saving him! She was not quite a +valueless person; sweet, too, was the thought that he consulted her, +listened to her, weighed her ideas. He had evidently taken to study her, +as if dispersing some wonderment that one of her sex should have ideas. +He had repeated certain of her own which had been forgotten by her. His +eyes were often on her with this that she thought humorous intentness. +She smiled. She had assisted in raising him from his bed of sickness, +whereof the memory affrighted her and melted her. The difficulty now was +to keep him indoors, and why he would not go even temporarily to a large +house like Mount Laurels, whither Colonel Halkett was daily requesting +him to go, she was unable to comprehend. His love of Dr. Shrapnel might +account for it. + +'Own, Jenny,' said Beauchamp, springing up to meet her as she entered +the room where he and Dr. Shrapnel sat discussing Lord Romfrey's bearing +at his visit, 'own that my uncle Everard is a true nobleman. He has to +make the round to the right mark, but he comes to it. I could not move +him--and I like him the better for that. He worked round to it himself. +I ought to have been sure he would. You're right: I break my head with +impatience.' + +'No; you sowed seed,' said Dr. Shrapnel. 'Heed not that girl, my +Beauchamp. The old woman's in the Tory, and the Tory leads the young +maid. Here's a fable I draw from a Naturalist's book, and we'll set +it against the dicta of Jenny Do-nothing, Jenny Discretion, Jenny +Wait-for-the-Gods: Once upon a time in a tropical island a man lay sick; +so ill that he could not rise to trouble his neighbours for help; so +weak that it was lifting a mountain to get up from his bed; so hopeless +of succour that the last spark of distraught wisdom perching on his +brains advised him to lie where he was and trouble not himself, since +peace at least he could command, before he passed upon the black +highroad men call our kingdom of peace: ay, he lay there. Now it chanced +that this man had a mess to cook for his nourishment. And life said, +Do it, and death said, To what end? He wrestled with the stark limbs of +death, and cooked the mess; and that done he had no strength remaining +to him to consume it, but crept to his bed like the toad into winter. +Now, meanwhile a steam arose from the mess, and he lay stretched. So it +befel that the birds of prey of the region scented the mess, and they +descended and thronged at that man's windows. And the man's neighbours +looked up at them, for it was the sign of one who is fit for the beaks +of birds, lying unburied. Fail to spread the pall one hour where suns +are decisive, and the pall comes down out of heaven! They said, The man +is dead within. And they went to his room, and saw him and succoured +him. They lifted him out of death by the last uncut thread. + +'Now, my Jenny Weigh-words, Jenny Halt-there! was it they who saved the +man, or he that saved himself? The man taxed his expiring breath to sow +seed of life. Lydiard shall put it into verse for a fable in song for +our people. I say it is a good fable, and sung spiritedly may serve for +nourishment, and faith in work, to many of our poor fainting fellows! +Now you?' + +Jenny said: 'I think it is a good fable of self-help. Does it quite +illustrate the case? I mean, the virtue of impatience. But I like +the fable and the moral; and I think it would do good if it were made +popular, though it would be hard to condense it to a song.' + +'It would be hard! ay, then we do it forthwith. And you shall compose +the music. As for the "case of impatience," my dear, you tether the +soaring universal to your pet-lamb's post, the special. I spoke of seed +sown. I spoke of the fruits of energy and resolution. Cared I for +an apology? I took the blows as I take hail from the clouds--which +apologize to you the moment you are in shelter, if you laugh at them. +So, good night to that matter! Are we to have rain this evening? I must +away into Bevisham to the Workmen's Hall, and pay the men.' + +'There will not be rain; there will be frost, and you must be well +wrapped if you must go,' said Jenny. 'And tell them not to think of +deputations to Captain Beauchamp yet.' + +'No, no deputations; let them send Killick, if they want to say +anything,' said Beauchamp. + +'Wrong!' the doctor cried; 'wrong! wrong! Six men won't hurt you more +than one. And why check them when their feelings are up? They burn to be +speaking some words to you. Trust me, Beauchamp, if we shun to encounter +the good warm soul of numbers, our hearts are narrowed to them. The +business of our modern world is to open heart and stretch out arms to +numbers. In numbers we have our sinews; they are our iron and gold. +Scatter them not; teach them the secret of cohesion. Practically, since +they gave you not their entire confidence once, you should not rebuff +them to suspicions of you as aristocrat, when they rise on the effort +to believe a man of, as 'tis called, birth their undivided friend. Meet +them!' + +'Send them,' said Beauchamp. + +Jenny Denham fastened a vast cloak and a comforter on the doctor's +heedless shoulders and throat, enjoining on him to return in good time +for dinner. + +He put his finger to her cheek in reproof of such supererogatory counsel +to a man famous for his punctuality. + +The day had darkened. + +Beauchamp begged Jenny to play to him on the piano. + +'Do you indeed care to have music?' said she. 'I did not wish you to +meet a deputation, because your strength is not yet equal to it. Dr. +Shrapnel dwells on principles, forgetful of minor considerations.' + +'I wish thousands did!' cried Beauchamp. 'When you play I seem to hear +ideas. Your music makes me think.' + +Jenny lit a pair of candles and set them on the piano. 'Waltzes?' she +asked. + +'Call in a puppet-show at once!' + +She smiled, turned over some leaves, and struck the opening notes of the +Ninth Symphony of Beethoven, and made her selections. + +At the finish he said: 'Now read me your father's poem, "The Hunt of the +Fates."' + +She read it to him. + +'Now read, "The Ascent from the Inferno."' + +That she read: and also 'Soul and Brute,' another of his favourites. + +He wanted more, and told her to read 'First Love--Last Love.' + +'I fear I have not the tone of voice for love-poems,' Jenny said, +returning the book to him. + +'I'll read it,' said he. + +He read with more impressiveness than effect. Lydiard's reading thrilled +her: Beauchamp's insisted too much on particular lines. But it was worth +while observing him. She saw him always as in a picture, remote from +herself. His loftier social station and strange character precluded any +of those keen suspicions by which women learn that a fire is beginning +to glow near them. + +'How I should like to have known your father!' he said. 'I don't wonder +at Dr. Shrapnel's love of him. Yes, he was one of the great men of his +day! and it's a higher honour to be of his blood than any that rank can +give. You were ten years old when you lost him. Describe him to me.' + +'He used to play with me like a boy,' said Jenny. She described her +father from a child's recollection of him. + +'Dr. Shrapnel declares he would have been one of the first surgeons in +Europe: and he was one of the first of poets,' Beauchamp pursued with +enthusiasm. 'So he was doubly great. I hold a good surgeon to be in the +front rank of public benefactors--where they put rich brewers, bankers, +and speculative manufacturers now. Well! the world is young. We shall +alter that in time. Whom did your father marry?' + +Jenny answered, 'My mother was the daughter of a London lawyer. She +married without her father's approval of the match, and he left her +nothing.' + +Beauchamp interjected: 'Lawyer's money!' + +'It would have been useful to my mother's household when I was an +infant,' said Jenny. + +'Poor soul! I suppose so. Yes; well,' Beauchamp sighed. 'Money! never +mind how it comes. We're in such a primitive condition that we catch +at anything to keep us out of the cold; dogs with a bone!--instead of +living, as Dr. Shrapnel prophecies, for and, with one another. It's war +now, and money's the weapon of war. And we're the worst nation in Europe +for that. But if we fairly recognize it, we shall be the first to alter +our ways. There's the point. Well, Jenny, I can look you in the face +to-night. Thanks to my uncle Everard at last!' + +'Captain Beauchamp, you have never been blamed.' + +'I am Captain Beauchamp by courtesy, in public. My friends call me +Nevil. I think I have heard the name on your lips?' + +'When you were very ill.' + +He stood closer to her, very close. + +'Which was the arm that bled for me? May I look at it? There was a +bruise.' + +'Have you not forgotten that trifle? There is the faintest possible mark +of it left.' + +'I wish to see.' + +She gently defended the arm, but he made it so much a matter of earnest +to see the bruise of the old Election missile on her fair arm, that, +with a pardonable soft blush, to avoid making much of it herself, she +turned her sleeve a little above the wrist. He took her hand. + +'It was for me!' + +'It was quite an accident: no harm was intended.' + +'But it was in my cause--for me!' + +'Indeed, Captain Beauchamp...' + +'Nevil, we say indoors.' + +'Nevil--but is it not wiser to say what comes naturally to us?' + +'Who told you to-day that you had brought me to life? I am here to prove +it true. If I had paid attention to your advice, I should not have gone +into the cottage of those poor creatures and taken away the fever. I did +no good there. But the man's wife said her husband had been ruined by +voting for me: and it was a point of honour to go in and sit with him. +You are not to have your hand back: it is mine. Don't you remember, +Jenny, how you gave me your arm on the road when I staggered; two days +before the fever knocked me over? Shall I tell you what I thought then? +I thought that he who could have you for a mate would have the bravest +and helpfullest wife in all England. And not a mere beauty, for you have +good looks: but you have the qualities I have been in search of. Why do +your eyes look so mournfully at me? I am full of hope. We'll sail the +Esperanza for the Winter: you and I, and our best friend with us. And +you shall have a voice in the council, be sure.' + +'If you are two to one?' Jenny said quickly, to keep from faltering. + +Beauchamp pressed his mouth to the mark of the bruise on her arm. He +held her fast. + +'I mean it, if you will join me, that you and I should rejoice the heart +of the dear old man--will you? He has been brooding over your loneliness +here if you are unmarried, ever since his recovery. I owe my life to +you, and every debt of gratitude to him. Now, Jenny!' + +'Oh! Captain Beauchamp--Nevil, if you will... if I may have my hand. You +exaggerate common kindness. He loves you. We both esteem you.' + +'But you don't love me?' + +'Indeed I have no fear that I shall be unable to support myself, if I am +left alone.' + +'But I want your help. I wake from illness with my eyes open. I must +have your arm to lean on now and then.' + +Jenny dropped a shivering sigh. + +'Uncle is long absent!' she said. + +Her hand was released. Beauchamp inspected his watch. + +'He may have fallen! He may be lying on the common!' + +'Oh!' cried Jenny, 'why did I let him go out without me?' + +'Let me have his lantern; I'll go and search over the common.' + +'You must not go out,' said she. + +'I must. The old man may be perishing.' + +'It will be death to you... Nevil!' + +'That 's foolish. I can stand the air for a few minutes.' + +'I 'll go,' said Jenny. + +'Unprotected? No.' + +'Cook shall come with me.' + +'Two women!' + +'Nevil, if you care a little for me, be good, be kind, submit.' + +'He is half an hour behind dinner-time, and he's never late. Something +must have happened to him. Way for me, my dear girl.' + +She stood firm between him and the door. It came to pass that she +stretched her hands to arrest him, and he seized the hands. + +'Rather than you should go out in this cold weather, anything!' she +said, in the desperation of physical inability to hold him back. + +'Ah!' Beauchamp crossed his arms round her. 'I'll wait for five +minutes.' + +One went by, with Jenny folded, broken and sobbing, senseless, against +his breast. + +They had not heard Dr. Shrapnel quietly opening the hall door and +hanging up his hat. He looked in. + +'Beauchamp!' he exclaimed. + +'Come, doctor,' said Beauchamp, and loosened his clasp of Jenny +considerately. + +She disengaged herself. + +'Beauchamp! now I die a glad man.' + +'Witness, doctor, she 's mine by her own confession.' + +'Uncle!' Jenny gasped. 'Oh! Captain Beauchamp, what an error! what +delusion!... Forget it. I will. Here are more misunderstandings! You +shall be excused. But be...' + +'Be you the blessedest woman alive on this earth, my Jenny!' shouted +Dr. Shrapnel. 'You have the choice man on all the earth for husband, +sweetheart! Ay, of all the earth! I go with a message for my old friend +Harry Denham, to quicken him in the grave; for the husband of his girl +is Nevil Beauchamp! The one thing I dared not dream of thousands is +established. Sunlight, my Jenny!' + +Beauchamp kissed her hand. + +She slipped away to her chamber, grovelling to find her diminished self +somewhere in the mid-thunder of her amazement, as though it were to +discover a pin on the floor by the flash of lightning. Where was she! + +This ensued from the apology of Lord Romfrey to Dr. Shrapnel. + + + + +CHAPTER LV. WITHOUT LOVE + +At the end of November, Jenny Denham wrote these lines to Mr. Lydiard, +in reply to his request that she should furnish the latest particulars +of Nevil Beauchamp, for the satisfaction of the Countess of Romfrey: + +'There is everything to reassure Lady Romfrey in the state of Captain +Beauchamp's health, and I have never seen him so placidly happy as he +has been since the arrival, yesterday morning, of a lady from France, +Madame la Marquise de Rouaillout, with her brother, M. le Comte de +Croisnel. Her husband, I hear from M. de Croisnel, dreads our climate +and coffee too much to attempt the voyage. I understand that she writes +to Lady Romfrey to-day. Lady Romfrey's letter to her, informing her of +Captain Beauchamp's alarming illness, went the round from Normandy to +Touraine and Dauphiny, otherwise she would have come over earlier. + +'Her first inquiry of me was, "Il est mort?" You would have supposed her +disappointed by my answer. A light went out in her eyes, like that of +a veilleuse in the dawn. She looked at me without speaking, while her +beautiful eyes regained their natural expression. She shut them and +sighed. "Tell him that M. de Croisnel and his sister are here." + +'This morning her wish to see Miss Halkett was gratified. You know my +taste was formed in France; I agree with Captain Beauchamp in his more +than admiration of Frenchwomen; ours, though more accomplished, are +colder and less plastic. But Miss Halkett is surpassingly beautiful, +very amiable, very generous, a perfect friend. She is our country at its +best. Probably she is shy of speaking French; she frequently puts the +Italian accent. Madame de Rouaillout begged to speak with her alone: I +do not know what passed. Miss Halkett did not return to us. + +'Dr. Shrapnel and Captain Beauchamp have recently been speculating +on our becoming a nation of artists, and authorities in science +and philosophy, by the time our coalfields and material wealth are +exhausted. That, and the cataclysm, are their themes. + +'They say, will things end utterly?--all our gains be lost? The question +seems to me to come of that love of earth which is recognition of God: +for if they cannot reconcile themselves to believe in extinction, to +what must they be looking? It is a confirmation of your saying, that +love leads to God, through art or in acts. + +'You will regret to hear that the project of Captain Beauchamp's voyage +is in danger of being abandoned. A committee of a vacant Radical borough +has offered to nominate him. My influence is weak; madame would have him +go back with her and her brother to Normandy. My influence is weak, I +suppose, because he finds me constantly leaning to expediency--I am your +pupil. It may be quite correct that powder is intended for explosion +we do not therefore apply a spark to the barrel. I ventured on that. +He pitied me in the snares of simile and metaphor. He is the same, you +perceive. How often have we not discussed what would have become of him, +with that "rocket brain" of his, in less quiet times! Yet, when he +was addressing a deputation of workmen the other day, he recommended +patience to them as one of the virtues that count under wisdom. He is +curiously impatient for knowledge. One of his reasons for not accepting +Colonel Halkett's offer of his yacht is, that he will not be able to +have books enough on board. Definite instead of vast and hazy duties +are to be desired for him, I think. Most fervently I pray that he will +obtain a ship and serve some years. At the risk of your accusing me +of "sententious posing," I would say, that men who do not live in the +present chiefly, but hamper themselves with giant tasks in excess of +alarm for the future, however devoted and noble they may be--and he +is an example of one that is--reduce themselves to the dimensions +of pigmies; they have the cry of infants. You reply, Foresight is +an element of love of country and mankind. But how often is not the +foresight guess-work? 'He has not spoken of the DAWN project. To-day he +is repeating one of uncle's novelties--"Sultry Tories." The sultry +Tory sits in the sun and prophecies woefully of storm, it appears. Your +accusation that I am one at heart amuses me; I am not quite able to deny +it. "Sultriness" I am not conscious of. But it would appear to be an +epithet for the Conservatives of wealth. So that England, being very +wealthy, we are to call it a sultry country? You are much wanted, for +where there is no "middleman Liberal" to hold the scales for them, these +two have it all their own way, which is not good for them. + +Captain Beauchamp quotes you too. It seems that you once talked to him +of a machine for measuring the force of blows delivered with the fist, +and compared his efforts to those of one perpetually practising at it: +and this you are said to have called "The case of the Constitutional +Realm and the extreme Radical." Elsewhere the Radical smites at iron or +rotten wood; in England it is a cushion on springs. Did you say it? He +quotes it as yours, half acquiescingly, and ruefully. + +'For visitors, we have had Captain Baskelett for two minutes, and +Lord Palmet, who stayed longer, and seems to intend to come daily. He +attempts French with Madame de R., and amuses her a little: a silver +foot and a ball of worsted. Mr. and Mrs. Grancey Lespel have called, and +Lord and Lady Croyston. Colonel Halkett, Miss Halkett, and Mr. Tuckham +come frequently. Captain Beauchamp spoke to her yesterday of her +marriage. 'Madame de R. leaves us to-morrow. Her brother is a +delightful, gay-tempered, very handsome boyish Frenchman--not her equal, +to my mind, for I do not think Frenchmen comparable to the women of +France; but she is exceedingly grave, with hardly a smile, and his high +spirits excite Nevil's, so it is pleasant to see them together.' + +The letter was handed to Lady Romfrey. She read through it thoughtfully +till she came to the name of Nevil, when she frowned. On the morrow she +pronounced it a disingenuous letter. Renee had sent her these lines: + +'I should come to you if my time were not restricted; my brother's leave +of absence is short. I have done here what lay in my power, to show you +I have learnt something in the school of self-immolation. I have seen +Mlle. Halkett. She is a beautiful young woman, deficient only in words, +doubtless. My labour, except that it may satisfy you, was the vainest of +tasks. She marries a ruddy monsieur of a name that I forget, and of the +bearing of a member of the gardes du corps, without the stature. Enfin, +madame, I have done my duty, and do not regret it, since I may hope that +it will win for me some approbation and a portion of the esteem of a +lady to whom I am indebted for that which is now the best of life to me: +and I do not undervalue it in saying I would gladly have it stamped on +brass and deposited beside my father's. I have my faith. I would it were +Nevil's too--and yours, should you be in need of it. + +'He will marry Mlle. Denham. If I may foretell events, she will steady +him. She is a young person who will not feel astray in society of his +rank; she possesses the natural grace we do not expect to see out of our +country--from sheer ignorance of what is beyond it. For the moment she +affects to consider herself unworthy; and it is excuseable that she +should be slightly alarmed at her prospect. But Nevil must have a wife. +I presume to think that he could not have chosen better. Above all, make +him leave England for the Winter. Adieu, dear countess. Nevil promises +me a visit after his marriage. I shall not set foot on England again: +but you, should you ever come to our land of France, will find my heart +open to you at the gates of undying grateful recollection. I am not +skilled in writing. You have looked into me once; look now; I am the +same. Only I have succeeded in bringing myself to a greater likeness +to the dead, as it becomes a creature to be who is coupled with one of +their body. Meanwhile I shall have news of you. I trust that soon I may +be warranted in forwarding congratulations to Lord Romfrey.' + +Rosamund handed the letters to her husband. Not only did she think +Miss Denham disingenuous, she saw that the girl was not in love with +Beauchamp: and the idea of a loveless marriage for him threw the +mournfullest of Hecate's beams along the course of a career that the +passionate love of a bride, though she were not well-born and not +wealthy, would have rosily coloured. + +'Without love!' she exclaimed to herself. She asked the earl's opinion +of the startling intelligence, and of the character of that Miss Denham, +who could pen such a letter, after engaging to give her hand to Nevil. + +Lord Romfrey laughed in his dumb way. 'If Nevil must have a wife--and +the marquise tells you so, and she ought to know--he may as well marry +a girl who won't go all the way down hill with him at his pace. He'll be +cogged.' + +'You do not object to such an alliance?' + +'I 'm past objection. There's no law against a man's marrying his +nurse.' + +'But she is not even in love with him!' + +'I dare say not. He wants a wife: she accepts a husband. The two women +who were in love with him he wouldn't have.' + +Lady Romfrey sighed deeply: 'He has lost Cecilia! She might still +have been his: but he has taken to that girl. And Madame de Rouaillout +praises the girl because--oh! I see it--she has less to be jealous of in +Miss Denham: of whose birth and blood we know nothing. Let that pass! If +only she loved him! I cannot endure the thought of his marrying a girl +who is not in love with him.' + +'Just as you like, my dear.' + +'I used to suspect Mr. Lydiard.' + +'Perhaps he's the man.' + +'Oh, what an end of so brilliant a beginning!' + +'It strikes me, my dear,' said the earl, 'it's the proper common sense +beginning that may have a fairish end.' + +'No, but what I feel is that he--our Nevil!--has accomplished hardly +anything, if anything!' + +'He hasn't marched on London with a couple of hundred thousand men: no, +he hasn't done that,' the earl said, glancing back in his mind through +Beauchamp's career. 'And he escapes what Stukely calls his nation's +scourge, in the shape of a statue turned out by an English chisel. No: +we haven't had much public excitement out of him. But one thing he did +do: he got me down on my knees!' + +Lord Romfrey pronounced these words with a sober emphasis that struck +the humour of it sharply into Rosamund's heart, through some contrast it +presented between Nevil's aim at the world and hit of a man: the immense +deal thought of it by the earl, and the very little that Nevil would +think of it--the great domestic achievement to be boasted of by an +enthusiastic devotee of politics! + +She embraced her husband with peals of loving laughter: the last +laughter heard in Romfrey Castle for many a day. + + + + +CHAPTER LVI. THE LAST OF NEVIL BEAUCHAMP + +Not before Beauchamp was flying with the Winter gales to warmer +climes could Rosamund reflect on his career unshadowed by her feminine +mortification at the thought that he was unloved by the girl he had +decided to marry. But when he was away and winds blew, the clouds which +obscured an embracing imagination of him--such as, to be true and full +and sufficient, should stretch like the dome of heaven over the humblest +of lives under contemplation--broke, and revealed him to her as one who +had other than failed: rather as one in mid career, in mid forest, who, +by force of character, advancing in self-conquest, strikes his impress +right and left around him, because of his aim at stars. He had faults, +and she gloried to think he had; for the woman's heart rejoiced in his +portion of our common humanity while she named their prince to men: but +where was he to be matched in devotedness and in gallantry? and what +man of blood fiery as Nevil's ever fought so to subject it? Rosamund +followed him like a migratory bird, hovered over his vessel, perched on +deck beside the helm, where her sailor was sure to be stationed, entered +his breast, communed with him, and wound him round and round with her +love. He has mine! she cried. Her craving that he should be blest in +the reward, or flower-crown, of his wife's love of him lessened in +proportion as her brooding spirit vividly realized his deeds. In fact +it had been but an example of our very general craving for a climax, +palpable and scenic. She was completely satisfied by her conviction that +his wife would respect and must be subordinate to him. So it had been +with her. As for love, let him come to his Rosamund for love, and +appreciation, adoration! + +Rosamund drew nigh to her hour of peril with this torch of her love of +Beauchamp to illuminate her. + +There had been a difficulty in getting him to go. One day Cecilia +walked down to Dr. Shrapnel's with Mr. Tuckham, to communicate that the +Esperanza awaited Captain Beauchamp, manned and provisioned, off the +pier. Now, he would not go without Dr. Shrapnel, nor the doctor without +Jenny; and Jenny could not hold back, seeing that the wish of her +heart was for Nevil to be at sea, untroubled by political questions and +prowling Radical deputies. So her consent was the seal of the voyage. +What she would not consent to, was the proposal to have her finger +ringed previous to the voyage, altogether in the manner of a sailor's +bride. She seemed to stipulate for a term of courtship. Nevil frankly +told the doctor that he was not equal to it; anything that was kind +he was quite ready to say; and anything that was pretty: but nothing +particularly kind and pretty occurred to him: he was exactly like a +juvenile correspondent facing a blank sheet of letter paper:--he really +did not know what to say, further than the uncomplicated exposition of +his case, that he wanted a wife and had found the very woman. How, then, +fathom Jenny's mood for delaying? Dr. Shrapnel's exhortations were so +worded as to induce her to comport herself like a Scriptural woman, +humbly wakeful to the surpassing splendour of the high fortune which had +befallen her in being so selected, and obedient at a sign. But she was, +it appeared that she was, a maid of scaly vision, not perceptive of the +blessedness of her lot. She could have been very little perceptive, for +she did not understand his casual allusion to Beauchamp's readiness to +overcome 'a natural repugnance,' for the purpose of making her his wife. + +Up to the last moment, before Cecilia Halkett left the deck of the +Esperanza to step on the pier, Jenny remained in vague but excited +expectation of something intervening to bring Cecilia and Beauchamp +together. It was not a hope; it was with pure suspense that she awaited +the issue. Cecilia was pale. Beauchamp shook Mr. Tuckham by the hand, +and said: 'I shall not hear the bells, but send me word of it, will +you?' and he wished them both all happiness. + +The sails of the schooner filled. On a fair frosty day, with a light +wind ruffling from the North-west, she swept away, out of sight of +Bevisham, and the island, into the Channel, to within view of the coast +of France. England once below the water-line, alone with Beauchamp and +Dr. Shrapnel, Jenny Denham knew her fate. + +As soon as that grew distinctly visible in shape and colour, she ceased +to be reluctant. All about her, in air and sea and unknown coast, was +fresh and prompting. And if she looked on Beauchamp, the thought--my +husband! palpitated, and destroyed and re-made her. Rapidly she +underwent her transformation from doubtfully-minded woman to woman +awakening clear-eyed, and with new sweet shivers in her temperate blood, +like the tremulous light seen running to the morn upon a quiet sea. She +fell under the charm of Beauchamp at sea. + +In view of the island of Madeira, Jenny noticed that some trouble had +come upon Dr. Shrapnel and Beauchamp, both of whom had been hilarious +during the gales; but sailing into Summer they began to wear that look +which indicated one of their serious deliberations. She was not taken +into their confidence, and after awhile they recovered partially. + +The truth was, they had been forced back upon old English ground by +a recognition of the absolute necessity, for her sake, of handing +themselves over to a parson. In England, possibly, a civil marriage +might have been proposed to the poor girl. In a foreign island, they +would be driven not simply to accept the services of a parson, but to +seek him and solicit him: otherwise the knot, faster than any sailor's +in binding, could not be tied. Decidedly it could not; and how submit? +Neither Dr. Shrapnel nor Beauchamp were of a temper to deceive the +clerical gentleman; only they had to think of Jenny's feelings. Alas +for us!--this our awful baggage in the rear of humanity, these women who +have not moved on their own feet one step since the primal mother taught +them to suckle, are perpetually pulling us backward on the march. +Slaves of custom, forms, shows and superstitions, they are slaves of the +priests. 'They are so in gratitude perchance, as the matter works,' Dr. +Shrapnel admitted. For at one period the priests did cherish and protect +the weak from animal man. But we have entered a broader daylight now, +when the sun of high heaven has crowned our structure with the flower of +brain, like him to scatter mists, and penetrate darkness, and shoot +from end to end of earth; and must we still be grinning subserviently to +ancient usages and stale forms, because of a baggage that it is, woe to +us! too true, we cannot cut ourselves loose from? Lydiard might say we +are compelling the priests to fight, and that they are compact foemen, +not always passive. Battle, then!--The cry was valiant. Nevertheless, +Jenny would certainly insist upon the presence of a parson, in spite of +her bridegroom's 'natural repugnance.' Dr. Shrapnel offered to argue it +with her, being of opinion that a British consul could satisfactorily +perform the ceremony. Beauchamp knew her too well. Moreover, though +tongue-tied as to love-making, he was in a hurry to be married. Jenny's +eyes were lovely, her smiles were soft; the fair promise of her was +in bloom on her face and figure. He could not wait; he must off to the +parson. + +Then came the question as to whether honesty and honour did not impose +it on them to deal openly with that gentle, and on such occasions +unobtrusive official, by means of a candid statement to him overnight, +to the effect that they were the avowed antagonists of his Church, +which would put him on his defence, and lead to an argument that would +accomplish his overthrow. You parsons, whose cause is good, marshal out +the poor of the land, that we may see the sort of army your stewardship +has gained for you. What! no army? only women and hoary men? And in the +rear rank, to support you as an institution, none but fanatics, cowards, +white-eyeballed dogmatists, timeservers, money-changers, mockers in +their sleeves? What is this? + +But the prospect of so completely confounding the unfortunate parson +warned Beauchamp that he might have a shot in his locker: the parson +heavily trodden on will turn. 'I suppose we must be hypocrites,' he said +in dejection. Dr. Shrapnel was even more melancholy. He again offered +to try his persuasiveness upon Jenny. Beauchamp declined to let her be +disturbed. + +She did not yield so very lightly to the invitation to go before a +parson. She had to be wooed after all; a Harry Hotspur's wooing. Three +clergymen of the Established Church were on the island: 'And where won't +they be, where there's fine scenery and comforts abound?' Beauchamp said +to the doctor ungratefully. + +'Whether a celibate clergy ruins the Faith faster than a non-celibate, I +won't dispute,' replied the doctor; 'but a non-celibate interwinds with +us, and is likely to keep up a one-storied edifice longer.' + +Jenny hesitated. She was a faltering unit against an ardent and +imperative two in the council. And Beauchamp had shown her a letter of +Lady Romfrey's very clearly signifying that she and her lord anticipated +tidings of the union. Marrying Beauchamp was no simple adventure. She +feared in her bosom, and resigned herself. + +She had a taste of what it was to be, at the conclusion of the service. +Beauchamp thanked the good-natured clergyman, and spoke approvingly of +him to his bride, as an agreeable well-bred gentlemanly person. Then, +fronting her and taking both her hands: 'Now, my darling,' he said: 'you +must pledge me your word to this: I have stooped my head to the parson, +and I am content to have done that to win you, though I don't think much +of myself for doing it. I can't look so happy as I am. And this idle +ceremony--however, I thank God I have you, and I thank you for taking +me. But you won't expect me to give in to the parson again.' + +'But, Nevil,' she said, fearing what was to come: 'they are gentlemen, +good men.' + +'Yes, yes.' + +'They are educated men, Nevil.' + +'Jenny! Jenny Beauchamp, they're not men, they're Churchmen. My +experience of the priest in our country is, that he has abandoned--he 's +dead against the only cause that can justify and keep up a Church: the +cause of the poor--the people. He is a creature of the moneyed class. I +look on him as a pretender. I go through his forms, to save my wife from +annoyance, but there 's the end of it: and if ever I'm helpless, unable +to resist him, I rely on your word not to let him intrude; he's to +have nothing to do with the burial of me. He's against the cause of the +people. Very well: I make my protest to the death against him. When he's +a Christian instead of a Churchman, then may my example not be followed. +It 's little use looking for that.' + +Jenny dropped some tears on her bridal day. She sighed her submission. +'So long as you do not change,' said she. + +'Change!' cried Nevil. 'That's for the parson. Now it's over: we start +fair. My darling! I have you. I don't mean to bother you. I'm sure +you'll see that the enemies of Reason are the enemies of the human race; +you will see that. I can wait.' + +'If we can be sure that we ourselves are using reason rightly, +Nevil!--not prejudice.' + +'Of course. But don't you see, my Jenny, we have no interest in opposing +reason?' + +'But have we not all grown up together? And is it just or wise to direct +our efforts to overthrow a solid structure that is a part...?' + +He put his legal right in force to shut her mouth, telling her presently +she might Lydiardize as much as she liked. While practising this +mastery, he assured her he would always listen to her: yes, whether she +Lydiardized, or what Dr. Shrapnel called Jenny-prated. + +'That is to say, dear Nevil, that you have quite made up your mind to a +toddling chattering little nursery wife?' + +Very much the contrary to anything of the sort, he declared; and he +proved his honesty by announcing an immediate reflection that had come +to him: 'How oddly things are settled! Cecilia Halkett and Tuckham; you +and I! Now, I know for certain that I have brought Cecilia Halkett out +of her woman's Toryism, and given her at least liberal views, and she +goes and marries an arrant Tory; while you, a bit of a Tory at heart, +more than anything else, have married an ultra.' + +'Perhaps we may hope that the conflict will be seasonable on both +sides?--if you give me fair play, Nevil!' + +As fair play as a woman's lord could give her, she was to have; with +which, adieu to argumentation and controversy, and all the thanks in +life to the parson! On a lovely island, free from the seductions of +care, possessing a wife who, instead of starting out of romance and +poetry with him to the supreme honeymoon, led him back to those forsaken +valleys of his youth, and taught him the joys of colour and sweet +companionship, simple delights, a sister mind, with a loveliness of +person and nature unimagined by him, Beauchamp drank of a happiness that +neither Renee nor Cecilia had promised. His wooing of Jenny Beauchamp +was a flattery richer than any the maiden Jenny Denham could have deemed +her due; and if his wonder in experiencing such strange gladness was +quaintly ingenuous, it was delicious to her to see and know full surely +that he who was at little pains to court, or please, independently of +the agency of the truth in him, had come to be her lover through being +her husband. + +Here I would stop. It is Beauchamp's career that carries me on to its +close, where the lanterns throw their beams off the mudbanks by the +black riverside; when some few English men and women differed from the +world in thinking that it had suffered a loss. + +They sorrowed for the earl when tidings came to them of the loss of his +child, alive one hour in his arms. Rosamund caused them to be deceived +as to her condition. She survived; she wrote to Jenny, bidding her keep +her husband cruising. Lord Romfrey added a brief word: he told Nevil +that he would see no one for the present; hoped he would be absent a +year, not a day less. To render it the more easily practicable, in the +next packet of letters Colonel Halkett and Cecilia begged them not to +bring the Esperanza home for the yachting season: the colonel said his +daughter was to be married in April, and that bridegroom and bride had +consented to take an old man off with them to Italy; perhaps in the +autumn all might meet in Venice. + +'And you've never seen Venice,' Beauchamp said to Jenny. + +'Everything is new to me,' said she, penetrating and gladly joining the +conspiracy to have him out of England. + +Dr. Shrapnel was not so compliant as the young husband. Where he could +land and botanize, as at Madeira, he let time fly and drum his wings +on air, but the cities of priests along the coast of Portugal and Spain +roused him to a burning sense of that flight of time and the vacuity it +told of in his labours. Greatly to his astonishment, he found that it +was no longer he and Beauchamp against Jenny, but Jenny and Beauchamp +against him. + +'What!' he cried, 'to draw breath day by day, and not to pay for it by +striking daily at the rock Iniquity? Are you for that, Beauchamp? And in +a land where these priests walk with hats curled like the water-lily's +leaf without the flower? How far will you push indolent unreason to gain +the delusion of happiness? There is no such thing: but there's trance. +That talk of happiness is a carrion clamour of the creatures of prey. +Take it--and you're helping tear some poor wretch to pieces, whom you +might be constructing, saving perchance: some one? some thousands! You, +Beauchamp, when I met you first, you were for England, England! for +a breadth of the palm of my hand comparatively--the round of a copper +penny, no wider! And from that you jumped at a bound to the round of +this earth: you were for humanity. Ay, we sailed our planet among the +icy spheres, and were at blood-heat for its destiny, you and I! And now +you hover for a wind to catch you. So it is for a soul rejecting prayer. +This wind and that has it: the well-springs within are shut down fast! I +pardon my Jenny, my Harry Denham's girl. She is a woman, and has a brain +like a bell that rings all round to the tongue. It is her kingdom, of +the interdicted untraversed frontiers. But what cares she, or any woman, +that this Age of ours should lie like a carcase against the Sun? What +cares any woman to help to hold up Life to him? He breeds divinely +upon life, filthy upon stagnation. Sail you away, if you will, in your +trance. I go. I go home by land alone, and I await you. Here in this +land of moles upright, I do naught but execrate; I am a pulpit of +curses. Counter-anathema, you might call me.' + +'Oh! I feel the comparison so, for England shining spiritually bright,' +said Jenny, and cut her husband adrift with the exclamation, and saw him +float away to Dr. Shrapnel. + +'Spiritually bright!' + +'By comparison, Nevil.' + +'There's neither spiritual nor political brightness in England, but a +common resolution to eat of good things and stick to them,' said the +doctor: 'and we two out of England, there's barely a voice to cry scare +to the feeders. I'm back! I'm home!' + +They lost him once in Cadiz, and discovered him on the quay, looking +about for a vessel. In getting him to return to the Esperanza, they +nearly all three fell into the hands of the police. Beauchamp gave him +a great deal of his time, reading and discussing with him on deck and +in the cabin, and projecting future enterprises, to pacify his +restlessness. A translation of Plato had become Beauchamp's intellectual +world. This philosopher singularly anticipated his ideas. Concerning +himself he was beginning to think that he had many years ahead of him +for work. He was with Dr. Shrapnel, as to the battle, and with Jenny as +to the delay in recommencing it. Both the men laughed at the constant +employment she gave them among the Greek islands in furnishing her +severely accurate accounts of sea-fights and land-fights: and the +scenes being before them they could neither of them protest that their +task-work was an idle labour. Dr. Shrapnel assisted in fighting Marathon +and Salamis over again cordially--to shield Great Britain from the rule +of a satrapy. + +Beauchamp often tried to conjure words to paint his wife. On grave +subjects she had the manner of speaking of a shy scholar, and between +grave and playful, between smiling and serious, her clear head, her +nobly poised character, seemed to him to have never had a prototype and +to elude the art of picturing it in expression, until he heard Lydiard +call her whimsically, 'Portia disrobing.' + +Portia half in her doctor's gown, half out of it. They met Lydiard and +his wife Louise, and Mr. and Mrs. Tuckham, in Venice, where, upon the +first day of October, Jenny Beauchamp gave birth to a son. The thrilling +mother did not perceive on this occasion the gloom she cast over the +father of the child and Dr. Shrapnel. The youngster would insist on his +right to be sprinkled by the parson, to get a legal name and please his +mother. At all turns in the history of our healthy relations with +women we are confronted by the parson! 'And, upon my word, I believe,' +Beauchamp said to Lydiard, 'those parsons--not bad creatures in private +life: there was one in Madeira I took a personal liking to--but they're +utterly ignorant of what men feel to them--more ignorant than women!' +Mr. Tuckham and Mrs. Lydiard would not listen to his foolish objections; +nor were they ever mentioned to Jenny. Apparently the commission of the +act of marriage was to force Beauchamp from all his positions one by +one. + +'The education of that child?' Mrs. Lydiard said to her husband. + +He considered that the mother would prevail. + +Cecilia feared she would not. + +'Depend upon it, he'll make himself miserable if he can,' said Tuckham. + +That gentleman, however, was perpetually coming fuming from arguments +with Beauchamp, and his opinion was a controversialist's. His common +sense was much afflicted. 'I thought marriage would have stopped +all those absurdities,' he said, glaring angrily, laughing, and then +frowning. 'I 've warned him I'll go out of my way to come across him if +he carries on his headlong folly. A man should accept his country for +what it is when he's born into it. Don't tell me he's a good fellow. I +know he is, but there 's an ass mounted on the good fellow. Talks of the +parsons! Why, they're men of education.' + +'They couldn't steer a ship in a gale, though.' + +'Oh! he's a good sailor. And let him go to sea,' said Tuckham. 'His +wife's a prize. He's hardly worthy of her. If she manages him she'll +deserve a monument for doing a public service.' + +How fortunate it is for us that here and there we do not succeed in +wresting our temporary treasure from the grasp of the Fates! + +This good old commonplace reflection came to Beauchamp while clasping +his wife's hand on the deck of the Esperanza, and looking up at the +mountains over the Gulf of Venice. The impression of that marvellous +dawn when he and Renee looked up hand-in-hand was ineffaceable, and pity +for the tender hand lost to him wrought in his blood, but Jenny was a +peerless wife; and though not in the music of her tongue, or in subtlety +of delicate meaning did she excel Renee, as a sober adviser she did, and +as a firm speaker; and she had homelier deep eyes, thoughtfuller brows. +The father could speculate with good hope of Jenny's child. Cecilia's +wealth, too, had gone over to the Tory party, with her incomprehensible +espousal of Tuckham. Let it go; let all go for dowerless Jenny! + +It was (she dared to recollect it in her anguish) Jenny's choice to go +home in the yacht that decided her husband not to make the journey by +land in company with the Lydiards. + +The voyage was favourable. Beauchamp had a passing wish to land on the +Norman coast, and take Jenny for a day to Tourdestelle. He deferred to +her desire to land baby speedily, now they were so near home. They ran +past Otley river, having sight of Mount Laurels, and on to Bevisham, +with swelling sails. There they parted. Beauchamp made it one of his +'points of honour' to deliver the vessel where he had taken her, at her +moorings in the Otley. One of the piermen stood before Beauchamp, and +saluting him, said he had been directed to inform him that the Earl +of Romfrey was with Colonel Halkett, expecting him at Mount Laurels. +Beauchamp wanted his wife to return in the yacht. She turned her eyes to +Dr. Shrapnel. It was out of the question that the doctor should think of +going. Husband and wife parted. She saw him no more. + +This is no time to tell of weeping. The dry chronicle is fittest. Hard +on nine o'clock in the December darkness, the night being still and +clear, Jenny's babe was at her breast, and her ears were awake for the +return of her husband. A man rang at the door of the house, and asked to +see Dr. Shrapnel. This man was Killick, the Radical Sam of politics. +He said to the doctor: 'I 'm going to hit you sharp, sir; I've had it +myself: please put on your hat and come out with me; and close the door. +They mustn't hear inside. And here's a fly. I knew you'd be off for the +finding of the body. Commander Beauchamp's drowned.' + +Dr. Shrapnel drove round by the shore of the broad water past a great +hospital and ruined abbey to Otley village. Killick had lifted him into +the conveyance, and he lifted him out. Dr. Shrapnel had not spoken a +word. Lights were flaring on the river, illuminating the small craft +sombrely. Men, women, and children crowded the hard and landing-places, +the marshy banks and the decks of colliers and trawlers. Neither Killick +nor Dr. Shrapnel questioned them. The lights were torches and lanterns; +the occupation of the boats moving in couples was the dragging for the +dead. + +'O God, let's find his body,' a woman called out. + +'Just a word; is it Commander Beauchamp?' Killick said to her. + +She was scarcely aware of a question. 'Here, this one,' she said, and +plucked a little boy of eight by the hand close against her side, and +shook him roughly and kissed him. + +An old man volunteered information. 'That's the boy. That boy was in his +father's boat out there, with two of his brothers, larking; and he and +another older than him fell overboard; and just then Commander Beauchamp +was rowing by, and I saw him from off here, where I stood, jump up and +dive, and he swam to his boat with one of them, and got him in safe: +that boy: and he dived again after the other, and was down a long time. +Either he burst a vessel or he got cramp, for he'd been rowing himself +from the schooner grounded down at the river-mouth, and must have been +hot when he jumped in: either way, he fetched the second up, and sank +with him. Down he went.' + +A fisherman said to Killick: 'Do you hear that voice thundering? That's +the great Lord Romfrey. He's been directing the dragging since five o' +the evening, and will till he drops or drowns, or up comes the body.' + +'O God, let's find the body!' the woman with the little boy called out. + +A torch lit up Lord Romfrey's face as he stepped ashore. 'The flood has +played us a trick,' he said. 'We want more drags, or with the next ebb +the body may be lost for days in this infernal water.' + +The mother of the rescued boy sobbed, 'Oh, my lord, my lord!' + +The earl caught sight of Dr. Shrapnel, and went to him. + +'My wife has gone down to Mrs. Beauchamp,' he said. 'She will bring her +and the baby to Mount Laurels. The child will have to be hand-fed. I +take you with me. You must not be alone.' + +He put his arm within the arm of the heavily-breathing man whom he had +once flung to the ground, to support him. + +'My lord! my lord!' sobbed the woman, and dropped on her knees. + +'What 's this?' the earl said, drawing his hand away from the woman's +clutch at it. + +'She's the mother, my lord,' several explained to him. + +'Mother of what?' + +'My boy,' the woman cried, and dragged the urchin to Lord Romfrey's +feet, cleaning her boy's face with her apron. + +'It's the boy Commander Beauchamp drowned to save,' said a man. + +All the lights of the ring were turned on the head of the boy. Dr. +Shrapnel's eyes and Lord Romfrey's fell on the abashed little creature. +The boy struck out both arms to get his fists against his eyelids. + +This is what we have in exchange for Beauchamp! + +It was not uttered, but it was visible in the blank stare at one +another of the two men who loved Beauchamp, after they had examined the +insignificant bit of mudbank life remaining in this world in the place +of him. + + ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARK + + A cloud of millinery shoots me off a mile from a woman + A kind of anchorage in case of indiscretion + A night that had shivered repose + A tear would have overcome him--She had not wept + A wound of the same kind that we are inflicting + A string of pearls: a woman who goes beyond that's in danger + A dash of conventionalism makes the whole civilized world kin + A bone in a boy's mind for him to gnaw and worry + Admires a girl when there's no married woman or widow in sight + Affectedly gentle and unusually roundabout opening + After forty, men have married their habits + Aimlessness of a woman's curiosity + Alike believe that Providence is for them + All concessions to the people have been won from fear + Am I thy master, or thou mine? + An instinct labouring to supply the deficiencies of stupidity + An old spoiler of women is worse than one spoiled by them! + And life said, Do it, and death said, To what end? + And never did a stroke of work in my life + And now came war, the purifier and the pestilence + And one gets the worst of it (in any bargain) + Anticipate opposition by initiating measures + Appealed to reason in them; he would not hear of convictions + Appetite to flourish at the cost of the weaker + Are we practical?' penetrates the bosom of an English audience + Art of speaking on politics tersely + As fair play as a woman's lord could give her + As to wit, the sneer is the cloak of clumsiness + As for titles, the way to defend them is to be worthy of them + Automatic creature is subject to the laws of its construction + Beauchamp's career + Beautiful servicelessness + Better for men of extremely opposite opinions not to meet + Boys are unjust + Braggadocioing in deeds is only next bad to mouthing it + Calm fanaticism of the passion of love + Canvassing means intimidation or corruption + Carry a scene through in virtue's name and vice's mask + Comfortable have to pay in occasional panics for the serenity + Compassionate sentiments veered round to irate amazement + Consult the family means--waste your time + Contemptuous exclusiveness could not go farther + Convict it by instinct without the ceremony of a jury + Convictions are generally first impressions + Cordiality of an extreme relief in leaving + Country can go on very well without so much speech-making + Cowardice is even worse for nations than for individual men + Crazy zigzag of policy in almost every stroke (of history) + Dark-eyed Renee was not beauty but attraction + Death within which welcomed a death without + Decline to practise hypocrisy + Despises the pomades and curling-irons of modern romance + Dialectical stiffness + Dignity of sulking so seductive to the wounded spirit of man + Discover the writers in a day when all are writing! + Disqualification of constantly offending prejudices + Dogs die more decently than we men + Dreads our climate and coffee too much to attempt the voyage + Effort to be reticent concerning Nevil, and communicative + Efforts to weary him out of his project were unsuccessful + Empty magnanimity which his uncle presented to him + Energy to something, that was not to be had in a market + Feigned utter condemnation to make partial comfort acceptable + Feminine pity, which is nearer to contempt than to tenderness + Fine eye for celestially directed consequences is ever haunted + Fit of Republicanism in the nursery + Forewarn readers of this history that there is no plot in it + Fretted by his relatives he cannot be much of a giant + Frozen vanity called pride, which does not seek to be revenged + Give our courage as hostage for the fulfilment of what we hope + Give our consciences to the keeping of the parsons + Given up his brains for a lodging to a single idea + Good maxim for the wrathful--speak not at all + Grief of an ill-fortuned passion of his youth + Had come to be her lover through being her husband + Half-truth that we may put on the mask of the whole + Hates a compromise + Haunted many pillows + He was too much on fire to know the taste of absurdity + He condensed a paragraph into a line + He runs too much from first principles to extremes + He bowed to facts + He lost the art of observing himself + He had expected romance, and had met merchandize + He smoked, Lord Avonley said of the second departure + He never calculated on the happening of mortal accidents + Heights of humour beyond laughter + Holding to his work after the strain's over--That tells the man + Hopes of a coming disillusion that would restore him + How angry I should be with you if you were not so beautiful! + Humour preserved her from excesses of sentiment + I can confess my sight to be imperfect: but will you ever do so? + I do not think Frenchmen comparable to the women of France + I cannot say less, and will say no more + If there's no doubt about it, how is it I have a doubt about it? + Immense wealth and native obtuseness combine to disfigure us + Impossible for him to think that women thought + Impudent boy's fling at superiority over the superior + In India they sacrifice the widows, in France the virgins + Incessantly speaking of the necessity we granted it unknowingly + Infallibility of our august mother + Inflicted no foretaste of her coming subjection to him + Irony provoked his laughter more than fun + Irritability at the intrusion of past disputes + It would be hard! ay, then we do it forthwith + It is not high flying, which usually ends in heavy falling + Leader accustomed to count ahead upon vapourish abstractions + Led him to impress his unchangeableness upon her + Let none of us be so exalted above the wit of daily life + Levelling a finger at the taxpayer + Love, that has risen above emotion, quite independent of craving + Love's a selfish business one has work in hand + Made of his creed a strait-jacket for humanity + Making too much of it--a trick of the vulgar + Man owes a duty to his class + Mankind is offended by heterodoxy in mean attire + Mark of a fool to take everybody for a bigger fool than himself + Martyrs of love or religion are madmen + May not one love, not craving to be beloved? + Men had not pleased him of late + Mental and moral neuters + Money's a chain-cable for holding men to their senses + More argument I cannot bear + Never was a word fitter for a quack's mouth than "humanity" + Never pretend to know a girl by her face + No heart to dare is no heart to love! + No case is hopeless till a man consents to think it is + No stopping the Press while the people have an appetite for it + No man has a firm foothold who pretends to it + None but fanatics, cowards, white-eyeballed dogmatists + Oggler's genial piety made him shrink with nausea + On which does the eye linger longest--which draws the heart? + Once called her beautiful; his praise had given her beauty + Oratory will not work against the stream, or on languid tides + Parliament, is the best of occupations for idle men + Passion is not invariably love + Past fairness, vaguely like a snow landscape in the thaw + Peace-party which opposed was the actual cause of the war + Peculiar subdued form of laughter through the nose + People with whom a mute conformity is as good as worship + People is one of your Radical big words that burst at a query + Planting the past in the present like a perceptible ghost + Play the great game of blunders + Please to be pathetic on that subject after I am wrinkled + Pleasure-giving laws that make the curves we recognize as beauty + Politics as well as the other diseases + Practical or not, the good people affectingly wish to be + Prayer for an object is the cajolery of an idol + Press, which had kindled, proceeded to extinguished + Presumptuous belief + Protestant clergy the social police of the English middle-class + Push indolent unreason to gain the delusion of happiness + Ready is the ardent mind to take footing on the last thing done + Rebellion against society and advocacy of humanity run counter + Reproof of such supererogatory counsel + Scotchman's metaphysics; you know nothing clear + She was not, happily, one of the women who betray strong feeling + She had no longer anything to resent: she was obliged to weep + Shun comparisons + Shuns the statuesque pathetic, or any kind of posturing + Silence and such signs are like revelations in black night + Slaves of the priests + Small things producing great consequences + So the frog telleth tadpoles + Socially and politically mean one thing in the end + Story that she believed indeed, but had not quite sensibly felt + Straining for common talk, and showing the strain + Style resembling either early architecture or utter dilapidation + That a mask is a concealment + The girl could not know her own mind, for she suited him exactly + The critic that sneers + The religion of this vast English middle-class--Comfort + The slavery of the love of a woman chained + The turn will come to us as to others--and go + The language of party is eloquent + The defensive is perilous policy in war + The healthy only are fit to live + The system is cursed by nature, and that means by heaven + The world without him would be heavy matter + The weighty and the trivial contended + The rider's too heavy for the horse in England + The greater wounds do not immediately convince us of our fate + The people always wait for the winner + The defensive is perilous policy in war + The family view is everlastingly the shopkeeper's + The infant candidate delights in his honesty + The tragedy of the mirror is one for a woman to write + Their hearts are eaten up by property + Their not caring to think at all + There is no step backward in life + There may be women who think as well as feel; I don't know them + There is no first claim + There's nothing like a metaphor for an evasion + They may know how to make themselves happy in their climate + They have their thinking done for them + They're always having to retire and always hissing + Thirst for the haranguing of crowds + This girl was pliable only to service, not to grief + Those whose humour consists of a readiness to laugh + Those happy men who enjoy perceptions without opinions + Threatened powerful drugs for weak stomachs + Times when an example is needed by brave men + To beg the vote and wink the bribe + Tongue flew, thought followed + Too many time-servers rot the State + Trust no man Still, this man may be better than that man + Unanimous verdicts from a jury of temporary impressions + Use your religion like a drug + Virtue of impatience + We do not see clearly when we are trying to deceive + We women can read men by their power to love + We could row and ride and fish and shoot, and breed largely + We dare not be weak if we would + We were unarmed, and the spectacle was distressing + We can't hope to have what should be + We have a system, not planned but grown + We are chiefly led by hope + We're treated like old-fashioned ornaments! + Welcomed and lured on an adversary to wild outhitting + Well, sir, we must sell our opium + What ninnies call Nature in books + When he's a Christian instead of a Churchman + Where love exists there is goodness + Who cannot talk!--but who can? + Without a single intimation that he loathed the task + Wives are only an item in the list, and not the most important + Women don't care uncommonly for the men who love them + Women must not be judging things out of their sphere + Won't do to be taking in reefs on a lee-shore + Wonderment that one of her sex should have ideas + Wooing a good man for his friendship + World cannot pardon a breach of continuity + You are not married, you are simply chained + You're talking to me, not to a gallery + You're talking to me, not to a gallery + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Beauchamp's Career, Complete, by George Meredith + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER, COMPLETE *** + +***** This file should be named 4460.txt or 4460.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/4/4/6/4460/ + +Produced by David Widger + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Hart +and may be reprinted only when these Etexts are free of all fees.] +[Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be used in any sales +of Project Gutenberg Etexts or other materials be they hardware or +software or any other related product without express permission.] + +*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.10/04/01*END* + + + + + +This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net> + + + + + +[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the +file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an +entire meal of them. D.W.] + + + + + +BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER + +By George Meredith + +1897 + + + +CONTENTS + +BOOK 1. +I. THE CHAMPION OF HIS COUNTRY +II. UNCLE, NEPHEW, AND ANOTHER +III. CONTAINS BARONIAL VIEWS OF THE PRESENT +IV. A GLIMPSE OF NEVIL IN ACTION +V. RENEE +VI. LOVE IN VENICE +VII. AN AWAKENING FOR BOTH +VIII. A NIGHT ON THE ADRIATIC +IX. MORNING AT SEA UNDER THE ALPS +X. A SINGULAR COUNCIL + +BOOK 2. +XI. CAPTAIN BASKELETT +XII. AN INTERVIEW WITH THE INFAMOUS Dr. SHRAPNEL +XIII. A SUPERFINE CONSCIENCE +XIV. THE LEADING ARTICLE AND MR. TIMOTHY TURBOT +XV. CECILIA HALKETT +XVI. A PARTIAL DISPLAY OF BEAUCHAMP IN HIS COLOURS +XVII. HIS FRIEND AND FOE +XVIII. CONCERNING THE ACT OF CANVASSING + +BOOK 3. +XIX. LORD PALMET, AND CERTAIN ELECTORS +XX. A DAY AT ITCHINCOPE +XXI. THE QUESTION AS TO THE EXAMINATION OF THE WHIGS, + AND THE FINE BLOW STRUCK BY MR. EVERARD ROMFREY +XXII. THE DRIVE INTO BEVISHAM +XXIII. TOURDESTELLE +XXIV. HIS HOLIDAY +XXV. THE ADVENTURE OF THE BOAT. + +BOOK 4. +XXVI. MR. BLACKBURN TUCKHAM +XXVII. A SHORT SIDELOOK AT THE ELECTION +XXVIII. TOUCHING A YOUNG LADY'S HEART AND HER INTELLECT +XXIX. THE EPISTLE OF DR. SHRAPNEL TO COMMANDER BEAUCHAMP +XXX. THE BAITING OF DR. SHRAPNEL +XXXI. SHOWING A CHIVALROUS GENTLEMAN SET IN MOTION +XXXII. AN EFFORT TO CONQUER CECILIA IN BEAUCHAMP'S FASHION +XXXIII. THE FIRST ENCOUNTER AT STEYNHAM + +BOOK 5. +XXXIV. THE FACE OF RENEE +XXXV. THE RIDE IN THE WRONG DIRECTION +XXXVI. PURSUIT OF THE APOLOGY OF MR. ROMFREY TO DR. SHRAPNEL +XXXVII. CECILIA CONQUERED +XXXVIII. LORD AVONLEY +XXXIX. BETWEEN BEAUCHAMP AND CECILIA +XL. A TRIAL OF HIM +XLI. A LAME VICTORY + +BOOK 6. +XLII. THE TWO PASSIONS +XLIII. THE EARL OF ROMFREY AND THE COUNTESS +XLIV. THE NEPHEWS OF THE EARL, AND ANOTHER EXHIBITION OF THE TWO + PASSIONS IN BEAUCHAMP. +XLV. A LITTLE PLOT AGAINST CECILIA +XLVI. AS IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN FORESEEN +XLVII. THE REFUSAL OF HIM +XLVIII. OF THE TRIAL AWAITING THE EARL OF ROMFREY +XLIX. A FABRIC OF BARONIAL DESPOTISM CRUMBLES + +BOOK 7. +L. AT THE COTTAGE ON THE COMMON +LI. IN THE NIGHT +LII. QUESTION OF A PILGRIMAGE AND AN ACT OF PENANCE +LIII. THE APOLOGY TO DR. SHRAPNEL +LIV. THE FRUITS OF THE APOLOGY +LV. WITHOUT LOVE +LVI. THE LAST OF NEVIL BEAUCHAMP + + + + +BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER + + +BOOK 1. + +I. THE CHAMPION OF HIS COUNTRY +II. UNCLE, NEPHEW, AND ANOTHER +III. CONTAINS BARONIAL VIEWS OF THE PRESENT +IV. A GLIMPSE OF NEVIL IN ACTION +V. RENEE +VI. LOVE IN VENICE +VII. AN AWAKENING FOR BOTH +VIII. A NIGHT ON THE ADRIATIC +IX. MORNING AT SEA UNDER THE ALPS +X. A SINGULAR COUNCIL + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE CHAMPION OF HIS COUNTRY + +When young Nevil Beauchamp was throwing off his midshipman's jacket for +a holiday in the garb of peace, we had across Channel a host of dreadful +military officers flashing swords at us for some critical observations +of ours upon their sovereign, threatening Afric's fires and savagery. +The case occurred in old days now and again, sometimes, upon imagined +provocation, more furiously than at others. We were unarmed, and the +spectacle was distressing. We had done nothing except to speak our minds +according to the habit of the free, and such an explosion appeared as +irrational and excessive as that of a powder-magazine in reply to nothing +more than the light of a spark. It was known that a valorous General of +the Algerian wars proposed to make a clean march to the capital of the +British Empire at the head of ten thousand men; which seems a small +quantity to think much about, but they wore wide red breeches blown out +by Fame, big as her cheeks, and a ten thousand of that sort would never +think of retreating. Their spectral advance on quaking London through +Kentish hopgardens, Sussex corn-fields, or by the pleasant hills of +Surrey, after a gymnastic leap over the riband of salt water, haunted +many pillows. And now those horrid shouts of the legions of Caesar, +crying to the inheritor of an invading name to lead them against us, as +the origin of his title had led the army of Gaul of old gloriously, +scared sweet sleep. We saw them in imagination lining the opposite +shore; eagle and standard-bearers, and gallifers, brandishing their fowls +and their banners in a manner to frighten the decorum of the universe. +Where were our men? + +The returns of the census of our population were oppressively +satisfactory, and so was the condition of our youth. We could row and +ride and fish and shoot, and breed largely: we were athletes with a fine +history and a full purse: we had first-rate sporting guns, unrivalled +park-hacks and hunters, promising babies to carry on the renown of +England to the next generation, and a wonderful Press, and a Constitution +the highest reach of practical human sagacity. But where were our armed +men? where our great artillery? where our proved captains, to resist a +sudden sharp trial of the national mettle? Where was the first line of +England's defence, her navy? These were questions, and Ministers were +called upon to answer them. The Press answered them boldly, with the +appalling statement that we had no navy and no army. At the most we +could muster a few old ships, a couple of experimental vessels of war, +and twenty-five thousand soldiers indifferently weaponed. + +We were in fact as naked to the Imperial foe as the merely painted +Britons. + +This being apprehended, by the aid of our own shortness of figures and +the agitated images of the red-breeched only waiting the signal to jump +and be at us, there ensued a curious exhibition that would be termed, in +simple language, writing to the newspapers, for it took the outward form +of letters: in reality, it was the deliberate saddling of our ancient +nightmare of Invasion, putting the postillion on her, and trotting her +along the high-road with a winding horn to rouse old Panic. Panic we +will, for the sake of convenience, assume to be of the feminine gender, +and a spinster, though properly she should be classed with the large +mixed race of mental and moral neuters which are the bulk of comfortable +nations. She turned in her bed at first like the sluggard of the +venerable hymnist: but once fairly awakened, she directed a stare toward +the terrific foreign contortionists, and became in an instant all stormy +nightcap and fingers starving for the bell-rope. Forthwith she burst +into a series of shrieks, howls, and high piercing notes that caused even +the parliamentary Opposition, in the heat of an assault on a parsimonious +Government, to abandon its temporary advantage and be still awhile. Yet +she likewise performed her part with a certain deliberation and method, +as if aware that it was a part she had to play in the composition of a +singular people. She did a little mischief by dropping on the stock- +markets; in other respects she was harmless, and, inasmuch as she +established a subject for conversation, useful. + +Then, lest she should have been taken too seriously, the Press, which had +kindled, proceeded to extinguish her with the formidable engines called +leading articles, which fling fire or water, as the occasion may require. +It turned out that we had ships ready for launching, and certain +regiments coming home from India; hedges we had, and a spirited body of +yeomanry; and we had pluck and patriotism, the father and mother of +volunteers innumerable. Things were not so bad. + +Panic, however, sent up a plaintive whine. What country had anything +like our treasures to defend? countless riches, beautiful women, an +inviolate soil! True, and it must be done. Ministers were +authoritatively summoned to set to work immediately. They replied that +they had been at work all the time, and were at work now. They could +assure the country, that though they flourished no trumpets, they +positively guaranteed the safety of our virgins and coffers. + +Then the people, rather ashamed, abused the Press for unreasonably +disturbing them. The Press attacked old Panic and stripped her naked. +Panic, with a desolate scream, arraigned the parliamentary Opposition for +having inflated her to serve base party purposes. The Opposition +challenged the allegations of Government, pointed to the trimness of army +and navy during its term of office, and proclaimed itself watch-dog of +the country, which is at all events an office of a kind. Hereupon the +ambassador of yonder ireful soldiery let fall a word, saying, by the +faith of his Master, there was no necessity for watch-dogs to bark; an +ardent and a reverent army had but fancied its beloved chosen Chief +insulted; the Chief and chosen held them in; he, despite obloquy, +discerned our merits and esteemed us. + +So, then, Panic, or what remained of her, was put to bed again. The +Opposition retired into its kennel growling. The People coughed like a +man of two minds, doubting whether he has been divinely inspired or has +cut a ridiculous figure. The Press interpreted the cough as a warning to +Government; and Government launched a big ship with hurrahs, and ordered +the recruiting-sergeant to be seen conspicuously. + +And thus we obtained a moderate reinforcement of our arms. + +It was not arrived at by connivance all round, though there was a look of +it. Certainly it did not come of accident, though there was a look of +that as well. Nor do we explain much of the secret by attributing it to +the working of a complex machinery. The housewife's remedy of a good +shaking for the invalid who will not arise and dance away his gout, +partly illustrates the action of the Press upon the country: and perhaps +the country shaken may suffer a comparison with the family chariot of the +last century, built in a previous one, commodious, furnished agreeably, +being all that the inside occupants could require of a conveyance, until +the report of horsemen crossing the heath at a gallop sets it +dishonourably creaking and complaining in rapid motion, and the squire +curses his miserly purse that would not hire a guard, and his dame says, +I told you so!--Foolhardy man, to suppose, because we have constables in +the streets of big cities, we have dismissed the highwayman to limbo. +And here he is, and he will cost you fifty times the sum you would have +laid out to keep him at a mile's respectful distance! But see, the +wretch is bowing: he smiles at our carriage, and tells the coachman that +he remembers he has been our guest, and really thinks we need not go so +fast. He leaves word for you, sir, on your peril to denounce him on +another occasion from the magisterial Bench, for that albeit he is a +gentleman of the road, he has a mission to right society, and succeeds +legitimately to that bold Good Robin Hood who fed the poor.--Fresh from +this polite encounter, the squire vows money for his personal protection: +and he determines to speak his opinion of Sherwood's latest captain as +loudly as ever. That he will, I do not say. It might involve a large +sum per annum. + +Similes are very well in their way. None can be sufficient in this case +without levelling a finger at the taxpayer--nay, directly mentioning him. +He is the key of our ingenuity. He pays his dues; he will not pay the +additional penny or two wanted of him, that we may be a step or two ahead +of the day we live in, unless he is frightened. But scarcely anything +less than the wild alarum of a tocsin will frighten him. Consequently +the tocsin has to be sounded; and the effect is woeful past measure: his +hugging of his army, his kneeling on the shore to his navy, his +implorations of his yeomanry and his hedges, are sad to note. His bursts +of pot-valiancy (the male side of the maiden Panic within his bosom) are +awful to his friends. Particular care must be taken after he has begun +to cool and calculate his chances of security, that he do not gather to +him a curtain of volunteers and go to sleep again behind them; for they +cost little in proportion to the much they pretend to be to him. +Patriotic taxpayers doubtless exist: prophetic ones, provident ones, do +not. At least we show that we are wanting in them. The taxpayer of a +free land taxes himself, and his disinclination for the bitter task, save +under circumstances of screaming urgency--as when the night-gear and bed- +linen of old convulsed Panic are like the churned Channel sea in the +track of two hundred hostile steamboats, let me say--is of the kind the +gentle schoolboy feels when death or an expedition has relieved him of +his tyrant, and he is entreated notwithstanding to go to his books. + +Will you not own that the working of the system for scaring him and +bleeding is very ingenious? But whether the ingenuity comes of native +sagacity, as it is averred by some, or whether it shows an instinct +labouring to supply the deficiencies of stupidity, according to others, +I cannot express an opinion. I give you the position of the country +undisturbed by any moralizings of mine. The youth I introduce to you +will rarely let us escape from it; for the reason that he was born with +so extreme and passionate a love for his country, that he thought all +things else of mean importance in comparison: and our union is one in +which, following the counsel of a sage and seer, I must try to paint for +you what is, not that which I imagine. This day, this hour, this life, +and even politics, the centre and throbbing heart of it (enough, when +unburlesqued, to blow the down off the gossamer-stump of fiction at a +single breath, I have heard tell), must be treated of men, and the ideas +of men, which are--it is policy to be emphatic upon truisms--are actually +the motives of men in a greater degree than their appetites: these are my +theme; and may it be my fortune to keep them at bloodheat, and myself +calm as a statue of Memnon in prostrate Egypt! He sits there waiting for +the sunlight; I here, and readier to be musical than you think. I can at +any rate be impartial; and do but fix your eyes on the sunlight striking +him and swallowing the day in rounding him, and you have an image of the +passive receptivity of shine and shade I hold it good to aim at, if at +the same time I may keep my characters at blood-heat. I shoot my arrows +at a mark that is pretty certain to return them to me. And as to perfect +success, I should be like the panic-stricken shopkeepers in my alarm at +it; for I should believe that genii of the air fly above our tree-tops +between us and the incognizable spheres, catching those ambitious shafts +they deem it a promise of fun to play pranks with. + +Young Mr. Beauchamp at that period of the panic had not the slightest +feeling for the taxpayer. He was therefore unable to penetrate the +mystery of our roundabout way of enlivening him. He pored over the +journals in perplexity, and talked of his indignation nightly to his +pretty partners at balls, who knew not they were lesser Andromedas of his +dear Andromeda country, but danced and chatted and were gay, and said +they were sure he would defend them. The men he addressed were civil. +They listened to him, sometimes with smiles and sometimes with laughter, +but approvingly, liking the lad's quick spirit. They were accustomed to +the machinery employed to give our land a shudder and to soothe it, and +generally remarked that it meant nothing. His uncle Everard, and his +uncle's friend Stukely Culbrett, expounded the nature of Frenchmen to +him, saying that they were uneasy when not periodically thrashed; it +would be cruel to deny them their crow beforehand; and so the pair of +gentlemen pooh-poohed the affair; agreeing with him, however, that we had +no great reason to be proud of our appearance, and the grounds they +assigned for this were the activity and the prevalence of the ignoble +doctrines of Manchester--a power whose very existence was unknown to Mr. +Beauchamp. He would by no means allow the burden of our national +disgrace to be cast on one part of the nation. We were insulted, and all +in a poultry-flutter, yet no one seemed to feel it but himself! Outside +the Press and Parliament, which must necessarily be the face we show to +the foreigner, absolute indifference reigned. Navy men and red-coats +were willing to join him or anybody in sneers at a clipping and paring +miserly Government, but they were insensible to the insult, the panic, +the startled-poultry show, the shame of our exhibition of ourselves in +Europe. It looked as if the blustering French Guard were to have it all +their own way. And what would they, what could they but, think of us! +He sat down to write them a challenge. + +He is not the only Englishman who has been impelled by a youthful +chivalry to do that. He is perhaps the youngest who ever did it, and +consequently there were various difficulties to be overcome. As regards +his qualifications for addressing Frenchmen, a year of his prae-neptunal +time had been spent in their capital city for the purpose of acquiring +French of Paris, its latest refinements of pronunciation and polish, and +the art of conversing. He had read the French tragic poets and Moliere; +he could even relish the Gallic-classic--'Qu'il mourut!' and he spoke +French passably, being quite beyond the Bullish treatment of the tongue. +Writing a letter in French was a different undertaking. The one he +projected bore no resemblance to an ordinary letter. The briefer the +better, of course; but a tone of dignity was imperative, and the tone +must be individual, distinctive, Nevil Beauchamp's, though not in his +native language. First he tried his letter in French, and lost sight of +himself completely. 'Messieurs de la Garde Francaise,' was a good +beginning; the remainder gave him a false air of a masquerader, most +uncomfortable to see; it was Nevil Beauchamp in moustache and imperial, +and bagbreeches badly fitting. He tried English, which was really +himself, and all that heart could desire, supposing he addressed a body +of midshipmen just a little loftily. But the English, when translated, +was bald and blunt to the verge of offensiveness. + + 'GENTLEMEN OF THE FRENCH GUARD, + + 'I take up the glove you have tossed us. I am an Englishman. + That will do for a reason.' + +This might possibly pass with the gentlemen of the English Guard. But +read: + + 'MESSIEURS DE LA GARDE FRANCAISE, + + 'J'accepte votre gant. Je suis Anglais. La raison est suffisante.' + +And imagine French Guardsmen reading it! + +Mr. Beauchamp knew the virtue of punctiliousness in epithets and phrases +of courtesy toward a formal people, and as the officers of the French +Guard were gentlemen of birth, he would have them to perceive in him +their equal at a glance. On the other hand, a bare excess of phrasing +distorted him to a likeness of Mascarille playing Marquis. How to be +English and think French! The business was as laborious as if he had +started on the rough sea of the Channel to get at them in an open boat. + +The lady governing his uncle Everard's house, Mrs. Rosamund Culling, +entered his room and found him writing with knitted brows. She was +young, that is, she was not in her middleage; and they were the dearest +of friends; each had given the other proof of it. Nevil looked up and +beheld her lifted finger. + +'You are composing a love-letter, Nevil!' The accusation sounded like +irony. + +'No,' said he, puffing; 'I wish I were! + +'What can it be, then?' + +He thrust pen and paper a hand's length on the table, and gazed at her. + +'My dear Nevil, is it really anything serious?' said she. + +'I am writing French, ma'am.' + +'Then I may help you. It must be very absorbing, for you did not hear my +knock at your door.' + +Now, could he trust her? The widow of a British officer killed nobly +fighting for his country in India, was a person to be relied on for +active and burning sympathy in a matter that touched the country's +honour. She was a woman, and a woman of spirit. Men had not pleased him +of late. Something might be hoped from a woman. + +He stated his occupation, saying that if she would assist him in his +French she would oblige him; the letter must be written and must go. +This was uttered so positively that she bowed her head, amused by the +funny semi-tone of defiance to the person to whom he confided the secret. +She had humour, and was ravished by his English boyishness, with the +novel blush of the heroical-nonsensical in it. + +Mrs. Culling promised him demurely that she would listen, objecting +nothing to his plan, only to his French. + +'Messieurs de la Garde Francaise!' he commenced. + +Her criticism followed swiftly. + +'I think you are writing to the Garde Imperiale.' + +He admitted his error, and thanked her warmly. + +'Messieurs de la Garde Imperiale!' + +'Does not that,' she said, 'include the non-commissioned officers, the +privates, and the cooks, of all the regiments?' + +He could scarcely think that, but thought it provoking the French had +no distinctive working title corresponding to gentlemen, and suggested +'Messieurs les Officiers': which might, Mrs. Culling assured him, +comprise the barbers. He frowned, and she prescribed his writing, +'Messieurs les Colonels de la Garde Imperiale.' This he set down. +The point was that a stand must be made against the flood of sarcasms +and bullyings to which the country was exposed in increasing degrees, +under a belief that we would fight neither in the mass nor individually. +Possibly, if it became known that the colonels refused to meet a +midshipman, the gentlemen of our Household troops would advance a step. + +Mrs. Calling's adroit efforts to weary him out of his project were +unsuccessful. He was too much on fire to know the taste of absurdity. + +Nevil repeated what he had written in French, and next the English of +what he intended to say. + +The lady conscientiously did her utmost to reconcile the two languages. +She softened his downrightness, passed with approval his compliments to +France and the ancient high reputation of her army, and, seeing that a +loophole was left for them to apologize, asked how many French colonels +he wanted to fight. + +'I do not WANT, ma'am,' said Nevil. + +He had simply taken up the glove they had again flung at our feet: and he +had done it to stop the incessant revilings, little short of positive +contempt, which we in our indolence exposed ourselves to from the +foreigner, particularly from Frenchmen, whom he liked; and precisely +because he liked them he insisted on forcing them to respect us. Let his +challenge be accepted, and he would find backers. He knew the stuff of +Englishmen: they only required an example. + +'French officers are skilful swordsmen,' said Mrs. Culling. 'My husband +has told me they will spend hours of the day thrusting and parrying. +They are used to duelling.' + +'We,' Nevil answered, 'don't get apprenticed to the shambles to learn our +duty on the field. Duelling is, I know, sickening folly. We go too far +in pretending to despise every insult pitched at us. A man may do for +his country what he wouldn't do for himself.' + +Mrs. Culling gravely said she hoped that bloodshed would be avoided, and +Mr. Beauchamp nodded. + +She left him hard at work. + +He was a popular boy, a favourite of women, and therefore full of +engagements to Balls and dinners. And he was a modest boy, though his +uncle encouraged him to deliver his opinions freely and argue with men. +The little drummer attached to wheeling columns thinks not more of +himself because his short legs perform the same strides as the +grenadiers'; he is happy to be able to keep the step; and so was Nevil; +and if ever he contradicted a senior, it was in the interests of the +country. Veneration of heroes, living and dead, kept down his conceit. +He worshipped devotedly. From an early age he exacted of his flattering +ladies that they must love his hero. Not to love his hero was to be +strangely in error, to be in need of conversion, and he proselytized with +the ardour of the Moslem. His uncle Everard was proud of his good looks, +fire, and nonsense, during the boy's extreme youth. He traced him by +cousinships back to the great Earl Beauchamp of Froissart, and would have +it so; and he would have spoilt him had not the young fellow's mind been +possessed by his reverence for men of deeds. How could he think of +himself, who had done nothing, accomplished nothing, so long as he +brooded on the images of signal Englishmen whose names were historic for +daring, and the strong arm, and artfulness, all given to the service of +the country?--men of a magnanimity overcast with simplicity, which Nevil +held to be pure insular English; our type of splendid manhood, not +discoverable elsewhere. A method of enraging him was to distinguish one +or other of them as Irish, Scottish, or Cambrian. He considered it a +dismemberment of the country. And notwithstanding the pleasure he had in +uniting in his person the strong red blood of the chivalrous Lord +Beauchamp with the hard and tenacious Romfrey blood, he hated the title +of Norman. We are English--British, he said. A family resting its pride +on mere ancestry provoked his contempt, if it did not show him one of his +men. He had also a disposition to esteem lightly the family which, +having produced a man, settled down after that effort for generations to +enjoy the country's pay. Boys are unjust; but Nevil thought of the +country mainly, arguing that we should not accept the country's money for +what we do not ourselves perform. These traits of his were regarded as +characteristics hopeful rather than the reverse; none of his friends and +relatives foresaw danger in them. He was a capital boy for his elders to +trot out and banter. + +Mrs. Rosamund Culling usually went to his room to see him and doat on him +before he started on his rounds of an evening. She suspected that his +necessary attention to his toilet would barely have allowed him time to +finish his copy of the letter. Certain phrases had bothered him. The +thrice recurrence of 'ma patrie' jarred on his ear. 'Sentiments' +afflicted his acute sense of the declamatory twice. 'C'est avec les +sentiments du plus profond regret': and again, 'Je suis bien scar que +vous comprendrez mes sentiments, et m'accorderez l'honneur que je reclame +au nom de ma patrie outrage.' The word 'patrie' was broadcast over the +letter, and 'honneur' appeared four times, and a more delicate word to +harp on than the others! + +'Not to Frenchmen,' said his friend Rosamund. 'I would put "Je suis +convaincu": it is not so familiar.' + +'But I have written out the fair copy, ma'am, and that alteration seems a +trifle.' + +'I would copy it again and again, Nevil, to get it right.' + +'No: I'd rather see it off than have it right,' said Nevil, and he folded +the letter. + +How the deuce to address it, and what direction to write on it, were +further difficulties. He had half a mind to remain at home to conquer +them by excogitation. + +Rosamund urged him not to break his engagement to dine at the Halketts', +where perhaps from his friend Colonel Halkett, who would never imagine +the reason for the inquiry, he might learn how a letter to a crack French +regiment should be addressed and directed. + +This proved persuasive, and as the hour was late Nevil had to act on her +advice in a hurry. + +His uncle Everard enjoyed a perusal of the manuscript in his absence. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +UNCLE, NEPHEW, AND ANOTHER + +The Honourable Everard Romfrey came of a race of fighting earls, toughest +of men, whose high, stout, Western castle had weathered our cyclone +periods of history without changeing hands more than once, and then but +for a short year or two, as if to teach the original possessors the +wisdom of inclining to the stronger side. They had a queen's chamber in +it, and a king's; and they stood well up against the charge of having +dealt darkly with the king. He died among them--how has not been told. +We will not discuss the conjectures here. A savour of North Sea foam and +ballad pirates hangs about the early chronicles of the family. +Indications of an ancestry that had lived between the wave and the cloud +were discernible in their notions of right and wrong. But a settlement +on solid earth has its influences. They were chivalrous knights +bannerets, and leaders in the tented field, paying and taking fair ransom +for captures; and they were good landlords, good masters blithely +followed to the wars. Sing an old battle of Normandy, Picardy, Gascony, +and you celebrate deeds of theirs. At home they were vexatious +neighbours to a town of burghers claiming privileges: nor was it +unreasonable that the Earl should flout the pretensions of the town to +read things for themselves, documents, titleships, rights, and the rest. +As well might the flat plain boast of seeing as far as the pillar. Earl +and town fought the fight of Barons and Commons in epitome. The Earl +gave way; the Barons gave way. Mighty men may thrash numbers for a time; +in the end the numbers will be thrashed into the art of beating their +teachers. It is bad policy to fight the odds inch by inch. Those +primitive school masters of the million liked it, and took their pleasure +in that way. The Romfreys did not breed warriors for a parade at Court; +wars, though frequent, were not constant, and they wanted occupation: +they may even have felt that they were bound in no common degree to the +pursuit of an answer to what may be called the parent question of +humanity: Am I thy master, or thou mine? They put it to lords of other +castles, to town corporations, and sometimes brother to brother: and +notwithstanding that the answer often unseated and once discastled them, +they swam back to their places, as born warriors, urged by a passion for +land, are almost sure to do; are indeed quite sure, so long as they +multiply sturdily, and will never take no from Fortune. A family passion +for land, that survives a generation, is as effective as genius in +producing the object it conceives; and through marriages and conflicts, +the seizure of lands, and brides bearing land, these sharp-feeding eagle- +eyed earls of Romfrey spied few spots within their top tower's wide +circle of the heavens not their own. + +It is therefore manifest that they had the root qualities, the prime +active elements, of men in perfection, and notably that appetite to +flourish at the cost of the weaker, which is the blessed exemplification +of strength, and has been man's cheerfulest encouragement to fight on +since his comparative subjugation (on the whole, it seems complete) of +the animal world. By-and-by the struggle is transferred to higher +ground, and we begin to perceive how much we are indebted to the fighting +spirit. Strength is the brute form of truth. No conspicuously great man +was born of the Romfreys, who were better served by a succession of able +sons. They sent undistinguished able men to army and navy--lieutenants +given to be critics of their captains, but trustworthy for their work. +In the later life of the family, they preferred the provincial state of +splendid squires to Court and political honours. They were renowned +shots, long-limbed stalking sportsmen in field and bower, fast friends, +intemperate enemies, handsome to feminine eyes, resembling one another in +build, and mostly of the Northern colour, or betwixt the tints, with an +hereditary nose and mouth that cried Romfrey from faces thrice diluted in +cousinships. + +The Hon. Everard (Stephen Denely Craven Romfrey), third son of the late +Earl, had some hopes of the title, and was in person a noticeable +gentleman, in mind a mediaeval baron, in politics a crotchety +unintelligible Whig. He inherited the estate of Holdesbury, on the +borders of Hampshire and Wilts, and espoused that of Steynham in Sussex, +where he generally resided. His favourite in the family had been the +Lady Emily, his eldest sister, who, contrary to the advice of her other +brothers and sisters, had yielded her hand to his not wealthy friend, +Colonel Richard Beauchamp. After the death of Nevil's parents, he +adopted the boy, being himself childless, and a widower. Childlessness +was the affliction of the family. Everard, having no son, could hardly +hope that his brother the Earl, and Craven, Lord Avonley, would have one, +for he loved the prospect of the title. Yet, as there were no cousins of +the male branch extant, the lack of an heir was a serious omission, and +to become the Earl of Romfrey, and be the last Earl of Romfrey, was a +melancholy thought, however brilliant. So sinks the sun: but he could +not desire the end of a great day. At one time he was a hot +Parliamentarian, calling himself a Whig, called by the Whigs a Radical, +called by the Radicals a Tory, and very happy in fighting them all round. +This was during the decay of his party, before the Liberals were defined. +A Liberal deprived him of the seat he had held for fifteen years, and the +clearness of his understanding was obscured by that black vision of +popular ingratitude which afflicts the free fighting man yet more than +the malleable public servant. The latter has a clerkly humility attached +to him like a second nature, from his habit of doing as others bid him: +the former smacks a voluntarily sweating forehead and throbbing wounds +for witness of his claim upon your palpable thankfulness. It is an +insult to tell him that he fought for his own satisfaction. Mr. Romfrey +still called himself a Whig, though it was Whig mean vengeance on account +of his erratic vote and voice on two or three occasions that denied him a +peerage and a seat in haven. Thither let your good sheep go, your +echoes, your wag-tail dogs, your wealthy pursy manufacturers! He decried +the attractions of the sublimer House, and laughed at the transparent +Whiggery of his party in replenishing it from the upper shoots of the +commonalty: 'Dragging it down to prop it up! swamping it to keep it +swimming!' he said. + +He was nevertheless a vehement supporter of that House. He stood for +King, Lords, and Commons, in spite of his personal grievances, harping +the triad as vigorously as bard of old Britain. Commons he added out of +courtesy, or from usage or policy, or for emphasis, or for the sake of +the Constitutional number of the Estates of the realm, or it was because +he had an intuition of the folly of omitting them; the same, to some +extent, that builders have regarding bricks when they plan a fabric. +Thus, although King and Lords prove the existence of Commons in days of +the political deluge almost syllogistically, the example of not including +one of the Estates might be imitated, and Commons and King do not +necessitate the conception of an intermediate third, while Lords and +Commons suggest the decapitation of the leading figure. The united +three, however, no longer cast reflections on one another, and were an +assurance to this acute politician that his birds were safe. He +preserved game rigorously, and the deduction was the work of instinct +with him. To his mind the game-laws were the corner-stone of Law, and of +a man's right to hold his own; and so delicately did he think the country +poised, that an attack on them threatened the structure of justice. The +three conjoined Estates were therefore his head gamekeepers; their duty +was to back him against the poacher, if they would not see the country +tumble. As to his under-gamekeepers, he was their intimate and their +friend, saying, with none of the misanthropy which proclaims the virtues +of the faithful dog to the confusion of humankind, he liked their company +better than that of his equals, and learnt more from them. They also +listened deferentially to their instructor. + +The conversation he delighted in most might have been going on in any +century since the Conquest. Grant him his not unreasonable argument upon +his property in game, he was a liberal landlord. No tenants were forced +to take his farms. He dragged none by the collar. He gave them liberty +to go to Australia, Canada, the Americas, if they liked. He asked in +return to have the liberty to shoot on his own grounds, and rear the +marks for his shot, treating the question of indemnification as a +gentleman should. Still there were grumbling tenants. He swarmed with +game, and, though he was liberal, his hares and his birds were immensely +destructive: computation could not fix the damage done by them. Probably +the farmers expected them not to eat. 'There are two parties to a +bargain,' said Everard, 'and one gets the worst of it. But if he was +never obliged to make it, where's his right to complain?' Men of sense +rarely obtain satisfactory answers: they are provoked to despise their +kind. But the poacher was another kind of vermin than the stupid tenant. +Everard did him the honour to hate him, and twice in a fray had he +collared his ruffian, and subsequently sat in condemnation of the wretch: +for he who can attest a villany is best qualified to punish it. Gangs +from the metropolis found him too determined and alert for their sport. +It was the factiousness of here and there an unbroken young scoundrelly +colt poacher of the neighbourhood, a born thief, a fellow damned in an +inveterate taste for game, which gave him annoyance. One night he took +Master Nevil out with him, and they hunted down a couple of sinners that +showed fight against odds. Nevil attempted to beg them off because of +their boldness. 'I don't set my traps for nothing,' said his uncle, +silencing him. But the boy reflected that his uncle was perpetually +lamenting the cowed spirit of the common English-formerly such fresh and +merry men! He touched Rosamund Culling's heart with his description of +their attitudes when they stood resisting and bawling to the keepers, +'Come on we'll die for it.' They did not die. Everard explained to the +boy that he could have killed them, and was contented to have sent them +to gaol for a few weeks. Nevil gaped at the empty magnanimity which his +uncle presented to him as a remarkably big morsel. At the age of +fourteen he was despatched to sea. + +He went unwillingly; not so much from an objection to a naval life as +from a wish, incomprehensible to grown men and boys, and especially to +his cousin, Cecil Baskelett, that he might remain at school and learn. +'The fellow would like to be a parson!' Everard said in disgust. No +parson had ever been known of in the Romfrey family, or in the Beauchamp. +A legend of a parson that had been a tutor in one of the Romfrey houses, +and had talked and sung blandly to a damsel of the blood--degenerate maid +--to receive a handsome trouncing for his pains, instead of the holy +marriage-tie he aimed at, was the only connection of the Romfreys with +the parsonry, as Everard called them. He attributed the boy's feeling to +the influence of his great-aunt Beauchamp, who would, he said, infallibly +have made a parson of him. 'I'd rather enlist for a soldier,' Nevil +said, and he ceased to dream of rebellion, and of his little property of +a few thousand pounds in the funds to aid him in it. He confessed to his +dear friend Rosamund Culling that he thought the parsons happy in having +time to read history. And oh, to feel for certain which side was the +wrong side in our Civil War, so that one should not hesitate in choosing! +Such puzzles are never, he seemed to be aware, solved in a midshipman's +mess. He hated bloodshed, and was guilty of the 'cotton-spinners' +babble,' abhorred of Everard, in alluding to it. Rosamund liked him for +his humanity; but she, too, feared he was a slack Romfrey when she heard +him speak in precocious contempt of glory. Somewhere, somehow, he had +got hold of Manchester sarcasms concerning glory: a weedy word of the +newspapers had been sown in his bosom perhaps. He said: 'I don't care to +win glory; I know all about that; I 've seen an old hat in the Louvre.' +And he would have had her to suppose that he had looked on the +campaigning head-cover of Napoleon simply as a shocking bad, bald, brown- +rubbed old tricorne rather than as the nod of extinction to thousands, +the great orb of darkness, the still-trembling gloomy quiver--the brain +of the lightnings of battles. + +Now this boy nursed no secret presumptuous belief that he was fitted for +the walks of the higher intellect; he was not having his impudent boy's +fling at superiority over the superior, as here and there a subtle-minded +vain juvenile will; nor was he a parrot repeating a line from some +Lancastrian pamphlet. He really disliked war and the sword; and scorning +the prospect of an idle life, confessing that his abilities barely +adapted him for a sailor's, he was opposed to the career opened to him +almost to the extreme of shrinking and terror. Or that was the +impression conveyed to a not unsympathetic hearer by his forlorn efforts +to make himself understood, which were like the tappings of the stick of +a blind man mystified by his sense of touch at wrong corners. His +bewilderment and speechlessness were a comic display, tragic to him. + +Just as his uncle Everard predicted, he came home from his first voyage +a pleasant sailor lad. His features, more than handsome to a woman, so +mobile they were, shone of sea and spirit, the chance lights of the sea, +and the spirit breathing out of it. As to war and bloodshed, a man's +first thought must be his country, young Jacket remarked, and 'Ich dien' +was the best motto afloat. Rosamund noticed the peculiarity of the books +he selected for his private reading. They were not boys' books, books of +adventure and the like. His favourite author was one writing of Heroes, +in (so she esteemed it) a style resembling either early architecture or +utter dilapidation, so loose and rough it seemed; a wind-in-the-orchard +style, that tumbled down here and there an appreciable fruit with uncouth +bluster; sentences without commencements running to abrupt endings and +smoke, like waves against a sea-wall, learned dictionary words giving a +hand to street-slang, and accents falling on them haphazard, like slant +rays from driving clouds; all the pages in a breeze, the whole book +producing a kind of electrical agitation in the mind and the joints. +This was its effect on the lady. To her the incomprehensible was the +abominable, for she had our country's high critical feeling; but he, +while admitting that he could not quite master it, liked it. He had dug +the book out of a bookseller's shop in Malta, captivated by its title, +and had, since the day of his purchase, gone at it again and again, +getting nibbles of golden meaning by instalments, as with a solitary pick +in a very dark mine, until the illumination of an idea struck him that +there was a great deal more in the book than there was in himself. This +was sufficient to secure the devoted attachment of young Mr. Beauchamp. +Rosamund sighed with apprehension to think of his unlikeness to boys and +men among his countrymen in some things. Why should he hug a book he +owned he could not quite comprehend? He said he liked a bone in his +mouth; and it was natural wisdom, though unappreciated by women. A bone +in a boy's mind for him to gnaw and worry, corrects the vagrancies and +promotes the healthy activities, whether there be marrow in it or not. +Supposing it furnishes only dramatic entertainment in that usually vacant +tenement, or powder-shell, it will be of service. + +Nevil proposed to her that her next present should be the entire list of +his beloved Incomprehensible's published works, and she promised, and was +not sorry to keep her promise dangling at the skirts of memory, to drop +away in time. For that fire-and-smoke writer dedicated volumes to the +praise of a regicide. Nice reading for her dear boy! Some weeks after +Nevil was off again, she abused herself for her half-hearted love of him, +and would have given him anything--the last word in favour of the Country +versus the royal Martyr, for example, had he insisted on it. She +gathered, bit by bit, that he had dashed at his big blustering cousin +Cecil to vindicate her good name. The direful youths fought in the +Steynham stables, overheard by the grooms. Everard received a fine +account of the tussle from these latter, and Rosamund, knowing him to be +of the order of gentlemen who, whatsoever their sins, will at all costs +protect a woman's delicacy, and a dependant's, man or woman, did not fear +to have her ears shocked in probing him on the subject. + +Everard was led to say that Nevil's cousins were bedevilled with +womanfolk. + +From which Rosamund perceived that women had been at work; and if so, it +was upon the business of the scandal-monger; and if so, Nevil fought his +cousin to protect her good name from a babbler of the family gossip. + +She spoke to Stukely Culbrett, her dead husband's friend, to whose +recommendation she was indebted for her place in Everard Romfrey's +household. + +'Nevil behaved like a knight, I hear.' + +'Your beauty was disputed,' said he, 'and Nevil knocked the blind man +down for not being able to see.' + +She thought, 'Not my beauty! Nevil struck his cousin on behalf of the +only fair thing I have left to me!' + +This was a moment with her when many sensations rush together and form a +knot in sensitive natures. She had been very good-looking. She was +good-looking still, but she remembered the bloom of her looks in her +husband's days (the tragedy of the mirror is one for a woman to write: I +am ashamed to find myself smiling while the poor lady weeps), she +remembered his praises, her pride; his death in battle, her anguish: +then, on her strange entry to this house, her bitter wish to be older; +and then, the oppressive calm of her recognition of her wish's +fulfilment, the heavy drop to dead earth, when she could say, or pretend +to think she could say--I look old enough: will they tattle of me now? +Nevil's championship of her good name brought her history spinning about +her head, and threw a finger of light on her real position. In that she +saw the slenderness of her hold on respect, as well as felt her personal +stainlessness. The boy warmed her chill widowhood. It was written that +her, second love should be of the pattern of mother's love. She loved +him hungrily and jealously, always in fear for him when he was absent, +even anxiously when she had him near. For some cause, born, one may +fancy, of the hour of her love's conception, his image in her heart was +steeped in tears. She was not, happily, one of the women who betray +strong feeling, and humour preserved her from excesses of sentiment. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +CONTAINS BARONIAL VIEWS OF THE PRESENT TIME + +Upon the word of honour of Rosamund, the letter to the officers of the +French Guard was posted. + +'Post it, post it,' Everard said, on her consulting him, with the letter +in her hand. 'Let the fellow stand his luck.' It was addressed to the +Colonel of the First Regiment of the Imperial Guard, Paris. That +superscription had been suggested by Colonel Halkett. Rosamund was in +favour of addressing it to Versailles, Nevil to the Tuileries; but Paris +could hardly fail to hit the mark, and Nevil waited for the reply, half +expecting an appointment on the French sands: for the act of posting a +letter, though it be to little short of the Pleiades even, will stamp an +incredible proceeding as a matter of business, so ready is the ardent +mind to take footing on the last thing done. The flight of Mr. +Beauchamp's letter placed it in the common order of occurrences for the +youthful author of it. Jack Wilmore, a messmate, offered to second him, +though he should be dismissed the service for it. Another second would +easily be found somewhere; for, as Nevil observed, you have only to set +these affairs going, and British blood rises: we are not the people you +see on the surface. Wilmore's father was a parson, for instance. What +did he do? He could not help himself: he supplied the army and navy with +recruits! One son was in a marching regiment, the other was Jack, and +three girls had vowed never to quit the rectory save as brides of +officers. Nevil thought that seemed encouraging; we were evidently not a +nation of shopkeepers at heart; and he quoted sayings of Mr. Stukely +Culbrett's, in which neither his ear nor Wilmore's detected the under- +ring Stukely was famous for: as that England had saddled herself with +India for the express purpose of better obeying the Commandments in +Europe; and that it would be a lamentable thing for the Continent and our +doctrines if ever beef should fail the Briton, and such like. 'Depend +upon it we're a fighting nation naturally, Jack,' said Nevil. 'How can +we submit! . . . however, I shall not be impatient. I dislike +duelling, and hate war, but I will have the country respected.' They +planned a defence of the country, drawing their strategy from magazine +articles by military pens, reverberations of the extinct voices of the +daily and weekly journals, customary after a panic, and making bloody +stands on spots of extreme pastoral beauty, which they visited by coach +and rail, looking back on unfortified London with particular melancholy. + +Rosamund's word may be trusted that she dropped the letter into a London +post-office in pursuance of her promise to Nevil. The singular fact was +that no answer to it ever arrived. Nevil, without a doubt of her +honesty, proposed an expedition to Paris; he was ordered to join his +ship, and he lay moored across the water in the port of Bevisham, panting +for notice to be taken of him. The slight of the total disregard of his +letter now affected him personally; it took him some time to get over +this indignity put upon him, especially because of his being under the +impression that the country suffered, not he at all. The letter had +served its object: ever since the transmission of it the menaces and +insults had ceased. + +But they might be renewed, and he desired to stop them altogether. His +last feeling was one of genuine regret that Frenchmen should have behaved +unworthily of the high estimation he held them in. With which he +dismissed the affair. + +He was rallied about it when he next sat at his uncle's table, and had to +pardon Rosamund for telling. + +Nevil replied modestly: 'I dare say you think me half a fool, sir. +All I know is, I waited for my betters to speak first. I have no dislike +of Frenchmen.' + +Everard shook his head to signify, 'not half.' But he was gentle enough +in his observations. 'There's a motto, Ex pede Herculem. You stepped +out for the dogs to judge better of us. It's an infernally tripping +motto for a composite structure like the kingdom of Great Britain and +Manchester, boy Nevil. We can fight foreigners when the time comes.' +He directed Nevil to look home, and cast an eye on the cotton-spinners, +with the remark that they were binding us hand and foot to sell us to the +biggest buyer, and were not Englishmen but 'Germans and Jews, and quakers +and hybrids, diligent clerks and speculators, and commercial travellers, +who have raised a fortune from foisting drugged goods on an idiot +population.' + +He loathed them for the curse they were to the country. And he was one +of the few who spoke out. The fashion was to pet them. We stood against +them; were halfhearted, and were beaten; and then we petted them, and bit +by bit our privileges were torn away. We made lords of them to catch +them, and they grocers of us by way of a return. 'Already,' said +Everard, 'they have knocked the nation's head off, and dry-rotted the +bone of the people.' + +'Don't they,' Nevil asked, 'belong to the Liberal party?' + +'I'll tell you,' Everard replied, 'they belong to any party that upsets +the party above them. They belong to the GEORGE FOXE party, and my +poultry-roosts are the mark they aim at. You shall have a glance at the +manufacturing district some day. You shall see the machines they work +with. You shall see the miserable lank-jawed half-stewed pantaloons +they've managed to make of Englishmen there. My blood 's past boiling. +They work young children in their factories from morning to night. Their +manufactories are spreading like the webs of the devil to suck the blood +of the country. In that district of theirs an epidemic levels men like a +disease in sheep. Skeletons can't make a stand. On the top of it all +they sing Sunday tunes!' + +This behaviour of corn-law agitators and protectors of poachers was an +hypocrisy too horrible for comment. Everard sipped claret. Nevil lashed +his head for the clear idea which objurgation insists upon implanting, +but batters to pieces in the act. + +'Manchester's the belly of this country!' Everard continued. 'So long as +Manchester flourishes, we're a country governed and led by the belly. +The head and the legs of the country are sound still; I don't guarantee +it for long, but the middle's rapacious and corrupt. Take it on a +question of foreign affairs, it 's an alderman after a feast. Bring it +upon home politics, you meet a wolf.' + +The faithful Whig veteran spoke with jolly admiration of the speech of a +famous Tory chief. + +'That was the way to talk to them! Denounce them traitors! Up whip, and +set the ruffians capering! Hit them facers! Our men are always for the +too-clever trick. They pluck the sprouts and eat them, as if the loss of +a sprout or two thinned Manchester! Your policy of absorption is good +enough when you're dealing with fragments. It's a devilish unlucky thing +to attempt with a concrete mass. You might as well ask your head to +absorb a wall by running at it like a pugnacious nigger. I don't want +you to go into Parliament ever. You're a fitter man out of it; but if +ever you're bitten--and it's the curse of our country to have politics as +well as the other diseases--don't follow a flag, be independent, keep a +free vote; remember how I've been tied, and hold foot against Manchester. +Do it blindfold; you don't want counselling, you're sure to be right. +I'll lay you a blood-brood mare to a cabstand skeleton, you'll have an +easy conscience and deserve the thanks of the country.' + +Nevil listened gravely. The soundness of the head and legs of the +country he took for granted. The inflated state of the unchivalrous +middle, denominated Manchester, terrified him. Could it be true that +England was betraying signs of decay? and signs how ignoble! Half-a- +dozen crescent lines cunningly turned, sketched her figure before the +world, and the reflection for one ready to die upholding her was that the +portrait was no caricature. Such an emblematic presentation of the land +of his filial affection haunted him with hideous mockeries. Surely the +foreigner hearing our boasts of her must compare us to showmen bawling +the attractions of a Fat Lady at a fair! + +Swoln Manchester bore the blame of it. Everard exulted to hear his young +echo attack the cotton-spinners. But Nevil was for a plan, a system, +immediate action; the descending among the people, and taking an +initiative, LEADING them, insisting on their following, not standing +aloof and shrugging. + +'We lead them in war,' said he; 'why not in peace? There's a front for +peace as well as war, and that's our place rightly. We're pushed aside; +why, it seems to me we're treated like old-fashioned ornaments! The +fault must be ours. Shrugging and sneering is about as honourable as +blazing fireworks over your own defeat. Back we have to go! that's the +point, sir. And as for jeering the cotton-spinners, I can't while +they've the lead of us. We let them have it! And we have thrice the +stake in the country. I don't mean properties and titles.' + +'Deuce you don't,' said his uncle. + +'I mean our names, our histories; I mean our duties. As for titles, the +way to defend them is to be worthy of them.' + +'Damned fine speech,' remarked Everard. 'Now you get out of that trick +of prize-orationing. I call it snuffery, sir; it's all to your own nose! +You're talking to me, not to a gallery. "Worthy of them!" Caesar wraps +his head in his robe: he gets his dig in the ribs for all his +attitudinizing. It's very well for a man to talk like that who owns no +more than his barebodkin life, poor devil. Tall talk's his jewelry: he +must have his dandification in bunkum. You ought to know better. +Property and titles are worth having, whether you are "worthy of them" or +a disgrace to your class. The best way of defending them is to keep a +strong fist, and take care you don't draw your fore-foot back more than +enough.' + +'Please propose something to be done,' said Nevil, depressed by the +recommendation of that attitude. + +Everard proposed a fight for every privilege his class possessed. 'They +say,' he said, 'a nobleman fighting the odds is a sight for the gods: and +I wouldn't yield an inch of ground. It's no use calling things by fine +names--the country's ruined by cowardice. Poursuivez! I cry. Haro! at +them! The biggest hart wins in the end. I haven't a doubt about that. +And I haven't a doubt we carry the tonnage.' + +'There's the people,' sighed Nevil, entangled in his uncle's haziness. + +'What people?' + +'I suppose the people of Great Britain count, sir.' + +'Of course they do; when the battle's done, the fight lost and won.' + +'Do you expect the people to look on, sir?' + +'The people always wait for the winner, boy Nevil.' + +The young fellow exclaimed despondingly, 'If it were a race!' + +'It's like a race, and we're confoundedly out of training,' said Everard. + +There he rested. A mediaeval gentleman with the docile notions of the +twelfth century, complacently driving them to grass and wattling them in +the nineteenth, could be of no use to a boy trying to think, though he +could set the youngster galloping. Nevil wandered about the woods of +Steynham, disinclined to shoot and lend a hand to country sports. The +popping of the guns of his uncle and guests hung about his ears much like +their speech, which was unobjectionable in itself, but not sufficient; a +little hard, he thought, a little idle. He wanted something, and wanted +them to give their time and energy to something, that was not to be had +in a market. The nobles, he felt sure, might resume their natural +alliance with the people, and lead them, as they did of old, to the +battle-field. How might they? A comely Sussex lass could not well tell +him how. Sarcastic reports of the troublesome questioner represented him +applying to a nymph of the country for enlightenment. He thrilled +surprisingly under the charm of feminine beauty. 'The fellow's sound at +bottom,' his uncle said, hearing of his having really been seen walking +in the complete form proper to his budding age, that is, in two halves. +Nevil showed that he had gained an acquaintance with the struggles of the +neighbouring agricultural poor to live and rear their children. His +uncle's table roared at his enumeration of the sickly little beings, +consumptive or bandy-legged, within a radius of five miles of Steynham. +Action was what he wanted, Everard said. Nevil perhaps thought the same, +for he dashed out of his mooning with a wave of the Tory standard, +delighting the ladies, though in that conflict of the Lion and the +Unicorn (which was a Tory song) he seemed rather to wish to goad the dear +lion than crush the one-horned intrusive upstart. His calling on the +crack corps of Peers to enrol themselves forthwith in the front ranks, +and to anticipate opposition by initiating measures, and so cut out that +funny old crazy old galleon, the People, from under the batteries of the +enemy, highly amused the gentlemen. + +Before rejoining his ship, Nevil paid his customary short visit of +ceremony to his great-aunt Beauchamp--a venerable lady past eighty, +hitherto divided from him in sympathy by her dislike of his uncle +Everard, who had once been his living hero. That was when he was in +frocks, and still the tenacious fellow could not bear to hear his uncle +spoken ill of. + +'All the men of that family are heartless, and he is a man of wood, my +dear, and a bad man,' the old lady said. 'He should have kept you at +school, and sent you to college. You want reading and teaching and +talking to. Such a house as that is should never be a home for you.' +She hinted at Rosamund. Nevil defended the persecuted woman, but with no +better success than from the attacks of the Romfrey ladies; with this +difference, however, that these decried the woman's vicious arts, and +Mistress Elizabeth Mary Beauchamp put all the sin upon the man. Such a +man! she said. 'Let me hear that he has married her, I will not utter +another word.' Nevil echoed, 'Married!' in a different key. + +'I am as much of an aristocrat as any of you, only I rank morality +higher,' said Mrs. Beauchamp. 'When you were a child I offered to take +you and make you my heir, and I would have educated you. You shall see a +great-nephew of mine that I did educate; he is eating his dinners for the +bar in London, and comes to me every Sunday. I shall marry him to a good +girl, and I shall show your uncle what my kind of man-making is.' + +Nevil had no desire to meet the other great-nephew, especially when he +was aware of the extraordinary circumstance that a Beauchamp great-niece, +having no money, had bestowed her hand on a Manchester man defunct, +whereof this young Blackburn Tuckham, the lawyer, was issue. He took his +leave of Mrs. Elizabeth Beauchamp, respecting her for her constitutional +health and brightness, and regretting for the sake of the country that +she had not married to give England men and women resembling her. +On the whole he considered her wiser in her prescription for the malady +besetting him than his uncle. He knew that action was but a temporary +remedy. College would have been his chronic medicine, and the old lady's +acuteness in seeing it impressed him forcibly. She had given him a +peaceable two days on the Upper Thames, in an atmosphere of plain good +sense and just-mindedness. He wrote to thank her, saying: + +'My England at sea will be your parlour-window looking down the grass to +the river and rushes; and when you do me the honour to write, please tell +me the names of those wildflowers growing along the banks in Summer.' +The old lady replied immediately, enclosing a cheque for fifty pounds: +'Colonel Halkett informs me you are under a cloud at Steynham, and I have +thought you may be in want of pocket-money. The wild-flowers are +willowherb, meadow-sweet, and loosestrife. I shall be glad when you are +here in Summer to see them.' + +Nevil despatched the following: 'I thank you, but I shall not cash the +cheque. The Steynham tale is this: + +I happened to be out at night, and stopped the keepers in chase of a +young fellow trespassing. I caught him myself, but recognized him as one +of a family I take an interest in, and let him run before they came up. +My uncle heard a gun; I sent the head gamekeeper word in the morning to +out with it all. Uncle E. was annoyed, and we had a rough parting. If +you are rewarding me for this, I have no right to it.' + +Mrs. Beauchamp rejoined: 'Your profession should teach you subordination, +if it does nothing else that is valuable to a Christian gentleman. +You will receive from the publisher the "Life and Letters of Lord +Collingwood," whom I have it in my mind that a young midshipman should +task himself to imitate. Spend the money as you think fit.' + +Nevil's ship, commanded by Captain Robert Hall (a most gallant officer, +one of his heroes, and of Lancashire origin, strangely!), flew to the +South American station, in and about Lord Cochrane's waters; then as +swiftly back. For, like the frail Norwegian bark on the edge of the +maelstrom, liker to a country of conflicting interests and passions, that +is not mentally on a level with its good fortune, England was drifting +into foreign complications. A paralyzed Minister proclaimed it. The +governing people, which is looked to for direction in grave dilemmas by +its representatives and reflectors, shouted that it had been accused of +pusillanimity. No one had any desire for war, only we really had (and it +was perfectly true) been talking gigantic nonsense of peace, and of the +everlastingness of the exchange of fruits for money, with angels waving +raw-groceries of Eden in joy of the commercial picture. Therefore, to +correct the excesses of that fit, we held the standing by the Moslem, on +behalf of the Mediterranean (and the Moslem is one of our customers, +bearing an excellent reputation for the payment of debts), to be good, +granting the necessity. We deplored the necessity. The Press wept over +it. That, however, was not the politic tone for us while the Imperial +berg of Polar ice watched us keenly; and the Press proceeded to remind us +that we had once been bull-dogs. Was there not an animal within us +having a right to a turn now and then? And was it not (Falstaff, on a +calm world, was quoted) for the benefit of our constitutions now and then +to loosen the animal? Granting the necessity, of course. By dint of +incessantly speaking of the necessity we granted it unknowingly. The +lighter hearts regarded our period of monotonously lyrical prosperity as +a man sensible of fresh morning air looks back on the snoring bolster. +Many of the graver were glad of a change. After all that maundering over +the blessed peace which brings the raisin and the currant for the +pudding, and shuts up the cannon with a sheep's head, it became a +principle of popular taste to descant on the vivifying virtues of war; +even as, after ten months of money-mongering in smoky London, the citizen +hails the sea-breeze and an immersion in unruly brine, despite the cost, +that breeze and brine may make a man of him, according to the doctor's +prescription: sweet is home, but health is sweeter! Then was there +another curious exhibition of us. Gentlemen, to the exact number of the +Graces, dressed in drab of an ancient cut, made a pilgrimage to the icy +despot, and besought him to give way for Piety's sake. He, courteous, +colossal, and immoveable, waved them homeward. They returned and were +hooted for belying the bellicose by their mission, and interpreting too +well the peaceful. They were the unparalyzed Ministers of the occasion, +but helpless. + +And now came war, the purifier and the pestilence. + +The cry of the English people for war was pretty general, as far as the +criers went. They put on their Sabbath face concerning the declaration +of war, and told with approval how the Royal hand had trembled in +committing itself to the form of signature to which its action is +limited. If there was money to be paid, there was a bugbear to be slain +for it; and a bugbear is as obnoxious to the repose of commercial +communities as rivals are to kings. + +The cry for war was absolutely unanimous, and a supremely national cry, +Everard Romfrey said, for it excluded the cotton-spinners. + +He smacked his hands, crowing at the vociferations of disgust of those +negrophiles and sweaters of Christians, whose isolated clamour amid the +popular uproar sounded of gagged mouths. + +One of the half-stifled cotton-spinners, a notorious one, a spouter of +rank sedition and hater of aristocracy, a political poacher, managed to +make himself heard. He was tossed to the Press for morsel, and tossed +back to the people in strips. Everard had a sharp return of appetite in +reading the daily and weekly journals. They printed logic, they printed +sense; they abused the treasonable barking cur unmercifully. They +printed almost as much as he would have uttered, excepting the strong +salt of his similes, likening that rascal and his crew to the American +weed in our waters, to the rotting wild bees' nest in our trees, to the +worm in our ships' timbers, and to lamentable afflictions of the human +frame, and of sheep, oxen, honest hounds. Manchester was in eclipse. +The world of England discovered that the peace-party which opposed was +the actual cause of the war: never was indication clearer. But my +business is with Mr. Beauchamp, to know whom, and partly understand his +conduct in after-days, it will be as well to take a bird'seye glance at +him through the war. + +'Now,' said Everard, 'we shall see what staff there is in that fellow +Nevil.' + +He expected, as you may imagine, a true young Beauchamp-Romfrey to be +straining his collar like a leash-hound. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +A GLIMPSE OF NEVIL IN ACTION + +The young gentleman to whom Everard Romfrey transferred his combative +spirit despatched a letter from the Dardanelles, requesting his uncle not +to ask him for a spark of enthusiasm. He despised our Moslem allies, he +said, and thought with pity of the miserable herds of men in regiments +marching across the steppes at the bidding of a despot that we were +helping to popularize. He certainly wrote in the tone of a jejune +politician; pardonable stuff to seniors entertaining similar opinions, +but most exasperating when it runs counter to them: though one question +put by Nevil was not easily answerable. He wished to know whether the +English people would be so anxious to be at it if their man stood on the +opposite shore and talked of trying conclusions on their green fields. +And he suggested that they had become so ready for war because of their +having grown rather ashamed of themselves, and for the special reason +that they could have it at a distance. + +'The rascal's liver's out of order,' Everard said. + +Coming to the sentence: 'Who speaks out in this crisis? There is one, +and I am with him'; Mr. Romfrey's compassionate sentiments veered round +to irate amazement. For the person alluded to was indeed the infamous +miauling cotton-spinner. Nevil admired him. He said so bluntly. He +pointed to that traitorous George-Foxite as the one heroical Englishman +of his day, declaring that he felt bound in honour to make known his +admiration for the man; and he hoped his uncle would excuse him. 'If we +differ, I am sorry, sir; but I should be a coward to withhold what I +think of him when he has all England against him, and he is in the right, +as England will discover. I maintain he speaks wisely--I don't mind +saying, like a prophet; and he speaks on behalf of the poor as well as of +the country. He appears to me the only public man who looks to the state +of the poor--I mean, their interests. They pay for war, and if we are to +have peace at home and strength for a really national war, the only war +we can ever call necessary, the poor must be contented. He sees that. +I shall not run the risk of angering you by writing to defend him, unless +I hear of his being shamefully mishandled, and the bearer of an old name +can be of service to him. I cannot say less, and will say no more.' + +Everard apostrophized his absent nephew: 'You jackass!' + +I am reminded by Mr. Romfrey's profound disappointment in the youth, that +it will be repeatedly shared by many others: and I am bound to forewarn +readers of this history that there is no plot in it. The hero is +chargeable with the official disqualification of constantly offending +prejudices, never seeking to please; and all the while it is upon him the +narrative hangs. To be a public favourite is his last thought. +Beauchampism, as one confronting him calls it, may be said to stand for +nearly everything which is the obverse of Byronism, and rarely woos your +sympathy, shuns the statuesque pathetic, or any kind of posturing. For +Beauchamp will not even look at happiness to mourn its absence; melodious +lamentations, demoniacal scorn, are quite alien to him. His faith is in +working and fighting. With every inducement to offer himself for a +romantic figure, he despises the pomades and curling-irons of modern +romance, its shears and its labels: in fine, every one of those positive +things by whose aid, and by some adroit flourishing of them, the nimbus +known as a mysterious halo is produced about a gentleman's head. And a +highly alluring adornment it is! We are all given to lose our solidity +and fly at it; although the faithful mirror of fiction has been showing +us latterly that a too superhuman beauty has disturbed popular belief in +the bare beginnings of the existence of heroes: but this, very likely, is +nothing more than a fit of Republicanism in the nursery, and a deposition +of the leading doll for lack of variety in him. That conqueror of +circumstances will, the dullest soul may begin predicting, return on his +cockhorse to favour and authority. Meantime the exhibition of a hero +whom circumstances overcome, and who does not weep or ask you for a tear, +who continually forfeits attractiveness by declining to better his own +fortunes, must run the chances of a novelty during the interregnum. +Nursery Legitimists will be against him to a man; Republicans likewise, +after a queer sniff at his pretensions, it is to be feared. For me, I +have so little command over him, that in spite of my nursery tastes, he +drags me whither he lists. It is artless art and monstrous innovation to +present so wilful a figure, but were I to create a striking fable for +him, and set him off with scenic effects and contrasts, it would be only +a momentary tonic to you, to him instant death. He could not live in +such an atmosphere. The simple truth has to be told: how he loved his +country, and for another and a broader love, growing out of his first +passion, fought it; and being small by comparison, and finding no giant +of the Philistines disposed to receive a stone in his fore-skull, +pummelled the obmutescent mass, to the confusion of a conceivable epic. +His indifferent England refused it to him. That is all I can say. The +greater power of the two, she seems, with a quiet derision that does not +belie her amiable passivity, to have reduced in Beauchamp's career the +boldest readiness for public action, and some good stout efforts besides, +to the flat result of an optically discernible influence of our hero's +character in the domestic circle; perhaps a faintly-outlined circle or +two beyond it. But this does not forbid him to be ranked as one of the +most distinguishing of her children of the day he lived in. Blame the +victrix if you think he should have been livelier. + + +Nevil soon had to turn his telescope from politics. The torch of war was +actually lighting, and he was not fashioned to be heedless of what +surrounded him. Our diplomacy, after dancing with all the suppleness of +stilts, gravely resigned the gift of motion. Our dauntless Lancastrian +thundered like a tempest over a gambling tent, disregarded. Our worthy +people, consenting to the doctrine that war is a scourge, contracted the +habit of thinking it, in this case, the dire necessity which is the sole +excuse for giving way to an irritated pugnacity, and sucked the +comforting caramel of an alliance with their troublesome next-door +neighbour, profuse in comfits as in scorpions. Nevil detected that +politic element of their promptitude for war. His recollections of +dissatisfaction in former days assisted him to perceive the nature of it, +but he was too young to hold his own against the hubbub of a noisy +people, much too young to remain sceptical of a modern people's +enthusiasm for war while journals were testifying to it down the length +of their columns, and letters from home palpitated with it, and shipmates +yawned wearily for the signal, and shiploads of red coats and blue, +infantry, cavalry, artillery, were singing farewell to the girl at home, +and hurrah for anything in foreign waters. He joined the stream with a +cordial spirit. Since it must be so! The wind of that haughty +proceeding of the Great Bear in putting a paw over the neutral brook +brushed his cheek unpleasantly. He clapped hands for the fezzy defenders +of the border fortress, and when the order came for the fleet to enter +the old romantic sea of storms and fables, he wrote home a letter fit for +his uncle Everard to read. Then there was the sailing and the landing, +and the march up the heights, which Nevil was condemned to look at. To +his joy he obtained an appointment on shore, and after that Everard heard +of him from other channels. The two were of a mind when the savage +winter advanced which froze the attack of the city, and might be imaged +as the hoar god of hostile elements pointing a hand to the line reached, +and menacing at one farther step. Both blamed the Government, but they +divided as to the origin of governmental inefficiency; Nevil accusing the +Lords guilty of foulest sloth, Everard the Quakers of dry-rotting the +country. He passed with a shrug Nevil's puling outcry for the enemy as +well as our own poor fellows: 'At his steppes again!' And he had to be +forgiving when reports came of his nephew's turn for overdoing his duty: +'show-fighting,' as he termed it. + +'Braggadocioing in deeds is only next bad to mouthing it,' he wrote very +rationally. 'Stick to your line. Don't go out of it till you are +ordered out. Remember that we want soldiers and sailors, we don't want +suicides.' He condescended to these italics, considering impressiveness +to be urgent. In his heart, notwithstanding his implacably clear +judgement, he was passably well pleased with the congratulations +encompassing him on account of his nephew's gallantry at a period of +dejection in Britain: for the winter was dreadful; every kind heart that +went to bed with cold feet felt acutely for our soldiers on the frozen +heights, and thoughts of heroes were as good as warming-pans. Heroes we +would have. It happens in war as in wit, that all the birds of wonder +fly to a flaring reputation. He that has done one wild thing must +necessarily have done the other; so Nevil found himself standing in the +thick of a fame that blew rank eulogies on him for acts he had not +performed. The Earl of Romfrey forwarded hampers and a letter of praise. +'They tell me that while you were facing the enemy, temporarily attaching +yourself to one of the regiments--I forget which, though I have heard it +named--you sprang out under fire on an eagle clawing a hare. I like +that. I hope you had the benefit of the hare. She is our property, and +I have issued an injunction that she shall not go into the newspapers.' +Everard was entirely of a contrary opinion concerning the episode of +eagle and hare, though it was a case of a bird of prey interfering with +an object of the chase. Nevil wrote home most entreatingly and +imperatively, like one wincing, begging him to contradict that and +certain other stories, and prescribing the form of a public renunciation +of his proclaimed part in them. 'The hare,' he sent word, 'is the +property of young Michell of the Rodney, and he is the humanest and the +gallantest fellow in the service. I have written to my Lord. Pray help +to rid me of burdens that make me feel like a robber and impostor.' + +Everard replied: + +'I have a letter from your captain, informing me that I am unlikely to +see you home unless you learn to hold yourself in. I wish you were in +another battery than Robert Hall's. He forgets the force of example, +however much of a dab he may be at precept. But there you are, and +please clap a hundredweight on your appetite for figuring, will you. +Do you think there is any good in helping to Frenchify our army? +I loathe a fellow who shoots at a medal. I wager he is easy enough +to be caught by circumvention--put me in the open with him. Tom Biggot, +the boxer, went over to Paris, and stood in the ring with one of their +dancing pugilists, and the first round he got a crack on the chin from +the rogue's foot; the second round he caught him by the lifted leg, and +punished him till pec was all he could say of peccavi. Fight the +straightforward fight. Hang flan! Battle is a game of give and take, +and if our men get elanned, we shall see them refusing to come up to +time. This new crossing and medalling is the devil's own notion for +upsetting a solid British line, and tempting fellows to get invalided +that they may blaze it before the shopkeepers and their wives in the +city. Give us an army!--none of your caperers. Here are lots of circusy +heroes coming home to rest after their fatigues. One was spouting at a +public dinner yesterday night. He went into it upright, and he ran out +of it upright--at the head of his men!--and here he is feasted by the +citizens and making a speech upright, and my boy fronting the enemy!' + +Everard's involuntary break-down from his veteran's roughness to a touch +of feeling thrilled Nevil, who began to perceive what his uncle was +driving at when he rebuked the coxcombry of the field, and spoke of the +description of compliment your hero was paying Englishmen in affecting to +give them examples of bravery and preternatural coolness. Nevil sent +home humble confessions of guilt in this respect, with fresh praises of +young Michell: for though Everard, as Nevil recognized it, was perfectly +right in the abstract, and generally right, there are times when an +example is needed by brave men--times when the fiery furnace of death's +dragon-jaw is not inviting even to Englishmen receiving the word that +duty bids them advance, and they require a leader of the way. A national +coxcombry that pretends to an independence of human sensations, and makes +a motto of our dandiacal courage, is more perilous to the armies of the +nation than that of a few heroes. It is this coxcombry which has too +often caused disdain of the wise chief's maxim of calculation for +winners, namely, to have always the odds on your side, and which has +bled, shattered, and occasionally disgraced us. Young Michell's carrying +powder-bags to the assault, and when ordered to retire, bearing them on +his back, and helping a wounded soldier on the way, did surely well; nor +did Mr. Beauchamp himself behave so badly on an occasion when the sailors +of his battery caught him out of a fire of shell that raised jets of dust +and smoke like a range of geysers over the open, and hugged him as loving +women do at a meeting or a parting. He was penitent before his uncle, +admitting, first, that the men were not in want of an example of the +contempt of death, and secondly, that he doubted whether it was contempt +of death on his part so much as pride--a hatred of being seen running. + +'I don't like the fellow to be drawing it so fine,' said Everard. It +sounded to him a trifle parsonical. But his heart was won by Nevil's +determination to wear out the campaign rather than be invalided or +entrusted with a holiday duty. + +'I see with shame (admiration of them) old infantry captains and colonels +of no position beyond their rank in the army, sticking to their post,' +said Nevil, 'and a lord and a lord and a lord slipping off as though the +stuff of the man in him had melted. I shall go through with it.' +Everard approved him. Colonel Halkett wrote that the youth was a +skeleton. Still Everard encouraged him to persevere, and said of him: + +'I like him for holding to his work after the strain's over. That tells +the man.' + +He observed at his table, in reply to commendations of his nephew: + +'Nevil's leak is his political craze, and that seems to be going: I hope +it is. You can't rear a man on politics. When I was of his age I never +looked at the newspapers, except to read the divorce cases. I came to +politics with a ripe judgement. He shines in action, and he'll find that +out, and leave others the palavering.' + +It was upon the close of the war that Nevil drove his uncle to avow a +downright undisguised indignation with him. He caught a fever in the +French camp, where he was dispensing vivers and provends out of English +hampers. + +'Those French fellows are every man of them trained up to snapping- +point,' said Everard. 'You're sure to have them if you hold out long +against them. And greedy dogs too: they're for half our hampers, and all +the glory. And there's Nevil down on his back in the thick of them! +Will anybody tell me why the devil he must be poking into the French +camp? They were ready enough to run to him and beg potatoes. It 's all +for humanity he does it-mark that. Never was a word fitter for a quack's +mouth than "humanity." Two syllables more, and the parsons would be +riding it to sawdust. Humanity! Humanitomtity! It's the best word of +the two for half the things done in the name of it.' + +A tremendously bracing epistle, excellent for an access of fever, was +despatched to humanity's curate, and Everard sat expecting a hot +rejoinder, or else a black sealed letter, but neither one nor the other +arrived. + +Suddenly, to his disgust, came rumours of peace between the mighty +belligerents. + +The silver trumpets of peace were nowhere hearkened to with satisfaction +by the bull-dogs, though triumph rang sonorously through the music, for +they had been severely mangled, as usual at the outset, and they had at +last got their grip, and were in high condition for fighting. + +The most expansive panegyrists of our deeds did not dare affirm of the +most famous of them, that England had embarked her costly cavalry to +offer it for a mark of artillery-balls on three sides of a square: and +the belief was universal that we could do more business-like deeds and +play the great game of blunders with an ability refined by experience. +Everard Romfrey was one of those who thought themselves justified in +insisting upon the continuation of the war, in contempt of our allies. +His favourite saying that constitution beats the world, was being +splendidly manifested by our bearing. He was very uneasy; he would not +hear of peace; and not only that, the imperial gentleman soberly +committed the naivete of sending word to Nevil to let him know +immediately the opinion of the camp concerning it, as perchance an old +Roman knight may have written to some young aquilifer of the Praetorians. + +Allies, however, are of the description of twins joined by a membrane, +and supposing that one of them determines to sit down, the other will act +wisely in bending his knees at once, and doing the same: he cannot but be +extremely uncomfortable left standing. Besides, there was the Ottoman +cleverly poised again; the Muscovite was battered; fresh guilt was added +to the military glory of the Gaul. English grumblers might well be asked +what they had fought for, if they were not contented. + +Colonel Halkett mentioned a report that Nevil had received a slight +thigh-wound of small importance. At any rate, something was the matter +with him, and it was naturally imagined that he would have double cause +to write home; and still more so for the reason, his uncle confessed, +that he had foreseen the folly of a war conducted by milky cotton- +spinners and their adjuncts, in partnership with a throned gambler, +who had won his stake, and now snapped his fingers at them. Everard +expected, he had prepared himself for, the young naval politician's crow, +and he meant to admit frankly that he had been wrong in wishing to fight +anybody without having first crushed the cotton faction. But Nevil +continued silent. + +'Dead in hospital or a Turk hotel!' sighed Everard; 'and no more to the +scoundrels over there than a body to be shovelled into slack lime.' + +Rosamund Culling was the only witness of his remarkable betrayal of +grief. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +RENEE + +At last, one morning, arrived a letter from a French gentleman signing +himself Comte Cresnes de Croisnel, in which Everard was informed that his +nephew had accompanied the son of the writer, Captain de Croisnel, on +board an Austrian boat out of the East, and was lying in Venice under a +return-attack of fever,--not, the count stated pointedly, in the hands of +an Italian physician. He had brought his own with him to meet his son, +who was likewise disabled. + +Everard was assured by M. de Croisnel that every attention and +affectionate care were being rendered to his gallant and adored nephew-- +'vrai type de tout ce qu'il y a de noble et de chevaleresque dans la +vieille Angleterre'--from a family bound to him by the tenderest +obligations, personal and national; one as dear to every member of it as +the brother, the son, they welcomed with thankful hearts to the Divine +interposition restoring him to them. In conclusion, the count proposed +something like the embrace of a fraternal friendship should Everard think +fit to act upon the spontaneous sentiments of a loving relative, and join +them in Venice to watch over his nephew's recovery. Already M. Nevil was +stronger. The gondola was a medicine in itself, the count said. + +Everard knitted his mouth to intensify a peculiar subdued form of +laughter through the nose, in hopeless ridicule of a Frenchman's notions +of an Englishman's occupations--presumed across Channel to allow of his +breaking loose from shooting engagements at a minute's notice, to rush +off to a fetid foreign city notorious for mud and mosquitoes, and +commence capering and grimacing, pouring forth a jugful of ready-made +extravagances, with 'mon fils! mon cher neveu! Dieu!' and similar +fiddlededee. These were matters for women to do, if they chose: women +and Frenchmen were much of a pattern. Moreover, he knew the hotel this +Comte de Croisnel was staying at. He gasped at the name of it: he had +rather encounter a grisly bear than a mosquito any night of his life, for +no stretch of cunning outwits a mosquito; and enlarging on the qualities +of the terrific insect, he vowed it was damnation without trial or +judgement. + +Eventually, Mrs. Culling's departure was permitted. He argued, 'Why go? +the fellow's comfortable, getting himself together, and you say the +French are good nurses.' But her entreaties to go were vehement, though +Venice had no happy place in her recollections, and he withheld his +objections to her going. For him, the fields forbade it. He sent hearty +messages to Nevil, and that was enough, considering that the young dog of +'humanity' had clearly been running out of his way to catch a jaundice, +and was bereaving his houses of the matronly government, deprived of +which they were all of them likely soon to be at sixes and sevens with +disorderly lacqueys, peccant maids, and cooks in hysterics. + +Now if the master of his fortunes had come to Venice!--Nevil started the +supposition in his mind often after hope had sunk.--Everard would have +seen a young sailor and a soldier the thinner for wear, reclining in a +gondola half the day, fanned by a brunette of the fine lineaments of the +good blood of France. She chattered snatches of Venetian caught from the +gondoliers, she was like a delicate cup of crystal brimming with the +beauty of the place, and making one of them drink in all his impressions +through her. Her features had the soft irregularities which run to +rarities of beauty, as the ripple rocks the light; mouth, eyes, brows, +nostrils, and bloomy cheeks played into one another liquidly; thought +flew, tongue followed, and the flash of meaning quivered over them like +night-lightning. Or oftener, to speak truth, tongue flew, thought +followed: her age was but newly seventeen, and she was French. + +Her name was Renee. She was the only daughter of the Comte de Croisnel. +Her brother Roland owed his life to Nevil, this Englishman proud of a +French name--Nevil Beauchamp. If there was any warm feeling below the +unruffled surface of the girl's deliberate eyes while gazing on him, +it was that he who had saved her brother must be nearly brother himself, +yet was not quite, yet must be loved, yet not approached. He was her +brother's brother-in-arms, brother-in-heart, not hers, yet hers through +her brother. His French name rescued him from foreignness. He spoke her +language with a piquant accent, unlike the pitiable English. Unlike +them, he was gracious, and could be soft and quick. The battle-scarlet, +battle-black, Roland's tales of him threw round him in her imagination, +made his gentleness a surprise. If, then, he was hers through her +brother, what was she to him? The question did not spring clearly within +her, though she was alive to every gradual change of manner toward the +convalescent necessitated by the laws overawing her sex. + +Venice was the French girl's dream. She was realizing it hungrily, +revelling in it, anatomizing it, picking it to pieces, reviewing it, +comparing her work with the original, and the original with her first +conception, until beautiful sad Venice threatened to be no more her +dream, and in dread of disenchantment she tried to take impressions +humbly, really tasked herself not to analyze, not to dictate from a +French footing, not to scorn. Not to be petulant with objects +disappointing her, was an impossible task. She could not consent to a +compromise with the people, the merchandize, the odours of the city. +Gliding in the gondola through the narrow canals at low tide, she leaned +back simulating stupor, with one word--'Venezia!' Her brother was +commanded to smoke: 'Fumez, fumez, Roland!' As soon as the steel-crested +prow had pushed into her Paradise of the Canal Grande, she quietly +shrouded her hair from tobacco, and called upon rapture to recompense her +for her sufferings. The black gondola was unendurable to her. She had +accompanied her father to the Accademia, and mused on the golden Venetian +streets of Carpaccio: she must have an open gondola to decorate in his +manner, gaily, splendidly, and mock at her efforts--a warning to all that +might hope to improve the prevailing gloom and squalor by levying +contributions upon the Merceria! Her most constant admiration was for +the English lord who used once to ride on the Lido sands and visit the +Armenian convent--a lord and a poet. [Lord Byron D.W.] + +This was to be infinitely more than a naval lieutenant. But Nevil +claimed her as little personally as he allowed her to be claimed by +another. The graces of her freaks of petulance and airy whims, her +sprightly jets of wilfulness, fleeting frowns of contempt, imperious +decisions, were all beautiful, like silver-shifting waves, in this +lustrous planet of her pure freedom; and if you will seize the divine +conception of Artemis, and own the goddess French, you will understand +his feelings. + +But though he admired fervently, and danced obediently to her tunes, +Nevil could not hear injustice done to a people or historic poetic city +without trying hard to right the mind guilty of it. A newspaper +correspondent, a Mr. John Holles, lingering on his road home from the +army, put him on the track of an Englishman's books--touching the spirit +as well as the stones of Venice, and Nevil thanked him when he had turned +some of the leaves. + +The study of the books to school Renee was pursued, like the Bianchina's +sleep, in gondoletta, and was not unlike it at intervals. A translated +sentence was the key to a reverie. Renee leaned back, meditating; he +forward, the book on his knee: Roland left them to themselves, and spied +for the Bianchina behind the window-bars. The count was in the churches +or the Galleries. Renee thought she began to comprehend the spirit of +Venice, and chided her rebelliousness. + +'But our Venice was the Venice of the decadence, then!' she said, +complaining. Nevil read on, distrustful of the perspicuity of his own +ideas. + +'Ah, but,' said she, 'when these Venetians were rough men, chanting like +our Huguenots, how cold it must have been here!' + +She hoped she was not very wrong in preferring the times of the great +Venetian painters and martial doges to that period of faith and stone- +cutting. What was done then might be beautiful, but the life was +monotonous; she insisted that it was Huguenot; harsh, nasal, sombre, +insolent, self-sufficient. Her eyes lightened for the flashing colours +and pageantries, and the threads of desperate adventure crossing the rii +to this and that palace-door and balcony, like faint blood-streaks; the +times of Venice in full flower. She reasoned against the hard eloquent +Englishman of the books. 'But we are known by our fruits, are we not? +and the Venice I admire was surely the fruit of these stonecutters +chanting hymns of faith; it could not but be: and if it deserved, as he +says, to die disgraced, I think we should go back to them and ask them +whether their minds were as pure and holy as he supposes.' Her French +wits would not be subdued. Nevil pointed to the palaces. 'Pride,' said +she. He argued that the original Venetians were not responsible for +their offspring. 'You say it?' she cried, 'you, of an old race? Oh, no; +you do not feel it!' and the trembling fervour of her voice convinced him +that he did not, could not. + +Renee said: 'I know my ancestors are bound up in me, by my sentiments to +them; and so do you, M. Nevil. We shame them if we fail in courage and +honour. Is it not so? If we break a single pledged word we cast shame +on them. Why, that makes us what we are; that is our distinction: we +dare not be weak if we would. And therefore when Venice is reproached +with avarice and luxury, I choose to say--what do we hear of the children +of misers? and I say I am certain that those old cold Huguenot +stonecutters were proud and grasping. I am sure they were, and they +shall share the blame.' + +Nevil plunged into his volume. + +He called on Roland for an opinion. + +'Friend,' said Roland, 'opinions may differ: mine is, considering the +defences of the windows, that the only way into these houses or out of +them bodily was the doorway.' + +Roland complimented his sister and friend on the prosecution of their +studies: he could not understand a word of the subject, and yawning, he +begged permission to be allowed to land and join the gondola at a distant +quarter. The gallant officer was in haste to go. + +Renee stared at her brother. He saw nothing; he said a word to the +gondoliers, and quitted the boat. Mars was in pursuit. She resigned +herself, and ceased then to be a girl. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +LOVE IN VENICE + +The air flashed like heaven descending for Nevil alone with Renee. They +had never been alone before. Such happiness belonged to the avenue of +wishes leading to golden mists beyond imagination, and seemed, coming on +him suddenly, miraculous. He leaned toward her like one who has broken a +current of speech, and waits to resume it. She was all unsuspecting +indolence, with gravely shadowed eyes. + +'I throw the book down,' he said. + +She objected. 'No; continue: I like it.' + +Both of them divined that the book was there to do duty for Roland. + +He closed it, keeping a finger among the leaves; a kind of anchorage in +case of indiscretion. + +'Permit me to tell you, M. Nevil, you are inclined to play truant to- +day.' + +'I am.' + +'Now is the very time to read; for my poor Roland is at sea when we +discuss our questions, and the book has driven him away.' + +'But we have plenty of time to read. We miss the scenes.' + +'The scenes are green shutters, wet steps, barcaroli, brown women, +striped posts, a scarlet night-cap, a sick fig-tree, an old shawl, faded +spots of colour, peeling walls. They might be figured by a trodden +melon. They all resemble one another, and so do the days here.' + +'That's the charm. I wish I could look on you and think the same. You, +as you are, for ever.' + +'Would you not let me live my life?' + +'I would not have you alter.' + +'Please to be pathetic on that subject after I am wrinkled, monsieur.' + +'You want commanding, mademoiselle.' + +Renee nestled her chin, and gazed forward through her eyelashes. + +'Venice is like a melancholy face of a former beauty who has ceased to +rouge, or wipe away traces of her old arts,' she said, straining for +common talk, and showing the strain. + +'Wait; now we are rounding,' said he; 'now you have three of what you +call your theatre-bridges in sight. The people mount and drop, mount and +drop; I see them laugh. They are full of fun and good-temper. Look on +living Venice! + +'Provided that my papa is not crossing when we go under! + +'Would he not trust you to me?' + +'Yes.' + +'He would? And you?' + +'I do believe they are improvizing an operetta on the second bridge.' + +'You trust yourself willingly?' + +'As to my second brother. You hear them? How delightfully quick and +spontaneous they are! Ah, silly creatures! they have stopped. They +might have held it on for us while we were passing.' + +'Where would the naturalness have been then?' + +'Perhaps, M. Nevil, I do want commanding. I am wilful. Half my days +will be spent in fits of remorse, I begin to think.' + +'Come to me to be forgiven.' + +'Shall I? I should be forgiven too readily.' + +'I am not so sure of that.' + +'Can you be harsh? No, not even with enemies. Least of all with . . . +with us.' + +Oh for the black gondola!--the little gliding dusky chamber for two; +instead of this open, flaunting, gold and crimson cotton-work, which +exacted discretion on his part and that of the mannerly gondoliers, and +exposed him to window, balcony, bridge, and borderway. + +They slipped on beneath a red balcony where a girl leaned on her folded +arms, and eyed them coming and going by with Egyptian gravity. + +'How strange a power of looking these people have,' said Renee, whose +vivacity was fascinated to a steady sparkle by the girl. 'Tell me, is +she glancing round at us?' + +Nevil turned and reported that she was not. She had exhausted them while +they were in transit; she had no minor curiosity. + +'Let us fancy she is looking for her lover,' he said. + +Renee added: 'Let us hope she will not escape being seen.' + +'I give her my benediction,' said Nevil. + +'And I,' said Renee; 'and adieu to her, if you please. Look for Roland.' + +'You remind me; I have but a few instants.' + +'M. Nevil, you are a preux of the times of my brother's patronymic. And +there is my Roland awaiting us. Is he not handsome?' + +'How glad you are to have him to relieve guard!' + +Renee bent on Nevil one of her singular looks of raillery. She had +hitherto been fencing at a serious disadvantage. + +'Not so very glad,' she said, 'if that deprived me of the presence of his +friend.' + +Roland was her tower. But Roland was not yet on board. She had peeped +from her citadel too rashly. Nevil had time to spring the flood of +crimson in her cheeks, bright as the awning she reclined under. + +'Would you have me with you always?' + +'Assuredly,' said she, feeling the hawk in him, and trying to baffle him +by fluttering. + +'Always? forever? and--listen-give me a title?' + +Renee sang out to Roland like a bird in distress, and had some trouble +not to appear too providentially rescued. Roland on board, she resumed +the attack. + +'M. Nevil vows he is a better brother to me than you, who dart away on an +impulse and leave us threading all Venice till we do not know where we +are, naughty brother!' + +'My little sister, the spot where you are,' rejoined Roland, 'is +precisely the spot where I left you, and I defy you to say you have gone +on without me. This is the identical riva I stepped out on to buy you a +packet of Venetian ballads.' + +They recognized the spot, and for a confirmation of the surprising +statement, Roland unrolled several sheets of printed blotting-paper, and +rapidly read part of a Canzonetta concerning Una Giovine who reproved her +lover for his extreme addiction to wine: + + 'Ma se, ma se, + Cotanto beve, + Mi no, mi no, + No ve sposero.' + +'This astounding vagabond preferred Nostrani to his heart's mistress. +I tasted some of their Nostrani to see if it could be possible for a +Frenchman to exonerate him.' + +Roland's wry face at the mention of Nostrani brought out the chief +gondolier, who delivered himself: + +'Signore, there be hereditary qualifications. One must be born Italian +to appreciate the merits of Nostrani!' + +Roland laughed. He had covered his delinquency in leaving his sister, +and was full of an adventure to relate to Nevil, a story promising well +for him. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +AN AWAKENING FOR BOTH + +Renee was downcast. Had she not coquetted? The dear young Englishman +had reduced her to defend herself, the which fair ladies, like besieged +garrisons, cannot always do successfully without an attack at times, +which, when the pursuer is ardent, is followed by a retreat, which is a +provocation; and these things are coquettry. Her still fresh convent- +conscience accused her of it pitilessly. She could not forgive her +brother, and yet she dared not reproach him, for that would have +inculpated Nevil. She stepped on to the Piazzetta thoughtfully. Her +father was at Florian's, perusing letters from France. 'We are to have +the marquis here in a week, my child,' he said. Renee nodded. +Involuntarily she looked at Nevil. He caught the look, with a lover's +quick sense of misfortune in it. + +She heard her brother reply to him: 'Who? the Marquis de Rouaillout? +It is a jolly gaillard of fifty who spoils no fun.' + +'You mistake his age, Roland,' she said. + +'Forty-nine, then, my sister.' + +'He is not that.' + +'He looks it.' + +'You have been absent.' + +'Probably, my arithmetical sister, he has employed the interval to grow +younger. They say it is the way with green gentlemen of a certain age. +They advance and they retire. They perform the first steps of a +quadrille ceremoniously, and we admire them.' + +'What's that?' exclaimed the Comte de Croisnel. 'You talk nonsense, +Roland. M. le marquis is hardly past forty. He is in his prime.' + +'Without question, mon pere. For me, I was merely offering proof that he +can preserve his prime unlimitedly.' + +'He is not a subject for mockery, Roland.' + +'Quite the contrary; for reverence!' + +'Another than you, my boy, and he would march you out.' + +'I am to imagine, then, that his hand continues firm?' + +'Imagine to the extent of your capacity; but remember that respect is +always owing to your own family, and deliberate before you draw on +yourself such a chastisement as mercy from an accepted member of it.' + +Roland bowed and drummed on his knee. + +The conversation had been originated by Renee for the enlightenment of +Nevil and as a future protection to herself. Now that it had disclosed +its burden she could look at him no more, and when her father addressed +her significantly: 'Marquise, you did me the honour to consent to +accompany me to the Church of the Frari this afternoon?' she felt her +self-accusation of coquettry biting under her bosom like a thing alive. + +Roland explained the situation to Nevil. + +'It is the mania with us, my dear Nevil, to marry our girls young to +established men. Your established man carries usually all the signs, +visible to the multitude or not, of the stages leading to that eminence. +We cannot, I believe, unless we have the good fortune to boast the +paternity of Hercules, disconnect ourselves from the steps we have +mounted; not even, the priests inform us, if we are ascending to heaven; +we carry them beyond the grave. However, it seems that our excellent +marquis contrives to keep them concealed, and he is ready to face +marriage--the Grandest Inquisitor, next to Death. Two furious +matchmakers--our country, beautiful France, abounds in them--met one day; +they were a comtesse and a baronne, and they settled the alliance. The +bell was rung, and Renee came out of school. There is this to be said: +she has no mother; the sooner a girl without a mother has a husband the +better. That we are all agreed upon. I have no personal objection to +the marquis; he has never been in any great scandals. He is Norman, and +has estates in Normandy, Dauphiny, Touraine; he is hospitable, luxurious. +Renee will have a fine hotel in Paris. But I am eccentric: I have read +in our old Fabliaux of December and May. Say the marquis is November, +say October; he is still some distance removed from the plump Spring +month. And we in our family have wits and passions. In fine, a bud of a +rose in an old gentleman's button-hole! it is a challenge to the whole +world of youth; and if the bud should leap? Enough of this matter, +friend Nevil; but sometimes a friend must allow himself to be bothered. +I have perfect confidence in my sister, you see; I simply protest against +her being exposed to . . . You know men. I protest, that is, in the +privacy of my cigar-case, for I have no chance elsewhere. The affair is +on wheels. The very respectable matchmakers have kindled the marquis on +the one hand, and my father on the other, and Renee passes obediently +from the latter to the former. In India they sacrifice the widows, in +France the virgins.' + +Roland proceeded to relate his adventure. Nevil's inattention piqued him +to salt and salt it wonderfully, until the old story of He and She had an +exciting savour in its introductory chapter; but his friend was flying +through the circles of the Inferno, and the babble of an ephemeral upper +world simply affected him by its contrast with the overpowering horrors, +repugnances, despairs, pities, rushing at him, surcharging his senses. +Those that live much by the heart in their youth have sharp foretastes of +the issues imaged for the soul. St. Mark's was in a minute struck black +for him. He neither felt the sunlight nor understood why column and +campanile rose, nor why the islands basked, and boats and people moved. +All were as remote little bits of mechanism. + +Nevil escaped, and walked in the direction of the Frari down calle and +campiello. Only to see her--to compare her with the Renee of the past +hour! But that Renee had been all the while a feast of delusion; she +could never be resuscitated in the shape he had known, not even clearly +visioned. Not a day of her, not an hour, not a single look had been his +own. She had been sold when he first beheld her, and should, he muttered +austerely, have been ticketed the property of a middle-aged man, a worn- +out French marquis, whom she had agreed to marry, unwooed, without love +--the creature of a transaction. But she was innocent, she was unaware +of the sin residing in a loveless marriage; and this restored her to him +somewhat as a drowned body is given back to mourners. + +After aimless walking he found himself on the Zattere, where the lonely +Giudecca lies in front, covering mud and marsh and lagune-flames of later +afternoon, and you have sight of the high mainland hills which seem to +fling forth one over other to a golden sea-cape. + +Midway on this unadorned Zattere, with its young trees and spots of +shade, he was met by Renee and her father. Their gondola was below, +close to the riva, and the count said, 'She is tired of standing gazing +at pictures. There is a Veronese in one of the churches of the Giudecca +opposite. Will you, M. Nevil, act as parade-escort to her here for half +an hour, while I go over? Renee complains that she loses the vulgar art +of walking in her complaisant attention to the fine Arts. I weary my +poor child.' + +Renee protested in a rapid chatter. + +'Must I avow it?' said the count; 'she damps my enthusiasm a little.' + +Nevil mutely accepted the office. + +Twice that day was she surrendered to him: once in his ignorance, when +time appeared an expanse of many sunny fields. On this occasion it +puffed steam; yet, after seeing the count embark, he commenced the parade +in silence. + +'This is a nice walk,' said Renee; 'we have not the steps of the Riva dei +Schiavoni. It is rather melancholy though. How did you discover it? I +persuaded my papa to send the gondola round, and walk till we came to the +water. Tell me about the Giudecca.' + +'The Giudecca was a place kept apart for the Jews, I believe. You have +seen their burial-ground on the Lido. Those are, I think, the Euganean +hills. You are fond of Petrarch.' + +'M. Nevil, omitting the allusion to the poet, you have, permit me to +remark, the brevity without the precision of an accredited guide to +notabilities.' + +'I tell you what I know,' said Nevil, brooding on the finished tone and +womanly aplomb of her language. It made him forget that she was a girl +entrusted to his guardianship. His heart came out. + +'Renee, if you loved him, I, on my honour, would not utter a word for +myself. Your heart's inclinations are sacred for me. I would stand by, +and be your friend and his. If he were young, that I might see a chance +of it!' + +She murmured, 'You should not have listened to Roland.' + +'Roland should have warned me. How could I be near you and not . . . +But I am nothing. Forget me; do not think I speak interestedly, except +to save the dearest I have ever known from certain wretchedness. To +yield yourself hand and foot for life! I warn you that it must end +miserably. Your countrywomen . . . You have the habit in France; but +like what are you treated? You! none like you in the whole world! You +consent to be extinguished. And I have to look on! Listen to me now.' + +Renee glanced at the gondola conveying her father. And he has not yet +landed! she thought, and said, 'Do you pretend to judge of my welfare +better than my papa?' + +'Yes; in this. He follows a fashion. You submit to it. His anxiety is +to provide for you. But I know the system is cursed by nature, and that +means by heaven.' + +'Because it is not English?' + +'O Renee, my beloved for ever! Well, then, tell me, tell me you can say +with pride and happiness that the Marquis de Rouaillout is to be your-- +there's the word--husband!' + +Renee looked across the water. + +'Friend, if my father knew you were asking me!' + +'I will speak to him.' + +'Useless.' + +'He is generous, he loves you.' + +'He cannot break an engagement binding his honour.' + +'Would you, Renee, would you--it must be said--consent to have it known +to him--I beg for more than life--that your are not averse . . . that +you support me?' + +His failing breath softened the bluntness. + +She replied, 'I would not have him ever break an engagement binding his +honour.' + +'You stretch the point of honour.' + +'It is our way. Dear friend, we are French. And I presume to think that +our French system is not always wrong, for if my father had not broken it +by treating you as one of us and leaving me with you, should I have heard +. . . ?' + +'I have displeased you.' + +'Do not suppose that. But, I mean, a mother would not have left me.' + +'You wished to avoid it.' + +'Do not blame me. I had some instinct; you were very pale.' + +'You knew I loved you.' + +'No.' + +'Yes; for this morning . . .' + +This morning it seemed to me, and I regretted my fancy, that you were +inclined to trifle, as, they say, young men do.' + +'With Renee?' + +'With your friend Renee. And those are the hills of Petrarch's tomb? +They are mountains.' + +They were purple beneath a large brooding cloud that hung against the +sun, waiting for him to enfold him, and Nevil thought that a tomb there +would be a welcome end, if he might lift Renee in one wild flight over +the chasm gaping for her. He had no language for thoughts of such a +kind, only tumultuous feeling. + +She was immoveable, in perfect armour. + +He said despairingly, 'Can you have realized what you are consenting to?' + +She answered, 'It is my duty.' + +'Your duty! it's like taking up a dice-box, and flinging once, to certain +ruin!' + +'I must oppose my father to you, friend. Do you not understand duty to +parents? They say the English are full of the idea of duty.' + +'Duty to country, duty to oaths and obligations; but with us the heart is +free to choose.' + +'Free to choose, and when it is most ignorant?' + +'The heart? ask it. Nothing is surer.' + +'That is not what we are taught. We are taught that the heart deceives +itself. The heart throws your dicebox; not prudent parents.' + +She talked like a woman, to plead the cause of her obedience as a girl, +and now silenced in the same manner that she had previously excited him. + +'Then you are lost to me,' he said. + +They saw the gondola returning. + +'How swiftly it comes home; it loitered when it went,' said Renee. +'There sits my father, brimming with his picture; he has seen one more! +We will congratulate him. This little boulevard is not much to speak of. +The hills are lovely. Friend,' she dropped her voice on the gondola's +approach, 'we have conversed on common subjects.' + +Nevil had her hand in his, to place her in the gondola. + +She seemed thankful that he should prefer to go round on foot. At least, +she did not join in her father's invitation to him. She leaned back, +nestling her chin and half closing her eyes, suffering herself to be +divided from him, borne away by forces she acquiesced in. + +Roland was not visible till near midnight on the Piazza. The +promenaders, chiefly military of the garrison, were few at that period of +social protestation, and he could declare his disappointment aloud, +ringingly, as he strolled up to Nevil, looking as if the cigar in his +mouth and the fists entrenched in his wide trowsers-pockets were mortally +at feud. His adventure had not pursued its course luminously. He had +expected romance, and had met merchandize, and his vanity was offended. +To pacify him, Nevil related how he had heard that since the Venetian +rising of '49, Venetian ladies had issued from the ordeal of fire and +famine of another pattern than the famous old Benzon one, in which they +touched earthiest earth. He praised Republicanism for that. The spirit +of the new and short-lived Republic wrought that change in Venice. + +'Oh, if they're republican as well as utterly decayed,' said Roland, 'I +give them up; let them die virtuous.' + +Nevil told Roland that he had spoken to Renee. He won sympathy, but +Roland could not give him encouragement. They crossed and recrossed the +shadow of the great campanile, on the warm-white stones of the square, +Nevil admitting the weight of whatsoever Roland pointed to him in favour +of the arrangement according to French notions, and indeed, of +aristocratic notions everywhere, saving that it was imperative for Renee +to be disposed of in marriage early. Why rob her of her young +springtime! + +'French girls,' replied Roland, confused by the nature of the explication +in his head--'well, they're not English; they want a hand to shape them, +otherwise they grow all awry. My father will not have one of her aunts +to live with him, so there she is. But, my dear Nevil, I owe my life to +you, and I was no party to this affair. I would do anything to help you. +What says Renee?' + +'She obeys.' + +'Exactly. You see! Our girls are chess-pieces until they 're married. +Then they have life and character sometimes too much.' + +'She is not like them, Roland; she is like none. When I spoke to her +first, she affected no astonishment; never was there a creature so nobly +sincere. She's a girl in heart, not in mind. Think of her sacrificed to +this man thrice her age!' + +'She differs from other girls only on the surface, Nevil. As for the +man, I wish she were going to marry a younger. I wish, yes, my friend,' +Roland squeezed Nevil's hand, 'I wish! I'm afraid it's hopeless. She +did not tell you to hope?' + +'Not by one single sign,' said Nevil. + +'You see, my friend!' + +'For that reason,' Nevil rejoined, with the calm fanaticism of the +passion of love, 'I hope all the more . . . because I will not believe +that she, so pure and good, can be sacrificed. Put me aside--I am +nothing. I hope to save her from that.' + +'We have now,' said Roland, 'struck the current of duplicity. You are +really in love, my poor fellow.' + +Lover and friend came to no conclusion, except that so lovely a night was +not given for slumber. A small round brilliant moon hung almost globed +in the depths of heaven, and the image of it fell deep between San +Giorgio and the Dogana. + +Renee had the scene from her window, like a dream given out of sleep. +She lay with both arms thrown up beneath her head on the pillow, her +eyelids wide open, and her visage set and stern. Her bosom rose and sank +regularly but heavily. The fluctuations of a night stormy for her, +hitherto unknown, had sunk her to this trance, in which she lay like a +creature flung on shore by the waves. She heard her brother's voice and +Nevil's, and the pacing of their feet. She saw the long shaft of +moonlight broken to zigzags of mellow lightning, and wavering back to +steadiness; dark San Giorgio, and the sheen of the Dogana's front. But +the visible beauty belonged to a night that had shivered repose, +humiliated and wounded her, destroyed her confident happy half-infancy of +heart, and she had flown for a refuge to hard feelings. Her predominant +sentiment was anger; an anger that touched all and enveloped none, for it +was quite fictitious, though she felt it, and suffered from it. She +turned it on Nevil, as against an enemy, and became the victim in his +place. Tears for him filled in her eyes, and ran over; she disdained to +notice them, and blinked offendedly to have her sight clear of the +weakness; but these interceding tears would flow; it was dangerous to +blame him, harshly. She let them roll down, figuring to herself with +quiet simplicity of mind that her spirit was independent of them as long +as she restrained her hands from being accomplices by brushing them away, +as weeping girls do that cry for comfort. Nevil had saved her brother's +life, and had succoured her countrymen; he loved her, and was a hero. He +should not have said he loved her; that was wrong; and it was shameful +that he should have urged her to disobey her father. But this hero's +love of her might plead excuses she did not know of; and if he was to be +excused, he, unhappy that he was, had a claim on her for more than tears. +She wept resentfully. Forces above her own swayed and hurried her like a +lifeless body dragged by flying wheels: they could not unnerve her will, +or rather, what it really was, her sense of submission to a destiny. +Looked at from the height of the palm-waving cherubs over the fallen +martyr in the picture, she seemed as nerveless as a dreamy girl. The +raised arms and bent elbows were an illusion of indifference. Her shape +was rigid from hands to feet, as if to keep in a knot the resolution of +her mind; for the second and in that young season the stronger nature +grafted by her education fixed her to the religious duty of obeying and +pleasing her father, in contempt, almost in abhorrence, of personal +inclinations tending to thwart him and imperil his pledged word. She +knew she had inclinations to be tender. Her hands released, how promptly +might she not have been confiding her innumerable perplexities of +sentiment and emotion to paper, undermining self-governance; self- +respect, perhaps! Further than that, she did not understand the feelings +she struggled with; nor had she any impulse to gaze on him, the cause of +her trouble, who walked beside her brother below, talking betweenwhiles +in the night's grave undertones. Her trouble was too overmastering; it +had seized her too mysteriously, coming on her solitariness without +warning in the first watch of the night, like a spark crackling +serpentine along dry leaves to sudden flame. A thought of Nevil and a +regret had done it. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +A NIGHT ON THE ADRIATIC + +The lovers met after Roland had spoken to his sister--not exactly to +advocate the cause of Nevil, though he was under the influence of that +grave night's walk with him, but to sound her and see whether she at all +shared Nevil's view of her situation. Roland felt the awfulness of a +French family arrangement of a marriage, and the impertinence of a +foreign Cupid's intrusion, too keenly to plead for his friend: at the +same time he loved his friend and his sister, and would have been very +ready to smile blessings on them if favourable circumstances had raised +a signal; if, for example, apoplexy or any other cordial ex machina +intervention had removed the middle-aged marquis; and, perhaps, if Renee +had shown the repugnance to her engagement which Nevil declared she must +have in her heart, he would have done more than smile; he would have laid +the case deferentially before his father. His own opinion was that young +unmarried women were incapable of the passion of love, being, as it were, +but half-feathered in that state, and unable to fly; and Renee confirmed +it. The suspicion of an advocacy on Nevil's behalf steeled her. His +tentative observations were checked at the outset. + +'Can such things be spoken of to me, Roland? I am plighted. You know +it.' + +He shrugged, said a word of pity for Nevil, and went forth to let his +friend know that it was as he had predicted: Renee was obedience in +person, like a rightly educated French girl. He strongly advised his +friend to banish all hope of her from his mind. But the mind he +addressed was of a curious order; far-shooting, tough, persistent, and +when acted on by the spell of devotion, indomitable. Nevil put hope +aside, or rather, he clad it in other garments, in which it was hardly to +be recognized by himself, and said to Roland: 'You must bear this from +me; you must let me follow you to the end, and if she wavers she will +find me near.' + +Roland could not avoid asking the use of it, considering that Renee, +however much she admired and liked, was not in love with him. + +Nevil resigned himself to admit that she was not: and therefore,' said +he, 'you won't object to my remaining.' + +Renee greeted Nevil with as clear a conventional air as a woman could +assume. + +She was going, she said, to attend High Mass in the church of S. Moise, +and she waved her devoutest Roman Catholicism to show the breadth of the +division between them. He proposed to go likewise. She was mute. +After some discourse she contrived to say inoffensively that people who +strolled into her churches for the music, or out of curiosity, played the +barbarian. + +'Well, I will not go,' said Nevil. + +'But I do not wish to number you among them,' she said. + +'Then,' said Nevil, 'I will go, for it cannot be barbarous to try to be +with you.' + +'No, that is wickedness,' said Renee. + +She was sensible that conversation betrayed her, and Nevil's apparently +deliberate pursuit signified to her that he must be aware of his mastery, +and she resented it, and stumbled into pitfalls whenever she opened her +lips. It seemed to be denied to them to utter what she meant, if indeed +she had a meaning in speaking, save to hurt herself cruelly by wounding +the man who had caught her in the toils: and so long as she could imagine +that she was the only one hurt, she was the braver and the harsher for +it; but at the sight of Nevil in pain her heart relented and shifted, and +discovering it to be so weak as to be almost at his mercy, she defended +it with an aggressive unkindness, for which, in charity to her sweeter +nature, she had to ask his pardon, and then had to fib to give reasons +for her conduct, and then to pretend to herself that her pride was +humbled by him; a most humiliating round, constantly recurring; the worse +for the reflection that she created it. She attempted silence. Nevil +spoke, and was like the magical piper: she was compelled to follow him +and dance the round again, with the wretched thought that it must +resemble coquettry. Nevil did not think so, but a very attentive +observer now upon the scene, and possessed of his half of the secret, +did, and warned him. Rosamund Culling added that the French girl might +be only an unconscious coquette, for she was young. The critic would not +undertake to pronounce on her suggestion, whether the candour apparent in +merely coquettish instincts was not more dangerous than a battery of the +arts of the sex. She had heard Nevil's frank confession, and seen Renee +twice, when she tried in his service, though not greatly wishing for +success, to stir the sensitive girl for an answer to his attachment. +Probably she went to work transparently, after the insular fashion of +opening a spiritual mystery with the lancet. Renee suffered herself to +be probed here and there, and revealed nothing of the pain of the +operation. She said to Nevil, in Rosamund's hearing: + +'Have you the sense of honour acute in your country?' Nevil inquired for +the apropos. + +'None,' said she. + +Such pointed insolence disposed Rosamund to an irritable antagonism, +without reminding her that she had given some cause for it. + +Renee said to her presently: 'He saved my brother's life'; the apropos +being as little perceptible as before. + +Her voice dropped to her sweetest deep tones, and there was a +supplicating beam in her eyes, unintelligible to the direct Englishwoman, +except under the heading of a power of witchery fearful to think of in +one so young, and loved by Nevil. + +The look was turned upon her, not upon her hero, and Rosamund thought, +'Does she want to entangle me as well?' + +It was, in truth, a look of entreaty from woman to woman, signifying need +of womanly help. Renee would have made a confidante of her, if she had +not known her to be Nevil's, and devoted to him. 'I would speak to you, +but that I feel you would betray me,' her eyes had said. The strong +sincerity dwelling amid multiform complexities might have made itself +comprehensible to the English lady for a moment or so, had Renee spoken +words to her ears; but belief in it would hardly have survived the girl's +next convolutions. 'She is intensely French,' Rosamund said to Nevil-- +a volume of insular criticism in a sentence. + +'You do not know her, ma'am,' said Nevil. 'You think her older than she +is, and that is the error I fell into. She is a child.' + +'A serpent in the egg is none the less a serpent, Nevil. Forgive me; but +when she tells you the case is hopeless!' + +'No case is hopeless till a man consents to think it is; and I shall +stay.' + +'But then again, Nevil, you have not consulted your uncle.' + +'Let him see her! let him only see her!' + +Rosamund Culling reserved her opinion compassionately. His uncle would +soon be calling to have him home: society panted for him to make much of +him and here he was, cursed by one of his notions of duty, in attendance +on a captious 'young French beauty, who was the less to be excused for +not dismissing him peremptorily, if she cared for him at all. His +career, which promised to be so brilliant, was spoiling at the outset. +Rosamund thought of Renee almost with detestation, as a species of +sorceress that had dug a trench in her hero's road, and unhorsed and fast +fettered him. + +The marquis was expected immediately. Renee sent up a little note to +Mrs. Calling's chamber early in the morning, and it was with an air of +one-day-more-to-ourselves, that, meeting her, she entreated the English +lady to join the expedition mentioned in her note. Roland had hired a +big Chioggian fishing-boat to sail into the gulf at night, and return at +dawn, and have sight of Venice rising from the sea. Her father had +declined; but M. Nevil wished to be one of the party, and in that case + . . ? . . . Renee threw herself beseechingly into the mute +interrogation, keeping both of Rosamund's hands. They could slip away +only by deciding to, and this rare Englishwoman had no taste for the +petty overt hostilities. 'If I can be of use to you,' she said. + +'If you can bear sea-pitching and tossing for the sake of the loveliest +sight in the whole world,' said Renee. + +'I know it well,' Rosamund replied. + +Renee rippled her eyebrows. She divined a something behind that remark, +and as she was aware of the grief of Rosamund's life, her quick intuition +whispered that it might be connected with the gallant officer dead on the +battle-field. + +'Madame, if you know it too well . . .' she said. + +'No; it is always worth seeing,' said Rosamund, 'and I think, +mademoiselle, with your permission, I should accompany you.' + +'It is only a whim of mine, madame. I can stay on shore.' + +'Not when it is unnecessary to forego a pleasure.' + +'Say, my last day of freedom.' + +Renee kissed her hand. + +She is terribly winning, Rosamund avowed. Renee was in debate whether +the woman devoted to Nevil would hear her and help. + +Just then Roland and Nevil returned from their boat, where they had left +carpenters and upholsterers at work, and the delicate chance for an +understanding between the ladies passed by. + +The young men were like waves of ocean overwhelming it, they were so full +of their boat, and the scouring and cleaning out of it, and provisioning, +and making it worthy of its freight. Nevil was surprised that Mrs. +Culling should have consented to come, and asked her if she really wished +it--really; and 'Really,' said Rosamund; 'certainly.' + +'Without dubitation,' cried Roland. 'And now my little Renee has no more +shore-qualms; she is smoothly chaperoned, and madame will present us tea +on board. All the etcaeteras of life are there, and a mariner's eye in +me spies a breeze at sunset to waft us out of Malamocco.' + +The count listened to the recital of their preparations with his usual +absent interest in everything not turning upon Art, politics, or social +intrigue. He said, 'Yes, good, good,' at the proper intervals, and +walked down the riva to look at the busy boat, said to Nevil, 'You are a +sailor; I confide my family to you,' and prudently counselled Renee to +put on the dresses she could toss to the deep without regrets. +Mrs. Culling he thanked fervently for a wonderful stretch of +generosity in lending her presence to the madcaps. + +Altogether the day was a reanimation of external Venice. But there was a +thunderbolt in it; for about an hour before sunset, when the ladies were +superintending and trying not to criticize the ingenious efforts to +produce a make-believe of comfort on board for them, word was brought +down to the boat by the count's valet that the Marquis de Rouaillout had +arrived. Renee turned her face to her brother superciliously. Roland +shrugged. 'Note this, my sister,' he said; 'an anticipation of dates in +paying visits precludes the ripeness of the sentiment of welcome. It is, +however, true that the marquis has less time to spare than others.' + +'We have started; we are on the open sea. How can we put back?' said +Renee. + +'You hear, Francois; we are on the open sea,' Roland addressed the valet. + +'Monsieur has cut loose his communications with land,' Francois +responded, and bowed from the landing. + +Nevil hastened to make this a true report; but they had to wait for tide +as well as breeze, and pilot through intricate mud-channels before they +could see the outside of the Lido, and meanwhile the sun lay like a +golden altarplatter on mud-banks made bare by the ebb, and curled in +drowsy yellow links along the currents. All they could do was to push +off and hang loose, bumping to right and left in the midst of volleys and +countervolleys of fishy Venetian, Chioggian, and Dalmatian, quite as +strong as anything ever heard down the Canalaggio. The representatives +of these dialects trotted the decks and hung their bodies half over the +sides of the vessels to deliver fire, flashed eyes and snapped fingers, +not a whit less fierce than hostile crews in the old wars hurling an +interchange of stink-pots, and then resumed the trot, apparently in +search of fresh ammunition. An Austrian sentinel looked on passively, +and a police inspector peeringly. They were used to it. Happily, the +combustible import of the language was unknown to the ladies, and Nevil's +attempts to keep his crew quiet, contrasting with Roland's phlegm, which +a Frenchman can assume so philosophically when his tongue is tied, amused +them. During the clamour, Renee saw her father beckoning from the riva. +She signified that she was no longer in command of circumstances; the +vessel was off. But the count stamped his foot, and nodded imperatively. +Thereupon Roland repeated the eloquent demonstrations of Renee, and the +count lost patience, and Roland shouted, 'For the love of heaven, don't +join this babel; we're nearly bursting.' The rage of the babel was +allayed by degrees, though not appeased, for the boat was behaving +wantonly, as the police officer pointed out to the count. + +Renee stood up to bend her head. It was in reply to a salute from the +Marquis de Rouaillout, and Nevil beheld his rival. + +'M. le Marquis, seeing it is out of the question that we can come to you, +will you come to us?' cried Roland. + +The marquis gesticulated 'With alacrity' in every limb. + +'We will bring you back on to-morrow midnight's tide, safe, we promise +you.' + +The marquis advanced a foot, and withdrew it. Could he have heard +correctly? They were to be out a whole night at sea! The count +dejectedly confessed his incapability to restrain them: the young +desperadoes were ready for anything. He had tried the voice of +authority, and was laughed at. As to Renee, an English lady was with +her. + +'The English lady must be as mad as the rest,' said the marquis. + +'The English are mad,' said the count; 'but their women are strict upon +the proprieties.' + +'Possibly, my dear count; but what room is there for the proprieties on +board a fishing-boat?' + +'It is even as you say, my dear marquis.' + +'You allow it?' + +'Can I help myself? Look at them. They tell me they have given the boat +the fittings of a yacht.' + +'And the young man?' + +'That is the M. Beauchamp of whom I have spoken to you, the very pick of +his country, fresh, lively, original; and he can converse. You will like +him.' + +'I hope so,' said the marquis, and roused a doleful laugh. 'It would +seem that one does not arrive by hastening!' + +'Oh! but my dear marquis, you have paid the compliment; you are like +Spring thrusting in a bunch of lilac while the winds of winter blow. +If you were not expected, your expeditiousness is appreciated, be sure.' + +Roland fortunately did not hear the marquis compared to Spring. He was +saying: 'I wonder what those two elderly gentlemen are talking about'; +and Nevil confused his senses by trying to realize that one of them was +destined to be the husband of his now speechless Renee. The marquis was +clad in a white silken suit, and a dash of red round the neck set off his +black beard; but when he lifted his broad straw hat, a baldness of sconce +shone. There was elegance in his gestures; he looked a gentleman, though +an ultra-Gallican one, that is, too scrupulously finished for our taste, +smelling of the valet. He had the habit of balancing his body on the +hips, as if to emphasize a juvenile vigour, and his general attitude +suggested an idea that he had an oration for you. Seen from a distance, +his baldness and strong nasal projection were not winning features; the +youthful standard he had evidently prescribed to himself in his dress and +his ready jerks of acquiescence and delivery might lead a forlorn rival +to conceive him something of an ogre straining at an Adonis. It could +not be disputed that he bore his disappointment remarkably well; the more +laudably, because his position was within a step of the ridiculous, for +he had shot himself to the mark, despising sleep, heat, dust, dirt, diet, +and lo, that charming object was deliberately slipping out of reach, +proving his headlong journey an absurdity. + +As he stood declining to participate in the lunatic voyage, and bidding +them perforce good speed off the tips of his fingers, Renee turned her +eyes on him, and away. She felt a little smart of pity, arising partly +from her antagonism to Roland's covert laughter: but it was the colder +kind of feminine pity, which is nearer to contempt than to tenderness. +She sat still, placid outwardly, in fear of herself, so strange she found +it to be borne out to sea by her sailor lover under the eyes of her +betrothed. She was conscious of a tumultuous rush of sensations, none of +them of a very healthy kind, coming as it were from an unlocked chamber +of her bosom, hitherto of unimagined contents; and the marquis being now +on the spot to defend his own, she no longer blamed Nevil: it was +otherwise utterly. All the sweeter side of pity was for him. + +He was at first amazed by the sudden exquisite transition. Tenderness +breathed from her, in voice, in look, in touch; for she accepted his help +that he might lead her to the stern of the vessel, to gaze well on +setting Venice, and sent lightnings up his veins; she leaned beside him +over the vessel's rails, not separated from him by the breadth of a +fluttering riband. Like him, she scarcely heard her brother when for an +instant he intervened, and with Nevil she said adieu to Venice, where the +faint red Doge's palace was like the fading of another sunset north- +westward of the glory along the hills. Venice dropped lower and lower, +breasting the waters, until it was a thin line in air. The line was +broken, and ran in dots, with here and there a pillar standing on opal +sky. At last the topmost campanile sank. + +Renee looked up at the sails, and back for the submerged city. + +'It is gone!' she said, as though a marvel had been worked; and swiftly: +'we have one night!' + +She breathed it half like a question, like a petition, catching her +breath. The adieu to Venice was her assurance of liberty, but Venice +hidden rolled on her the sense of the return and plucked shrewdly at her +tether of bondage. + +They set their eyes toward the dark gulf ahead. The night was growing +starry. The softly ruffled Adriatic tossed no foam. + +'One night?' said Nevil; 'one? Why only one?' + +Renee shuddered. 'Oh! do not speak.' + +'Then, give me your hand.' + +'There, my friend.' + +He pressed a hand that was like a quivering chord. She gave it as though +it had been his own to claim. But that it meant no more than a hand he +knew by the very frankness of her compliance, in the manner natural to +her; and this was the charm, it filled him with her peculiar image and +spirit, and while he held it he was subdued. + +Lying on the deck at midnight, wrapt in his cloak and a coil of rope for +a pillow, considerably apart from jesting Roland, the recollection of +that little sanguine spot of time when Renee's life-blood ran with his, +began to heave under him like a swelling sea. For Nevil the starred +black night was Renee. Half his heart was in it: but the combative +division flew to the morning and the deadly iniquity of the marriage, +from which he resolved to save her; in pure devotedness, he believed. +And so he closed his eyes. She, a girl, with a heart fluttering open +and fearing, felt only that she had lost herself somewhere, and she had +neither sleep nor symbols, nothing but a sense of infinite strangeness, +as though she were borne superhumanly through space. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +MORNING AT SEA UNDER THE ALPS + +The breeze blew steadily, enough to swell the sails and sweep the vessel +on smoothly. The night air dropped no moisture on deck. + +Nevil Beauchamp dozed for an hour. He was awakened by light on his +eyelids, and starting up beheld the many pinnacles of grey and red rocks +and shadowy high white regions at the head of the gulf waiting for the +sun; and the sun struck them. One by one they came out in crimson flame, +till the vivid host appeared to have stepped forward. The shadows on the +snow-fields deepened to purple below an irradiation of rose and pink and +dazzling silver. There of all the world you might imagine Gods to sit. +A crowd of mountains endless in range, erect, or flowing, shattered and +arid, or leaning in smooth lustre, hangs above the gulf. The mountains +are sovereign Alps, and the sea is beneath them. The whole gigantic body +keeps the sea, as with a hand, to right and left. + +Nevil's personal rapture craved for Renee with the second long breath he +drew; and now the curtain of her tent-cabin parted, and greeting him with +a half smile, she looked out. The Adriatic was dark, the Alps had heaven +to themselves. Crescents and hollows, rosy mounds, white shelves, +shining ledges, domes and peaks, all the towering heights were in +illumination from Friuli into farthest Tyrol; beyond earth to the +stricken senses of the gazers. Colour was stedfast on the massive front +ranks: it wavered in the remoteness, and was quick and dim as though it +fell on beating wings; but there too divine colour seized and shaped +forth solid forms, and thence away to others in uttermost distances where +the incredible flickering gleam of new heights arose, that soared, or +stretched their white uncertain curves in sky like wings traversing +infinity. + +It seemed unlike morning to the lovers, but as if night had broken with a +revelation of the kingdom in the heart of night. While the broad smooth +waters rolled unlighted beneath that transfigured upper sphere, it was +possible to think the scene might vanish like a view caught out of +darkness by lightning. Alp over burning Alp, and around them a hueless +dawn! The two exulted they threw off the load of wonderment, and in +looking they had the delicious sensation of flight in their veins. + +Renee stole toward Nevil. She was mystically shaken and at his mercy; +and had he said then, 'Over to the other land, away from Venice!' she +would have bent her head. + +She asked his permission to rouse her brother and madame, so that they +should not miss the scene. + +Roland lay in the folds of his military greatcoat, too completely happy +to be disturbed, Nevil Beauchamp chose to think; and Rosamund Culling, he +told Renee, had been separated from her husband last on these waters. + +'Ah! to be unhappy here,' sighed Renee. 'I fancied it when I begged her +to join us. It was in her voice.' + +The impressionable girl trembled. He knew he was dear to her, and for +that reason, judging of her by himself, he forbore to urge his advantage, +conceiving it base to fear that loving him she could yield her hand to +another; and it was the critical instant. She was almost in his grasp. +A word of sharp entreaty would have swung her round to see her situation +with his eyes, and detest and shrink from it. He committed the capital +fault of treating her as his equal in passion and courage, not as metal +ready to run into the mould under temporary stress of fire. + +Even later in the morning, when she was cooler and he had come to speak, +more than her own strength was needed to resist him. The struggle was +hard. The boat's head had been put about for Venice, and they were among +the dusky-red Chioggian sails in fishing quarters, expecting momently a +campanile to signal the sea-city over the level. Renee waited for it in +suspense. To her it stood for the implacable key of a close and stifling +chamber, so different from this brilliant boundless region of air, that +she sickened with the apprehension; but she knew it must appear, and +soon, and therewith the contraction and the gloom it indicated to her +mind. He talked of the beauty. She fretted at it, and was her petulant +self again in an epigrammatic note of discord. + +He let that pass. + +'Last night you said "one night,"' he whispered. 'We will have another +sail before we leave Venice.' + +'One night, and in a little time one hour! and next one minute! and +there's the end,' said Renee. + +Her tone alarmed him. 'Have you forgotten that you gave me your hand?' + +'I gave my hand to my friend.' + +'You gave it to me for good.' + +'No; I dared not; it is not mine.' + +'It is mine,' said Beauchamp. + +Renee pointed to the dots and severed lines and isolated columns of the +rising city, black over bright sea. + +'Mine there as well as here,' said Beauchamp, and looked at her with the +fiery zeal of eyes intent on minutest signs for a confirmation, to shake +that sad negation of her face. + +'Renee, you cannot break the pledge of the hand you gave me last night.' + +'You tell me how weak a creature I am.' + +'You are me, myself; more, better than me. And say, would you not rather +coast here and keep the city under water?' + +She could not refrain from confessing that she would be glad never to +land there. + +'So, when you land, go straight to your father,' said Beauchamp, to whose +conception it was a simple act resulting from the avowal. + +'Oh! you torture me,' she cried. Her eyelashes were heavy with tears. +'I cannot do it. Think what you will of me! And, my friend, help me. +Should you not help me? I have not once actually disobeyed my father, +and he has indulged me, but he has been sure of me as a dutiful girl. +That is my source of self-respect. My friend can always be my friend.' + +'Yes, while it's not too late,' said Beauchamp. + +She observed a sudden stringing of his features. He called to the chief +boatman, made his command intelligible to that portly capitano, and went +on to Roland, who was puffing his after-breakfast cigarette in +conversation with the tolerant English lady. + +'You condescend to notice us, Signor Beauchamp,' said Roland. 'The +vessel is up to some manoeuvre?' + +'We have decided not to land,' replied Beauchamp. 'And Roland,' he +checked the Frenchman's shout of laughter, 'I think of making for +Trieste. Let me speak to you, to both. Renee is in misery. She must +not go back.' + +Roland sprang to his feet, stared, and walked over to Renee. + +'Nevil,' said Rosamund Culling, 'do you know what you are doing?' + +'Perfectly,' said he. 'Come to her. She is a girl, and I must think and +act for her.' + +Roland met them. + +'My dear Nevil, are you in a state of delusion? Renee denies . . .' + +'There's no delusion, Roland. I am determined to stop a catastrophe. +I see it as plainly as those Alps. There is only one way, and that's the +one I have chosen.' + +'Chosen! my friend'. But allow me to remind you that you have others to +consult. And Renee herself . . .' + +'She is a girl. She loves me, and I speak for her.' + +'She has said it?' + +'She has more than said it.' + +'You strike me to the deck, Nevil. Either you are downright mad--which +seems the likeliest, or we are all in a nightmare. Can you suppose I +will let my sister be carried away the deuce knows where, while her +father is expecting her, and to fulfil an engagement affecting his +pledged word?' + +Beauchamp simply replied: + +'Come to her.' + + + + +CHAPTER X + +A SINGULAR COUNCIL + +The four sat together under the shadow of the helmsman, by whom they were +regarded as voyagers in debate upon the question of some hours further on +salt water. 'No bora,' he threw in at intervals, to assure them that the +obnoxious wind of the Adriatic need not disturb their calculations. + +It was an extraordinary sitting, but none of the parties to it thought of +it so when Nevil Beauchamp had plunged them into it. He compelled them, +even Renee--and she would have flown had there been wings on her +shoulders--to feel something of the life and death issues present to +his soul, and submit to the discussion, in plain language of the market- +place, of the most delicate of human subjects for her, for him, and +hardly less for the other two. An overmastering fervour can do this. +It upsets the vessel we float in, and we have to swim our way out of +deep waters by the directest use of the natural faculties, without much +reflection on the change in our habits. To others not under such an +influence the position seems impossible. This discussion occurred. +Beauchamp opened the case in a couple of sentences, and when the turn +came for Renee to speak, and she shrank from the task in manifest pain, +he spoke for her, and no one heard her contradiction. She would have +wished the fearful impetuous youth to succeed if she could have slept +through the storm he was rousing. + +Roland appealed to her. 'You! my sister! it is you that consent to this +wild freak, enough to break your father's heart?' + +He had really forgotten his knowledge of her character--what much he +knew--in the dust of the desperation flung about her by Nevil Beauchamp. + +She shook her head; she had not consented. + +'The man she loves is her voice and her will,' said Beauchamp. 'She +gives me her hand and I lead her.' + +Roland questioned her. It could not be denied that she had given her +hand, and her bewildered senses made her think that it had been with an +entire abandonment; and in the heat of her conflict of feelings, the +deliciousness of yielding to him curled round and enclosed her, as in a +cool humming sea-shell. + +'Renee!' said Roland. + +'Brother!' she cried. + +'You see that I cannot suffer you to be borne away.' + +'No; do not!' + + +But the boat was flying fast from Venice, and she could have fallen at +his feet and kissed them for not countermanding it. + +'You are in my charge, my sister.' + +'Yes.' + +'And now, Nevil, between us two,' said Roland. + +Beauchamp required no challenge. He seemed, to Rosamund Culling, twice +older than he was, strangely adept, yet more strangely wise of worldly +matters, and eloquent too. But it was the eloquence of frenzy, madness, +in Roland's ear. The arrogation of a terrible foresight that harped on +present and future to persuade him of the righteousness of this headlong +proceeding advocated by his friend, vexed his natural equanimity. The +argument was out of the domain of logic. He could hardly sit to listen, +and tore at his moustache at each end. Nevertheless his sister listened. +The mad Englishman accomplished the miracle of making her listen, and +appear to consent. + +Roland laughed scornfully. 'Why Trieste? I ask you, why Trieste? You +can't have a Catholic priest at your bidding, without her father's +sanction.' + +'We leave Renee at Trieste, under the care of madame,' said Beauchamp, +'and we return to Venice, and I go to your father. This method protects +Renee from annoyance.' + +'It strikes me that if she arrives at any determination she must take the +consequences.' + +'She does. She is brave enough for that. But she is a girl; she has to +fight the battle of her life in a day, and I am her lover, and she leaves +it to me.' + +'Is my sister such a coward?' said Roland. + +Renee could only call out his name. + +'It will never do, my dear Nevil; Roland tried to deal with his +unreasonable friend affectionately. 'I am responsible for her. It's +your own fault--if you had not saved my life I should not have been in +your way. Here I am, and your proposal can't be heard of. Do as you +will, both of you, when you step ashore in Venice.' + +'If she goes back she is lost,' said Beauchamp, and he attacked Roland on +the side of his love for Renee, and for him. + +Roland was inflexible. Seeing which, Renee said, 'To Venice, quickly, my +brother!' and now she almost sighed with relief to think that she was +escaping from this hurricane of a youth, who swept her off her feet and +wrapt her whole being in a delirium. + +'We were in sight of the city just now!' cried Roland, staring and +frowning. 'What's this?' + +Beauchamp answered him calmly, 'The boat's under my orders.' + +'Talk madness, but don't act it,' said Roland. 'Round with the boat at +once. Hundred devils! you haven't your wits.' + +To his amazement, Beauchamp refused to alter the boat's present course. + +'You heard my sister?' said Roland. + +'You frighten her,' said Beauchamp. + +'You heard her wish to return to Venice, I say.' + +'She has no wish that is not mine.' + +It came to Roland's shouting his command to the men, while Beauchamp +pointed the course on for them. + +'You will make this a ghastly pleasantry,' said Roland. + +'I do what I know to be right,' said Beauchamp. + +'You want an altercation before these fellows?' + +'There won't be one; they obey me.' + +Roland blinked rapidly in wrath and doubt of mind. + +'Madame,' he stooped to Rosamund Culling, with a happy inspiration, +'convince him; you have known him longer than I, and I desire not to lose +my friend. And tell me, madame--I can trust you to be truth itself, and +you can see it is actually the time for truth to be spoken--is he +justified in taking my sister's hand? You perceive that I am obliged to +appeal to you. Is he not dependent on his uncle? And is he not, +therefore, in your opinion, bound in reason as well as in honour to wait +for his uncle's approbation before he undertakes to speak for my sister? +And, since the occasion is urgent, let me ask you one thing more: +whether, by your knowledge of his position, you think him entitled to +presume to decide upon my sister's destiny? She, you are aware, is not +so young but that she can speak for herself . . .' + +'There you are wrong, Roland,' said Beauchamp; 'she can neither speak nor +think for herself: you lead her blindfolded.' + +'And you, my friend, suppose that you are wiser than any of us. It is +understood. I venture to appeal to madame on the point in question.' + +The poor lady's heart beat dismally. She was constrained to answer, and +said, 'His uncle is one who must be consulted.' + +'You hear that, Nevil,' said Roland. + +Beauchamp looked at her sharply; angrily, Rosamund feared. She had +struck his hot brain with the vision of Everard Romfrey as with a bar of +iron. If Rosamund had inclined to the view that he was sure of his +uncle's support, it would have seemed to him a simple confirmation of his +sentiments, but he was not of the same temper now as when he exclaimed, +'Let him see her!' and could imagine, give him only Renee's love, the +world of men subservient to his wishes. + +Then he was dreaming; he was now in fiery earnest, for that reason +accessible to facts presented to him; and Rosamund's reluctantly spoken +words brought his stubborn uncle before his eyes, inflicting a sense of +helplessness of the bitterest kind. + +They were all silent. Beauchamp stared at the lines of the deck-planks. + +His scheme to rescue Renee was right and good; but was he the man that +should do it? And was she, moreover, he thought--speculating on her bent +head--the woman to be forced to brave the world with him, and poverty? +She gave him no sign. He was assuredly not the man to pretend to powers +he did not feel himself to possess, and though from a personal, and still +more from a lover's, inability to see all round him at one time and +accurately to weigh the forces at his disposal, he had gone far, he was +not a wilful dreamer nor so very selfish a lover. The instant his +consciousness of a superior strength failed him he acknowledged it. + +Renee did not look up. She had none of those lightnings of primitive +energy, nor the noble rashness and reliance on her lover, which his +imagination had filled her with; none. That was plain. She could not +even venture to second him. Had she done so he would have held out. He +walked to the head of the boat without replying. + +Soon after this the boat was set for Venice again. + +When he rejoined his companions he kissed Rosamund's hand, and Renee, +despite a confused feeling of humiliation and anger, loved him for it. + +Glittering Venice was now in sight; the dome of Sta. Maria Salute shining +like a globe of salt. + +Roland flung his arm round his friend's neck, and said, 'Forgive me.' + +'You do what you think right,' said Beauchamp. + +'You are a perfect man of honour, my friend, and a woman would adore you. +Girls are straws. It's part of Renee's religion to obey her father. +That's why I was astonished! . . . I owe you my life, and I would +willingly give you my sister in part payment, if I had the giving of her; +most willingly. The case is, that she's a child, and you?' + +'Yes, I'm dependent,' Beauchamp assented. 'I can't act; I see it. That +scheme wants two to carry it out: she has no courage. I feel that I +could carry the day with my uncle, but I can't subject her to the risks, +since she dreads them; I see it. Yes, I see that! I should have done +well, I believe; I should have saved her.' + +'Run to England, get your uncle's consent, and then try.' + +'No; I shall go to her father.' + +'My dear Nevil, and supposing you have Renee to back you--supposing it, +I say--won't you be falling on exactly the same bayonet-point?' + +'If I leave her!' Beauchamp interjected. He perceived the quality of +Renee's unformed character which he could not express. + +'But we are to suppose that she loves you?' + +'She is a girl.' + +'You return, my friend, to the place you started from, as you did on the +canal without knowing it. In my opinion, frankly, she is best married. +And I think so all the more after this morning's lesson. You understand +plainly that if you leave her she will soon be pliant to the legitimate +authorities; and why not?' + +'Listen to me, Roland. I tell you she loves me. I am bound to her, and +when--if ever I see her unhappy, I will not stand by and look on +quietly.' + +Roland shrugged. 'The future not being born, my friend, we will abstain +from baptizing it. For me, less privileged than my fellows, I have never +seen the future. Consequently I am not in love with it, and to declare +myself candidly I do not care for it one snap of the fingers. Let us +follow our usages, and attend to the future at the hour of its delivery. +I prefer the sage-femme to the prophet. From my heart, Nevil, I wish I +could help you. We have charged great guns together, but a family +arrangement is something different from a hostile battery. There's +Venice! and, as soon as you land, my responsibility's ended. Reflect, +I pray you, on what I have said about girls. Upon my word, I discover +myself talking wisdom to you. Girls are precious fragilities. Marriage +is the mould for them; they get shape, substance, solidity: that is to +say, sense, passion, a will of their own: and grace and tenderness, +delicacy; all out of the rude, raw, quaking creatures we call girls. +Paris! my dear Nevil. Paris! It's the book of women.' + +The grandeur of the decayed sea-city, where folly had danced Parisianly +of old, spread brooding along the waters in morning light; beautiful; but +with that inner light of history seen through the beauty Venice was like +a lowered banner. The great white dome and the campanili watching above +her were still brave emblems. Would Paris leave signs of an ancient +vigour standing to vindicate dignity when her fall came? Nevil thought +of Renee in Paris. + +She avoided him. She had retired behind her tent-curtains, and +reappeared only when her father's voice hailed the boat from a gondola. +The count and the marquis were sitting together, and there was a spare +gondola for the voyagers, so that they should not have to encounter +another babel of the riva. Salutes were performed with lifted hats, +nods, and bows. + +'Well, my dear child, it has all been very wonderful and uncomfortable?' +said the count. + +'Wonderful, papa; splendid.' + +'No qualms of any kind?' + +'None, I assure you.' And madame?' + +'Madame will confirm it, if you find a seat for her.' + +Rosamund Culling was received in the count's gondola, cordially thanked, +and placed beside the marquis. + +'I stay on board and pay these fellows,' said Roland. + +Renee was told by her father to follow madame. He had jumped into the +spare gondola and offered a seat to Beauchamp. + +'No,' cried Renee, arresting Beauchamp, 'it is I who mean to sit with +papa.' + +Up sprang the marquis with an entreating, 'Mademoiselle!' + +'M. Beauchamp will entertain you, M. le Marquis.' + +'I want him here,' said the count; and Beauchamp showed that his wish was +to enter the count's gondola, but Renee had recovered her aplomb, and +decisively said 'No,' and Beauchamp had to yield. + +That would have been an opportunity of speaking to her father without a +formal asking of leave. She knew it as well as Nevil Beauchamp. + +Renee took his hand to be assisted in the step down to her father's arms, +murmuring: + +'Do nothing--nothing! until you hear from me.' + + + + +ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + +A bone in a boy's mind for him to gnaw and worry +A kind of anchorage in case of indiscretion +A night that had shivered repose +Am I thy master, or thou mine? +An instinct labouring to supply the deficiencies of stupidity +And now came war, the purifier and the pestilence +And one gets the worst of it (in any bargain) +Anticipate opposition by initiating measures +Appetite to flourish at the cost of the weaker +As for titles, the way to defend them is to be worthy of them +Boys are unjust +Braggadocioing in deeds is only next bad to mouthing it +Calm fanaticism of the passion of love +Compassionate sentiments veered round to irate amazement +Despises the pomades and curling-irons of modern romance +Disqualification of constantly offending prejudices +Efforts to weary him out of his project were unsuccessful +Empty magnanimity which his uncle presented to him +Energy to something, that was not to be had in a market +Feminine pity, which is nearer to contempt than to tenderness +Fit of Republicanism in the nursery +Forewarn readers of this history that there is no plot in it +Haunted many pillows +He had expected romance, and had met merchandize +He was too much on fire to know the taste of absurdity +Holding to his work after the strain's over--That tells the man +Humour preserved her from excesses of sentiment +I cannot say less, and will say no more +Impudent boy's fling at superiority over the superior +In India they sacrifice the widows, in France the virgins +Incessantly speaking of the necessity we granted it unknowingly +Levelling a finger at the taxpayer +Men had not pleased him of late +Mental and moral neuters +Never was a word fitter for a quack's mouth than "humanity" +No case is hopeless till a man consents to think it is +Peace-party which opposed was the actual cause of the war +Peculiar subdued form of laughter through the nose +Play the great game of blunders +Please to be pathetic on that subject after I am wrinkled +Politics as well as the other diseases +Press, which had kindled, proceeded to extinguished +Presumptuous belief +Ready is the ardent mind to take footing on the last thing done +She was not, happily, one of the women who betray strong feeling +Shuns the statuesque pathetic, or any kind of posturing +Straining for common talk, and showing the strain +Style resembling either early architecture or utter dilapidation +The people always wait for the winner +The system is cursed by nature, and that means by heaven +The tragedy of the mirror is one for a woman to write +Times when an example is needed by brave men +Tongue flew, thought followed +We could row and ride and fish and shoot, and breed largely +We dare not be weak if we would +We were unarmed, and the spectacle was distressing +We're treated like old-fashioned ornaments! +You're talking to me, not to a gallery + + + + +End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Beauchamp's Career, v1 +by George Meredith + + + + + + +BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER + +By GEORGE MEREDITH + +1897 + + + +BOOK 2. + +XI. CAPTAIN BASKELETT +XII. AN INTERVIEW WITH THE INFAMOUS DR. SHRAPNEL +XIII. A SUPERFINE CONSCIENCE +XIV. THE LEADING ARTICLE AND Mr. TIMOTHY TURBOT +XV. CECILIA HALKETT +XVI. A PARTIAL DISPLAY OF BEAUCHAMP IN HIS COLOURS +XVII. HIS FRIEND AND FOE +XVIII. CONCERNING THE ACT OF CANVASSING + + + +CHAPTER XI + +CAPTAIN BASKELETT + +Our England, meanwhile, was bustling over the extinguished war, counting +the cost of it, with a rather rueful eye on Manchester, and soothing the +taxed by an exhibition of heroes at brilliant feasts. Of course, the +first to come home had the cream of the praises. She hugged them in a +manner somewhat suffocating to modest men, but heroism must be brought to +bear upon these excesses of maternal admiration; modesty, too, when it +accepts the place of honour at a public banquet, should not protest +overmuch. To be just, the earliest arrivals, which were such as reached +the shores of Albion before her war was at an end, did cordially +reciprocate the hug. They were taught, and they believed most naturally, +that it was quite as well to repose upon her bosom as to have stuck to +their posts. Surely there was a conscious weakness in the Spartans, who +were always at pains to discipline their men in heroical conduct, and +rewarded none save the stand-fasts. A system of that sort seems to +betray the sense of poverty in the article. Our England does nothing +like it. All are welcome home to her so long as she is in want of them. +Besides, she has to please the taxpayer. You may track a shadowy line or +crazy zigzag of policy in almost every stroke of her domestic history: +either it is the forethought finding it necessary to stir up an impulse, +or else dashing impulse gives a lively pull to the afterthought: policy +becomes evident somehow, clumsily very possibly. How can she manage an +enormous middle-class, to keep it happy, other than a little clumsily? +The managing of it at all is the wonder. And not only has she to stupefy +the taxpayer by a timely display of feastings and fireworks, she has to +stop all that nonsense (to quote a satiated man lightened in his purse) +at the right moment, about the hour when the old standfasts, who have +simply been doing duty, return, poor jog-trot fellows, and a +complimentary motto or two is the utmost she can present to them. +On the other hand, it is true she gives her first loves, those early +birds, fully to understand that a change has come in their island +mother's mind. If there is a balance to be righted, she leaves that +business to society, and if it be the season for the gathering of +society, it will be righted more or less; and if no righting is done at +all, perhaps the Press will incidentally toss a leaf of laurel on a name +or two: thus in the exercise of grumbling doing good. + +With few exceptions, Nevil Beauchamp's heroes received the motto instead +of the sweetmeat. England expected them to do their duty; they did it, +and she was not dissatisfied, nor should they be. Beauchamp, at a +distance from the scene, chafed with customary vehemence, concerning the +unjust measure dealt to his favourites: Captain Hardist, of the Diomed, +twenty years a captain, still a captain! Young Michell denied the cross! +Colonel Evans Cuff, on the heights from first to last, and not advanced a +step! But Prancer, and Plunger, and Lammakin were thoroughly well taken +care of, this critic of the war wrote savagely, reviving an echo of a +queer small circumstance occurring in the midst of the high dolour and +anxiety of the whole nation, and which a politic country preferred to +forget, as we will do, for it was but an instance of strong family +feeling in high quarters; and is not the unity of the country founded on +the integrity of the family sentiment? Is it not certain, which the +master tells us, that a line is but a continuation of a number of dots? +Nevil Beauchamp was for insisting that great Government officers had paid +more attention to a dot or two than to the line. He appeared to be at +war with his country after the peace. So far he had a lively ally in his +uncle Everard; but these remarks of his were a portion of a letter, whose +chief burden was the request that Everard Romfrey would back him in +proposing for the hand of a young French lady, she being, Beauchamp +smoothly acknowledged, engaged to a wealthy French marquis, under the +approbation of her family. Could mortal folly outstrip a petition of +that sort? And apparently, according to the wording and emphasis of the +letter, it was the mature age of the marquis which made Mr. Beauchamp so +particularly desirous to stop the projected marriage and take the girl +himself. He appealed to his uncle on the subject in a 'really--really' +remonstrative tone, quite overwhelming to read. 'It ought not to be +permitted: by all the laws of chivalry, I should write to the girl's +father to interdict it: I really am particeps criminis in a sin against +nature if I don't!' Mr. Romfrey interjected in burlesque of his +ridiculous nephew, with collapsing laughter. But he expressed an +indignant surprise at Nevil for allowing Rosamund to travel alone. + +'I can take very good care of myself,' Rosamund protested. + +'You can do hundreds of things you should never be obliged to do while +he's at hand, or I, ma'am,' said Mr. Romfrey. 'The fellow's insane. He +forgets a gentleman's duty. Here's his "humanity" dogging a French +frock, and pooh!--the age of the marquis! Fifty? A man's beginning his +prime at fifty, or there never was much man in him. It's the mark of a +fool to take everybody for a bigger fool than himself-or he wouldn't have +written this letter to me. He can't come home yet, not yet, and he +doesn't know when he can! Has he thrown up the service? I am to +preserve the alliance between England and France by getting this French +girl for him in the teeth of her marquis, at my peril if I refuse!' + +Rosamund asked, 'Will you let me see where Nevil says that, sir?' + +Mr. Romfrey tore the letter to strips. 'He's one of your fellows who +cock their eyes when they mean to be cunning. He sends you to do the +wheedling, that's plain. I don't say he has hit on a bad advocate; but +tell him I back him in no mortal marriage till he shows a pair of +epaulettes on his shoulders. Tell him lieutenants are fledglings--he's +not marriageable at present. It's a very pretty sacrifice of himself he +intends for the sake of the alliance, tell him that, but a lieutenant's +not quite big enough to establish it. You will know what to tell him, +ma'am. And say, it's the fellow's best friend that advises him to be out +of it and home quick. If he makes one of a French trio, he's dished. +He's too late for his luck in England. Have him out of that mire, we +can't hope for more now.' + +Rosamund postponed her mission to plead. Her heart was with Nevil; her +understanding was easily led to side against him, and for better reasons +than Mr. Romfrey could be aware of: so she was assured by her experience +of the character of Mademoiselle de Croisnel. A certain belief in her +personal arts of persuasion had stopped her from writing on her homeward +journey to inform him that Nevil was not accompanying her, and when she +drove over Steynham Common, triumphal arches and the odour of a roasting +ox richly browning to celebrate the hero's return afflicted her mind with +all the solid arguments of a common-sense country in contravention of a +wild lover's vaporous extravagances. Why had he not come with her? The +disappointed ox put the question in a wavering drop of the cheers of the +villagers at the sight of the carriage without their bleeding hero. Mr. +Romfrey, at his hall-doors, merely screwed his eyebrows; for it was the +quality of this gentleman to foresee most human events, and his capacity +to stifle astonishment when they trifled with his prognostics. Rosamund +had left Nevil fast bound in the meshes of the young French sorceress, +no longer leading, but submissively following, expecting blindly, seeing +strange new virtues in the lurid indication of what appeared to border on +the reverse. How could she plead for her infatuated darling to one who +was common sense in person? + +Everard's pointed interrogations reduced her to speak defensively, +instead of attacking and claiming his aid for the poor enamoured young +man. She dared not say that Nevil continued to be absent because he was +now encouraged by the girl to remain in attendance on her, and was more +than half inspired to hope, and too artfully assisted to deceive the +count and the marquis under the guise of simple friendship. Letters +passed between them in books given into one another's hands with an +audacious openness of the saddest augury for the future of the pair, +and Nevil could be so lost to reason as to glory in Renee's intrepidity, +which he justified by their mutual situation, and cherished for a proof +that she was getting courage. In fine, Rosamund abandoned her task of +pleading. Nevil's communications gave the case a worse and worse aspect: +Renee was prepared to speak to her father; she delayed it; then the two +were to part; they were unable to perform the terrible sacrifice and slay +their last hope; and then Nevil wrote of destiny--language hitherto +unknown to him, evidently the tongue of Renee. He slipped on from Italy +to France. His uncle was besieged by a series of letters, and his +cousin, Cecil Baskelett, a captain in England's grand reserve force--her +Horse Guards, of the Blue division--helped Everard Romfrey to laugh over +them. + +It was not difficult, alack! Letters of a lover in an extremity of love, +crying for help, are as curious to cool strong men as the contortions of +the proved heterodox tied to a stake must have been to their chastening +ecclesiastical judges. Why go to the fire when a recantation will save +you from it? Why not break the excruciating faggot-bands, and escape, +when you have only to decide to do it? We naturally ask why. Those +martyrs of love or religion are madmen. Altogether, Nevil's adjurations +and supplications, his threats of wrath and appeals to reason, were an +odd mixture. 'He won't lose a chance while there's breath in his body,' +Everard said, quite good-humouredly, though he deplored that the chance +for the fellow to make his hero-parade in society, and haply catch an +heiress, was waning. There was an heiress at Steynham, on her way with +her father to Italy, very anxious to see her old friend Nevil--Cecilia +Halkett--and very inquisitive this young lady of sixteen was to know the +cause of his absence. She heard of it from Cecil. + +'And one morning last week mademoiselle was running away with him, and +the next morning she was married to her marquis!' + +Cecil was able to tell her that. + +'I used to be so fond of him,' said the ingenuous young lady. She had to +thank Nevil for a Circassian dress and pearls, which he had sent to her +by the hands of Mrs. Culling--a pretty present to a girl in the nursery, +she thought, and in fact she chose to be a little wounded by the cause of +his absence. + +'He's a good creature-really,' Cecil spoke on his cousin's behalf. +'Mad; he always will be mad. A dear old savage; always amuses me. +He does! I get half my entertainment from him.' + +Captain Baskelett was gifted with the art, which is a fine and a precious +one, of priceless value in society, and not wanting a benediction upon it +in our elegant literature, namely, the art of stripping his fellow-man +and so posturing him as to make every movement of the comical wretch +puppet-like, constrained, stiff, and foolish. He could present you +heroical actions in that fashion; for example: + +'A long-shanked trooper, bearing the name of John Thomas Drew, was +crawling along under fire of the batteries. Out pops old Nevil, tries to +get the man on his back. It won't do. Nevil insists that it's exactly +one of the cases that ought to be, and they remain arguing about it like +a pair of nine-pins while the Muscovites are at work with the bowls. +Very well. Let me tell you my story. It's perfectly true, I give you my +word. So Nevil tries to horse Drew, and Drew proposes to horse Nevil, as +at school. Then Drew offers a compromise. He would much rather have +crawled on, you know, and allowed the shot to pass over his head; but +he's a Briton, old Nevil the same; but old Nevil's peculiarity is that, +as you are aware, he hates a compromise--won't have it--retro Sathanas! +and Drew's proposal to take his arm instead of being carried pickaback +disgusts old Nevil. Still it won't do to stop where they are, like the +cocoa-nut and the pincushion of our friends, the gipsies, on the downs: +so they take arms and commence the journey home, resembling the best of +friends on the evening of a holiday in our native clime--two steps to the +right, half-a-dozen to the left, etcaetera.' + +Thus, with scarce a variation from the facts, with but a flowery chaplet +cast on a truthful narrative, as it were, Captain Baskelett could render +ludicrous that which in other quarters had obtained honourable mention. +Nevil and Drew being knocked down by the wind of a ball near the battery, +'Confound it!' cries Nevil, jumping on his feet, 'it's because I +consented to a compromise!'--a transparent piece of fiction this, but so +in harmony with the character stripped naked for us that it is accepted. +Imagine Nevil's love-affair in such hands! Recovering from a fever, +Nevil sees a pretty French girl in a gondola, and immediately thinks, +'By jingo, I'm marriageable.' He hears she is engaged. 'By jingo, she's +marriageable too.' He goes through a sum in addition, and the total is a +couple; so he determines on a marriage. 'You can't get it out of his +head; he must be married instantly, and to her, because she is going to +marry somebody else. Sticks to her, follows her, will have her, in spite +of her father, her marquis, her brother, aunts, cousins, religion, +country, and the young woman herself. I assure you, a perfect model of +male fidelity! She is married. He is on her track. He knows his time +will come; he has only to be handy. You see, old Nevil believes in +Providence, is perfectly sure he will one day hear it cry out, "Where's +Beauchamp?"--"Here I am!"--"And here's your marquise!"--"I knew I should +have her at last," says Nevil, calm as Mont Blanc on a reduced scale.' + +The secret of Captain Baskelett's art would seem to be to show the +automatic human creature at loggerheads with a necessity that winks at +remarkable pretensions, while condemning it perpetually to doll-like +action. You look on men from your own elevation as upon a quantity of +our little wooden images, unto whom you affix puny characteristics, under +restrictions from which they shall not escape, though they attempt it +with the enterprising vigour of an extended leg, or a pair of raised +arms, or a head awry, or a trick of jumping; and some of them are +extraordinarily addicted to these feats; but for all they do the end is +the same, for necessity rules, that exactly so, under stress of activity +must the doll Nevil, the doll Everard, or the dolliest of dolls, fair +woman, behave. The automatic creature is subject to the laws of its +construction, you perceive. It can this, it can that, but it cannot leap +out of its mechanism. One definition of the art is, humour made easy, +and that may be why Cecil Baskelett indulged in it, and why it is popular +with those whose humour consists of a readiness to laugh. + +The fun between Cecil Baskelett and Mr. Romfrey over the doll Nevil +threatened an intimacy and community of sentiment that alarmed Rosamund +on behalf of her darling's material prospects. She wrote to him, +entreating him to come to Steynham. Nevil Beauchamp replied to her both +frankly and shrewdly: 'I shall not pretend that I forgive my uncle +Everard, and therefore it is best for me to keep away. Have no fear. +The baron likes a man of his own tastes: they may laugh together, if it +suits them; he never could be guilty of treachery, and to disinherit me +would be that. If I were to become his open enemy to-morrow, I should +look on the estates as mine-unless I did anything to make him disrespect +me. You will not suppose it likely. I foresee I shall want money. As +for Cecil, I give him as much rope as he cares to have. I know very well +Everard Romfrey will see where the point of likeness between them stops. +I apply for a ship the moment I land.' + +To test Nevil's judgement of his uncle, Rosamund ventured on showing this +letter to Mr. Romfrey. He read it, and said nothing, but subsequently +asked, from time to time, 'Has he got his ship yet?' It assured her that +Nevil was not wrong, and dispelled her notion of the vulgar imbroglio of +a rich uncle and two thirsty nephews. She was hardly less relieved in +reflecting that he could read men so soberly and accurately. The +desperation of the youth in love had rendered her one little bit doubtful +of the orderliness of his wits. After this she smiled on Cecil's +assiduities. Nevil obtained his appointment to a ship bound for the +coast of Africa to spy for slavers. He called on his uncle in London, +and spent the greater part of the hour's visit with Rosamund; seemed +cured of his passion, devoid of rancour, glad of the prospect of a run +among the slaving hulls. He and his uncle shook hands manfully, at the +full outstretch of their arms, in a way so like them, to Rosamund's +thinking--that is, in a way so unlike any other possible couple of men so +situated--that the humour of the sight eclipsed all the pleasantries of +Captain Baskelett. 'Good-bye, sir,' Nevil said heartily; and Everard +Romfrey was not behind-hand with the cordial ring of his 'Good-bye, +Nevil'; and upon that they separated. Rosamund would have been willing +to speak to her beloved of his false Renee--the Frenchwoman, she termed +her, i.e. generically false, needless to name; and one question quivered +on her tongue's tip: 'How, when she had promised to fly with you, how +could she the very next day step to the altar with him now her husband?' +And, if she had spoken it, she would have added, 'Your uncle could not +have set his face against you, had you brought her to England.' She felt +strongly the mastery Nevil Beauchamp could exercise even over his uncle +Everard. But when he was gone, unquestioned, merely caressed, it came to +her mind that he had all through insisted on his possession of this +particular power, and she accused herself of having wantonly helped to +ruin his hope--a matter to be rejoiced at in the abstract; but what +suffering she had inflicted on him! To quiet her heart, she persuaded +herself that for the future she would never fail to believe in him and +second him blindly, as true love should; and contemplating one so brave, +far-sighted, and self-assured, her determination seemed to impose the +lightest of tasks. + +Practically humane though he was, and especially toward cattle and all +kinds of beasts, Mr. Romfrey entertained no profound fellow-feeling for +the negro, and, except as the representative of a certain amount of +working power commonly requiring the whip to wind it up, he inclined to +despise that black spot in the creation, with which our civilization +should never have had anything to do. So he pronounced his mind, and the +long habit of listening to oracles might grow us ears to hear and +discover a meaning in it. Nevil's captures and releases of the grinning +freights amused him for awhile. He compared them to strings of bananas, +and presently put the vision of the whole business aside by talking of +Nevil's banana-wreath. He desired to have Nevil out of it. He and Cecil +handed Nevil in his banana-wreath about to their friends. Nevil, in his +banana-wreath, was set preaching 'humanitomtity.' At any rate, they +contrived to keep the remembrance of Nevil Beauchamp alive during the +period of his disappearance from the world, and in so doing they did him +a service. + +There is a pause between the descent of a diver and his return to the +surface, when those who would not have him forgotten by the better world +above him do rightly to relate anecdotes of him, if they can, and to +provoke laughter at him. The encouragement of the humane sense of +superiority over an object of interest, which laughter gives, is good for +the object; and besides, if you begin to tell sly stories of one in the +deeps who is holding his breath to fetch a pearl or two for you all, you +divert a particular sympathetic oppression of the chest, that the +extremely sensitive are apt to suffer from, and you dispose the larger +number to keep in mind a person they no longer see. Otherwise it is +likely that he will, very shortly after he has made his plunge, fatigue +the contemplative brains above, and be shuffled off them, even as great +ocean smoothes away the dear vanished man's immediate circle of foam, and +rapidly confounds the rippling memory of him with its other agitations. +And in such a case the apparition of his head upon our common level once +more will almost certainly cause a disagreeable shock; nor is it +improbable that his first natural snorts in his native element, though +they be simply to obtain his share of the breath of life, will draw down +on him condemnation for eccentric behaviour and unmannerly; and this in +spite of the jewel he brings, unless it be an exceedingly splendid one. +The reason is, that our brave world cannot pardon a breach of continuity +for any petty bribe. + +Thus it chanced, owing to the prolonged efforts of Mr. Romfrey and Cecil +Baskelett to get fun out of him, at the cost of considerable +inventiveness, that the electoral Address of the candidate, signing +himself 'R. C. S. Nevil Beauchamp,' to the borough of Bevisham, did not +issue from an altogether unremembered man. + +He had been cruising in the Mediterranean, commanding the Ariadne, the +smartest corvette in the service. He had, it was widely made known, met +his marquise in Palermo. It was presumed that he was dancing the round +with her still, when this amazing Address appeared on Bevisham's walls, +in anticipation of the general Election. The Address, moreover, was +ultra-Radical: museums to be opened on Sundays; ominous references to the +Land question, etc.; no smooth passing mention of Reform, such as the +Liberal, become stately, adopts in speaking of that property of his, but +swinging blows on the heads of many a denounced iniquity. + +Cecil forwarded the Address to Everard Romfrey without comment. + +Next day the following letter, dated from Itchincope, the house of Mr. +Grancey Lespel, on the borders of Bevisham, arrived at Steynham: + +'I have despatched you the proclamation, folded neatly. The electors of +Bevisham are summoned, like a town at the sword's point, to yield him +their votes. Proclamation is the word. I am your born representative! +I have completed my political education on salt water, and I tackle you +on the Land question. I am the heir of your votes, gentlemen!--I forgot, +and I apologize; he calls them fellow-men. Fraternal, and not so risky. +Here at Lespel's we read the thing with shouts. It hangs in the smoking- +room. We throw open the curacoa to the intelligence and industry of the +assembled guests; we carry the right of the multitude to our host's +cigars by a majority. C'est un farceur que notre bon petit cousin. +Lespel says it is sailorlike to do something of this sort after a cruise. +Nevil's Radicalism would have been clever anywhere out of Bevisham. Of +all boroughs! Grancey Lespel knows it. He and his family were +Bevisham's Whig M.P.'s before the day of Manchester. In Bevisham an +election is an arrangement made by Providence to square the accounts of +the voters, and settle arrears. They reckon up the health of their two +members and the chances of an appeal to the country when they fix the +rents and leases. You have them pointed out to you in the street, with +their figures attached to them like titles. Mr. Tomkins, the twenty- +pound man; an elector of uncommon purity. I saw the ruffian yesterday. +He has an extra breadth to his hat. He has never been known to listen to +a member under L20, and is respected enormously--like the lady of the +Mythology, who was an intolerable Tartar of virtue, because her price was +nothing less than a god, and money down. Nevil will have to come down on +Bevisham in the Jupiter style. Bevisham is downright the dearest of +boroughs--"vaulting-boards," as Stukely Culbrett calls them--in the +kingdom. I assume we still say "kingdom." + +'He dashed into the Radical trap exactly two hours after landing. I +believe he was on his way to the Halketts at Mount Laurels. A notorious +old rascal revolutionist retired from his licenced business of +slaughterer--one of your gratis doctors--met him on the high-road, and +told him he was the man. Up went Nevil's enthusiasm like a bottle rid of +the cork. You will see a great deal about faith in the proclamation; +"faith in the future," and "my faith in you." When you become a Radical +you have faith in any quantity, just as an alderman gets turtle soup. +It is your badge, like a livery-servant's cockade or a corporal's sleeve +stripes--your badge and your bellyful. Calculations were gone through at +the Liberal newspaper-office, old Nevil adding up hard, and he was +informed that he was elected by something like a topping eight or nine +hundred and some fractions. I am sure that a fellow who can let himself +be gulled by a pile of figures trumped up in a Radical newspaper-office +must have great faith in the fractions. Out came Nevil's proclamation. + +'I have not met him, and I would rather not. I shall not pretend to +offer you advice, for I have the habit of thinking your judgement can +stand by itself. We shall all find this affair a nuisance. Nevil will +pay through the nose. We shall have the ridicule spattered on the +family. It would be a safer thing for him to invest his money on the +Turf, and I shall advise his doing it if I come across him. + +'Perhaps the best course would be to telegraph for the marquise!' + +This was from Cecil Baskelett. He added a postscript: + +'Seriously, the "mad commander" has not an ace of a chance. Grancey and +I saw some Working Men (you have to write them in capitals, king and +queen small); they were reading the Address on a board carried by a red- +nosed man, and shrugging. They are not such fools. + +'By the way, I am informed Shrapnel has a young female relative living +with him, said to be a sparkler. I bet you, sir, she is not a Radical. +Do you take me?' + +Rosamund Culling drove to the railway station on her way to Bevisham +within an hour after Mr. Romfrey's eyebrows had made acute play over this +communication. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +AN INTERVIEW WITH THE INFAMOUS DR. SHRAPNEL + +In the High street of the ancient and famous town and port of Bevisham, +Rosamund met the military governor of a neighbouring fortress, General +Sherwin, once colonel of her husband's regiment in India; and by him, as +it happened, she was assisted in finding the whereabout of the young +Liberal candidate, without the degrading recourse of an application at +the newspaper-office of his party. The General was leisurely walking to +a place of appointment to fetch his daughter home from a visit to an old +school-friend, a Miss Jenny Denham, no other than a ward, or a niece, or +an adoption of Dr. Shrapnel's: 'A nice girl; a great favourite of mine,' +the General said. Shrapnel he knew by reputation only as a wrong-headed +politician; but he spoke of Miss Denham pleasantly two or three times, +praising her accomplishments and her winning manners. His hearer +suspected that it might be done to dissociate the idea of her from the +ruffling agitator. 'Is she pretty?' was a question that sprang. from +Rosamund's intimate reflections. The answer was, 'Yes.' + +'Very pretty?' + +'I think very pretty,' said the General. + +'Captivatingly?' + +'Clara thinks she is perfect; she is tall and slim, and dresses well. +The girls were with a French Madam in Paris. But, if you are interested +about her, you can come on with me, and we shall meet them somewhere near +the head of the street. I don't,' the General hesitated and hummed-- +'I don't call at Shrapnel's.' + +'I have never heard her name before to-day,' said Rosamund. + +'Exactly,' said the General, crowing at the aimlessness of a woman's +curiosity. + +The young ladies were seen approaching, and Rosamund had to ask herself +whether the first sight of a person like Miss Denham would be of a kind +to exercise a lively influence over the political and other sentiments of +a dreamy sailor just released from ship-service. In an ordinary case she +would have said no, for Nevil enjoyed a range of society where faces +charming as Miss Denham's were plentiful as roses in the rose-garden. +But, supposing him free of his bondage to the foreign woman, there was, +she thought and feared, a possibility that a girl of this description +might capture a young man's vacant heart sighing for a new mistress. +And if so, further observation assured her Miss Denham was likely to be +dangerous far more than professedly attractive persons, enchantresses and +the rest. Rosamund watchfully gathered all the superficial indications +which incite women to judge of character profoundly. This new object of +alarm was, as the General had said of her, tall and slim, a friend of +neatness, plainly dressed, but exquisitely fitted, in the manner of +Frenchwomen. She spoke very readily, not too much, and had the rare gift +of being able to speak fluently with a smile on the mouth. Vulgar +archness imitates it. She won and retained the eyes of her hearer +sympathetically, it seemed. Rosamund thought her as little conscious as +a woman could be. She coloured at times quickly, but without confusion. +When that name, the key of Rosamund's meditations, chanced to be +mentioned, a flush swept over Miss Denham's face. The candour of it was +unchanged as she gazed at Rosamund, with a look that asked, 'Do you know +him?' + +Rosamund said, 'I am an old friend of his.' + +'He is here now, in this town.' + +'I wish to see him very much.' + +General Sherwin interposed: 'We won't talk about political characters +just for the present.' + +'I wish you knew him, papa, and would advise him,' his daughter said. + +The General nodded hastily. 'By-and-by, by-and-by.' + +They had in fact taken seats at a table of mutton pies in a pastrycook's +shop, where dashing military men were restrained solely by their presence +from a too noisy display of fascinations before the fashionable waiting- +women. + +Rosamund looked at Miss Denham. As soon as they were in the street the +latter said, 'If you will be good enough to come with me, madam . . .?' +Rosamund bowed, thankful to have been comprehended. The two young ladies +kissed cheeks and parted. General Sherwin raised his hat, and was +astonished to see Mrs. Culling join Miss Denham in accepting the salute, +for they had not been introduced, and what could they have in common? It +was another of the oddities of female nature. + +'My name is Mrs. Culling, and I will tell you how it is that I am +interested in Captain Beauchamp,' Rosamund addressed her companion. 'I +am his uncle's housekeeper. I have known him and loved him since he was +a boy. I am in great fear that he is acting rashly.' + +'You honour me, madam, by speaking to me so frankly,' Miss Denham +answered. + +'He is quite bent upon this Election?' + +'Yes, madam. I am not, as you can suppose, in his confidence, but I hear +of him from Dr. Shrapnel.' + +'Your uncle?' + +'I call him uncle: he is my guardian, madam.' + +It is perhaps excuseable that this communication did not cause the doctor +to shine with added lustre in Rosamund's thoughts, or ennoble the young +lady. + +'You are not relatives, then?' she said. + +'No, unless love can make us so.' + +'Not blood-relatives?' + +'No.' + +'Is he not very . . . extreme?' + +'He is very sincere.' + +'I presume you are a politician?' + +Miss Denham smiled. 'Could you pardon me, madam, if I said that I was?' +The counter-question was a fair retort enfolding a gentler irony. +Rosamund felt that she had to do with wits as well as with vivid feminine +intuitions in the person of this Miss Denham. + +She said, 'I really am of opinion that our sex might abstain from +politics.' + +'We find it difficult to do justice to both parties,' Miss Denham +followed. 'It seems to be a kind of clanship with women; hardly even +that.' + +Rosamund was inattentive to the conversational slipshod, and launched one +of the heavy affrmatives which are in dialogue full stops. She could not +have said why she was sensible of anger, but the sentiment of anger, or +spite (if that be a lesser degree of the same affliction), became stirred +in her bosom when she listened to the ward of Dr. Shrapnel. A silly +pretty puss of a girl would not have excited it, nor an avowed blood- +relative of the demagogue. + +Nevil's hotel was pointed out to Rosamund, and she left her card there. +He had been absent since eight in the morning. There was the probability +that he might be at Dr. Shrapnel's, so Rosamund walked on. + +'Captain Beauchamp gives himself no rest,' Miss Denham said. + +'Oh! I know him, when once his mind is set on anything,' said Rosamund. + +'Is it not too early to begin to--canvass, I think, is the word?' + +'He is studying whatever the town can teach him of its wants; that is, +how he may serve it.' + +'Indeed! But if the town will not have him to serve it?' + +'He imagines that he cannot do better, until that has been decided, than +to fit himself for the post.' + +'Acting upon your advice? I mean, of course, your uncle's; that is, Dr. +Shrapnel's.' + +'Dr. Shrapnel thinks it will not be loss of time for Captain Beauchamp to +grow familiar with the place, and observe as well as read.' + +'It sounds almost as if Captain Beauchamp had submitted to be Dr. +Shrapnel's pupil.' + +'It is natural, madam, that Dr. Shrapnel should know more of political +ways at present than Captain Beauchamp.' + +'To Captain Beauchamp's friends and relatives it appears very strange +that he should have decided to contest this election so suddenly. May I +inquire whether he and Dr. Shrapnel are old acquaintances?' + +'No, madam, they are not. They had never met before Captain Beauchamp +landed, the other day.' + +'I am surprised, I confess. I cannot understand the nature of an +influence that induces him to abandon a profession he loves and shines +in, for politics, at a moment's notice.' + +Miss Denham was silent, and then said: + +'I will tell you, madam, how it occurred, as far as circumstances explain +it. Dr. Shrapnel is accustomed to give a little country feast to the +children I teach, and their parents if they choose to come, and they +generally do. They are driven to Northeden Heath, where we set up a +booth for them, and try with cakes and tea and games to make them spend +one of their happy afternoons and evenings. We succeed, I know, for the +little creatures talk of it and look forward to the day. When they are +at their last romp, Dr. Shrapnel speaks to the parents.' + +'Can he obtain a hearing?' Rosamund asked. + +'He has not so very large a crowd to address, madam, and he is much +beloved by those that come.' + +'He speaks to them of politics on those occasions?' + +'Adouci a leur intention. It is not a political speech, but Dr. Shrapnel +thinks, that in a so-called free country seeking to be really free, men +of the lowest class should be educated in forming a political judgement.' + +'And women too?' + +'And women, yes. Indeed, madam, we notice that the women listen very +creditably.' + +'They can put on the air.' + +'I am afraid, not more than the men do. To get them to listen is +something. They suffer like the men, and must depend on their +intelligence to win their way out of it.' + +Rosamund's meditation was exclamatory: What can be the age of this +pretentious girl? + +An afterthought turned her more conciliatorily toward the person, but +less to the subject. She was sure that she was lending ear to the echo +of the dangerous doctor, and rather pitied Miss Denham for awhile, +reflecting that a young woman stuffed with such ideas would find it hard +to get a husband. Mention of Nevil revived her feeling of hostility. + +We had seen a gentleman standing near and listening attentively,' Miss +Denham resumed, 'and when Dr. Shrapnel concluded a card was handed to +him. He read it and gave it to me, and said, "You know that name." It +was a name we had often talked about during the war. + +He went to Captain Beauchamp and shook his hand. He does not pay many +compliments, and he does not like to receive them, but it was impossible +for him not to be moved by Captain Beauchamp's warmth in thanking him for +the words he had spoken. I saw that Dr. Shrapnel became interested in +Captain Beauchamp the longer they conversed. We walked home together. +Captain Beauchamp supped with us. I left them at half-past eleven at +night, and in the morning I found them walking in the garden. They had +not gone to bed at all. Captain Beauchamp has remained in Bevisham ever +since. He soon came to the decision to be a candidate for the borough.' + +Rosamund checked her lips from uttering: To be a puppet of +Dr. Shrapnel's! + +She remarked, 'He is very eloquent--Dr. Shrapnel?' + +Miss Denham held some debate with herself upon the term. + +'Perhaps it is not eloquence; he often . . . no, he is not an orator.' + +Rosamund suggested that he was persuasive, possibly. + +Again the young lady deliberately weighed the word, as though the nicest +measure of her uncle or adoptor's quality in this or that direction were +in requisition and of importance--an instance of a want of delicacy of +perception Rosamund was not sorry to detect. For good-looking, refined- +looking, quick-witted girls can be grown; but the nimble sense of +fitness, ineffable lightning-footed tact, comes of race and breeding, and +she was sure Nevil was a man soon to feel the absence of that. + +'Dr. Shrapnel is persuasive to those who go partly with him, or whose +condition of mind calls on him for great patience,' Miss Denham said at +last. + +'I am only trying to comprehend how it was that he should so rapidly have +won Captain Beauchamp to his views,' Rosamund explained; and the young +lady did not reply. + +Dr. Shrapnel's house was about a mile beyond the town, on a common of +thorn and gorse, through which the fir-bordered highway ran. A fence +waist-high enclosed its plot of meadow and garden, so that the doctor, +while protecting his own, might see and be seen of the world, as was the +case when Rosamund approached. He was pacing at long slow strides along +the gravel walk, with his head bent and bare, and his hands behind his +back, accompanied by a gentleman who could be no other than Nevil, +Rosamund presumed to think; but drawing nearer she found she was +mistaken. + +'That is not Captain Beauchamp's figure,' she said. + +'No, it is not he,' said Miss Denham. + +Rosamund saw that her companion was pale. She warmed to her at once; by +no means on account of the pallor in itself. + +'I have walked too fast for you, I fear.' + +'Oh no; I am accused of being a fast walker.' + +Rosamund was unwilling to pass through the demagogue's gate. On second +thoughts, she reflected that she could hardly stipulate to have news of +Nevil tossed to her over the spikes, and she entered. + +While receiving Dr. Shrapnel's welcome to a friend of Captain Beauchamp, +she observed the greeting between Miss Denham and the younger gentleman. +It reassured her. They met like two that have a secret. + +The dreaded doctor was an immoderately tall man, lean and wiry, +carelessly clad in a long loose coat of no colour, loose trowsers, and +huge shoes. + +He stooped from his height to speak, or rather swing the stiff upper half +of his body down to his hearer's level and back again, like a ship's mast +on a billowy sea. He was neither rough nor abrupt, nor did he roar +bullmouthedly as demagogues are expected to do, though his voice was +deep. He was actually, after his fashion, courteous, it could be said of +him, except that his mind was too visibly possessed by distant matters +for Rosamund's taste, she being accustomed to drawing-room and hunting +and military gentlemen, who can be all in the words they utter. +Nevertheless he came out of his lizard-like look with the down-dropped +eyelids quick at a resumption of the dialogue; sometimes gesturing, +sweeping his arm round. A stubborn tuft of iron-grey hair fell across +his forehead, and it was apparently one of his life's labours to get it +to lie amid the mass, for his hand rarely ceased to be in motion without +an impulsive stroke at the refractory forelock. He peered through his +eyelashes ordinarily, but from no infirmity of sight. The truth was, +that the man's nature counteracted his spirit's intenser eagerness and +restlessness by alternating a state of repose that resembled dormancy, +and so preserved him. Rosamund was obliged to give him credit for +straightforward eyes when they did look out and flash. Their filmy blue, +half overflown with grey by age, was poignant while the fire in them +lasted. Her antipathy attributed something electrical to the light they +shot. + +Dr. Shrapnel's account of Nevil stated him to have gone to call on +Colonel Halkett, a new resident at Mount Laurels, on the Otley river. He +offered the welcome of his house to the lady who was Captain Beauchamp's +friend, saying, with extraordinary fatuity (so it sounded in Rosamund's +ears), that Captain Beauchamp would certainly not let an evening pass +without coming to him. Rosamund suggested that he might stay late at +Mount Laurels. + +'Then he will arrive here after nightfall,' said the doctor. 'A bed is +at your service, ma'am.' + +The offer was declined. 'I should like to have seen him to-day; but he +will be home shortly.' + +'He will not quit Bevisham till this Election's decided unless to hunt a +stray borough vote, ma'am.' + +'He goes to Mount Laurels. + +'For that purpose.' + +'I do not think he will persuade Colonel Halkett to vote in the Radical +interest.' + +'That is the probability with a landed proprietor, ma'am. We must knock, +whether the door opens or not. Like,' the doctor laughed to himself up +aloft, 'like a watchman in the night to say that he smells smoke on the +premises.' + +'Surely we may expect Captain Beauchamp to consult his family about so +serious a step as this he is taking,' Rosamund said, with an effort to be +civil. + +Why should he?' asked the impending doctor. + +His head continued in the interrogative position when it had resumed its +elevation. The challenge for a definite reply to so outrageous a +question irritated Rosamund's nerves, and, loth though she was to admit +him to the subject, she could not forbear from saying, 'Why? Surely his +family have the first claim on him!' + +'Surely not, ma'am. There is no first claim. A man's wife and children +have a claim on him for bread. A man's parents have a claim on him for +obedience while he is a child. A man's uncles, aunts, and cousins have +no claim on him at all, except for help in necessity, which he can grant +and they require. None--wife, children, parents, relatives--none has a +claim to bar his judgement and his actions. Sound the conscience, and +sink the family! With a clear conscience, it is best to leave the family +to its own debates. No man ever did brave work who held counsel with his +family. The family view of a man's fit conduct is the weak point of the +country. It is no other view than, "Better thy condition for our sakes." +Ha! In this way we breed sheep, fatten oxen: men are dying off. +Resolution taken, consult the family means--waste your time! Those who +go to it want an excuse for altering their minds. The family view is +everlastingly the shopkeeper's! Purse, pence, ease, increase of worldly +goods, personal importance--the pound, the English pound! Dare do that, +and you forfeit your share of Port wine in this world; you won't be +dubbed with a title; you'll be fingered at! Lord, Lord! is it the region +inside a man, or out, that gives him peace? Out, they say; for they have +lost faith in the existence of an inner. They haven't it. Air-sucker, +blood-pump, cooking machinery, and a battery of trained instincts, +aptitudes, fill up their vacuum. I repeat, ma'am, why should young +Captain Beauchamp spend an hour consulting his family? They won't +approve him; he knows it. They may annoy him; and what is the gain of +that? They can't move him; on that I let my right hand burn. So it +would be useless on both sides. He thinks so. So do I. He is one of +the men to serve his country on the best field we can choose for him. In +a ship's cabin he is thrown away. Ay, ay, War, and he may go aboard. +But now we must have him ashore. Too few of such as he!' + +'It is matter of opinion,' said Rosamund, very tightly compressed; +scarcely knowing what she said. + +How strange, besides hateful, it was to her to hear her darling spoken +of by a stranger who not only pretended to appreciate but to possess him! +A stranger, a man of evil, with monstrous ideas! A terribly strong +inexhaustible man, of a magical power too; or would he otherwise have won +such a mastery over Nevil? + +Of course she could have shot a rejoinder, to confute him with all the +force of her indignation, save that the words were tumbling about in her +head like a world in disruption, which made her feel a weakness at the +same time that she gloated on her capacity, as though she had an enormous +army, quite overwhelming if it could but be got to move in advance. This +very common condition of the silent-stricken, unused in dialectics, +heightened Rosamund's disgust by causing her to suppose that Nevil had +been similarly silenced, in his case vanquished, captured, ruined; and he +dwindled in her estimation for a moment or two. She felt that among a +sisterhood of gossips she would soon have found her voice, and struck +down the demagogue's audacious sophisms: not that they affected her in +the slightest degree for her own sake. + +Shrapnel might think what he liked, and say what he liked, as far as she +was concerned, apart from the man she loved. Rosamund went through these +emotions altogether on Nevil's behalf, and longed for her affirmatizing +inspiring sisterhood until the thought of them threw another shade on +him. + +What champion was she to look to? To whom but to Mr. Everard Romfrey? + +It was with a spasm of delighted reflection that she hit on Mr. Romfrey. +He was like a discovery to her. With his strength and skill, his robust +common sense and rough shrewd wit, his prompt comparisons, his chivalry, +his love of combat, his old knightly blood, was not he a match, and an +overmatch, for the ramping Radical who had tangled Nevil in his rough +snares? She ran her mind over Mr. Romfrey's virtues, down even to his +towering height and breadth. Could she but once draw these two giants +into collision in Nevil's presence, she was sure it would save him. The +method of doing it she did not stop to consider: she enjoyed her triumph +in the idea. + +Meantime she had passed from Dr. Shrapnel to Miss Denham, and carried on +a conversation becomingly. + +Tea had been made in the garden, and she had politely sipped half a cup, +which involved no step inside the guilty house, and therefore no distress +to her antagonism. The sun descended. She heard the doctor reciting. +Could it be poetry? In her imagination the sombre hues surrounding an +incendiary opposed that bright spirit. She listened, smiling +incredulously. Miss Denham could interpret looks, and said, 'Dr. +Shrapnel is very fond of those verses.' + +Rosamund's astonishment caused her to say, 'Are they his own?'--a piece +of satiric innocency at which Miss Denham laughed softly as she answered, +'No.' + +Rosamund pleaded that she had not heard them with any distinctness. + +'Are they written by the gentleman at his side?' + +'Mr. Lydiard? No. He writes, but the verses are not his.' + +'Does he know--has he met Captain Beauchamp?' + +'Yes, once. Captain Beauchamp has taken a great liking to his works.' + +Rosamund closed her eyes, feeling that she was in a nest that had +determined to appropriate Nevil. But at any rate there was the hope and +the probability that this Mr. Lydiard of the pen had taken a long start +of Nevil in the heart of Miss Denham: and struggling to be candid, to +ensure some meditative satisfaction, Rosamund admitted to herself that +the girl did not appear to be one of the wanton giddy-pated pusses who +play two gentlemen or more on their line. Appearances, however, could be +deceptive: never pretend to know a girl by her face, was one of +Rosamund's maxims. + +She was next informed of Dr. Shrapnel's partiality for music toward the +hour of sunset. Miss Denham mentioned it, and the doctor, presently +sauntering up, invited Rosamund to a seat on a bench near the open window +of the drawing-room. He nodded to his ward to go in. + +'I am a fire-worshipper, ma'am,' he said. 'The God of day is the father +of poetry, medicine, music: our best friend. See him there! My Jenny +will spin a thread from us to him over the millions of miles, with one +touch of the chords, as quick as he shoots a beam on us. Ay! on her +wretched tinkler called a piano, which tries at the whole orchestra and +murders every instrument in the attempt. But it's convenient, like our +modern civilization--a taming and a diminishing of individuals for an +insipid harmony!' + +'You surely do not object to the organ?--I fear I cannot wait, though,' +said Rosamund. + +Miss Denham entreated her. 'Oh! do, madam. Not to hear me--I am not so +perfect a player that I should wish it--but to see him. Captain +Beauchamp may now be coming at any instant.' + +Mr. Lydiard added, 'I have an appointment with him here for this +evening.' + +'You build a cathedral of sound in the organ,' said Dr. Shrapnel, casting +out a league of leg as he sat beside his only half-persuaded fretful +guest. 'You subject the winds to serve you; that's a gain. You do +actually accomplish a resonant imitation of the various instruments; they +sing out as your two hands command them--trumpet, flute, dulcimer, +hautboy, drum, storm, earthquake, ethereal quire; you have them at your +option. But tell me of an organ in the open air? The sublimity would +vanish, ma'am, both from the notes and from the structure, because +accessories and circumstances produce its chief effects. Say that an +organ is a despotism, just as your piano is the Constitutional bourgeois. +Match them with the trained orchestral band of skilled individual +performers, indoors or out, where each grasps his instrument, and each +relies on his fellow with confidence, and an unrivalled concord comes of +it. That is our republic each one to his work; all in union! There's +the motto for us! Then you have music, harmony, the highest, fullest, +finest! Educate your men to form a band, you shame dexterous trickery +and imitation sounds. Then for the difference of real instruments from +clever shams! Oh, ay, one will set your organ going; that is, one in +front, with his couple of panting air-pumpers behind--his ministers!' +Dr. Shrapnel laughed at some undefined mental image, apparently careless +of any laughing companionship. 'One will do it for you, especially if +he's born to do it. Born!' A slap of the knee reported what seemed to +be an immensely contemptuous sentiment. 'But free mouths blowing into +brass and wood, ma'am, beat your bellows and your whifflers; your +artificial choruses--crash, crash! your unanimous plebiscitums! Beat +them? There's no contest: we're in another world; we're in the sun's +world,--yonder!' + +Miss Denham's opening notes on the despised piano put a curb on the +doctor. She began a Mass of Mozart's, without the usual preliminary +rattle of the keys, as of a crier announcing a performance, straight to +her task, for which Rosamund thanked her, liking that kind of composed +simplicity: she thanked her more for cutting short the doctor's fanatical +nonsense. It was perceptible to her that a species of mad metaphor had +been wriggling and tearing its passage through a thorn-bush in his +discourse, with the furious urgency of a sheep in a panic; but where the +ostensible subject ended and the metaphor commenced, and which was which +at the conclusion, she found it difficult to discern--much as the sheep +would, be when he had left his fleece behind him. She could now have +said, 'Silly old man!' + +Dr. Shrapnel appeared most placable. He was gazing at his Authority in +the heavens, tangled among gold clouds and purple; his head bent acutely +on one side, and his eyes upturned in dim speculation. His great feet +planted on their heels faced him, suggesting the stocks; his arms hung +loose. Full many a hero of the alehouse, anciently amenable to leg-and- +foot imprisonment in the grip of the parish, has presented as respectable +an air. His forelock straggled as it willed. + +Rosamund rose abruptly as soon as the terminating notes of the Mass had +been struck. + +Dr. Shrapnel seemed to be concluding his devotions before he followed her +example. + +'There, ma'am, you have a telegraphic system for the soul,' he said. +'It is harder work to travel from this place to this' (he pointed at ear +and breast) 'than from here to yonder' (a similar indication traversed +the distance between earth and sun). 'Man's aim has hitherto been to +keep men from having a soul for this world: he takes it for something +infernal. He?--I mean, they that hold power. They shudder to think the +conservatism of the earth will be shaken by a change; they dread they +won't get men with souls to fetch and carry, dig, root, mine, for them. +Right!--what then? Digging and mining will be done; so will harping and +singing. But then we have a natural optimacy! Then, on the one hand, +we whip the man-beast and the man-sloth; on the other, we seize that old +fatted iniquity--that tyrant! that tempter! that legitimated swindler +cursed of Christ! that palpable Satan whose name is Capital! by the +neck, and have him disgorging within three gasps of his life. He is the +villain! Let him live, for he too comes of blood and bone. He shall not +grind the faces of the poor and helpless--that's all.' + +The comicality of her having such remarks addressed to her provoked a +smile on Rosamund's lips. + +'Don't go at him like Samson blind,' said Mr. Lydiard; and Miss Denham, +who had returned, begged her guardian to entreat the guest to stay. + +She said in an undertone, 'I am very anxious you should see Captain +Beauchamp, madam.' + +'I too; but he will write, and I really can wait no longer,' Rosamund +replied, in extreme apprehension lest a certain degree of pressure should +overbear her repugnance to the doctor's dinner-table. Miss Denham's look +was fixed on her; but, whatever it might mean, Rosamund's endurance was +at an end. She was invited to dine; she refused. She was exceedingly +glad to find herself on the high-road again, with a prospect of reaching +Steynham that night; for it was important that she should not have to +confess a visit to Bevisham now when she had so little of favourable to +tell Mr. Everard Romfrey of his chosen nephew. Whether she had acted +quite wisely in not remaining to see Nevil, was an agitating question +that had to be silenced by an appeal to her instincts of repulsion, +and a further appeal for justification of them to her imaginary +sisterhood of gossips. How could she sit and eat, how pass an evening +in that house, in the society of that man? Her tuneful chorus cried, +'How indeed.' Besides, it would have offended Mr. Romfrey to hear that +she had done so. Still she could not refuse to remember Miss Denham's +marked intimations of there being a reason for Nevil's friend to seize +the chance of an immediate interview with him; and in her distress at the +thought, Rosamund reluctantly, but as if compelled by necessity, ascribed +the young lady's conduct to a strong sense of personal interests. + +'Evidently she has no desire he should run the risk of angering a rich +uncle.' + +This shameful suspicion was unavoidable: there was no other opiate for +Rosamund's blame of herself after letting her instincts gain the +ascendancy. + +It will be found a common case, that when we have yielded to our +instincts, and then have to soothe conscience, we must slaughter +somebody, for a sacrificial offering to our sense of comfort. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +A SUPERFINE CONSCIENCE + +However much Mr. Everard Romfrey may have laughed at Nevil Beauchamp with +his 'banana-wreath,' he liked the fellow for having volunteered for that +African coast-service, and the news of his promotion by his admiral to +the post of commander through a death vacancy, had given him an exalted +satisfaction, for as he could always point to the cause of failures, he +strongly appreciated success. The circumstance had offered an occasion +for the new commander to hit him hard upon a matter of fact. Beauchamp +had sent word of his advance in rank, but requested his uncle not to +imagine him wearing an additional epaulette; and he corrected the +infallible gentleman's error (which had of course been reported to him +when he was dreaming of Renee, by Mrs. Culling) concerning a lieutenant's +shoulder decorations, most gravely; informing him of the anchor on the +lieutenant's pair of epaulettes, and the anchor and star on a +commander's, and the crown on a captain's, with a well-feigned +solicitousness to save his uncle from blundering further. This was done +in the dry neat manner which Mr. Romfrey could feel to be his own turned +on him. + +He began to conceive a vague respect for the fellow who had proved him +wrong upon a matter of fact. Beauchamp came from Africa rather worn by +the climate, and immediately obtained the command of the Ariadne +corvette, which had been some time in commission in the Mediterranean, +whither he departed, without visiting Steynham; allowing Rosamund to +think him tenacious of his wrath as well as of love. Mr. Romfrey +considered him to be insatiable for service. Beauchamp, during his +absence, had shown himself awake to the affairs of his country once only, +in an urgent supplication he had forwarded for all his uncle's influence +to be used to get him appointed to the first vacancy in Robert Hall's +naval brigade, then forming a part of our handful in insurgent India. +The fate of that chivalrous Englishman, that born sailor-warrior, that +truest of heroes, imperishable in the memory of those who knew him, and +in our annals, young though he was when death took him, had wrung from +Nevil Beauchamp such a letter of tears as to make Mr. Romfrey believe the +naval crown of glory his highest ambition. Who on earth could have +guessed him to be bothering his head about politics all the while! Or +was the whole stupid business a freak of the moment? + +It became necessary for Mr. Romfrey to contemplate his eccentric nephew +in the light of a mannikin once more. Consequently he called to mind, +and bade Rosamund Culling remember, that he had foreseen and had +predicted the mounting of Nevil Beauchamp on his political horse one day +or another; and perhaps the earlier the better. And a donkey could have +sworn that when he did mount he would come galloping in among the Radical +rough-riders. Letters were pouring upon Steynham from men and women of +Romfrey blood and relationship concerning the positive tone of Radicalism +in the commander's address. Everard laughed at them. As a practical +man, his objection lay against the poor fool's choice of the peccant +borough of Bevisham. Still, in view of the needfulness of his learning +wisdom, and rapidly, the disbursement of a lot of his money, certain to +be required by Bevisham's electors, seemed to be the surest method for +quickening his wits. Thus would he be acting as his own chirurgeon, +gaily practising phlebotomy on his person to cure him of his fever. Too +much money was not the origin of the fever in Nevil's case, but he had +too small a sense of the value of what he possessed, and the diminishing +stock would be likely to cry out shrilly. + +To this effect, never complaining that Nevil Beauchamp had not come to +him to take counsel with him, the high-minded old gentleman talked. At +the same time, while indulging in so philosophical a picture of himself +as was presented by a Romfrey mildly accounting for events and smoothing +them under the infliction of an offence, he could not but feel that Nevil +had challenged him: such was the reading of it; and he waited for some +justifiable excitement to fetch him out of the magnanimous mood, rather +in the image of an angler, it must be owned. + +'Nevil understands that I am not going to pay a farthing of his expenses +in Bevisham?' he said to Mrs. Culling. + +She replied blandly and with innocence, 'I have not seen him, sir.' + +He nodded. At the next mention of Nevil between them, he asked, 'Where +is it he's lying perdu, ma'am?' + +'I fancy in that town, in Bevisham.' + +'At the Liberal, Radical, hotel?' + +'I dare say; some place; I am not certain . . . .' + +'The rascal doctor's house there? Shrapnel's?' + +'Really . . . I have not seen him.' + +'Have you heard from him?' + +'I have had a letter; a short one.' + +'Where did he date his letter from?' + +'From Bevisham.' + +'From what house?' + +Rosamund glanced about for a way of escaping the question. There was +none but the door. She replied, 'From Dr. Shrapnel's.' + +'That's the Anti-Game-Law agitator.' + +'You do not imagine, sir, that Nevil subscribes to every thing the horrid +man agitates for?' + +'You don't like the man, ma'am?' + +'I detest him.' + +'Ha! So you have seen Shrapnel?' + +'Only for a moment; a moment or two. I cannot endure him. I am sure I +have reason.' + +Rosamund flushed exceedingly red. The visit to Dr. Shrapnel's house was +her secret, and the worming of it out made her feel guilty, and that +feeling revived and heated her antipathy to the Radical doctor. + +'What reason?' said Mr. Romfrey, freshening at her display of colour. + +She would not expose Nevil to the accusation of childishness by +confessing her positive reason, so she answered, 'The man is a kind of +man . . . I was not there long; I was glad to escape. He . . .' +she hesitated: for in truth it was difficult to shape the charge against +him, and the effort to be reticent concerning Nevil, and communicative, +now that he had been spoken of, as to the detested doctor, reduced her to +some confusion. She was also fatally anxious to be in the extreme degree +conscientious, and corrected and modified her remarks most suspiciously. + +'Did he insult you, ma'am?' Mr. Romfrey inquired. + +She replied hastily, 'Oh no. He may be a good man in his way. He is one +of those men who do not seem to think a woman may have opinions. He does +not scruple to outrage those we hold. I am afraid he is an infidel. His +ideas of family duties and ties, and his manner of expressing himself, +shocked me, that is all. He is absurd. I dare say there is no harm in +him, except for those who are so unfortunate as to fall under his +influence--and that, I feel sure, cannot be permanent. He could not +injure me personally. He could not offend me, I mean. Indeed, I have +nothing whatever to say against him, as far as I . . .' + +'Did he fail to treat you as a lady, ma'am?' + +Rosamund was getting frightened by the significant pertinacity of her +lord. + +'I am sure, sir, he meant no harm.' + +'Was the man uncivil to you, ma'am?' came the emphatic interrogation. + +She asked herself, had Dr. Shrapnel been uncivil toward her? And so +conscientious was she, that she allowed the question to be debated in her +mind for half a minute, answering then, 'No, not uncivil. I cannot +exactly explain . . . . He certainly did not intend to be uncivil. +He is only an unpolished, vexatious man; enormously tall.' + +Mr. Romfrey ejaculated, 'Ha! humph!' + +His view of Dr. Shrapnel was taken from that instant. It was, that this +enormously big blustering agitator against the preservation of birds, +had behaved rudely toward the lady officially the chief of his household, +and might be considered in the light of an adversary one would like to +meet. The size of the man increased his aspect of villany, which in +return added largely to his giant size. Everard Romfrey's mental eye +could perceive an attractiveness about the man little short of magnetic; +for he thought of him so much that he had to think of what was due to his +pacifical disposition (deeply believed in by him) to spare himself the +trouble of a visit to Bevisham. + +The young gentleman whom he regarded as the Radical doctor's dupe, fell +in for a share of his view of the doctor, and Mr. Romfrey became less +fitted to observe Nevil Beauchamp's doings with the Olympian gravity he +had originally assumed. + +The extreme delicacy of Rosamund's conscience was fretted by a remorseful +doubt of her having conveyed a just impression of Dr. Shrapnel, somewhat +as though the fine sleek coat of it were brushed the wrong way. +Reflection warned her that her deliberative intensely sincere pause +before she responded to Mr. Romfrey's last demand, might have implied +more than her words. She consoled herself with the thought that it was +the dainty susceptibility of her conscientiousness which caused these +noble qualms, and so deeply does a refined nature esteem the gift, that +her pride in it helped her to overlook her moral perturbation. She was +consoled, moreover, up to the verge of triumph in her realization of the +image of a rivalling and excelling power presented by Mr. Romfrey, though +it had frightened her at the time. Let not Dr. Shrapnel come across him! +She hoped he would not. Ultimately she could say to herself, 'Perhaps I +need not have been so annoyed with the horrid man.' It was on Nevil's +account. Shrapnel's contempt of the claims of Nevil's family upon him +was actually a piece of impudence, impudently expressed, if she +remembered correctly. And Shrapnel was a black malignant, the foe of the +nation's Constitution, deserving of punishment if ever man was; with his +ridiculous metaphors, and talk of organs and pianos, orchestras and +despotisms, and flying to the sun! How could Nevil listen to the +creature! Shrapnel must be a shameless, hypocrite to mask his wickedness +from one so clear-sighted as Nevil, and no doubt he indulged in his +impudence out of wanton pleasure in it. His business was to catch young +gentlemen of family, and to turn them against their families, plainly. +That was thinking the best of him. No doubt he had his objects to gain. +'He might have been as impudent as he liked to me; I would have pardoned +him!' Rosamund exclaimed. Personally, you see, she was generous. On +the whole, knowing Everard Romfrey as she did, she wished that she had +behaved, albeit perfectly discreet in her behaviour, and conscientiously +just, a shade or two differently. But the evil was done. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +THE LEADING ARTICLE AND MR. TIMOTHY TURBOT + +Nevil declined to come to Steynham, clearly owing to a dread of hearing +Dr. Shrapnel abused, as Rosamund judged by the warmth of his written +eulogies of the man, and an ensuing allusion to Game. He said that he +had not made up his mind as to the Game Laws. Rosamund mentioned the +fact to Mr. Romfrey. 'So we may stick by our licences to shoot to- +morrow,' he rejoined. Of a letter that he also had received from Nevil, +he did not speak. She hinted at it, and he stared. He would have deemed +it as vain a subject to discourse of India, or Continental affairs, at a +period when his house was full for the opening day of sport, and the +expectation of keeping up his renown for great bags on that day so +entirely occupied his mind. Good shots were present who had contributed +to the fame of Steynham on other opening days. Birds were plentiful and +promised not to be too wild. He had the range of the Steynham estate in +his eye, dotted with covers; and after Steynham, Holdesbury, which had +never yielded him the same high celebrity, but both lay mapped out for +action under the profound calculations of the strategist, ready to show +the skill of the field tactician. He could not attend to Nevil. Even +the talk of the forthcoming Elections, hardly to be avoided at his table, +seemed a puerile distraction. Ware the foe of his partridges and +pheasants, be it man or vermin! The name of Shrapnel was frequently on +the tongue of Captain Baskelett. Rosamund heard him, in her room, and +his derisive shouts of laughter over it. Cecil was a fine shot, quite as +fond of the pastime as his uncle, and always in favour with him while +sport stalked the land. He was in gallant spirits, and Rosamund, +brooding over Nevil's fortunes, and sitting much alone, as she did when +there were guests in the house, gave way to her previous apprehensions. +She touched on them to Mr. Stukely Culbrett, her husband's old friend, +one of those happy men who enjoy perceptions without opinions, and are +not born to administer comfort to other than themselves. As far as she +could gather, he fancied Nevil Beauchamp was in danger of something, but +he delivered his mind only upon circumstances and characters: Nevil +risked his luck, Cecil knew his game, Everard Romfrey was the staunchest +of mankind: Stukely had nothing further to say regarding the situation. +She asked him what he thought, and he smiled. Could a reasonable head +venture to think anything in particular? He repeated the amazed, 'You +don't say so' of Colonel Halkett, on hearing the name of the new Liberal +candidate for Bevisham at the dinner-table, together with some of Cecil's +waggish embroidery upon the theme. + +Rosamund exclaimed angrily, 'Oh! if I had been there he would not have +dared.' + +'Why not be there?' said Stukely. 'You have had your choice for a number +of years.' + +She shook her head, reddening. + +But supposing that she had greater privileges than were hers now? The +idea flashed. A taint of personal pique, awakened by the fancied +necessity for putting her devotedness to Nevil to proof, asked her if she +would then be the official housekeeper to whom Captain Baskelett bowed +low with affected respect and impertinent affability, ironically praising +her abroad as a wonder among women, that could at one time have played +the deuce in the family, had she chosen to do so. + +'Just as you like,' Mr. Culbrett remarked. It was his ironical habit of +mind to believe that the wishes of men and women--women as well as men-- +were expressed by their utterances. + +'But speak of Nevil to Colonel Halkett,' said Rosamund, earnestly +carrying on what was in her heart. 'Persuade the colonel you do not +think Nevil foolish--not more than just a little impetuous. I want +that marriage to come off! Not on account of her wealth. She is to +inherit a Welsh mine from her uncle, you know, besides being an only +child. Recall what Nevil was during the war. Miss Halkett has not +forgotten it, I am sure, and a good word for him from a man of the world +would, I am certain, counteract Captain Baskelett's--are they designs? +At any rate, you can if you like help Nevil with the colonel. I am +convinced they are doing him a mischief. Colonel Halkett has bought an +estate--and what a misfortune that is!--close to Bevisham. I fancy he is +Toryish. Will you not speak to him? At my request? I am so helpless I +could cry. + +'Fancy you have no handkerchief,' said Mr. Culbrett, 'and give up +scheming, pray. One has only to begin to scheme, to shorten life to +half-a-dozen hops and jumps. I could say to the colonel, "Young +Beauchamp's a political cub: he ought to have a motherly wife."' + +'Yes, yes, you are right; don't speak to him at all,' said Rosamund, +feeling that there must be a conspiracy to rob her of her proud +independence, since not a soul could be won to spare her from taking +some energetic step, if she would be useful to him she loved. + +Colonel Halkett was one of the guests at Steynham who knew and respected +her, and he paid her a visit and alluded to Nevil's candidature, +apparently not thinking much the worse of him. 'We can't allow him to +succeed,' he said, and looked for a smiling approval of such natural +opposition, which Rosamund gave him readily after he had expressed the +hope that Nevil Beauchamp would take advantage of his proximity to Mount +Laurels during the contest to try the hospitality of the house. 'He +won't mind meeting his uncle?' The colonel's eyes twinkled. 'My daughter +has engaged Mr. Romfrey and Captain Baskelett to come to us when they +have shot Holdesbury.' + +And Captain Baskelett! thought Rosamund; her jealousy whispering that the +mention of his name close upon Cecilia Halkett's might have a nuptial +signification. + +She was a witness from her window--a prisoner's window, her 'eager heart +could have termed it--of a remarkable ostentation of cordiality between +the colonel and Cecil, in the presence of Mr. Romfrey. Was it his humour +to conspire to hand Miss Halkett to Cecil, and then to show Nevil the +prize he had forfeited by his folly? The three were on the lawn a little +before Colonel Halkett's departure. The colonel's arm was linked with +Cecil's while they conversed. Presently the latter received his +afternoon's letters, and a newspaper. He soon had the paper out at a +square stretch, and sprightly information for the other two was visible +in his crowing throat. Mr. Romfrey raised the gun from his shoulder-pad, +and grounded it. Colonel Halkett wished to peruse the matter with his +own eyes, but Cecil could not permit it; he must read it aloud for them, +and he suited his action to his sentences. Had Rosamund been accustomed +to leading articles which are the composition of men of an imposing +vocabulary, she would have recognized and as good as read one in Cecil's +gestures as he tilted his lofty stature forward and back, marking his +commas and semicolons with flapping of his elbows, and all but doubling +his body at his periods. Mr. Romfrey had enough of it half-way down the +column; his head went sharply to left and right. Cecil's peculiar +foppish slicing down of his hand pictured him protesting that there was +more and finer of the inimitable stuff to follow. The end of the scene +exhibited the paper on the turf, and Colonel Halkett's hand on Cecil's +shoulder, Mr. Romfrey nodding some sort of acquiescence over the muzzle +of his gun, whether reflective or positive Rosamund could not decide. +She sent out a footman for the paper, and was presently communing with +its eloquent large type, quite unable to perceive where the comicality or +the impropriety of it lay, for it would have struck her that never were +truer things of Nevil Beauchamp better said in the tone befitting them. +This perhaps was because she never heard fervid praises of him, or of +anybody, delivered from the mouth, and it is not common to hear +Englishmen phrasing great eulogies of one another. Still, as a rule, +they do not object to have it performed in that region of our national +eloquence, the Press, by an Irishman or a Scotchman. And what could +there be to warrant Captain Baskelett's malicious derision, and Mr. +Romfrey's nodding assent to it, in an article where all was truth? + +The truth was mounted on an unusually high wind. It was indeed a leading +article of a banner-like bravery, and the unrolling of it was designed to +stir emotions. Beauchamp was the theme. Nevil had it under his eyes +earlier than Cecil. The paper was brought into his room with the beams +of day, damp from the presses of the Bevisham Gazette, exactly opposite +to him in the White Hart Hotel, and a glance at the paragraphs gave him a +lively ardour to spring to his feet. What writing! He was uplifted as +'The heroical Commander Beauchamp, of the Royal Navy,' and 'Commander +Beauchamp, R.N., a gentleman of the highest connections': he was 'that +illustrious Commander Beauchamp, of our matchless, navy, who proved on +every field of the last glorious war of this country that the traditional +valour of the noble and indomitable blood transmitted to his veins had +lost none of its edge and weight since the battle-axes of the Lords de +Romfrey, ever to the fore, clove the skulls of our national enemy on the +wide and fertile campaigns of France.' This was pageantry. + +There was more of it. Then the serious afflatus of the article +condescended, as it were, to blow a shrill and well-known whistle:--the +study of the science of navigation made by Commander Beauchamp, R.N., was +cited for a jocose warranty of a seaman's aptness to assist in steering +the Vessel of the State. After thus heeling over, to tip a familiar wink +to the multitude, the leader tone resumed its fit deportment. Commander +Beauchamp, in responding to the invitation of the great and united +Liberal party of the borough of Bevisham, obeyed the inspirations of +genius, the dictates of humanity, and what he rightly considered the +paramount duty, as it is the proudest ambition, of the citizen of a free +country. + +But for an occasional drop and bump of the sailing gasbag upon catch- +words of enthusiasm, which are the rhetoric of the merely windy, and a +collapse on a poetic line, which too often signalizes the rhetorician's +emptiness of his wind, the article was eminent for flight, sweep, and +dash, and sailed along far more grandly than ordinary provincial organs +for the promoting or seconding of public opinion, that are as little to +be compared with the mighty metropolitan as are the fife and bugle boys +practising on their instruments round melancholy outskirts of garrison +towns with the regimental marching full band under the presidency of its +drum-major. No signature to the article was needed for Bevisham to know +who had returned to the town to pen it. Those long-stretching sentences, +comparable to the very ship Leviathan, spanning two Atlantic billows, +appertained to none but the renowned Mr. Timothy Turbot, of the Corn Law +campaigns, Reform agitations, and all manifestly popular movements +requiring the heaven-endowed man of speech, an interpreter of multitudes, +and a prompter. Like most men who have little to say, he was an orator +in print, but that was a poor medium for him--his body without his fire. +Mr. Timothy's place was the platform. A wise discernment, or else a +lucky accident (for he came hurriedly from the soil of his native isle, +needing occupation), set him on that side in politics which happened to +be making an established current and strong headway. Oratory will not +work against the stream, or on languid tides. Driblets of movements that +allowed the world to doubt whether they were so much movements as +illusions of the optics, did not suit his genius. Thus he was a Liberal, +no Radical, fountain. Liberalism had the attraction for the orator of +being the active force in politics, between two passive opposing bodies, +the aspect of either of which it can assume for a menace to the other, +Toryish as against Radicals; a trifle red in the eyes of the Tory. It +can seem to lean back on the Past; it can seem to be amorous of the +Future. It is actually the thing of the Present and its urgencies, +therefore popular, pouring forth the pure waters of moderation, strong in +their copiousness. Delicious and rapturous effects are to be produced in +the flood of a Liberal oration by a chance infusion of the fierier +spirit, a flavour of Radicalism. That is the thing to set an audience +bounding and quirking. Whereas if you commence by tilling a Triton +pitcher full of the neat liquor upon them, 'you have to resort to the +natural element for the orator's art of variation, you are diluted--and +that's bathos, to quote Mr. Timothy. It was a fine piece of discernment +in him. Let Liberalism be your feast, Radicalism your spice. And now +and then, off and on, for a change, for diversion, for a new emotion, +just for half an hour or so-now and then the Sunday coat of Toryism will +give you an air. You have only to complain of the fit, to release your +shoulders in a trice. Mr. Timothy felt for his art as poets do for +theirs, and considered what was best adapted to speaking, purely to +speaking. Upon no creature did he look with such contempt as upon Dr. +Shrapnel, whose loose disjunct audiences he was conscious he could, +giving the doctor any start he liked, whirl away from him and have +compact, enchained, at his first flourish; yea, though they were composed +of 'the poor man,' with a stomach for the political distillery fit to +drain relishingly every private bogside or mountain-side tap in old +Ireland in its best days--the illicit, you understand. + +Further, to quote Mr. Timothy's points of view, the Radical orator has +but two notes, and one is the drawling pathetic, and the other is the +ultra-furious; and the effect of the former we liken to the English +working man's wife's hob-set queasy brew of well-meant villany, that she +calls by the innocent name of tea; and the latter is to be blown, asks to +be blown, and never should be blown without at least seeming to be blown, +with an accompaniment of a house on fire. Sir, we must adapt ourselves +to our times. Perhaps a spark or two does lurk about our house, but we +have vigilant watchmen in plenty, and the house has been pretty fairly +insured. Shrieking in it is an annoyance to the inmates, nonsensical; +weeping is a sickly business. The times are against Radicalism to the +full as much as great oratory is opposed to extremes. These drag the +orator too near to the matter. So it is that one Radical speech is +amazingly like another--they all have the earth-spots. They smell, too; +they smell of brimstone. Soaring is impossible among that faction; but +this they can do, they can furnish the Tory his opportunity to soar. +When hear you a thrilling Tory speech that carries the country with it, +save when the incendiary Radical has shrieked? If there was envy in the +soul of Timothy, it was addressed to the fine occasions offered to the +Tory speaker for vindicating our ancient principles and our sacred homes. +He admired the tone to be assumed for that purpose: it was a good note. +Then could the Tory, delivering at the right season the Shakesperian +'This England . . .' and Byronic--'The inviolate Island . . .' +shake the frame, as though smiting it with the tail of the gymnotus +electricus. Ah, and then could he thump out his Horace, the Tory's +mentor and his cordial, with other great ancient comic and satiric poets, +his old Port of the classical cellarage, reflecting veneration upon him +who did but name them to an audience of good dispositions. The Tory +possessed also an innate inimitably easy style of humour, that had the +long reach, the jolly lordly indifference, the comfortable masterfulness, +of the whip of a four-in-hand driver, capable of flicking and stinging, +and of being ironically caressing. Timothy appreciated it, for he had +winced under it. No professor of Liberalism could venture on it, unless +it were in the remote district of a back parlour, in the society of a +cherishing friend or two, and with a slice of lemon requiring to be +refloated in the glass. + +But gifts of this description were of a minor order. Liberalism gave the +heading cry, devoid of which parties are dogs without a scent, orators +mere pump-handles. The Tory's cry was but a whistle to his pack, the +Radical howled to the moon like any chained hound. And no wonder, for +these parties had no established current, they were as hard-bound waters; +the Radical being dyked and dammed most soundly, the Tory resembling a +placid lake of the plains, fed by springs and no confluents. For such +good reasons, Mr. Timothy rejoiced in the happy circumstances which had +expelled him from the shores of his native isle to find a refuge and a +vocation in Manchester at a period when an orator happened to be in +request because dozens were wanted. That centre of convulsions and +source of streams possessed the statistical orator, the reasoning orator, +and the inspired; with others of quality; and yet it had need of an ever- +ready spontaneous imperturbable speaker, whose bubbling generalizations +and ability to beat the drum humorous could swing halls of meeting from +the grasp of an enemy, and then ascend on incalescent adjectives to the +popular idea of the sublime. He was the artistic orator of Corn Law +Repeal--the Manchester flood, before which time Whigs were, since which +they have walked like spectral antediluvians, or floated as dead canine +bodies that are sucked away on the ebb of tides and flung back on the +flow, ignorant whether they be progressive or retrograde. Timothy Turbot +assisted in that vast effort. It should have elevated him beyond the +editorship of a country newspaper. Why it did not do so his antagonists +pretended to know, and his friends would smile to hear. The report was +that he worshipped the nymph Whisky. + +Timothy's article had plucked Beauchamp out of bed; Beauchamp's card in +return did the same for him. + +'Commander Beauchamp? I am heartily glad to make your acquaintance, +sir; I've been absent, at work, on the big business we have in common, +I rejoice to say, and am behind my fellow townsmen in this pleasure and +lucky I slept here in my room above, where I don't often sleep, for the +row of the machinery--it 's like a steamer that won't go, though it's +always starting ye,' Mr. Timothy said in a single breath, upon entering +the back office of the Gazette, like unto those accomplished violinists +who can hold on the bow to finger an incredible number of notes, and may +be imaged as representing slow paternal Time, that rolls his capering +dot-headed generation of mortals over the wheel, hundreds to the minute. +'You'll excuse my not shaving, sir, to come down to your summons without +an extra touch to the neck-band.' + +Beauchamp beheld a middle-sized round man, with loose lips and pendant +indigo jowl, whose eyes twinkled watery, like pebbles under the shore- +wash, and whose neck-band needed an extra touch from fingers other than +his own. + +'I am sorry to have disturbed you so early,' he replied. + +'Not a bit, Commander Beauchamp, not a bit, sir. Early or late, and ay +ready--with the Napiers; I'll wash, I'll wash.' + +'I came to speak to you of this article of yours on me. They tell me in +the office that you are the writer. Pray don't "Commander" me so much. +--It's not customary, and I object to it.' + +'Certainly, certainly,' Timothy acquiesced. + +'And for the future, Mr. Turbot, please to be good enough not to allude +in print to any of my performances here and there. Your intentions are +complimentary, but it happens that I don't like a public patting on the +back.' + +'No, and that's true,' said Timothy. + +His appreciative and sympathetic agreement with these sharp strictures on +the article brought Beauchamp to a stop. + +Timothy waited for him; then, smoothing his prickly cheek, remarked: +'If I'd guessed your errand, Commander Beauchamp, I'd have called in the +barber before I came down, just to make myself decent for a 'first +introduction.' + +Beauchamp was not insensible to the slyness of the poke at him. +'You see, I come to the borough unknown to it, and as quietly as +possible, and I want to be taken as a politician,' he continued, for the +sake of showing that he had sufficient to say to account for his hasty +and peremptory summons of the writer of that article to his presence. +'It's excessively disagreeable to have one's family lugged into notice in +a newspaper--especially if they are of different politics. I feel it.' + +All would, sir,' said Timothy. + +'Then why the deuce did you do it?' + +Timothy drew a lading of air into his lungs. 'Politics, Commander +Beauchamp, involves the doing of lots of disagreeable things to ourselves +and our relations; it 's positive. I'm a soldier of the Great Campaign: +and who knows it better than I, sir? It's climbing the greasy pole for +the leg o' mutton, that makes the mother's heart ache for the jacket and +the nether garments she mended neatly, if she didn't make them. Mutton +or no mutton, there's grease for certain! Since it's sure we can't be +disconnected from the family, the trick is to turn the misfortune to a +profit; and allow me the observation, that an old family, sir, and a high +and titled family, is not to be despised for a background of a portrait +in naval uniform, with medal and clasps, and some small smoke of powder +clearing off over there:--that's if we're to act sagaciously in +introducing an unknown candidate to a borough that has a sneaking liking +for the kind of person, more honour to it. I'm a political veteran, sir; +I speak from experience. We must employ our weapons, every one of them, +and all off the grindstone.' + +'Very well,' said Beauchamp. 'Now understand; you are not in future to +employ the weapons, as you call them, that I have objected to.' + +Timothy gaped slightly. + +'Whatever you will, but no puffery,' Beauchamp added. 'Can I by any +means arrest--purchase--is it possible, tell me, to lay an embargo--stop +to-day's issue of the Gazette?' + +'No more--than the bite of a mad dog,' Timothy replied, before he had +considered upon the monstrous nature of the proposal. + +Beauchamp humphed, and tossed his head. The simile of the dog struck him +with intense effect. + +'There'd be a second edition,' said Timothy, 'and you might buy up that. +But there'll be a third, and you may buy up that; but there'll be a +fourth and a fifth, and so on ad infinitum, with the advertisement of the +sale of the foregoing creating a demand like a rageing thirst in a +shipwreck, in Bligh's boat, in the tropics. I'm afraid, Com--Captain +Beauchamp, sir, there's no stopping the Press while the people have an +appetite for it--and a Company's at the back of it.' + +'Pooh, don't talk to me in that way; all I complain of is the figure you +have made of me,' said Beauchamp, fetching him smartly out of his +nonsense; 'and all I ask of you is not to be at it again. Who would +suppose from reading an article like that, that I am a candidate with a +single political idea!' + +'An article like that,' said Timothy, winking, and a little surer of his +man now that he suggested his possession of ideas, 'an article like that +is the best cloak you can put on a candidate with too many of 'em, +Captain Beauchamp. I'll tell you, sir; I came, I heard of your +candidature, I had your sketch, the pattern of ye, before me, and I was +told that Dr. Shrapnel fathered you politically. There was my brief! +I had to persuade our constituents that you, Commander Beauchamp of the +Royal Navy, and the great family of the Earls of Romfrey, one of the +heroes of the war, and the recipient of a Royal Humane Society's medal +for saving life in Bevisham waters, were something more than the Radical +doctor's political son; and, sir, it was to this end, aim, and object, +that I wrote the article I am not ashamed to avow as mine, and I do so, +sir, because of the solitary merit it has of serving your political +interests as the liberal candidate for Bevisham by counteracting the +unpopularity of Dr. Shrapnel's name, on the one part, and of reviving the +credit due to your valour and high bearing on the field of battle in +defence of your country, on the other, so that Bevisham may apprehend, in +spite of party distinctions, that it has the option, and had better seize +upon the honour, of making a M.P. of a hero.' + +Beauchamp interposed hastily: 'Thank you, thank you for the best of +intentions. But let me tell you I am prepared to stand or fall with +Dr. Shrapnel, and be hanged to all that humbug.' + +Timothy rubbed his hands with an abstracted air of washing. 'Well, +commander, well, sir, they say a candidate's to be humoured in his +infancy, for he has to do all the humouring before he's many weeks old at +it; only there's the fact!--he soon finds out he has to pay for his first +fling, like the son of a family sowing his oats to reap his Jews. Credit +me, sir, I thought it prudent to counteract a bit of an apothecary's shop +odour in the junior Liberal candidate's address. I found the town +sniffing, they scented Shrapnel in the composition.' + +'Every line of it was mine,' said Beauchamp. + +'Of course it was, and the address was admirably worded, sir, I make bold +to say it to your face; but most indubitably it threatened powerful drugs +for weak stomachs, and it blew cold on votes, which are sensitive plants +like nothing else in botany.' + +'If they are only to be got by abandoning principles, and by anything but +honesty in stating them, they may go,' said Beauchamp. + +'I repeat, my dear sir, I repeat, the infant candidate delights in his +honesty, like the babe in its nakedness, the beautiful virgin in her +innocence. So he does; but he discovers it's time for him to wear +clothes in a contested election. And what's that but to preserve the +outlines pretty correctly, whilst he doesn't shock and horrify the +optics? A dash of conventionalism makes the whole civilized world kin, +ye know. That's the truth. You must appear to be one of them, for them +to choose you. After all, there's no harm in a dyer's hand; and, sir, a +candidate looking at his own, when he has won the Election . . .' + +'Ah, well,' said Beauchamp, swinging on his heel, 'and now I'll take my +leave of you, and I apologize for bringing you down here so early. +Please attend to what I have said; it's peremptory. You will give me +great pleasure by dining with me to-night, at the hotel opposite. Will +you? I don't know what kind of wine I shall be able to offer you. +Perhaps you know the cellar, and may help me in that.' + +Timothy grasped his hand, 'With pleasure, Commander Beauchamp. They have +a bucellas over there that 's old, and a tolerable claret, and a Port to +be inquired for under the breath, in a mysteriously intimate tone of +voice, as one says, "I know of your treasure, and the corner under ground +where it lies." Avoid the champagne: 'tis the banqueting wine. Ditto +the sherry. One can drink them, one can drink them.' + +'At a quarter to eight this evening, then,' said Nevil. + +'I'll be there at the stroke of the clock, sure as the date of a bill,' +said Timothy. + +And it's early to guess whether you'll catch Bevisham or you won't, he +reflected, as he gazed at the young gentleman crossing the road; but +female Bevisham's with you, if that counts for much. Timothy confessed, +that without the employment of any weapon save arrogance and a look of +candour, the commander had gone some way toward catching the feminine +side of himself. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +CECILIA HALKETT + +Beauchamp walked down to the pier, where he took a boat for H.M.S. Isis, +to see Jack Wilmore, whom he had not met since his return from his last +cruise, and first he tried the efficacy of a dive in salt water, as a +specific for irritation. It gave the edge to a fine appetite that he +continued to satisfy while Wilmore talked of those famous dogs to which +the navy has ever been going. + +'We want another panic, Beauchamp,' said Lieutenant Wilmore. 'No one +knows better than you what a naval man has to complain of, so I hope +you'll get your Election, if only that we may reckon on a good look-out +for the interests of the service. A regular Board with a permanent Lord +High Admiral, and a regular vote of money to keep it up to the mark. +Stick to that. Hardist has a vote in Bevisham. I think I can get one or +two more. Why aren't you a Tory? No Whigs nor Liberals look after us +half so well as the Tories. It's enough to break a man's heart to see +the troops of dockyard workmen marching out as soon as ever a Liberal +Government marches in. Then it's one of our infernal panics again, and +patch here, patch there; every inch of it make-believe! I'll prove to +you from examples that the humbug of Government causes exactly the same +humbugging workmanship. It seems as if it were a game of "rascals all." +Let them sink us! but, by heaven! one can't help feeling for the country. +And I do say it's the doing of those Liberals. Skilled workmen, mind +you, not to be netted again so easily. America reaps the benefit of our +folly . . . . That was a lucky run of yours up the Niger; the admiral +was friendly, but you deserved your luck. For God's sake, don't forget +the state of our service when you're one of our cherubs up aloft, +Beauchamp. This I'll say, I've never heard a man talk about it as you +used to in old midshipmite days, whole watches through--don't you +remember? on the North American station, and in the Black Sea, and the +Mediterranean. And that girl at Malta! I wonder what has become of her? +What a beauty she was! I dare say she wasn't so fine a girl as the +Armenian you unearthed on the Bosphorus, but she had something about her +a fellow can't forget. That was a lovely creature coming down the hills +over Granada on her mule. Ay, we've seen handsome women, Nevil +Beauchamp. But you always were lucky, invariably, and I should bet on +you for the Election.' + +'Canvass for me, Jack,' said Beauchamp, smiling at his friend's +unconscious double-skeining of subjects. 'If I turn out as good a +politician as you are a seaman, I shall do. Pounce on Hardist's vote +without losing a day. I would go to him, but I've missed the Halketts +twice. They 're on the Otley river, at a place called Mount Laurels, +and I particularly want to see the colonel. Can you give me a boat +there, and come?' + +'Certainly,' said Wilmore. 'I've danced there with the lady, the +handsomest girl, English style, of her time. And come, come, our English +style's the best. It wears best, it looks best. Foreign women . . . +they're capital to flirt with. But a girl like Cecilia Halkett--one +can't call her a girl, and it won't do to say Goddess, and queen and +charmer are out of the question, though she's both, and angel into the +bargain; but, by George! what a woman to call wife, you say; and a man +attached to a woman like that never can let himself look small. No such +luck for me; only I swear if I stood between a good and a bad action, the +thought of that girl would keep me straight, and I've only danced with +her once!' + +Not long after sketching this rough presentation of the lady, with a +masculine hand, Wilmore was able to point to her in person on the deck of +her father's yacht, the Esperanza, standing out of Otley river. There +was a gallant splendour in the vessel that threw a touch of glory on its +mistress in the minds of the two young naval officers, as they pulled for +her in the ship's gig. + +Wilmore sang out, 'Give way, men!' + +The sailors bent to their oars, and presently the schooner's head was put +to the wind. + +'She sees we're giving chase,' Wilmore said. 'She can't be expecting me, +so it must be you. No, the colonel doesn't race her. They've only been +back from Italy six months: I mean the schooner. I remember she talked +of you when I had her for a partner. Yes, now I mean Miss Halkett. +Blest if I think she talked of anything else. She sees us. I'll tell +you what she likes: she likes yachting, she likes Italy, she likes +painting, likes things old English, awfully fond of heroes. I told her a +tale of one of our men saving life. "Oh!" said she, "didn't your friend +Nevil Beauchamp save a man from drowning, off the guardship, in exactly +the same place?" And next day she sent me a cheque for three pounds for +the fellow. Steady, men! I keep her letter.' + +The boat went smoothly alongside the schooner. Miss Halkett had come to +the side. The oars swung fore and aft, and Beauchamp sprang on deck. + +Wilmore had to decline Miss Halkett's invitation to him as well as his +friend, and returned in his boat. He left the pair with a ruffling +breeze, and a sky all sail, prepared, it seemed to him, to enjoy the most +delicious you-and-I on salt water that a sailor could dream of; and +placidly envying, devoid of jealousy, there was just enough of fancy +quickened in Lieutenant Wilmore to give him pictures of them without +disturbance of his feelings--one of the conditions of the singular +visitation we call happiness, if he could have known it. + +For a time his visionary eye followed them pretty correctly. So long +since they had parted last! such changes in the interval! and great +animation in Beauchamp's gaze, and a blush on Miss Halkett's cheeks. + +She said once, 'Captain Beauchamp.' He retorted with a solemn formality. +They smiled, and immediately took footing on their previous intimacy. + +'How good it was of you to come twice to Mount Laurels,' said she. +'I have not missed you to-day. No address was on your card. Where are +you staying in the neighbourhood? At Mr. Lespel's?' + +'I'm staying at a Bevisham hotel,' said Beauchamp. + +'You have not been to Steynham yet? Papa comes home from Steynham to- +night.' + +'Does he? Well, the Ariadne is only just paid off, and I can't well go +to Steynham yet. I--' Beauchamp was astonished at the hesitation he +found in himself to name it: 'I have business in Bevisham.' + +'Naval business?' she remarked. + +'No,' said he. + +The sensitive prescience we have of a critical distaste of our +proceedings is, the world is aware, keener than our intuition of contrary +opinions; and for the sake of preserving the sweet outward forms of +friendliness, Beauchamp was anxious not to speak of the business in +Bevisham just then, but she looked and he had hesitated, so he said +flatly, 'I am one of the candidates for the borough.' + +'Indeed!' + +'And I want the colonel to give me his vote.' + +The young lady breathed a melodious 'Oh!' not condemnatory or +reproachful--a sound to fill a pause. But she was beginning to reflect. + +'Italy and our English Channel are my two Poles,' she said. 'I am +constantly swaying between them. I have told papa we will not lay up the +yacht while the weather holds fair. Except for the absence of deep +colour and bright colour, what can be more beautiful than these green +waves and that dark forest's edge, and the garden of an island! The +yachting-water here is an unrivalled lake; and if I miss colour, which I +love, I remind myself that we have temperate air here, not a sun that +fiends you under cover. We can have our fruits too, you see.' One of +the yachtsmen was handing her a basket of hot-house grapes, reclining +beside crisp home-made loaflets. 'This is my luncheon. Will you share +it, Nevil?' + +His Christian name was pleasant to hear from her lips. She held out a +bunch to him. + +'Grapes take one back to the South,' said he. 'How do you bear +compliments? You have been in Italy some years, and it must be the South +that has worked the miracle.' + +'In my growth?' said Cecilia, smiling. 'I have grown out of my +Circassian dress, Nevil.' + +'You received it, then?' + +'I wrote you a letter of thanks--and abuse, for your not coming to +Steynham. You may recognize these pearls.' + +The pearls were round her right wrist. He looked at the blue veins. + +'They're not pearls of price,' he said. + +'I do not wear them to fascinate the jewellers,' rejoined Miss Halkett. +'So you are a candidate at an Election. You still have a tinge of +Africa, do you know? But you have not abandoned the navy?' + +'--Not altogether.' + +'Oh! no, no: I hope not. I have heard of you, . . . but who has not? +We cannot spare officers like you. Papa was delighted to hear of your +promotion. Parliament!' + +The exclamation was contemptuous. + +'It's the highest we can aim at,' Beauchamp observed meekly. + +'I think I recollect you used to talk politics when you were a +midshipman,' she said. 'You headed the aristocracy, did you not?' + +'The aristocracy wants a head,' said Beauchamp. + +'Parliament, in my opinion, is the best of occupations for idle men,' +said she. + +'It shows that it is a little too full of them.' + +'Surely the country can go on very well without so much speech-making?' + +'It can go on very well for the rich.' + +Miss Halkett tapped with her foot. + +'I should expect a Radical to talk in that way, Nevil.' + +'Take me for one.' + +'I would not even imagine it.' + +'Say Liberal, then.' + +'Are you not'--her eyes opened on him largely, and narrowed from surprise +to reproach, and then to pain--are you not one of us? Have you gone over +to the enemy, Nevil?' + +'I have taken my side, Cecilia; but we, on our side, don't talk of an +enemy.' + +'Most unfortunate! We are Tories, you know, Nevil. Papa is a thorough +Tory. He cannot vote for you. Indeed I have heard him say he is anxious +to defeat the plots of an old Republican in Bevisham--some doctor there; +and I believe he went to London to look out for a second Tory candidate +to oppose to the Liberals. Our present Member is quite safe, of course. +Nevil, this makes me unhappy. Do you not feel that it is playing traitor +to one's class to join those men?' + +Such was the Tory way of thinking, Nevil Beauchamp said: the Tories +upheld their Toryism in the place of patriotism. + +'But do we not owe the grandeur of the country to the Tories?' she said, +with a lovely air of conviction. 'Papa has told me how false the Whigs +played the Duke in the Peninsula: ruining his supplies, writing him down, +declaring, all the time he was fighting his first hard battles, that his +cause was hopeless--that resistance to Napoleon was impossible. The Duke +never, never had loyal support but from the Tory Government. The Whigs, +papa says, absolutely preached submission to Napoleon! The Whigs, I +hear, were the Liberals of those days. The two Pitts were Tories. The +greatness of England has been built up by the Tories. I do and will +defend them: it is the fashion to decry them now. They have the honour +and safety of the country at heart. They do not play disgracefully at +reductions of taxes, as the Liberals do. They have given us all our +heroes. Non fu mai gloria senza invidia. They have done service enough +to despise the envious mob. They never condescend to supplicate brute +force for aid to crush their opponents. You feel in all they do that the +instincts of gentlemen are active.' + +Beauchamp bowed. + +'Do I speak too warmly?' she asked. 'Papa and I have talked over it +often, and especially of late. You will find him your delighted host +and your inveterate opponent.' + +'And you?' + +'Just the same. You will have to pardon me; I am a terrible foe.' + +'I declare to you, Cecilia, I would prefer having you against me to +having you indifferent.' + +'I wish I had not to think it right that you should be beaten. And now-- +can you throw off political Nevil, and be sailor Nevil? I distinguish +between my old friend, and my . . .our . . .' + +'Dreadful antagonist?' + +'Not so dreadful, except in the shock he gives us to find him in the +opposite ranks. I am grieved. But we will finish our sail in peace. +I detest controversy. I suppose, Nevil, you would have no such things +as yachts? they are the enjoyments of the rich!' + +He reminded her that she wished to finish her sail in peace; and he +had to remind her of it more than once. Her scattered resources for +argumentation sprang up from various suggestions, such as the flight of +yachts, mention of the shooting season, sight of a royal palace; and +adopted a continually heightened satirical form, oddly intermixed with an +undisguised affectionate friendliness. Apparently she thought it +possible to worry him out of his adhesion to the wrong side in politics. +She certainly had no conception of the nature of his political views, +for one or two extreme propositions flung to him in jest, he swallowed +with every sign of a perfect facility, as if the Radical had come to +regard stupendous questions as morsels barely sufficient for his daily +sustenance. Cecilia reflected that he must be playing, and as it was +not a subject for play she tacitly reproved him by letting him be the +last to speak of it. He may not have been susceptible to the delicate +chastisement, probably was not, for when he ceased it was to look on the +beauty of her lowered eyelids, rather with an idea that the weight of his +argument lay on them. It breathed from him; both in the department of +logic and of feeling, in his plea for the poor man and his exposition of +the poor man's rightful claims, he evidently imagined that he had spoken +overwhelmingly; and to undeceive him in this respect, for his own good, +Cecilia calmly awaited the occasion when she might show the vanity of +arguments in their effort to overcome convictions. He stood up to take +his leave of her, on their return to the mouth of the Otley river, +unexpectedly, so that the occasion did not arrive; but on his mentioning +an engagement he had to give a dinner to a journalist and a tradesman of +the town of Bevisham, by way of excuse for not complying with her gentle +entreaty that he would go to Mount Laurels and wait to see the colonel +that evening, 'Oh! then your choice must be made irrevocably, I am sure,' +Miss Halkett said, relying upon intonation and manner to convey a great +deal more, and not without a minor touch of resentment for his having +dragged her into the discussion of politics, which she considered as a +slime wherein men hustled and tussled, no doubt worthily enough, and as +became them; not however to impose the strife upon the elect ladies of +earth. What gentleman ever did talk to a young lady upon the dreary +topic seriously? Least of all should Nevil Beauchamp have done it. That +object of her high imagination belonged to the exquisite sphere of the +feminine vision of the pure poetic, and she was vexed by the discord he +threw between her long-cherished dream and her unanticipated realization +of him:, if indeed it was he presenting himself to her in his own +character, and not trifling, or not passing through a phase of young +man's madness. + +Possibly he might be the victim of the latter and more pardonable state, +and so thinking she gave him her hand. + +'Good-bye, Nevil. I may tell papa to expect you tomorrow?' + +'Do, and tell him to prepare for a field-day.' + +She smiled. 'A sham fight that will not win you a vote! I hope you will +find your guests this evening agreeable companions.' + +Beauchamp half-shrugged involuntarily. He obliterated the piece of +treason toward them by saying that he hoped so; as though the meeting +them, instead of slipping on to Mount Laurels with her, were an enjoyable +prospect. + +He was dropped by the Esperanza's boat near Otley ferry, to walk along +the beach to Bevisham, and he kept eye on the elegant vessel as she +glided swan-like to her moorings off Mount Laurels park through dusky +merchant craft, colliers, and trawlers, loosely shaking her towering +snow-white sails, unchallenged in her scornful supremacy; an image of a +refinement of beauty, and of a beautiful servicelessness. + +As the yacht, so the mistress: things of wealth, owing their graces to +wealth, devoting them to wealth--splendid achievements of art both! and +dedicated to the gratification of the superior senses. + +Say that they were precious examples of an accomplished civilization; and +perhaps they did offer a visible ideal of grace for the rough world to +aim at. They might in the abstract address a bit of a monition to the +uncultivated, and encourage the soul to strive toward perfection, in +beauty: and there is no contesting the value of beauty when the soul is +taken into account. But were they not in too great a profusion in +proportion to their utility? That was the question for Nevil Beauchamp. +The democratic spirit inhabiting him, temporarily or permanently, asked +whether they were not increasing to numbers which were oppressive? And +further, whether it was good, for the country, the race, ay, the species, +that they should be so distinctly removed from the thousands who fought +the grand, and the grisly, old battle with nature for bread of life. +Those grimy sails of the colliers and fishing-smacks, set them in a great +sea, would have beauty for eyes and soul beyond that of elegance and +refinement. And do but look on them thoughtfully, the poor are +everlastingly, unrelievedly, in the abysses of the great sea . . . . + +One cannot pursue to conclusions a line of meditation that is half-built +on the sensations as well as on the mind. Did Beauchamp at all desire to +have those idly lovely adornments of riches, the Yacht and the Lady, +swept away? Oh, dear, no. He admired them, he was at home with them. +They were much to his taste. Standing on a point of the beach for a last +look at them before he set his face to the town, he prolonged the look in +a manner to indicate that the place where business called him was not in +comparison at all so pleasing: and just as little enjoyable were his +meditations opposed to predilections. Beauty plucked the heart from his +breast. But he had taken up arms; he had drunk of the questioning cup, +that which denieth peace to us, and which projects us upon the missionary +search of the How, the Wherefore, and the Why not, ever afterward. He +questioned his justification, and yours, for gratifying tastes in an ill- +regulated world of wrong-doing, suffering, sin, and bounties +unrighteously dispensed--not sufficiently dispersed. He said by-and-by +to pleasure, battle to-day. From his point of observation, and with the +store of ideas and images his fiery yet reflective youth had gathered, he +presented himself as it were saddled to that hard-riding force known as +the logical impetus, which spying its quarry over precipices, across +oceans and deserts, and through systems and webs, and into shops and +cabinets of costliest china, will come at it, will not be refused, let +the distances and the breakages be what they may. He went like the +meteoric man with the mechanical legs in the song, too quick for a cry of +protestation, and reached results amazing to his instincts, his tastes, +and his training, not less rapidly and naturally than tremendous Ergo is +shot forth from the clash of a syllogism. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +A PARTIAL DISPLAY OF BEAUCHAMP IN HIS COLOURS + +Beauchamp presented himself at Mount Laurels next day, and formally asked +Colonel Halkett for his vote, in the presence of Cecilia. + +She took it for a playful glance at his new profession of politician: he +spoke half-playfully. Was it possible to speak in earnest? + +'I 'm of the opposite party,' said the colonel; as conclusive a reply +as could be: but he at once fell upon the rotten navy of a Liberal +Government. How could a true sailor think of joining those Liberals! +The question referred to the country, not to a section of it, Beauchamp +protested with impending emphasis: Tories and Liberals were much the same +in regard to the care of the navy. 'Nevil!' exclaimed Cecilia. He cited +beneficial Liberal bills recently passed, which she accepted for a +concession of the navy to the Tories, and she smiled. In spite of her +dislike of politics, she had only to listen a few minutes to be drawn +into the contest: and thus it is that one hot politician makes many among +women and men of a people that have the genius of strife, or else in this +case the young lady did unconsciously feel a deep interest in refuting +and overcoming Nevil Beauchamp. Colonel Halkett denied the benefits of +those bills. 'Look,' said he, 'at the scarecrow plight of the army under +a Liberal Government!' This laid him open to the charge that he was for +backing Administrations instead of principles. + +'I do,' said the colonel. 'I would rather have a good Administration +than all your talk of principles: one's a fact, but principles? +principles?' He languished for a phrase to describe the hazy things. +'I have mine, and you have yours. It's like a dispute between religions. +There's no settling it except by main force. That's what principles lead +you to.' + +Principles may be hazy, but heavy artillery is disposable in defence of +them, and Beauchamp fired some reverberating guns for the eternal against +the transitory; with less of the gentlemanly fine taste, the light and +easy social semi-irony, than Cecilia liked and would have expected from +him. However, as to principles, no doubt Nevil was right, and Cecilia +drew her father to another position. 'Are not we Tories to have +principles as well as the Liberals, Nevil?' + +'They may have what they call principles,' he admitted, intent on +pursuing his advantage over the colonel, who said, to shorten the +controversy: 'It's a question of my vote, and my liking. I like a Tory +Government, and I don't like the Liberals. I like gentlemen; I don't +like a party that attacks everything, and beats up the mob for power, and +repays it with sops, and is dragging us down from all we were proud of.' + +'But the country is growing, the country wants expansion,' said +Beauchamp; 'and if your gentlemen by birth are not up to the mark, you +must have leaders that are.' + +'Leaders who cut down expenditure, to create a panic that doubles the +outlay! I know them.' + +'A panic, Nevil.' Cecilia threw stress on the memorable word. + +He would hear no reminder in it. The internal condition of the country +was now the point for seriously-minded Englishmen. + +'My dear boy, what have you seen of the country?' Colonel Halkett +inquired. + +'Every time I have landed, colonel, I have gone to the mining and the +manufacturing districts, the centres of industry; wherever there was +dissatisfaction. I have attended meetings, to see and hear for myself. +I have read the papers . . . .' + +'The papers!' + +'Well, they're the mirror of the country.' + +'Does one see everything in a mirror, Nevil?' said Cecilia: 'even in the +smoothest?' + +He retorted softly: 'I should be glad to see what you see,' and felled +her with a blush. + +For an example of the mirror offered by the Press, Colonel Halkett +touched on Mr. Timothy Turbot's article in eulogy of the great Commander +Beauchamp. 'Did you like it?' he asked. 'Ah, but if you meddle with +politics, you must submit to be held up on the prongs of a fork, my boy; +soaped by your backers and shaved by the foe; and there's a figure for a +gentleman! as your uncle Romfrey says.' + +Cecilia did not join this discussion, though she had heard from her +father that something grotesque had been written of Nevil. Her +foolishness in blushing vexed body and mind. She was incensed by a silly +compliment that struck at her feminine nature when her intellect stood in +arms. Yet more hurt was she by the reflection that a too lively +sensibility might have conjured up the idea of the compliment. And +again, she wondered at herself for not resenting so rare a presumption +as it implied, and not disdaining so outworn a form of flattery. She +wondered at herself too for thinking of resentment and disdain in +relation to the familiar commonplaces of licenced impertinence. Over all +which hung a darkened image of her spirit of independence, like a moon in +eclipse. + +Where lay his weakness? Evidently in the belief that he had thought +profoundly. But what minor item of insufficiency or feebleness was +discernible? She discovered that he could be easily fretted by similes +and metaphors they set him staggering and groping like an ancient knight +of faery in a forest bewitched. + +'Your specific for the country is, then, Radicalism,' she said, after +listening to an attack on the Tories for their want of a policy and +indifference to the union of classes. + +'I would prescribe a course of it, Cecilia; yes,' he turned to her. + +'The Dr. Dulcamara of a single drug?' + +'Now you have a name for me! Tory arguments always come to epithets.' + +'It should not be objectionable. Is it not honest to pretend to have +only one cure for mortal maladies? There can hardly be two panaceas, +can there be?' + +'So you call me quack?' + +'No, Nevil, no,' she breathed a rich contralto note of denial: 'but if +the country is the patient, and you will have it swallow your +prescription . . .' + +'There's nothing like a metaphor for an evasion,' said Nevil, blinking +over it. + +She drew him another analogy, longer than was at all necessary; so +tedious that her father struck through it with the remark: + +'Concerning that quack--that's one in the background, though!' + +'I know of none,' said Beauchamp, well-advised enough to forbear mention +of the name of Shrapnel. + +Cecilia petitioned that her stumbling ignorance, which sought the road of +wisdom, might be heard out. She had a reserve entanglement for her +argumentative friend. 'You were saying, Nevil, that you were for +principles rather than for individuals, and you instanced Mr. Cougham, +the senior Liberal candidate of Bevisham, as one whom you would prefer to +see in Parliament instead of Seymour Austin, though you confess to Mr. +Austin's far superior merits as a politician and servant of his country: +but Mr. Cougham supports Liberalism while Mr. Austin is a Tory. You are +for the principle.' + +'I am,' said he, bowing. + +She asked: 'Is not that equivalent to the doctrine of election by Grace?' + +Beauchamp interjected: 'Grace! election?' + +Cecilia was tender to his inability to follow her allusion. + +'Thou art a Liberal--then rise to membership,' she said. 'Accept my +creed, and thou art of the chosen. Yes, Nevil, you cannot escape from +it. Papa, he preaches Calvinism in politics.' + +'We stick to men, and good men,' the colonel flourished. 'Old English +for me!' + +'You might as well say, old timber vessels, when Iron's afloat, colonel.' + +'I suspect you have the worst of it there, papa,' said Cecilia, taken by +the unexpectedness and smartness of the comparison coming from wits that +she had been undervaluing. + +'I shall not own I'm worsted until I surrender my vote,' the colonel +rejoined. + +'I won't despair of it,' said Beauchamp. + +Colonel Halkett bade him come for it as often as he liked. You'll be +beaten in Bevisham, I warn you. Tory reckonings are safest: it's an +admitted fact: and we know you can't win. According to my judgement a +man owes a duty to his class.' + +'A man owes a duty to his class as long as he sees his class doing its +duty to the country,' said Beauchamp; and he added, rather prettily in +contrast with the sententious commencement, Cecilia thought, that the +apathy of his class was proved when such as he deemed it an obligation on +them to come forward and do what little they could. The deduction of the +proof was not clearly consequent, but a meaning was expressed; and in +that form it brought him nearer to her abstract idea of Nevil Beauchamp +than when he raged and was precise. + +After his departure she talked of him with her father, to be charitably +satirical over him, it seemed. + +The critic in her ear had pounced on his repetition of certain words that +betrayed a dialectical stiffness and hinted a narrow vocabulary: his use +of emphasis, rather reminding her of his uncle Everard, was, in a young +man, a little distressing. 'The apathy of the country, papa; the apathy +of the rich; a state of universal apathy. Will you inform me, papa, what +the Tories are doing? Do we really give our consciences to the keeping +of the parsons once a week, and let them dogmatize for us to save us from +exertion? We must attach ourselves to principles; nothing is permanent +but principles. Poor Nevil! And still I am sure you have, as I have, +the feeling that one must respect him. I am quite convinced that he +supposes he is doing his best to serve his country by trying for +Parliament, fancying himself a Radical. I forgot to ask him whether he +had visited his great-aunt, Mrs. Beauchamp. They say the dear old lady +has influence with him.' + +'I don't think he's been anywhere,' Colonel Halkett half laughed at the +quaint fellow. 'I wish the other great-nephew of hers were in England, +for us to run him against Nevil Beauchamp. He's touring the world. I'm +told he's orthodox, and a tough debater. We have to take what we can +get.' + +'My best wishes for your success, and you and I will not talk of politics +any more, papa. I hope Nevil will come often, for his own good; he will +meet his own set of people here. And if he should dogmatize so much as +to rouse our apathy to denounce his principles, we will remember that we +are British, and can be sweet-blooded in opposition. Perhaps he may +change, even tra le tre ore a le quattro: electioneering should be a +lesson. From my recollection of Blackburn Tuckham, he was a boisterous +boy.' + +'He writes uncommonly clever letters home to his aunt Beauchamp. She has +handed them to me to read,' said the colonel. 'I do like to see +tolerably solid young fellows: they give one some hope of the stability +of the country.' + +'They are not so interesting to study, and not half so amusing,' said +Cecilia. + +Colonel Halkett muttered his objections to the sort of amusement +furnished by firebrands. + +'Firebrand is too strong a word for poor Nevil,' she remonstrated. + +In that estimate of the character of Nevil Beauchamp, Cecilia soon had to +confess that she had been deceived, though not by him. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +HIS FRIEND AND FOE + +Looking from her window very early on a Sunday morning, Miss Halkett saw +Beauchamp strolling across the grass of the park. She dressed hurriedly +and went out to greet him, smiling and thanking him for his friendliness +in coming. + +He said he was delighted, and appeared so, but dashed the sweetness. +'You know I can't canvass on Sundays! + +'I suppose not,' she replied. 'Have you walked up from Bevisham? You +must be tired.' + +'Nothing tires me,' said he. + +With that they stepped on together. + +Mount Laurels, a fair broad house backed by a wood of beeches and firs, +lay open to view on the higher grassed knoll of a series of descending +turfy mounds dotted with gorseclumps, and faced South-westerly along the +run of the Otley river to the gleaming broad water and its opposite +border of forest, beyond which the downs of the island threw long +interlapping curves. Great ships passed on the line of the water to and +fro; and a little mist of masts of the fishing and coasting craft by +Otley village, near the river's mouth, was like a web in air. Cecilia +led him to her dusky wood of firs, where she had raised a bower for a +place of poetical contemplation and reading when the clear lapping salt +river beneath her was at high tide. She could hail the Esperanza from +that cover; she could step from her drawing-room window, over the flower- +beds, down the gravel walk to the hard, and be on board her yacht within +seven minutes, out on her salt-water lake within twenty, closing her +wings in a French harbour by nightfall of a summer's day, whenever she +had the whim to fly abroad. Of these enviable privileges she boasted +with some happy pride. + +'It's the finest yachting-station in England,' said Beauchamp. + +She expressed herself very glad that he should like it so much. +Unfortunately she added, 'I hope you will find it pleasanter to be here +than canvassing.' + +'I have no pleasure in canvassing,' said he. 'I canvass poor men +accustomed to be paid for their votes, and who get nothing from me but +what the baron would call a parsonical exhortation. I'm in the thick of +the most spiritless crew in the kingdom. Our southern men will not +compare with the men of the north. But still, even among these fellows, +I see danger for the country if our commerce were to fail, if distress +came on them. There's always danger in disunion. That's what the rich +won't see. They see simply nothing out of their own circle; and they +won't take a thought of the overpowering contrast between their luxury +and the way of living, that's half-starving, of the poor. They +understand it when fever comes up from back alleys and cottages, and then +they join their efforts to sweep the poor out of the district. The poor +are to get to their work anyhow, after a long morning's walk over the +proscribed space; for we must have poor, you know. The wife of a parson +I canvassed yesterday, said to me, "Who is to work for us, if you do away +with the poor, Captain Beauchamp?"' + +Cecilia quitted her bower and traversed the wood silently. + +'So you would blow up my poor Mount Laurels for a peace-offering to the +lower classes?' + +'I should hope to put it on a stronger foundation, Cecilia.' + +'By means of some convulsion?' + +'By forestalling one.' + +'That must be one of the new ironclads,' observed Cecilia, gazing at the +black smoke-pennon of a tower that slipped along the water-line. 'Yes? +You were saying? Put us on a stronger----?' + +'It's, I think, the Hastings: she broke down the other day on her trial +trip,' said Beauchamp, watching the ship's progress animatedly. 'Peppel +commands her--a capital officer. I suppose we must have these costly big +floating barracks. I don't like to hear of everything being done for the +defensive. The defensive is perilous policy in war. It's true, the +English don't wake up to their work under half a year. But, no: +defending and looking to defences is bad for the fighting power; and +there's half a million gone on that ship. Half a million! Do you know +how many poor taxpayers it takes to make up that sum, Cecilia?' + +'A great many,' she slurred over them; 'but we must have big ships, and +the best that are to be had.' + +'Powerful fast rams, sea-worthy and fit for running over shallows, +carrying one big gun; swarms of harryers and worriers known to be kept +ready for immediate service; readiness for the offensive in case of war +--there's the best defence against a declaration of war by a foreign +State.' + +'I like to hear you, Nevil,' said Cecilia, beaming: 'Papa thinks we have +a miserable army--in numbers. He says, the wealthier we become the more +difficult it is to recruit able-bodied men on the volunteering system. +Yet the wealthier we are the more an army is wanted, both to defend our +wealth and to preserve order. I fancy he half inclines to compulsory +enlistment. Do speak to him on that subject.' + +Cecilia must have been innocent of a design to awaken the fire-flash in +Nevil's eyes. She had no design, but hostility was latent, and hence +perhaps the offending phrase. + +He nodded and spoke coolly. 'An army to preserve order? So, then, an +army to threaten civil war!' + +'To crush revolutionists.' + +'Agitators, you mean. My dear good old colonel--I have always loved him +--must not have more troops at his command.' + +'Do you object to the drilling of the whole of the people?' + +'Does not the colonel, Cecilia? I am sure he does in his heart, and, for +different reasons, I do. He won't trust the working-classes, nor I the +middle.' + +'Does Dr. Shrapnel hate the middle-class?' + +'Dr. Shrapnel cannot hate. He and I are of opinion, that as the middle- +class are the party in power, they would not, if they knew the use of +arms, move an inch farther in Reform, for they would no longer be in fear +of the class below them.' + +'But what horrible notions of your country have you, Nevil! It is +dreadful to hear. Oh! do let us avoid politics for ever. Fear!' + +'All concessions to the people have been won from fear.' + +'I have not heard so.' + +'I will read it to you in the History of England.' + +'You paint us in a condition of Revolution.' + +'Happily it's not a condition unnatural to us. The danger would be in +not letting it be progressive, and there's a little danger too at times +in our slowness. We change our blood or we perish.' + +'Dr. Shrapnel?' + +'Yes, I have heard Dr. Shrapnel say that. And, by-the-way, Cecilia--will +you? can you?--take me for the witness to his character. He is the most +guileless of men, and he's the most unguarded. My good Rosamund saw him. +She is easily prejudiced when she is a trifle jealous, and you may hear +from her that he rambles, talks wildly. It may seem so. I maintain +there is wisdom in him when conventional minds would think him at his +wildest. Believe me, he is the humanest, the best of men, tenderhearted +as a child: the most benevolent, simple-minded, admirable old man--the +man I am proudest to think of as an Englishman and a man living in my +time, of all men existing. I can't overpraise him.' + +'He has a bad reputation.' + +'Only with the class that will not meet him and answer him.' + +'Must we invite him to our houses?' + +'It would be difficult to get him to come, if you did. I mean, meet him +in debate and answer his arguments. Try the question by brains.' + +'Before mobs?' + +'Not before mobs. I punish you by answering you seriously.' + +'I am sensible of the flattery.' + +'Before mobs!' Nevil ejaculated. 'It's the Tories that mob together and +cry down every man who appears to them to threaten their privileges. Can +you guess what Dr. Shrapnel compares them to?' + +'Indeed, Nevil, I have not an idea. I only wish your patriotism were +large enough to embrace them.' + +'He compares them to geese claiming possession of the whole common, and +hissing at every foot of ground they have to yield. They're always +having to retire and always hissing. "Retreat and menace," that's the +motto for them.' + +'Very well, Nevil, I am a goose upon a common.' + +So saying, Cecilia swam forward like a swan on water to give the morning +kiss to her papa, by the open window of the breakfast-room. + +Never did bird of Michaelmas fling off water from her feathers more +thoroughly than this fair young lady the false title she pretended to +assume. + +'I hear you're of the dinner party at Grancey Lespel's on Wednesday,' +the colonel said to Beauchamp. 'You'll have to stand fire.' + +'They will, papa,' murmured Cecilia. 'Will Mr. Austin be there?' + +'I particularly wish to meet Mr. Austin,' said Beauchamp. + +'Listen to him, if you do meet him,' she replied. + +His look was rather grave. + +'Lespel 's a Whig,' he said. + +The colonel answered. 'Lespel was a Whig. Once a Tory always a Tory,-- +but court the people and you're on quicksands, and that's where the Whigs +are. What he is now I don't think he knows himself. You won't get a +vote.' + +Cecilia watched her friend Nevil recovering from his short fit of gloom. +He dismissed politics at breakfast and grew companionable, with the charm +of his earlier day. He was willing to accompany her to church too. + +'You will hear a long sermon,' she warned him. + +'Forty minutes.' Colonel Halkett smothered a yawn that was both retro +and prospective. + +'It has been fifty, papa.' + +'It has been an hour, my dear.' + +It was good discipline nevertheless, the colonel affirmed, and Cecilia +praised the Rev. Mr. Brisk of Urplesdon vicarage as one of our few +remaining Protestant clergymen. + +'Then he ought to be supported,' said Beauchamp. 'In the dissensions of +religious bodies it is wise to pat the weaker party on the back--I quote +Stukely Culbrett.' + +'I 've heard him,' sighed the colonel. 'He calls the Protestant clergy +the social police of the English middle-class. Those are the things he +lets fly. I have heard that man say that the Church stands to show the +passion of the human race for the drama. He said it in my presence. And +there 's a man who calls himself a Tory + +You have rather too much of that playing at grudges and dislikes at +Steynham, with squibs, nicknames, and jests at things that--well, that +our stability is bound up in. I hate squibs.' + +'And I,' said Beauchamp. Some shadow of a frown crossed him; but Stukely +Culbrett's humour seemed to be a refuge. 'Protestant parson-not clergy,' +he corrected the colonel. 'Can't you hear Mr. Culbrett, Cecilia? The +Protestant parson is the policeman set to watch over the respectability +of the middle-class. He has sharp eyes for the sins of the poor. As for +the rich, they support his church; they listen to his sermon--to set an +example: discipline, colonel. You discipline the tradesman, who's afraid +of losing your custom, and the labourer, who might be deprived of his +bread. But the people? It's put down to the wickedness of human nature +that the parson has not got hold of the people. The parsons have lost +them by senseless Conservatism, because they look to the Tories for the +support of their Church, and let the religion run down the gutters. And +how many thousands have you at work in the pulpit every Sunday? I'm told +the Dissenting ministers have some vitality.' + +Colonel Halkett shrugged with disgust at the mention of Dissenters. + +'And those thirty or forty thousand, colonel, call the men that do the +work they ought to be doing demagogues. The parsonry are a power +absolutely to be counted for waste, as to progress.' + +Cecilia perceived that her father was beginning to be fretted. + +She said, with a tact that effected its object: 'I am one who hear Mr. +Culbrett without admiring his wit.' + +'No, and I see no good in this kind of Steynham talk,' Colonel Halkett +said, rising. 'We're none of us perfect. Heaven save us from political +parsons!' + +Beauchamp was heard to utter, 'Humanity.' + +The colonel left the room with Cecilia, muttering the Steynham tail to +that word: 'tomtity,' for the solace of an aside repartee. + +She was on her way to dress for church. He drew her into the library, +and there threw open a vast placard lying on the table. It was printed +in blue characters and red. 'This is what I got by the post this +morning. I suppose Nevil knows about it. He wants tickling, but I don't +like this kind of thing. It 's not fair war. It 's as bad as using +explosive bullets in my old game.' + +'Can he expect his adversaries to be tender with him?' Cecilia simulated +vehemence in an underbreath. She glanced down the page: + +'FRENCH MARQUEES' caught her eye. + +It was a page of verse. And, oh! could it have issued from a Tory +Committee? + +'The Liberals are as bad, and worse,' her father said. + +She became more and more distressed. 'It seems so very mean, papa; so +base. Ungenerous is no word for it. And how vulgar! Now I remember, +Nevil said he wished to see Mr. Austin.' + +'Seymour Austin would not sanction it.' + +'No, but Nevil might hold him responsible for it.' + +'I suspect Mr. Stukely Culbrett, whom he quotes, and that smoking-room +lot at Lespel's. I distinctly discountenance it. So I shall tell them +on Wednesday night. Can you keep a secret?' + +'And after all Nevil Beauchamp is very young, papa!--of course I can keep +a secret.' + +The colonel exacted no word of honour, feeling quite sure of her. + +He whispered the secret in six words, and her cheeks glowed vermilion. + +'But they will meet on Wednesday after this,' she said, and her sight +went dancing down the column of verse, of which the following trotting +couplet is a specimen:-- + + 'O did you ever, hot in love, a little British middy see, + Like Orpheus asking what the deuce to do without Eurydice?' + +The middy is jilted by his FRENCH MARQUEES, whom he 'did adore,' and in +his wrath he recommends himself to the wealthy widow Bevisham, concerning +whose choice of her suitors there is a doubt: but the middy is encouraged +to persevere: + + 'Up, up, my pretty middy; take a draught of foaming Sillery; + Go in and win the uriddy with your Radical artillery.' + +And if Sillery will not do, he is advised, he being for superlatives, +to try the sparkling Sillery of the Radical vintage, selected grapes. + +This was but impudent nonsense. But the reiterated apostrophe to +'MY FRENCH MARQUEES' was considered by Cecilia to be a brutal offence. + +She was shocked that her party should have been guilty of it. Nevil +certainly provoked, and he required, hard blows; and his uncle Everard +might be right in telling her father that they were the best means of +teaching him to come to his understanding. Still a foul and stupid squib +did appear to her a debasing weapon to use. + +'I cannot congratulate you on your choice of a second candidate, papa,' +she said scornfully. + +'I don't much congratulate myself,' said the colonel. + +'Here's a letter from Mrs. Beauchamp informing me that her boy Blackburn +will be home in a month. There would have been plenty of time for him. +However, we must make up our minds to it. Those two 'll be meeting on +Wednesday, so keep your secret. It will be out tomorrow week.' + +'But Nevil will be accusing Mr. Austin.' + +'Austin won't be at Lespel's. And he must bear it, for the sake of +peace.' + +'Is Nevil ruined with his uncle, papa?' + +'Not a bit, I should imagine. It's Romfrey's fun.' + +'And this disgraceful squib is a part of the fun?' + +'That I know nothing about, my dear. I'm sorry, but there's pitch and +tar in politics as well as on shipboard.' + +'I do not see that there should be,' said Cecilia resolutely. + +'We can't hope to have what should be.' + +'Why not? I would have it: I would do my utmost to have it,' she flamed +out. + +'Your utmost?' Her father was glancing at her foregone mimicry of +Beauchamp's occasional strokes of emphasis. 'Do your utmost to have your +bonnet on in time for us to walk to church. I can't bear driving there.' + +Cecilia went to her room with the curious reflection, awakened by what +her father had chanced to suggest to her mind, that she likewise could be +fervid, positive, uncompromising--who knows? Radicalish, perhaps, when +she looked eye to eye on an evil. For a moment or so she espied within +herself a gulf of possibilities, wherein black night-birds, known as +queries, roused by shot of light, do flap their wings.--Her utmost to +have be what should be! And why not? + +But the intemperate feeling subsided while she was doing duty before her +mirror, and the visionary gulf closed immediately. + +She had merely been very angry on Nevil Beauchamp's behalf, and had dimly +seen that a woman can feel insurgent, almost revolutionary, for a +personal cause, Tory though her instinct of safety and love of smoothness +make her. + +No reflection upon this casual piece of self or sex revelation troubled +her head. She did, however, think of her position as the friend of Nevil +in utter antagonism to him. It beset her with contradictions that blew +rough on her cherished serenity; for she was of the order of ladies who, +by virtue of their pride and spirit, their port and their beauty, decree +unto themselves the rank of princesses among women, before our world has +tried their claim to it. She had lived hitherto in upper air, high above +the clouds of earth. Her ideal of a man was of one similarly disengaged +and lofty-loftier. Nevil, she could honestly say, was not her ideal; +he was only her old friend, and she was opposed to him in his present +adventure. The striking at him to cure him of his mental errors and +excesses was an obligation; she could descend upon him calmly with the +chastening rod, pointing to the better way; but the shielding of him was +a different thing; it dragged her down so low, that in her condemnation +of the Tory squib she found herself asking herself whether haply Nevil +had flung off the yoke of the French lady; with the foolish excuse for +the question, that if he had not, he must be bitterly sensitive to the +slightest public allusion to her. Had he? And if not, how desperately +faithful he was! or else how marvellously seductive she! + +Perhaps it was a lover's despair that had precipitated him into the mire +of politics. She conceived the impression that it must be so, and +throughout the day she had an inexplicable unsweet pleasure in inciting +him to argumentation and combating him, though she was compelled to admit +that he had been colloquially charming antecedent to her naughty +provocation; and though she was indebted to him for his patient decorum +under the weary wave of the Reverend Mr. Brisk. Now what does it matter +what a woman thinks in politics? But he deemed it of great moment. +Politically, he deemed that women have souls, a certain fire of life for +exercise on earth. He appealed to reason in them; he would not hear of +convictions. He quoted the Bevisham doctor + +'Convictions are generally first impressions that are sealed with later +prejudices,' and insisted there was wisdom in it. Nothing tired him, as +he had said, and addressing woman or man, no prospect of fatigue or of +hopeless effort daunted him in the endeavour to correct an error of +judgement in politics--his notion of an error. The value he put upon +speaking, urging his views, was really fanatical. It appeared that he +canvassed the borough from early morning till near midnight, and nothing +would persuade him that his chance was poor; nothing that an entrenched +Tory like her father, was not to be won even by an assault of all the +reserve forces of Radical pathos, prognostication, and statistics. + +Only conceive Nevil Beauchamp knocking at doors late at night, the sturdy +beggar of a vote! or waylaying workmen, as he confessed without shame +that he had done, on their way trooping to their midday meal; penetrating +malodoriferous rooms of dismal ten-pound cottagers, to exhort bedraggled +mothers and babes, and besotted husbands; and exposed to rebuffs from +impertinent tradesmen; and lampooned and travestied, shouting speeches to +roaring men, pushed from shoulder to shoulder of the mob! . . . + +Cecilia dropped a curtain on her mind's picture of him. But the blinding +curtain rekindled the thought that the line he had taken could not but be +the desperation of a lover abandoned. She feared it was, she feared it +was not. Nevil Beauchamp's foe persisted in fearing that it was not; his +friend feared that it was. Yet why? For if it was, then he could not be +quite in earnest, and might be cured. Nay, but earnestness works out its +own cure more surely than frenzy, and it should be preferable to think +him sound of heart, sincere though mistaken. Cecilia could not decide +upon what she dared wish for his health's good. Friend and foe were not +further separable within her bosom than one tick from another of a clock; +they changed places, and next his friend was fearing what his foe had +feared: they were inextricable. + +Why had he not sprung up on a radiant aquiline ambition, whither one +might have followed him, with eyes and prayers for him, if it was not +possible to do so companionably? At present, in the shape of a +canvassing candidate, it was hardly honourable to let imagination dwell +on him, save compassionately. + +When he rose to take his leave, Cecilia said, 'Must you go to Itchincope +on Wednesday, Nevil?' + +Colonel Halkett added: 'I don't think I would go to Lespel's if I were +you. I rather suspect Seymour Austin will be coming on Wednesday, and +that 'll detain me here, and you might join us and lend him an ear for an +evening.' + +'I have particular reasons for going to Lespel's; I hear he wavers toward +a Tory conspiracy of some sort,' said Beauchamp. + +The colonel held his tongue. + +The untiring young candidate chose to walk down to Bevisham at eleven +o'clock at night, that he might be the readier to continue his canvass of +the borough on Monday morning early. He was offered a bed or a +conveyance, and he declined both; the dog-cart he declined out of +consideration for horse and groom, which an owner of stables could not +but approve. + +Colonel Halkett broke into exclamations of pity for so good a young +fellow so misguided. + +The night was moonless, and Cecilia, looking through the window, said +whimsically, 'He has gone out into the darkness, and is no light in it!' + +Certainly none shone. She however carried a lamp that revealed him +footing on with a wonderful air of confidence, and she was rather +surprised to hear her father regret that Nevil Beauchamp should be losing +his good looks already, owing to that miserable business of his in +Bevisham. She would have thought the contrary, that he was looking as +well as ever. + +'He dresses just as he used to dress,' she observed. + +The individual style of a naval officer of breeding, in which you see +neatness trifling with disorder, or disorder plucking at neatness, like +the breeze a trim vessel, had been caught to perfection by Nevil +Beauchamp, according to Cecilia. It presented him to her mind in a +cheerful and a very undemocratic aspect, but in realizing it, the +thought, like something flashing black, crossed her--how attractive such +a style must be to a Frenchwoman! + +'He may look a little worn,' she acquiesced. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +CONCERNING THE ACT OF CANVASSING + +Tories dread the restlessness of Radicals, and Radicals are in awe of the +organization of Tories. Beauchamp thought anxiously of the high degree +of confidence existing in the Tory camp, whose chief could afford to keep +aloof, while he slaved all day and half the night to thump ideas into +heads, like a cooper on a cask:--an impassioned cooper on an empty cask! +if such an image is presentable. Even so enviously sometimes the writer +and the barrister, men dependent on their active wits, regard the man +with a business fixed in an office managed by clerks. That man seems by +comparison celestially seated. But he has his fits of trepidation; for +new tastes prevail and new habits are formed, and the structure of his +business will not allow him to adapt himself to them in a minute. The +secure and comfortable have to pay in occasional panics for the serenity +they enjoy. Mr. Seymour Austin candidly avowed to Colonel Halkett, on +his arrival at Mount Laurels, that he was advised to take up his quarters +in the neighbourhood of Bevisham by a recent report of his committee, +describing the young Radical's canvass as redoubtable. Cougham he did +not fear: he could make a sort of calculation of the votes for the +Liberal thumping on the old drum of Reform; but the number for him who +appealed to feelings and quickened the romantic sentiments of the common +people now huddled within our electoral penfold, was not calculable. +Tory and Radical have an eye for one another, which overlooks the Liberal +at all times except when he is, as they imagine, playing the game of +either of them. + +'Now we shall see the passions worked,' Mr. Austin said, deploring the +extension of the franchise. + +He asked whether Beauchamp spoke well. + +Cecilia left it to her father to reply; but the colonel appealed to her, +saying, 'Inclined to dragoon one, isn't he?' + +She did not think that. 'He speaks . . . he speaks well in +conversation. I fancy he would be liked by the poor. I should doubt his +being a good public speaker. He certainly has command of his temper: +that is one thing. I cannot say whether it favours oratory. He is +indefatigable. One may be sure he will not faint by the way. He quite +believes in himself. But, Mr. Austin, do you really regard him as a +serious rival?' + +Mr. Austin could not tell. No one could tell the effect of an extended +franchise. The untried venture of it depressed him. 'Men have come +suddenly on a borough before now and carried it,' he said. + +'Not a borough like Bevisham?' + +He shook his head. 'A fluid borough, I'm afraid.' + +Colonel Halkettt interposed: 'But Ferbrass is quite sure of his +district.' + +Cecilia wished to know who the man was, of the mediaevally sounding name. + +'Ferbrass is an old lawyer, my dear. He comes of five generations of +lawyers, and he 's as old in the county as Grancey Lespel. Hitherto he +has always been to be counted on for marching his district to the poll +like a regiment. That's our strength--the professions, especially +lawyers.' + +'Are not a great many lawyers Liberals, papa?' + +'A great many barristers are, my dear.' + +Thereat the colonel and Mr. Austin smiled together. + +It was a new idea to Cecilia that Nevil Beauchamp should be considered by +a man of the world anything but a well-meaning, moderately ridiculous +young candidate; and the fact that one so experienced as Seymour Austin +deemed him an adversary to be grappled with in earnest, created a small +revolution in her mind, entirely altering her view of the probable +pliability of his Radicalism under pressure of time and circumstances. +Many of his remarks, that she had previously half smiled at, came across +her memory hard as metal. She began to feel some terror of him, and +said, to reassure herself: 'Captain Beauchamp is not likely to be a +champion with a very large following. He is too much of a political +mystic, I think.' + +'Many young men are, before they have written out a fair copy of their +meaning,' said Mr. Austin. + +Cecilia laughed to herself at the vision of the fiery Nevil engaged in +writing out a fair copy of his meaning. How many erasures! what foot- +notes! + +The arrangement was for Cecilia to proceed to Itchincope alone for a +couple of days, and bring a party to Mount Laurels through Bevisham by +the yacht on Thursday, to meet Mr. Seymour Austin and Mr. Everard +Romfrey. An early day of the next week had been agreed on for the +unmasking of the second Tory candidate. She promised that in case Nevil +Beauchamp should have the hardihood to enter the enemy's nest at +Itchincope on Wednesday, at the great dinner and ball there, she would do +her best to bring him back to Mount Laurels, that he might meet his uncle +Everard, who was expected there. At least he may consent to come for an +evening,' she said. 'Nothing will take him from that canvassing. It +seems to me it must be not merely distasteful . . . ?' + +Mr. Austin replied: 'It 's disagreeable, but it's' the practice. I would +gladly be bound by a common undertaking to abstain.' + +'Captain Beauchamp argues that it would be all to your advantage. He +says that a personal visit is the only chance for an unknown candidate to +make the people acquainted with him.' + +'It's a very good opportunity for making him acquainted with them; and I +hope he may profit by it.' + +'Ah! pah! "To beg the vote and wink the bribe,"' Colonel Halkett +subjoined abhorrently: + + "'It well becomes the Whiggish tribe + To beg the vote and wink the bribe." + +Canvassing means intimidation or corruption.' + +'Or the mixture of the two, called cajolery,' said Mr. Austin; 'and that +was the principal art of the Whigs.' + +Thus did these gentlemen converse upon canvassing. + +It is not possible to gather up in one volume of sound the rattle of the +knocks at Englishmen's castle-gates during election days; so, with the +thunder of it unheard, the majesty of the act of canvassing can be but +barely appreciable, and he, therefore, who would celebrate it must follow +the candidate obsequiously from door to door, where, like a cross between +a postman delivering a bill and a beggar craving an alms, patiently he +attempts the extraction of the vote, as little boys pick periwinkles with +a pin. + +'This is your duty, which I most abjectly entreat you to do,' is pretty +nearly the form of the supplication. + +How if, instead of the solicitation of the thousands by the unit, the +meritorious unit were besought by rushing thousands?--as a mound of the +plains that is circumvented by floods, and to which the waters cry, Be +thou our island. Let it be answered the questioner, with no discourteous +adjectives, Thou fool! To come to such heights of popular discrimination +and political ardour the people would have to be vivified to a pitch +little short of eruptive: it would be Boreas blowing AEtna inside them; +and we should have impulse at work in the country, and immense importance +attaching to a man's whether he will or he won't--enough to womanize him. +We should be all but having Parliament for a sample of our choicest +rather than our likest: and see you not a peril in that? + +Conceive, for the fleeting instants permitted to such insufferable +flights of fancy, our picked men ruling! So despotic an oligarchy as +would be there, is not a happy subject of contemplation. It is not too +much to say that a domination of the Intellect in England would at once +and entirely alter the face of the country. We should be governed by the +head with a vengeance: all the rest of the country being base members +indeed; Spartans--helots. Criticism, now so helpful to us, would wither +to the root: fun would die out of Parliament, and outside of it: we could +never laugh at our masters, or command them: and that good old-fashioned +shouldering of separate interests, which, if it stops progress, like a +block in the pit entrance to a theatre, proves us equal before the law, +puts an end to the pretence of higher merit in the one or the other, and +renders a stout build the safest assurance for coming through ultimately, +would be transformed to a painful orderliness, like a City procession +under the conduct of the police, and to classifications of things +according to their public value: decidedly no benefit to burly freedom. +None, if there were no shouldering and hustling, could tell whether +actually the fittest survived; as is now the case among survivors +delighting in a broad-chested fitness. + +And consider the freezing isolation of a body of our quintessential +elect, seeing below them none to resemble them! Do you not hear in +imagination the land's regrets for that amiable nobility whose +pretensions were comically built on birth, acres, tailoring, style, and +an air? Ah, that these unchallengeable new lords could be exchanged for +those old ones! These, with the traditions of how great people should +look in our country, these would pass among us like bergs of ice--a pure +Polar aristocracy, inflicting the woes of wintriness upon us. Keep them +from concentrating! At present I believe it to be their honest opinion, +their wise opinion, and the sole opinion common to a majority of them, +that it is more salutary, besides more diverting, to have the fools of +the kingdom represented than not. As professors of the sarcastic art +they can easily take the dignity out of the fools' representative at +their pleasure, showing him at antics while he supposes he is exhibiting +an honourable and a decent series of movements. Generally, too, their +archery can check him when he is for any of his measures; and if it does +not check, there appears to be such a property in simple sneering, that +it consoles even when it fails to right the balance of power. Sarcasm, +we well know, confers a title of aristocracy straightway and sharp on the +sconce of the man who does but imagine that he is using it. What, then, +must be the elevation of these princes of the intellect in their own +minds! Hardly worth bartering for worldly commanderships, it is evident. + +Briefly, then, we have a system, not planned but grown, the outcome and +image of our genius, and all are dissatisfied with parts of it; but, as +each would preserve his own, the surest guarantee is obtained for the +integrity of the whole by a happy adjustment of the energies of +opposition, which--you have only to look to see--goes far beyond concord +in the promotion of harmony. This is our English system; like our +English pudding, a fortuitous concourse of all the sweets in the grocer's +shop, but an excellent thing for all that, and let none threaten it. +Canvassing appears to be mixed up in the system; at least I hope I have +shown that it will not do to reverse the process, for fear of changes +leading to a sovereignty of the austere and antipathetic Intellect in our +England, that would be an inaccessible tyranny of a very small minority, +necessarily followed by tremendous convulsions. + + + + +ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + +A dash of conventionalism makes the whole civilized world kin +Aimlessness of a woman's curiosity +All concessions to the people have been won from fear +Appealed to reason in them; he would not hear of convictions +Automatic creature is subject to the laws of its construction +Beautiful servicelessness +Canvassing means intimidation or corruption +Comfortable have to pay in occasional panics for the serenity +Consult the family means--waste your time +Convictions are generally first impressions +Country can go on very well without so much speech-making +Crazy zigzag of policy in almost every stroke (of history) +Dialectical stiffness +Effort to be reticent concerning Nevil, and communicative +Give our consciences to the keeping of the parsons +Hates a compromise +Man owes a duty to his class +Mark of a fool to take everybody for a bigger fool than himself +Martyrs of love or religion are madmen +Never pretend to know a girl by her face +No stopping the Press while the people have an appetite for it +Oratory will not work against the stream, or on languid tides +Parliament, is the best of occupations for idle men +Protestant clergy the social police of the English middle-class +The defensive is perilous policy in war +The family view is everlastingly the shopkeeper's +The infant candidate delights in his honesty +There is no first claim +There's nothing like a metaphor for an evasion +They're always having to retire and always hissing +Those happy men who enjoy perceptions without opinions +Those whose humour consists of a readiness to laugh +Threatened powerful drugs for weak stomachs +To beg the vote and wink the bribe +We can't hope to have what should be +We have a system, not planned but grown +World cannot pardon a breach of continuity + + + + +End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Beauchamp's Career, v2 +by George Meredith + + + + + + +BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER + +By GEORGE MEREDITH + +1897 + + + +BOOK 3. +XIX. LORD PALMET, AND CERTAIN ELECTORS +XX. A DAY AT ITCHINCOPE +XXI. THE QUESTION AS TO THE EXAMINATION OF THE WHIGS, + AND THE FINE BLOW STRUCK BY MR. EVERARD ROMFREY +XXII. THE DRIVE INTO BEVISHAM +XXIII. TOURDESTELLE +XXIV. HIS HOLIDAY +XXV. THE ADVENTURE OF THE BOAT + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +LORD PALMET, AND CERTAIN ELECTORS OF BEVISHAM + +Meantime the candidates raised knockers, rang bells, bowed, expounded +their views, praised their virtues, begged for votes, and greatly and +strangely did the youngest of them enlarge his knowledge of his +countrymen. But he had an insatiable appetite, and except in relation to +Mr. Cougham, considerable tolerance. With Cougham, he was like a young +hound in the leash. They had to run as twins; but Beauchamp's conjunct +would not run, he would walk. He imposed his experience on Beauchamp, +with an assumption that it must necessarily be taken for the law of +Beauchamp's reason in electoral and in political affairs, and this was +hard on Beauchamp, who had faith in his reason. Beauchamp's early +canvassing brought Cougham down to Bevisham earlier than usual in the +days when he and Seymour Austin divided the borough, and he inclined to +administer correction to the Radically-disposed youngster. 'Yes, I have +gone all over that,' he said, in speech sometimes, in manner perpetually, +upon the intrusion of an idea by his junior. Cougham also, Cougham had +passed through his Radical phase, as one does on the road to wisdom. +So the frog telleth tadpoles: he too has wriggled most preposterous of +tails; and he has shoved a circular flat head into corners unadapted to +its shape; and that the undeveloped one should dutifully listen to +experience and accept guidance, is devoutly to be hoped. Alas! +Beauchamp would not be taught that though they were yoked they stood at +the opposite ends of the process of evolution. + +The oddly coupled pair deplored, among their respective friends, the +disastrous Siamese twinship created by a haphazard improvident Liberal +camp. Look at us! they said:--Beauchamp is a young demagogue; Cougham +is chrysalis Tory. Such Liberals are the ruin of Liberalism; but of such +must it be composed when there is no new cry to loosen floods. It was +too late to think of an operation to divide them. They held the heart of +the cause between them, were bound fast together, and had to go on. +Beauchamp, with a furious tug of Radicalism, spoken or performed, pulled +Cougham on his beam-ends. Cougham, to right himself, defined his +Liberalism sharply from the politics of the pit, pointed to France and +her Revolutions, washed his hands of excesses, and entirely overset +Beauchamp. Seeing that he stood in the Liberal interest, the junior +could not abandon the Liberal flag; so he seized it and bore it ahead of +the time, there where Radicals trip their phantom dances like shadows on +a fog, and waved it as the very flag of our perfectible race. So great +was the impetus that Cougham had no choice but to step out with him +briskly--voluntarily as a man propelled by a hand on his coat-collar. +A word saved him: the word practical. 'Are we practical?' he inquired, +and shivered Beauchamp's galloping frame with a violent application of +the stop abrupt; for that question, 'Are we practical?' penetrates the +bosom of an English audience, and will surely elicit a response if not. +plaudits. Practical or not, the good people affectingly wish to be +thought practical. It has been asked by them + +If we're not practical, what are we?--Beauchamp, talking to Cougham +apart, would argue that the daring and the far-sighted course was often +the most practical. Cougham extended a deprecating hand: 'Yes, I have +gone over all that.' Occasionally he was maddening. + +The melancholy position of the senior and junior Liberals was known +abroad and matter of derision. + +It happened that the gay and good-humoured young Lord Palmet, heir to the +earldom of Elsea, walking up the High Street of Bevisham, met Beauchamp +on Tuesday morning as he sallied out of his hotel to canvass. Lord +Palmet was one of the numerous half-friends of Cecil Baskelett, and it +may be a revelation of his character to you, that he owned to liking +Beauchamp because of his having always been a favourite with the women. +He began chattering, with Beauchamp's hand in his: 'I've hit on you, have +I? My dear fellow, Miss Halkett was talking of you last night. +I slept at Mount Laurels; went on purpose to have a peep. I'm bound +for Itchincope. They've some grand procession in view there; Lespel +wrote for my team; I suspect he's for starting some new October races. +He talks of half-a-dozen drags. He must have lots of women there. +I say, what a splendid creature Cissy Halkett has shot up! She topped +the season this year, and will next. You're for the darkies, Beauchamp. +So am I, when I don't see a blonde; just as a fellow admires a girl when +there's no married woman or widow in sight. And, I say, it can't be true +you've gone in for that crazy Radicalism? There's nothing to be gained +by it, you know; the women hate it! A married blonde of five-and- +twenty's the Venus of them all. Mind you, I don't forget that Mrs. +Wardour-Devereux is a thorough-paced brunette; but, upon my honour, I'd +bet on Cissy Halkett at forty. "A dark eye in woman," if you like, but +blue and auburn drive it into a corner.' + +Lord Palmet concluded by asking Beauchamp what he was doing and whither +going. + +Beauchamp proposed to him maliciously, as one of our hereditary +legislators, to come and see something of canvassing. Lord Palmet had no +objection. 'Capital opportunity for a review of their women,' he +remarked. + +'I map the places for pretty women in England; some parts of Norfolk, and +a spot or two in Cumberland and Wales, and the island over there, I know +thoroughly. Those Jutes have turned out some splendid fair women. +Devonshire's worth a tour. My man Davis is in charge of my team, and he +drives to Itchincope from Washwater station. I am independent; I 'll +have an hour with you. Do you think much of the women here?' + +Beauchamp had not noticed them. + +Palmet observed that he should not have noticed anything else. + +'But you are qualifying for the Upper House,' Beauchamp said in the tone +of an encomium. + +Palmet accepted the statement. 'Though I shall never care to figure +before peeresses,' he said. 'I can't tell you why. There's a heavy +sprinkling of the old bird among them. It isn't that. There's too much +plumage; I think it must be that. A cloud of millinery shoots me off a +mile from a woman. In my opinion, witches are the only ones for wearing +jewels without chilling the feminine atmosphere about them. Fellows +think differently.' Lord Palmet waved a hand expressive of purely +amiable tolerance, for this question upon the most important topic of +human affairs was deep, and no judgement should be hasty in settling it. +'I'm peculiar,' he resumed. 'A rose and a string of pearls: a woman who +goes beyond that's in danger of petrifying herself and her fellow man. +Two women in Paris, last winter, set us on fire with pale thin gold +ornaments--neck, wrists, ears, ruche, skirts, all in a flutter, and so +were you. But you felt witchcraft. "The magical Orient," Vivian Ducie +called the blonde, and the dark beauty, "Young Endor."' + +'Her name?' said Beauchamp. + +'A marquise; I forget her name. The other was Countess Rastaglione; you +must have heard of her; a towering witch, an empress, Helen of Troy; +though Ducie would have it the brunette was Queen of Paris. For French +taste, if you like.' + +Countess Rastaglione was a lady enamelled on the scroll of Fame. 'Did +you see them together?' said Beauchamp. 'They weren't together?' + +Palmet looked at him and laughed. 'You're yourself again, are you? Go +to Paris in January, and cut out the Frenchmen.' + +'Answer me, Palmet: they weren't in couples?' + +'I fancy not. It was luck to meet them, so they couldn't have been.' + +'Did you dance with either of them?' + +Unable to state accurately that he had, Palmet cried, 'Oh! for dancing, +the Frenchwoman beat the Italian.' + +'Did you see her often--more than once?' + +'My dear fellow, I went everywhere to see her: balls, theatres, +promenades, rides, churches.' + +'And you say she dressed up to the Italian, to challenge her, rival her?' + +'Only one night; simple accident. Everybody noticed it, for they stood +for Night and Day,--both hung with gold; the brunette Etruscan, and the +blonde Asiatic; and every Frenchman present was epigramizing up and down +the rooms like mad.' + +'Her husband 's Legitimist; he wouldn't be at the Tuileries?' Beauchamp +spoke half to himself. + +'What, then, what?' Palmet stared and chuckled. 'Her husband must have +taken the Tuileries' bait, if we mean the same woman. My dear old +Beauchamp, have I seen her, then? She's a darling! The Rastaglione was +nothing to her. When you do light on a grand smoky pearl, the milky ones +may go and decorate plaster. That's what I say of the loveliest +brunettes. It must be the same: there can't be a couple of dark beauties +in Paris without a noise about them. Marquise--? I shall recollect her +name presently.' + +'Here's one of the houses I stop at,' said Beauchamp, 'and drop that +subject.' + +A scared servant-girl brought out her wizened mistress to confront the +candidate, and to this representative of the sex he addressed his arts of +persuasion, requesting her to repeat his words to her husband. The +contrast between Beauchamp palpably canvassing and the Beauchamp who was +the lover of the Marquise of the forgotten name, struck too powerfully on +Palmet for his gravity he retreated. + +Beauchamp found him sauntering on the pavement, and would have dismissed +him but for an agreeable diversion that occurred at that moment. A +suavely smiling unctuous old gentleman advanced to them, bowing, and +presuming thus far, he said, under the supposition that he was accosting +the junior Liberal candidate for the borough. He announced his name and +his principles Tomlinson, progressive Liberal. + +'A true distinction from some Liberals I know,' said Beauchamp. + +Mr. Tomlinson hoped so. Never, he said, did he leave it to the man of +his choice at an election to knock at his door for the vote. + +Beauchamp looked as if he had swallowed a cordial. Votes falling into +his lap are heavenly gifts to the candidate sick of the knocker and the +bell. Mr. Tomlinson eulogized the manly candour of the junior Liberal +candidate's address, in which he professed to see ideas that +distinguished it from the address of the sound but otherwise conventional +Liberal, Mr. Cougham. He muttered of plumping for Beauchamp. 'Don't +plump,' Beauchamp said; and a candidate, if he would be an honourable +twin, must say it. Cougham had cautioned him against the heresy of +plumping. + +They discoursed of the poor and their beverages, of pothouses, of the +anti-liquorites, and of the duties of parsons, and the value of a robust +and right-minded body of the poor to the country. Palmet found himself +following them into a tolerably spacious house that he took to be the old +gentleman's until some of the apparatus of an Institute for literary and +scientific instruction revealed itself to him, and he heard Mr. Tomlinson +exalt the memory of one Wingham for the blessing bequeathed by him to the +town of Bevisham. 'For,' said Mr. Tomlinson, 'it is open to both sexes, +to all respectable classes, from ten in the morning up to ten at night. +Such a place affords us, I would venture to say, the advantages without +the seductions of a Club. I rank it next--at a far remove, but next-the +church.' + +Lord Palmet brought his eyes down from the busts of certain worthies +ranged along the top of the book-shelves to the cushioned chairs, and +murmured, 'Capital place for an appointment with a woman.' + +Mr. Tomlinson gazed up at him mildly, with a fallen countenance. He +turned sadly agape in silence to the busts, the books, and the range of +scientific instruments, and directed a gaze under his eyebrows at +Beauchamp. 'Does your friend canvass with you?' he inquired. + +'I want him to taste it,' Beauchamp replied, and immediately introduced +the affable young lord--a proceeding marked by some of the dexterity he +had once been famous for, as was shown by a subsequent observation of Mr. +Tomlinson's: + +'Yes,' he said, on the question of classes, 'yes, I fear we have classes +in this country whose habitual levity sharp experience will have to +correct. I very much fear it.' + +'But if you have classes that are not to face realities classes that look +on them from the box-seats of a theatre,' said Beauchamp, 'how can you +expect perfect seriousness, or any good service whatever?' + +'Gently, sir, gently. No; we can, I feel confident, expand within the +limits of our most excellent and approved Constitution. I could wish +that socially . . . that is all.' + +'Socially and politically mean one thing in the end,' said Beauchamp. +'If you have a nation politically corrupt, you won't have a good state of +morals in it, and the laws that keep society together bear upon the +politics of a country.' + +'True; yes,' Mr. Tomlinson hesitated assent. He dissociated Beauchamp +from Lord Palmet, but felt keenly that the latter's presence desecrated +Wingham's Institute, and he informed the candidate that he thought he +would no longer detain him from his labours. + +'Just the sort of place wanted in every provincial town,' Palmet remarked +by way of a parting compliment. + +Mr. Tomlinson bowed a civil acknowledgement of his having again spoken. + +No further mention was made of the miraculous vote which had risen +responsive to the candidate's address of its own inspired motion; so +Beauchamp said, 'I beg you to bear in mind that I request you not to +plump.' + +'You may be right, Captain Beauchamp. Good day, sir.' + +Palmet strode after Beauchamp into the street. + +'Why did you set me bowing to that old boy?' he asked. + +'Why did you talk about women?' was the rejoinder. + +'Oh, aha!' Palmet sang to himself. 'You're a Romfrey, Beauchamp. A +blow for a blow! But I only said what would strike every fellow first +off. It is the place; the very place. Pastry-cooks' shops won't stand +comparison with it. Don't tell me you 're the man not to see how much a +woman prefers to be under the wing of science and literature, in a good- +sized, well-warmed room, with a book, instead of making believe, with a +red face, over a tart.' + +He received a smart lecture from Beauchamp, and began to think he had +enough of canvassing. But he was not suffered to escape. For his +instruction, for his positive and extreme good, Beauchamp determined that +the heir to an earldom should have a day's lesson. We will hope there +was no intention to punish him for having frozen the genial current of +Mr. Tomlinson's vote and interest; and it may be that he clung to one who +had, as he imagined, seen Renee. Accompanied by a Mr. Oggler, a +tradesman of the town, on the Liberal committee, dressed in a pea-jacket +and proudly nautical, they applied for the vote, and found it oftener +than beauty. Palmet contrasted his repeated disappointments with the +scoring of two, three, four and more in the candidate's list, and +informed him that he would certainly get the Election. 'I think you're +sure of it,' he said. 'There's not a pretty woman to be seen; not one.' + +One came up to them, the sight of whom counselled Lord Palmet to +reconsider his verdict. She was addressed by Beauchamp as Miss Denham, +and soon passed on. + +Palmet was guilty of staring at her, and of lingering behind the others +for a last look at her. + +They were on the steps of a voter's house, calmly enduring a rebuff from +him in person, when Palmet returned to them, exclaiming effusively, 'What +luck you have, Beauchamp!' He stopped till the applicants descended the +steps, with the voice of the voter ringing contempt as well as refusal in +their ears; then continued: 'You introduced me neck and heels to that +undertakerly old Tomlinson, of Wingham's Institute; you might have given +me a chance with that Miss--Miss Denham, was it? She has a bit of a +style!' + +'She has a head,' said Beauchamp. + +'A girl like that may have what she likes. I don't care what she has-- +there's woman in her. You might take her for a younger sister of Mrs. +Wardour-Devereux. Who 's the uncle she speaks of? She ought not to be +allowed to walk out by herself.' + +'She can take care of herself,' said Beauchamp. + +Palmet denied it. 'No woman can. Upon my honour, it's a shame that she +should be out alone. What are her people? I'll run--from you, you know +--and see her safe home. There's such an infernal lot of fellows about; +and a girl simply bewitching and unprotected! I ought to be after her.' + +Beauchamp held him firmly to the task of canvassing. + +'Then will you tell me where she lives?' Palmet stipulated. He +reproached Beauchamp for a notorious Grand Turk exclusiveness and +greediness in regard to women, as well as a disposition to run hard +races for them out of a spirit of pure rivalry. + +'It's no use contradicting, it's universally known of you,' reiterated +Palmet. 'I could name a dozen women, and dozens of fellows you +deliberately set yourself to cut out, for the honour of it. What's that +story they tell of you in one of the American cities or watering-places, +North or South? You would dance at a ball a dozen times with a girl +engaged to a man--who drenched you with a tumbler at the hotel bar, and +off you all marched to the sands and exchanged shots from revolvers; and +both of you, they say, saw the body of a drowned sailor in the water, in +the moonlight, heaving nearer and nearer, and you stretched your man just +as the body was flung up by a wave between you. Picturesque, if you +like!' + +'Dramatic, certainly. And I ran away with the bride next morning?' + +'No!' roared Palmet; 'you didn't. There's the cruelty of the whole +affair.' + +Beauchamp laughed. 'An old messmate of mine, Lieutenant Jack Wilmore, +can give you a different version of the story. I never have fought a +duel, and never will. Here we are at the shop of a tough voter, Mr. +Oggler. So it says in my note-book. Shall we put Lord Palmet to speak +to him first?' + +'If his lordship will put his heart into what he says,' Mr. Oggler bowed. +'Are you for giving the people recreation on a Sunday, my lord?' + +'Trap-bat and ball, cricket, dancing, military bands, puppet-shows, +theatres, merry-go-rounds, bosky dells--anything to make them happy,' +said Palmet. + +'Oh, dear! then I 'm afraid we cannot ask you to speak to this Mr. +Carpendike.' Oggler shook his head. + +'Does the fellow want the people to be miserable?' + +'I'm afraid, my lord, he would rather see them miserable.' + +They introduced themselves to Mr. Carpendike in his shop. He was a flat- +chested, sallow young shoemaker, with a shelving forehead, who seeing +three gentlemen enter to him recognized at once with a practised +resignation that they had not come to order shoe-leather, though he would +fain have shod them, being needy; but it was not the design of Providence +that they should so come as he in his blindness would have had them. +Admitting this he wished for nothing. + +The battle with Carpendike lasted three-quarters of an hour, during which +he was chiefly and most effectively silent. Carpendike would not vote +for a man that proposed to open museums on the Sabbath day. The striking +simile of the thin end of the wedge was recurred to by him for a damning +illustration. Captain Beauchamp might be honest in putting his mind on +most questions in his address, when there was no demand upon him to do +it; but honesty was no antidote to impiety. Thus Carpendike. + +As to Sunday museuming being an antidote to the pothouse--no. For the +people knew the frequenting of the pothouse to be a vice; it was a +temptation of Satan that often in overcoming them was the cause of their +flying back to grace: whereas museums and picture galleries were +insidious attractions cloaked by the name of virtue, whereby they were +allured to abandon worship. + +Beauchamp flew at this young monster of unreason: 'But the people are not +worshipping; they are idling and sotting, and if you carry your despotism +farther still, and shut them out of every shop on Sundays, do you suppose +you promote the spirit of worship? If you don't revolt them you unman +them, and I warn you we can't afford to destroy what manhood remains to +us in England. Look at the facts.' + +He flung the facts at Carpendike with the natural exaggeration of them +which eloquence produces, rather, as a rule, to assure itself in passing +of the overwhelming justice of the cause it pleads than to deceive the +adversary. Brewers' beer and publicans' beer, wife-beatings, the homes +and the blood of the people, were matters reviewed to the confusion of +Sabbatarians. + +Carpendike listened with a bent head, upraised eyes, and brows wrinkling +far on to his poll: a picture of a mind entrenched beyond the +potentialities of mortal assault. He signified that he had spoken. +Indeed Beauchamp's reply was vain to one whose argument was that he +considered the people nearer to holiness in the: indulging of an evil +propensity than in satisfying a harmless curiosity and getting a +recreation. The Sabbath claimed them; if they were disobedient, Sin +ultimately might scourge them back to the fold, but never if they were +permitted to regard themselves as innocent in their backsliding and +rebelliousness. + +Such language was quite new to Beauchamp. The parsons he had spoken +to were of one voice in objecting to the pothouse. He appealed to +Carpendike's humanity. Carpendike smote him with a text from Scripture. + +'Devilish cold in this shop,' muttered Palmet. + +Two not flourishing little children of the emaciated Puritan burst into +the shop, followed by their mother, carrying a child in her arms. She +had a sad look, upon traces of a past fairness, vaguely like a snow +landscape in the thaw. Palmet stooped to toss shillings with her young +ones, that he might avoid the woman's face. It cramped his heart. + +'Don't you see, Mr. Carpendike,' said fat Mr. Oggler, 'it's the happiness +of the people we want; that's what Captain Beauchamp works for--their +happiness; that's the aim of life for all of us. Look at me! I'm as +happy as the day. I pray every night, and I go to church every Sunday, +and I never know what it is to be unhappy. The Lord has blessed me with +a good digestion, healthy pious children, and a prosperous shop that's a +competency--a modest one, but I make it satisfy me, because I know it's +the Lord's gift. Well, now, and I hate Sabbath-breakers; I would punish +them; and I'm against the public-houses on a Sunday; but aboard my little +yacht, say on a Sunday morning in the Channel, I don't forget I owe it to +the Lord that he has been good enough to put me in the way of keeping a +yacht; no; I read prayers to my crew, and a chapter in the Bible-Genesis, +Deuteronomy, Kings, Acts, Paul, just as it comes. All's good that's +there. Then we're free for the day! man, boy, and me; we cook our +victuals, and we must look to the yacht, do you see. But we've made our +peace with the Almighty. We know that. He don't mind the working of the +vessel so long as we've remembered him. He put us in that situation, +exactly there, latitude and longitude, do you see, and work the vessel we +must. And a glass of grog and a pipe after dinner, can't be any offence. +And I tell you, honestly and sincerely, I'm sure my conscience is good, +and I really and truly don't know what it is not to know happiness.' + +'Then you don't know God,' said Carpendike, like a voice from a cave. + +'Or nature: or the state of the world,' said Beauchamp, singularly +impressed to find himself between two men, of whom--each perforce of his +tenuity and the evident leaning of his appetites--one was for the barren +black view of existence, the other for the fantastically bright. As to +the men personally, he chose Carpendike, for all his obstinacy and +sourness. Oggler's genial piety made him shrink with nausea. + +But Lord Palmet paid Mr. Oggler a memorable compliment, by assuring him +that he was altogether of his way of thinking about happiness. + +The frank young nobleman did not withhold a reference to the two or three +things essential to his happiness; otherwise Mr. Oggler might have been +pleased and flattered. + +Before quitting the shop, Beauchamp warned Carpendike that he should come +again. 'Vote or no vote, you're worth the trial. Texts as many as you +like. I'll make your faith active, if it's alive at all. You speak of +the Lord loving his own; you make out the Lord to be your own, and use +your religion like a drug. So it appears to me. That Sunday tyranny of +yours has to be defended. + +Remember that; for I for one shall combat it and expose it. Good day.' + +Beauchamp continued, in the street: 'Tyrannies like this fellow's have +made the English the dullest and wretchedest people in Europe.' + +Palmet animadverted on Carpendike: 'The dog looks like a deadly fungus +that has poisoned the woman.' + +'I'd trust him with a post of danger, though,' said Beauchamp. + +Before the candidate had opened his mouth to the next elector he was +beamed on. M'Gilliper, baker, a floured brick face, leaned on folded +arms across his counter and said, in Scotch: 'My vote? and he that asks +me for my vote is the man who, when he was midshipman, saved the life of +a relation of mine from death by drowning! my wife's first cousin, Johnny +Brownson--and held him up four to five minutes in the water, and never +left him till he was out of danger! There 's my hand on it, I will, and +a score of householders in Bevisham the same.' He dictated precious +names and addresses to Beauchamp, and was curtly thanked for his pains. + +Such treatment of a favourable voter seemed odd to Palmet. + +'Oh, a vote given for reasons of sentiment!' Beauchamp interjected. + +Palmet reflected and said: 'Well, perhaps that's how it is women don't +care uncommonly for the men who love them, though they like precious well +to be loved. Opposition does it.' + +'You have discovered my likeness to women,' said Beauchamp, eyeing him +critically, and then thinking, with a sudden warmth, that he had seen +Renee: 'Look here, Palmet, you're too late for Itchincope, to-day; come +and eat fish and meat with me at my hotel, and come to a meeting after +it. You can run by rail to Itchincope to breakfast in the morning, and +I may come with you. You'll hear one or two men speak well to-night.' + +'I suppose I shall have to be at this business myself some day,' sighed +Palmet. 'Any women on the platform? Oh, but political women! And the +Tories get the pick of the women. No, I don't think I 'll stay. Yes, I +will; I'll go through with it. I like to be learning something. You +wouldn't think it of me, Beauchamp, but I envy fellows at work.' + +'You might make a speech for me, Palmet.' + +'No man better, my dear fellow, if it were proposing a toast to the poor +devils and asking them to drink it. But a dry speech, like leading them +over the desert without a well to cheer them--no oasis, as we used to +call a five-pound note and a holiday--I haven't the heart for that. Is +your Miss Denham a Radical?' + +Beauchamp asserted that he had not yet met a woman at all inclining in +the direction of Radicalism. 'I don't call furies Radicals. There may +be women who think as well as feel; I don't know them.' + +'Lots of them, Beauchamp. Take my word for it. I do know women. They +haven't a shift, nor a trick, I don't know. They're as clear to me as +glass. I'll wager your Miss Denham goes to the meetings. Now, doesn't +she? Of course she does. And there couldn't be a gallanter way of +spending an evening, so I'll try it. Nothing to repent of next morning! +That's to be said for politics, Beauchamp, and I confess I'm rather +jealous of you. A thoroughly good-looking girl who takes to a fellow for +what he's doing in the world, must have ideas of him precious different +from the adoration of six feet three and a fine seat in the saddle. I +see that. There's Baskelett in the Blues; and if I were he I should +detest my cuirass and helmet, for if he's half as successful as he +boasts--it's the uniform.' + +Two notorious Radicals, Peter Molyneux and Samuel Killick, were called +on. The first saw Beauchamp and refused him; the second declined to see +him. He was amazed and staggered, but said little. + +Among the remainder of the electors of Bevisham, roused that day to a +sense of their independence by the summons of the candidates, only one +man made himself conspicuous, by premising that he had two important +questions to ask, and he trusted Commander Beauchamp to answer them +unreservedly. They were: first, What is a FRENCH MARQUEES? arid second: +Who was EURYDICEY? + +Beauchamp referred him to the Tory camp, whence the placard alluding to +those ladies had issued. + +'Both of them 's ladies! I guessed it,' said the elector. + +'Did you guess that one of them is a mythological lady?' + +'I'm not far wrong in guessing t'other's not much better, I reckon. Now, +sir, may I ask you, is there any tale concerning your morals?' + +'No: you may not ask; you take a liberty.' + +'Then I'll take the liberty to postpone talking about my vote. Look +here, Mr. Commander; if the upper classes want anything of me and come to +me for it, I'll know what sort of an example they're setting; now that's +me.' + +'You pay attention to a stupid Tory squib?' + +'Where there's smoke there's fire, sir.' + +Beauchamp glanced at his note-book for the name of this man, who was a +ragman and dustman. + +'My private character has nothing whatever to do with my politics,' he +said, and had barely said it when he remembered having spoken somewhat +differently, upon the abstract consideration of the case, to Mr. +Tomlinson. + +'You're quite welcome to examine my character for yourself, only I don't +consent to be catechized. Understand that.' + +'You quite understand that, Mr. Tripehallow,' said Oggler, bolder in +taking up the strange name than Beauchamp had been. + +'I understand that. But you understand, there's never been a word +against the morals of Mr. Cougham. Here's the point: Do we mean to be a +moral country? Very well, then so let our representatives be, I say. +And if I hear nothing against your morals, Mr. Commander, I don't say you +shan't have my vote. I mean to deliberate. You young nobs capering over +our heads--I nail you down to morals. Politics secondary. Adew, as the +dying spirit remarked to weeping friends.' + +'Au revoir--would have been kinder,' said Palmet. + +Mr. Tripehallow smiled roguishly, to betoken comprehension. + +Beauchamp asked Mr. Oggler whether that fellow was to be taken for a +humourist or a five-pound-note man. + +'It may be both, sir. I know he's called Morality Joseph.' + +An all but acknowledged five-pound-note man was the last they visited. +He cut short the preliminaries of the interview by saying that he was a +four-o'clock man; i.e. the man who waited for the final bids to him upon +the closing hour of the election day. + +'Not one farthing!' said Beauchamp, having been warned beforehand of the +signification of the phrase by his canvassing lieutenant. + +'Then you're nowhere,' the honest fellow replied in the mystic tongue of +prophecy. + +Palmet and Beauchamp went to their fish and meat; smoked a cigarette or +two afterward, conjured away the smell of tobacco from their persons as +well as they could, and betook themselves to the assembly-room of the +Liberal party, where the young lord had an opportunity of beholding Mr. +Cougham, and of listening to him for an hour and forty minutes. He heard +Mr. Timothy Turbot likewise. And Miss Denham was present. Lord Palmet +applauded when she smiled. When she looked attentive he was deeply +studious. Her expression of fatigue under the sonorous ring of +statistics poured out from Cougham was translated by Palmet into yawns +and sighs of a profoundly fraternal sympathy. Her face quickened on the +rising of Beauchamp to speak. She kept eye on him all the while, as +Palmet, with the skill of an adept in disguising his petty larceny of the +optics, did on her. Twice or thrice she looked pained: Beauchamp was +hesitating for the word. Once she looked startled and shut her eyes: a +hiss had sounded; Beauchamp sprang on it as if enlivened by hostility, +and dominated the factious note. Thereat she turned to a gentleman +sitting beside her; apparently they agreed that some incident had +occurred characteristic of Nevil Beauchamp; for whom, however, it was not +a brilliant evening. He was very well able to account for it, and did +so, after he had walked a few steps with Miss Denham on her homeward way. + +'You heard Cougham, Palmet! He's my senior, and I'm obliged to come +second to him, and how am I to have a chance when he has drenched the +audience for close upon a couple of hours!' + +Palmet mimicked the manner of Cougham. + +'They cry for Turbot naturally; they want a relief,' Beauchamp groaned. + +Palmet gave an imitation of Timothy Turbot. + +He was an admirable mimic, perfectly spontaneous, without stressing any +points, and Beauchamp was provoked to laugh his discontentment with the +evening out of recollection. + +But a grave matter troubled Palmet's head. + +'Who was that fellow who walked off with Miss Denham?' + +'A married man,' said Beauchamp: 'badly married; more 's the pity; he has +a wife in the madhouse. His name is Lydiard.' + +'Not her brother! Where's her uncle?' + +'She won't let him come to these meetings. It's her idea; well- +intended, but wrong, I think. She's afraid that Dr. Shrapnel will alarm +the moderate Liberals and damage Radical me.' + +Palmet muttered between his teeth, 'What queer things they let their +women do!' He felt compelled to say, 'Odd for her to be walking home at +night with a fellow like that.' + +It chimed too consonantly with a feeling of Beauchamp's, to repress which +he replied: 'Your ideas about women are simply barbarous, Palmet. Why +shouldn't she? Her uncle places his confidence in the man, and in her. +Isn't that better--ten times more likely to call out the sense of honour +and loyalty, than the distrust and the scandal going on in your class?' + +'Please to say yours too.' + +'I've no class. I say that the education for women is to teach them to +rely on themselves.' + +'Ah! well, I don't object, if I'm the man.' + +'Because you and your set are absolutely uncivilized in your views of +women.' + +'Common sense, Beauchamp!' + +'Prey. You eye them as prey. And it comes of an idle aristocracy. You +have no faith in them, and they repay you for your suspicion.' + +'All the same, Beauchamp, she ought not to be allowed to go about at +night with that fellow. "Rich and rare were the gems she wore": but that +was in Erin's isle, and if we knew the whole history, she'd better have +stopped at home. She's marvellously pretty, to my mind. She looks a +high-bred wench. Odd it is, Beauchamp, to see a lady's-maid now and then +catch the style of my lady. No, by Jove! I've known one or two--you +couldn't tell the difference! Not till you were intimate. I know one +would walk a minuet with a duchess. Of course--all the worse for her. +If you see that uncle of Miss Denham's--upon my honour, I should advise +him: I mean, counsel him not to trust her with any fellow but you.' + +Beauchamp asked Lord Palmet how old he was. + +Palmet gave his age; correcting the figures from six-and-twenty to one +year more. 'And never did a stroke of work in my life,' he said, +speaking genially out of an acute guess at the sentiments of the man he +walked with. + +It seemed a farcical state of things. + +There was a kind of contrition in Palmet's voice, and to put him at his +ease, as well as to stamp something in his own mind, Beauchamp said: +'It's common enough.' + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +A DAY AT ITCHINCOPE + +An election in Bevisham was always an exciting period at Itchincope, the +large and influential old estate of the Lespels, which at one time, with +but a ceremonious drive through the town, sent you two good Whig men to +Parliament to sit at Reform banquets; two unswerving party men, blest +subscribers to the right Review, and personally proud of its trenchancy. +Mr. Grancey Lespel was the survivor of them, and well could he remember +the happier day of his grandfather, his father, and his own hot youth. +He could be carried so far by affectionate regrets as to think of the +Tories of that day benignly:--when his champion Review of the orange and +blue livery waved a wondrous sharp knife, and stuck and bled them, +proving to his party, by trenchancy alone, that the Whig was the cause of +Providence. Then politics presented you a table whereat two parties +feasted, with no fear of the intrusion of a third, and your backs were +turned on the noisy lower world, your ears were deaf to it. + +Apply we now the knocker to the door of venerable Quotation, and call the +aged creature forth, that he, half choked by his eheu!-- + + 'A sound between a sigh and bray,' + +may pronounce the familiar but respectable words, the burial-service of a +time so happy! + +Mr. Grancey Lespel would still have been sitting for Bevisham (or +politely at this elective moment bowing to resume the seat) had not those +Manchester jugglers caught up his cry, appropriated his colours, +displaced and impersonated him, acting beneficent Whig on a scale +approaching treason to the Constitution; leaning on the people in +earnest, instead of taking the popular shoulder for a temporary lift, all +in high party policy, for the clever manoeuvre, to oust the Tory and sway +the realm. See the consequences. For power, for no other consideration, +those manufacturing rascals have raised Radicalism from its primaeval +mire--from its petty backslum bookseller's shop and public-house back- +parlour effluvia of oratory--to issue dictates in England, and we, +England, formerly the oak, are topsy-turvy, like onions, our heels in the +air! + +The language of party is eloquent, and famous for being grand at +illustration; but it is equally well known that much of it gives us +humble ideas of the speaker, probably because of the naughty temper party +is prone to; which, while endowing it with vehemence, lessens the stout +circumferential view that should be taken, at least historically. +Indeed, though we admit party to be the soundest method for conducting +us, party talk soon expends its attractiveness, as would a summer's +afternoon given up to the contemplation of an encounter of rams' heads. +Let us be quit of Mr. Grancey Lespel's lamentations. The Whig gentleman +had some reason to complain. He had been trained to expect no other +attack than that of his hereditary adversary-ram in front, and a sham +ram--no honest animal, but a ramming engine rather--had attacked him in +the rear. Like Mr. Everard Romfrey and other Whigs, he was profoundly +chagrined by popular ingratitude: 'not the same man,' his wife said of +him. It nipped him early. He took to proverbs; sure sign of the sere +leaf in a man's mind. + +His wife reproached the people for their behaviour to him bitterly. The +lady regarded politics as a business that helped hunting-men a stage +above sportsmen, for numbers of the politicians she was acquainted with +were hunting-men, yet something more by virtue of the variety they could +introduce into a conversation ordinarily treating of sport and the +qualities of wines. Her husband seemed to have lost in that +Parliamentary seat the talisman which gave him notions distinguishing him +from country squires; he had sunk, and he no longer cared for the months +in London, nor for the speeches she read to him to re-awaken his mind and +make him look out of himself, as he had done when he was a younger man +and not a suspended Whig. Her own favourite reading was of love- +adventures written in the French tongue. She had once been in love, and +could be so sympathetic with that passion as to avow to Cecilia Halkett a +tenderness for Nevil Beauchamp, on account of his relations with the +Marquise de Rouaillout, and notwithstanding the demoniacal flame-halo of +the Radical encircling him. + +The allusion to Beauchamp occurred a few hours after Cecilia's arrival at +Itchincope. + +Cecilia begged for the French lady's name to be repeated; she had not +heard it before, and she tasted the strange bitter relish of realization +when it struck her ear to confirm a story that she believed indeed, but +had not quite sensibly felt. + +'And it is not over yet, they say,' Mrs. Grancey Lespel added, while +softly flipping some spots of the colour proper to radicals in morals on +the fame of the French lady. She possessed fully the grave judicial +spirit of her countrywomen, and could sit in judgement on the personages +of tales which had entranced her, to condemn the heroines: it was +impolitic in her sex to pity females. As for the men--poor weak things! +As for Nevil Beauchamp, in particular, his case, this penetrating lady +said, was clear: he ought to be married. 'Could you make a sacrifice?' +she asked Cecilia playfully. + +'Nevil Beauchamp and I are old friends, but we have agreed that we are +deadly political enemies,' Miss Halkett replied. + +'It is not so bad for a beginning,' said Mrs. Lespel. + +'If one were disposed to martyrdom.' + +The older woman nodded. 'Without that.' + +'My dear Mrs. Lespel, wait till you have heard him. He is at war with +everything we venerate and build on. The wife you would give him should +be a creature rooted in nothing--in sea-water. Simply two or three +conversations with him have made me uncomfortable ever since; I can see +nothing durable; I dream of surprises, outbreaks, dreadful events. At +least it is perfectly true that I do not look with the same eyes on my +country. He seems to delight in destroying one's peaceful contemplation +of life. The truth is that he blows a perpetual gale, and is all +agitation,' Cecilia concluded, affecting with a smile a slight shiver. + +'Yes, one tires of that,' said Mrs. Lespel. 'I was determined I would +have him here if we could get him to come. Grancey objected. We shall +have to manage Captain Beauchamp and the rest as well. He is sure to +come late to-morrow, and will leave early on Thursday morning for his +canvass; our driving into Bevisham is for Friday or Saturday. I do not +see that he need have any suspicions. Those verses you are so angry +about cannot be traced to Itchincope. My dear, they are a childish +trifle. When my husband stood first for Bevisham, the whole of his +University life appeared in print. What we have to do is to forewarn the +gentlemen to be guarded, and especially in what they say to my nephew +Lord Palmet, for that boy cannot keep a secret; he is as open as a +plate.' + +'The smoking-room at night?' Cecilia suggested, remembering her father's +words about Itchincope's tobacco-hall. + +'They have Captain Beauchamp's address hung up there, I have heard,' said +Mrs. Lespel. 'There may be other things--another address, though it is +not yet, placarded. Come with me. For fifteen years I have never once +put my head into that room, and now I 've a superstitious fear about it.' + +Mrs. Lespel led the way to the deserted smoking-room, where the stale +reek of tobacco assailed the ladies, as does that dire place of Customs +the stranger visiting savage (or too natural) potentates. + +In silence they tore down from the wall Beauchamp's electoral Address-- +flanked all its length with satirical pen and pencil comments and +sketches; and they consigned to flames the vast sheet of animated verses +relating to the FRENCH MARQUEES. A quarter-size chalk-drawing of a +slippered pantaloon having a duck on his shoulder, labelled to say +'Quack-quack,' and offering our nauseated Dame Britannia (or else it was +the widow Bevisham) a globe of a pill to swallow, crossed with the +consolatory and reassuring name of Shrapnel, they disposed of likewise. +And then they fled, chased forth either by the brilliancy of the +politically allusive epigrams profusely inscribed around them on the +walls, or by the atmosphere. Mrs. Lespel gave her orders for the walls +to be scraped, and said to Cecilia: 'A strange air to breathe, was it +not? The less men and women know of one another, the happier for them. +I knew my superstition was correct as a guide to me. I do so much wish +to respect men, and all my experience tells me the Turks know best how to +preserve it for us. Two men in this house would give their wives for +pipes, if it came to the choice. We might all go for a cellar of old +wine. After forty, men have married their habits, and wives are only an +item in the list, and not the most important.' + +With the assistance of Mr. Stukely Culbrett, Mrs. Lespel prepared the +house and those of the company who were in the secret of affairs for the +arrival of Beauchamp. The ladies were curious to see him. The +gentlemen, not anticipating extreme amusement, were calm: for it is an +axiom in the world of buckskins and billiard-cues, that one man is very +like another; and so true is it with them, that they can in time teach it +to the fair sex. Friends of Cecil Baskelett predominated, and the +absence of so sprightly a fellow was regretted seriously; but he was +shooting with his uncle at Holdesbury, and they did not expect him before +Thursday. + +On Wednesday morning Lord Palmet presented himself at a remarkably well- +attended breakfast-table at Itchincope. He passed from Mrs. Lespel to +Mrs. Wardour-Devsreux and Miss Halkett, bowed to other ladies, shook +hands with two or three men, and nodded over the heads of half-a-dozen, +accounting rather mysteriously for his delay in coming, it was thought, +until he sat down before a plate of Yorkshire pie, and said: + +'The fact is I've been canvassing hard. With Beauchamp!' + +Astonishment and laughter surrounded him, and Palmet looked from face to +face, equally astonished, and desirous to laugh too. + +'Ernest! how could you do that?' said Mrs. Lespel; and her husband +cried in stupefaction, 'With Beauchamp?' + +'Oh! it's because of the Radicalism,' Palmet murmured to himself. 'I +didn't mind that.' + +'What sort of a day did you have?' Mr. Culbrett asked him; and several +gentlemen fell upon him for an account of the day. + +Palmet grimaced over a mouthful of his pie. + +'Bad!' quoth Mr. Lespel; 'I knew it. I know Bevisham. The only chance +there is for five thousand pounds in a sack with a hole in it.' + +'Bad for Beauchamp? Dear me, no'; Palmet corrected the error. 'He is +carrying all before him. And he tells them,' Palmet mimicked Beauchamp, +'they shall not have one penny: not a farthing. I gave a couple of young +ones a shilling apiece, and he rowed me for bribery; somehow I did +wrong.' + +Lord Palmet described the various unearthly characters he had inspected +in their dens: Carpendike, Tripehallow, and the radicals Peter Molyneux +and Samuel Killick, and the ex-member for the borough, Cougham, posing to +suit sign-boards of Liberal inns, with a hand thrust in his waistcoat, +and his head well up, the eyes running over the under-lids, after the +traditional style of our aristocracy; but perhaps more closely resembling +an urchin on tiptoe peering above park-palings. Cougham's remark to +Beauchamp, heard and repeated by Palmet with the object of giving an +example of the senior Liberal's phraseology: 'I was necessitated to +vacate my town mansion, to my material discomfort and that of my wife, +whose equipage I have been compelled to take, by your premature canvass +of the borough, Captain Beauchamp: and now, I hear, on undeniable +authority, that no second opponent to us will be forthcoming'---this +produced the greatest effect on the company. + +'But do you tell me,' said Mr. Lespel, when the shouts of the gentlemen +were subsiding, 'do you tell me that young Beauchamp is going ahead?' + +'That he is. They flock to him in the street.' + +'He stands there, then, and jingles a money-bag.' + +Palmet resumed his mimicry of Beauchamp: 'Not a stiver; purity of +election is the first condition of instruction to the people! +Principles! Then they've got a capital orator: Turbot, an Irishman. I +went to a meeting last night, and heard him; never heard anything finer +in my life. You may laugh he whipped me off my legs; fellow spun me like +a top; and while he was orationing, a donkey calls, "Turbot! ain't you a +flat fish?" and he swings round, "Not for a fool's hook!" and out they +hustled the villain for a Tory. I never saw anything like it.' + +'That repartee wouldn't have done with a Dutchman or a Torbay trawler,' +said Stukely Culbrett. 'But let us hear more.' + +'Is it fair?' Miss Halkett murmured anxiously to Mrs. Lespel, who +returned a flitting shrug. + +'Charming women follow Beauchamp, you know,' Palmet proceeded, as he +conceived, to confirm and heighten the tale of success. 'There's a Miss +Denham, niece of a doctor, a Dr . . . . Shot--Shrapnel! a +wonderfully good-looking, clever-looking girl, comes across him in half- +a-dozen streets to ask how he's getting on, and goes every night to his +meetings, with a man who 's a writer and has a mad wife; a man named +Lydia-no, that's a woman--Lydiard. It's rather a jumble; but you should +see her when Beauchamp's on his legs and speaking.' + +'Mr. Lydiard is in Bevisham?' Mrs. Wardour-Devereux remarked. + +'I know the girl,' growled Mr. Lespel. 'She comes with that rascally +doctor and a bobtail of tea-drinking men and women and their brats to +Northeden Heath--my ground. There they stand and sing.' + +'Hymns?'inquired Mr. Culbrett. + +'I don't know what they sing. And when it rains they take the liberty to +step over my bank into my plantation. Some day I shall have them +stepping into my house.' + +'Yes, it's Mr. Lydiard; I'm sure of the man's name,' Palmet replied to +Mrs. Wardour-Devereux. + +'We met him in Spain the year before last,' she observed to Cecilia. + +The 'we' reminded Palmet that her husband was present. + +'Ah, Devereux, I didn't see you,' he nodded obliquely down the table. +'By the way, what's the grand procession? I hear my man Davis has come +all right, and I caught sight of the top of your coach-box in the +stableyard as I came in. What are we up to?' + +'Baskelett writes, it's to be for to-morrow morning at ten-the start.' +Mr. Wardour-Devereux addressed the table generally. He was a fair, huge, +bush-bearded man, with a voice of unvarying bass: a squire in his county, +and energetic in his pursuit of the pleasures of hunting, driving, +travelling, and tobacco. + +'Old Bask's the captain of us? Very well, but where do we drive the +teams? How many are we? What's in hand?' + +Cecilia threw a hurried glance at her hostess. + +Luckily some witling said, 'Fours-in-hand!' and so dryly that it passed +for humour, and gave Mrs. Lespel time to interpose. 'You are not to know +till to-morrow, Ernest.' + +Palmet had traced the authorship of the sally to Mr. Algy Borolick, and +crowned him with praise for it. He asked, 'Why not know till to-morrow?' +A word in a murmur from Mr. Culbrett, 'Don't frighten the women,' +satisfied him, though why it should he could not have imagined. + +Mrs. Lespel quitted the breakfast-table before the setting in of the +dangerous five minutes of conversation over its ruins, and spoke to her +husband, who contested the necessity for secresy, but yielded to her +judgement when it was backed by Stukely Culbrett. Soon after Lord Palmet +found himself encountered by evasions and witticisms, in spite of the +absence of the ladies, upon every attempt he made to get some light +regarding the destination of the four-in-hands next day. + +'What are you going to do?' he said to Mr. Devereux, thinking him the +likeliest one to grow confidential in private. + +'Smoke,' resounded from the depths of that gentleman. + +Palmet recollected the ground of division between the beautiful brunette +and her lord--his addiction to the pipe in perpetuity, and deemed it +sweeter to be with the lady. + +She and Miss Halkett were walking in the garden. + +Miss Halkett said to him: 'How wrong of you to betray the secrets of your +friend! Is he really making way?' + +'Beauchamp will head the poll to a certainty,' Palmet replied. + +'Still,' said Miss Halkett, 'you should not forget that you are not in +the house of a Liberal. Did you canvass in the town or the suburbs?' + +'Everywhere. I assure you, Miss Halkett, there's a feeling for +Beauchamp--they're in love with him!' + +'He promises them everything, I suppose?' + +'Not he. And the odd thing is, it isn't the Radicals he catches. He +won't go against the game laws for them, and he won't cut down army and +navy. So the Radicals yell at him. One confessed he had sold his vote +for five pounds last election: "you shall have it for the same," says he, +"for you're all humbugs." Beauchamp took him by the throat and shook +him--metaphorically, you know. But as for the tradesmen, he's their +hero; bakers especially.' + +'Mr. Austin may be right, then!' Cecilia reflected aloud. + +She went to Mrs. Lespel to repeat what she had extracted from Palmet, +after warning the latter not, in common loyalty, to converse about his +canvass with Beauchamp. + +'Did you speak of Mr. Lydiard as Captain Beauchamp's friend?' Mrs. +Devereux inquired of him. + +'Lydiard? why, he was the man who made off with that pretty Miss +Denham,' said Palmet. 'I have the greatest trouble to remember them all; +but it was not a day wasted. Now I know politics. Shall we ride or +walk? You will let me have the happiness? I'm so unlucky; I rarely meet +you!' + +'You will bring Captain Beauchamp to me the moment he comes?' + +'I'll bring him. Bring him? Nevil Beauchamp won't want bringing.' + +Mrs. Devereux smiled with some pleasure. + +Grancey Lespel, followed at some distance by Mr. Ferbrass, the Tory +lawyer, stepped quickly up to Palmet, and asked whether Beauchamp had +seen Dollikins, the brewer. + +Palmet could recollect the name of one Tomlinson, and also the calling at +a brewery. Moreover, Beauchamp had uttered contempt of the brewer's +business, and of the social rule to accept rich brewers for gentlemen. +The man's name might be Dollikins and not Tomlinson, and if so, it was +Dollikins who would not see Beauchamp. To preserve his political +importance, Palmet said, 'Dollikins! to be sure, that was the man.' + +'Treats him as he does you,' Mr. Lespel turned to Ferbrass. 'I've sent +to Dollikins to come to me this morning, if he's not driving into the +town. I'll have him before Beauchamp sees him. I've asked half-a-dozen +of these country gentlemen-tradesmen to lunch at my table to-day.' + +'Then, sir,' observed Ferbrass, 'if they are men to be persuaded, they +had better not see me.' + +'True; they're my old supporters, and mightn't like your Tory face,' Mr. +Lespel assented. + +Mr. Ferbrass congratulated him on the heartiness of his espousal of the +Tory cause. + +Mr. Lespel winced a little, and told him not to put his trust in that. + +'Turned Tory?' said Palmet. + +Mr. Lespel declined to answer. + +Palmet said to Mrs. Devereux, 'He thinks I'm not worth speaking to upon +politics. Now I'll give him some Beauchamp; I learned lots yesterday.' + +'Then let it be in Captain Beauchamp's manner,' said +she softly. + +Palmet obeyed her commands with the liveliest exhibition of his peculiar +faculty: Cecilia, rejoining them, seemed to hear Nevil himself in his +emphatic political mood. 'Because the Whigs are defunct! They had no +root in the people! Whig is the name of a tribe that was! You have +Tory, Liberal, and Radical. There is no place for Whig. He is played +out.' + +'Who has been putting that nonsense into your head?' Mr. Lespel +retorted. 'Go shooting, go shooting!' + +Shots were heard in the woods. Palmet pricked up his ears; but he was +taken out riding to act cavalier to Mrs. Devereux and Miss Halkett. + +Cecilia corrected his enthusiasm with the situation. 'No flatteries +to-day. There are hours when women feel their insignificance and +helplessness. I begin to fear for Mr. Austin; and I find I can do +nothing to aid him. My hands are tied. And yet I know I could win +voters if only it were permissible for me to go and speak to them.' + +'Win them!' cried Palmet, imagining the alacrity of men's votes to be +won by her. He recommended a gallop for the chasing away of melancholy, +and as they were on the Bevisham high road, which was bordered by strips +of turf and heath, a few good stretches brought them on the fir-heights, +commanding views of the town and broad water. + +'No, I cannot enjoy it,' Cecilia said to Mrs. Devereux; 'I don't mind the +grey light; cloud and water, and halftones of colour, are homely English +and pleasant, and that opal where the sun should be has a suggestiveness +richer than sunlight. I'm quite northern enough to understand it; but +with me it must be either peace or strife, and that Election down there +destroys my chance of peace. I never could mix reverie with excitement; +the battle must be over first, and the dead buried. Can you?' + +Mrs. Devereux answered: 'Excitement? I am not sure that I know what it +is. An Election does not excite me.' + +'There's Nevil Beauchamp himself!' Palmet sang out, and the ladies +discerned Beauchamp under a fir-tree, down by the road, not alone. A +man, increasing in length like a telescope gradually reaching its end for +observation, and coming to the height of a landmark, as if raised by +ropes, was rising from the ground beside him. 'Shall we trot on, Miss +Halkett?' + +Cecilia said, 'No.' + +'Now I see a third fellow,' said Palmet. 'It's the other fellow, the +Denham-Shrapnel-Radical meeting . . . Lydiard's his name: writes +books.! + +'We may as well ride on,' Mrs. Devereux remarked, and her horse fretted +singularly. + +Beauchamp perceived them, and lifted his hat. Palmet made demonstrations +for the ladies. Still neither party moved nearer. + +After some waiting, Cecilia proposed to turn back. + +Mrs. Devereux looked into her eyes. 'I'll take the lead,' she said, and +started forward, pursued by Palmet. Cecilia followed at a sullen canter. + +Before they came up to Beauchamp, the long-shanked man had stalked away +townward. Lydiard held Beauchamp by the hand. Some last words, after +the manner of instructions, passed between them, and then Lydiard also +turned away. + +'I say, Beauchamp, Mrs. Devereux wants to hear who that man is,' Palmet +said, drawing up. + +'That man is Dr. Shrapnel,' said Beauchamp, convinced that Cecilia had +checked her horse at the sight of the doctor. + +'Dr. Shrapnel,' Palmet informed Mrs. Devereux. + +She looked at him to seek his wits, and returning Beauchamp's admiring +salutation with a little bow and smile, said, 'I fancied it was a +gentleman we met in Spain.' + +'He writes books,' observed Palmet, to jog a slow intelligence. + +'Pamphlets, you mean.' + +'I think he is not a pamphleteer', Mrs. Devereux said. + +'Mr. Lydiard, then, of course; how silly I am! How can you pardon me!' +Beauchamp was contrite; he could not explain that a long guess he had +made at Miss Halkett's reluctance to come up to him when Dr. Shrapnel was +with him had preoccupied his mind. He sent off Palmet the bearer of a +pretext for bringing Lydiard back, and then said to Cecilia, 'You +recognized Dr. Shrapnel?' + +'I thought it might be Dr. Shrapnel', she was candid enough to reply. +'I could not well recognize him, not knowing him.' + +'Here comes Mr. Lydiard; and let me assure you, if I may take the liberty +of introducing him, he is no true Radical. He is a philosopher--one of +the flirts, the butterflies of politics, as Dr. Shrapnel calls them.' + +Beauchamp hummed over some improvized trifles to Lydiard, then introduced +him cursorily, and all walked in the direction of Itchincope. It was +really the Mr. Lydiard Mrs. Devereux had met in Spain, so they were left +in the rear to discuss their travels. Much conversation did not go on in +front. Cecilia was very reserved. By-and-by she said, 'I am glad you +have come into the country early to-day.' + +He spoke rapturously of the fresh air, and not too mildly of his pleasure +in meeting her. Quite off her guard, she began to hope he was getting to +be one of them again, until she heard him tell Lord Palmet that he had +come early out of Bevisham for the walk with Dr. Shrapnel, and to call on +certain rich tradesmen living near Itchincope. He mentioned the name of +Dollikins. + +'Dollikins?' Palmet consulted a perturbed recollection. Among the +entangled list of new names he had gathered recently from the study of +politics, Dollikins rang in his head. He shouted, 'Yes, Dollikins! to +be sure. Lespel has him to lunch to-day;--calls him a gentleman- +tradesman; odd fish! and told a fellow called--where is it now?--a name +like brass or copper . . . Copperstone? Brasspot? . . . told him +he'd do well to keep his Tory cheek out of sight. It 's the names of +those fellows bother one so! All the rest's easy.' + +'You are evidently in a state of confusion, Lord Palmet,' said Cecilia. + +The tone of rebuke and admonishment was unperceived. 'Not about the +facts,' he rejoined. 'I 'm for fair play all round; no trickery. I tell +Beauchamp all I know, just as I told you this morning, Miss Halkett. +What I don't like is Lespel turning Tory.' + +Cecilia put a stop to his indiscretions by halting for Mrs. Devereux, and +saying to Beauchamp, 'If your friend would return to Bevisham by rail, +this is the nearest point to the station.' + +Palmet, best-natured of men, though generally prompted by some of his +peculiar motives, dismounted from his horse, leaving him to Beauchamp, +that he might conduct Mr. Lydiard to the station, and perhaps hear a word +of Miss Denham: at any rate be able to form a guess as to the secret of +that art of his, which had in the space of an hour restored a happy and +luminous vivacity to the languid Mrs. Wardour-Devereux. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +THE QUESTION AS TO THE EXAMINATION OF THE WHIGS, AND THE FINE BLOW STRUCK +BY MR. EVERARD ROMFREY + +Itchincope was famous for its hospitality. Yet Beauchamp, when in the +presence of his hostess, could see that he was both unexpected and +unwelcome. Mrs. Lespel was unable to conceal it; she looked meaningly at +Cecilia, talked of the house being very full, and her husband engaged +till late in the afternoon. And Captain Baskelett had arrived on a +sudden, she said. And the luncheon-table in the dining-room could not +possibly hold more. + +'We three will sit in the library, anywhere,' said Cecilia. + +So they sat and lunched in the library, where Mrs. Devereux served +unconsciously for an excellent ally to Cecilia in chatting to Beauchamp, +principally of the writings of Mr. Lydiard. + +Had the blinds of the windows been drawn down and candles lighted, +Beauchamp would have been well contented to remain with these two ladies, +and forget the outer world; sweeter society could not have been offered +him: but glancing carelessly on to the lawn, he exclaimed in some +wonderment that the man he particularly wished to see was there. 'It +must be Dollikins, the brewer. I've had him pointed out to me in +Bevisham, and I never can light on him at his brewery.' + +No excuse for detaining the impetuous candidate struck Cecilia. She +betook herself to Mrs. Lespel, to give and receive counsel in the +emergency, while Beauchamp struck across the lawn to Mr. Dollikins, +who had the squire of Itchincope on the other side of him. + +Late in the afternoon a report reached the ladies of a furious contest +going on over Dollikins. Mr. Algy Borolick was the first to give them +intelligence of it, and he declared that Beauchamp had wrested Dollikins +from Grancey Lespel. This was contradicted subsequently by Mr. Stukely +Culbrett. 'But there's heavy pulling between them,' he said. + +'It will do all the good in the world to Grancey,' said Mrs. Lespel. + +She sat in her little blue-room, with gentlemen congregating at the open +window. + +Presently Grancey Lespel rounded a projection of the house where the +drawing-room stood out: 'The maddest folly ever talked!' he delivered +himself in wrath. 'The Whigs dead? You may as well say I'm dead.' + +It was Beauchamp answering: 'Politically, you're dead, if you call +yourself a Whig. You couldn't be a live one, for the party's in pieces, +blown to the winds. The country was once a chess-board for Whig and +Tory: but that game's at an end. There's no doubt on earth that the +Whigs are dead.' + +'But if there's no doubt about it, how is it I have a doubt about it?' + +'You know you're a Tory. You tried to get that man Dollikins from me in +the Tory interest.' + +'I mean to keep him out of Radical clutches. Now that 's the truth.' + +They came up to the group by the open window, still conversing hotly, +indifferent to listeners. + +'You won't keep him from me; I have him,' said Beauchamp. + +'You delude yourself; I have his promise, his pledged word,' said Grancey +Lespel. + +'The man himself told you his opinion of renegade Whigs.' + +'Renegade!' + +'Renegade Whig is an actionable phrase,' Mr. Culbrett observed. + +He was unnoticed. + +'If you don't like "renegade," take "dead,"' said Beauchamp. 'Dead Whig +resurgent in the Tory. You are dead.' + +'It's the stupid conceit of your party thinks that.' + +'Dead, my dear Mr. Lespel. I'll say for the Whigs, they would not be +seen touting for Tories if they were not ghosts of Whigs. You are dead. +There is no doubt of it.' + +'But,' Grancey Lespel repeated, 'if there's no doubt about it, how is it +I have a doubt about it?' + +'The Whigs preached finality in Reform. It was their own funeral +sermon.' + +'Nonsensical talk!' + +'I don't dispute your liberty of action to go over to the Tories, but you +have no right to attempt to take an honest Liberal with you. And that +I've stopped.' + +'Aha! Beauchamp; the man's mine. Come, you'll own he swore he wouldn't +vote for a Shrapnelite.' + +'Don't you remember?--that's how the Tories used to fight you; they stuck +an epithet to you, and hooted to set the mob an example; you hit them off +to the life,' said Beauchamp, brightening with the fine ire of strife, +and affecting a sadder indignation. 'You traded on the ignorance of a +man prejudiced by lying reports of one of the noblest of human +creatures.' + +'Shrapnel? There! I've had enough.' Grancey Lespel bounced away with +both hands outspread on the level of his ears. + +'Dead!' Beauchamp sent the ghastly accusation after him. + +Grancey faced round and said, 'Bo!' which was applauded for a smart +retort. And let none of us be so exalted above the wit of daily life as +to sneer at it. Mrs. Lespel remarked to Mr. Culbrett, 'Do you not see +how much he is refreshed by the interest he takes in this election? He +is ten years younger.' + +Beauchamp bent to her, saying mock-dolefully, 'I'm sorry to tell you that +if ever he was a sincere Whig, he has years of remorse before him.' + +'Promise me, Captain Beauchamp,' she answered, 'promise you will give us +no more politics to-day.' + +'If none provoke me.' + +'None shall.' + +'And as to Bevisham,' said Mr. Culbrett, 'it's the identical borough for +a Radical candidate, for every voter there demands a division of his +property, and he should be the last to complain of an adoption of his +principles.' + +'Clever,' rejoined Beauchamp; 'but I am under government'; and he swept a +bow to Mrs. Lespel. + +As they were breaking up the group, Captain Baskelett appeared. + +'Ah! Nevil,' said he, passed him, saluted Miss Halkett through the +window, then cordially squeezed his cousin's hand. 'Having a holiday out +of Bevisham? The baron expects to meet you at Mount Laurels to-morrow. +He particularly wishes me to ask you whether you think all is fair in +war.' + +'I don't,' said Nevil. + +'Not? The canvass goes on swimmingly.' + +'Ask Palmet! + +'Palmet gives you two-thirds of the borough. The poor old Tory tortoise +is nowhere. They've been writing about you, Nevil.' + +'They have. And if there 's a man of honour in the party I shall hold +him responsible for it.' + +'I allude to an article in the Bevisham Liberal paper; a magnificent +eulogy, upon my honour. I give you my word, I have rarely read an +article so eloquent. And what is the Conservative misdemeanour which the +man of honour in the party is to pay for?' + +'I'll talk to you about it by-and-by,' said Nevil. + +He seemed to Cecilia too trusting, too simple, considering his cousin's +undisguised tone of banter. Yet she could not put him on his guard. +She would have had Mr. Culbrett do so. She walked on the terrace with +him near upon sunset, and said, 'The position Captain Beauchamp is in +here is most unfair to him.' + +'There's nothing unfair in the lion's den,' said Stukely Culbrett; +adding, 'Now, observe, Miss Halkett; he talks for effect. He discovers +that Lespel is a Torified Whig; but that does not make him a bit more +alert. It's to say smart things. He speaks, but won't act, as if he +were among enemies. He's getting too fond of his bow-wow. Here he is, +and he knows the den, and he chooses to act the innocent. You see how +ridiculous? That trick of the ingenu, or peculiarly heavenly messenger, +who pretends that he ought never to have any harm done to him, though he +carries the lighted match, is the way of young Radicals. Otherwise +Beauchamp would be a dear boy. We shall see how he takes his thrashing.' + +'You feel sure he will be beaten?' + +'He has too strong a dose of fool's honesty to succeed--stands for the +game laws with Radicals, for example. He's loaded with scruples and +crotchets, and thinks more of them than of his winds and his tides. No +public man is to be made out of that. His idea of the Whigs being dead +shows a head that can't read the country. He means himself for mankind, +and is preparing to be the benefactor of a country parish.' + +'But as a naval officer?' + +'Excellent.' + +Cecilia was convinced that Mr. Culbrett underestimated Beauchamp. +Nevertheless the confidence expressed in Beauchamp's defeat reassured and +pleased her. At midnight she was dancing with him in the midst of great +matronly country vessels that raised a wind when they launched on the +waltz, and exacted an anxious pilotage on the part of gentlemen careful +of their partners; and why I cannot say, but contrasts produce quaint +ideas in excited spirits, and a dancing politician appeared to her so +absurd that at one moment she had to bite her lips not to laugh. It will +hardly be credited that the waltz with Nevil was delightful to Cecilia +all the while, and dancing with others a penance. He danced with none +other. He led her to a three o'clock morning supper: one of those +triumphant subversions of the laws and customs of earth which have the +charm of a form of present deification for all young people; and she, +while noting how the poor man's advocate dealt with costly pasties and +sparkling wines, was overjoyed at his hearty comrade's manner with the +gentlemen, and a leadership in fun that he seemed to have established. +Cecil Baskelett acknowledged it, and complimented him on it. 'I give you +my word, Nevil, I never heard you in finer trim. Here's to our drive +into Bevisham to-morrow! Do you drink it? I beg; I entreat.' + +'Oh, certainly,' said Nevil. + +'Will you take a whip down there?' + +'If you're all insured.' + +'On my honour, old Nevil, driving a four-in-hand is easier than governing +the country.' + +'I'll accept your authority for what you know best,' said Nevil. + +The toast of the Drive into Bevisham was drunk. + +Cecilia left the supper-table, mortified, and feeling disgraced by her +participation in a secret that was being wantonly abused to humiliate +Nevil, as she was made to think by her sensitiveness. All the gentlemen +were against him, excepting perhaps that chattering pie Lord Palmet, who +did him more mischief than his enemies. She could not sleep. She walked +out on the terrace with Mrs. Wardour-Devereux, in a dream, hearing that +lady breathe remarks hardly less than sentimental, and an unwearied +succession of shouts from the smoking-room. + +'They are not going to bed to-night,' said Mrs. Devereux. + +'They are mystifying Captain Beauchamp,' said Cecilia. + +'My husband tells me they are going to drive him into the town to- +morrow.' + +Cecilia flushed: she could scarcely get her breath. + +'Is that their plot?' she murmured. + +Sleep was rejected by her, bed itself. The drive into Bevisham had been +fixed for nine A.M. She wrote two lines on note-paper in her room: but +found them overfervid and mysterious. Besides, how were they to be +conveyed to Nevil's chamber + +She walked in the passage for half an hour, thinking it possible she +might meet him; not the most lady-like of proceedings, but her head was +bewildered. An arm-chair in her room invited her to rest and think--the +mask of a natural desire for sleep. At eight in the morning she was +awakened by her maid, and at a touch exclaimed, 'Have they gone?' and +her heart still throbbed after hearing that most of the gentlemen were in +and about the stables. Cecilia was down-stairs at a quarter to nine. +The breakfast-room was empty of all but Lord Palmet and Mr. Wardour- +Devereux; one selecting a cigar to light out of doors, the other debating +between two pipes. She beckoned to Palmet, and commissioned him to +inform Beauchamp that she wished him to drive her down to Bevisham in her +pony-carriage. Palmet brought back word from Beauchamp that he had an +appointment at ten o'clock in the town. 'I want to see him,' she said; +so Palmet ran out with the order. Cecilia met Beauchamp in the entrance- +hall. + +'You must not go,' she said bluntly. + +'I can't break an appointment,' said he--'for the sake of my own +pleasure,' was implied. + +'Will you not listen to me, Nevil, when I say you cannot go?' + +A coachman's trumpet blew. + +'I shall be late. That's Colonel Millington's team. He starts first, +then Wardour-Devereux, then Cecil, and I mount beside him; Palmet's at +our heels.' + +'But can't you even imagine a purpose for their driving into Bevisham so +pompously?' + +'Well, men with drags haven't commonly much purpose,' he said. + +'But on this occasion! At an Election time! Surely, Nevil, you can +guess at a reason.' + +A second trumpet blew very martially. Footmen came in search of Captain +Beauchamp. The alternative of breaking her pledged word to her father, +or of letting Nevil be burlesqued in the sight of the town, could no +longer be dallied with. + +Cecilia said, 'Well, Nevil, then you shall hear it.' + +Hereupon Captain Baskelett's groom informed Captain Beauchamp that he was +off. + +'Yes,' Nevil said to Cecilia, 'tell me on board the yacht.' + +'Nevil, you will be driving into the town with the second Tory candidate +of the borough.' + +'Which? who?' Nevil 'asked. + +'Your cousin Cecil.' + +'Tell Captain Baskelett that I don't drive down till an hour later,' +Nevil said to the groom. 'Cecilia, you're my friend; I wish you were +more. I wish we didn't differ. I shall hope to change you--make you +come half-way out of that citadel of yours. This is my uncle Everard! +I might have made sure there'd be a blow from him! And Cecil! of all +men for a politician! Cecilia, think of it! Cecil Baskelett! I beg +Seymour Austin's pardon for having suspected him . . .' + +Now sounded Captain Baskelett's trumpet. + +Angry though he was, Beauchamp laughed. 'Isn't it exactly like the baron +to spring a mine of this kind?' + +There was decidedly humour in the plot, and it was a lusty quarterstaff +blow into the bargain. Beauchamp's head rang with it. He could not +conceal the stunning effect it had on him. Gratitude and tenderness +toward Cecilia for saving him, at the cost of a partial breach of faith +that he quite understood, from the scandal of the public entry into +Bevisham on the Tory coach-box, alternated with his interjections +regarding his uncle Everard. + +At eleven, Cecilia sat in her pony-carriage giving final directions to +Mrs. Devereux where to look out for the Esperanza and the schooner's +boat. 'Then I drive down alone,' Mrs. Devereux said. + +The gentlemen were all off, and every available maid with them on the +coach-boxes, a brilliant sight that had been missed by Nevil and Cecilia. + +'Why, here's Lydiard!' said Nevil, supposing that Lydiard must be +approaching him with tidings of the second Tory candidate. But Lydiard +knew nothing of it. He was the bearer of a letter on foreign paper-- +marked urgent, in Rosamund's hand--and similarly worded in the well-known +hand which had inscribed the original address of the letter to Steynham. + +Beauchamp opened it and read: + + Chateau Tourdestelle + '(Eure). + + 'Come. I give you three days--no more. + + 'RENEE.' + +The brevity was horrible. Did it spring from childish imperiousness or +tragic peril? + +Beauchamp could imagine it to be this or that. In moments of excited +speculation we do not dwell on the possibility that there may be a +mixture of motives. + +'I fear I must cross over to France this evening,' he said to Cecilia. + +She replied, 'It is likely to be stormy to-night. The steamboat may not +run.' + +'If there's a doubt of it, I shall find a French lugger. You are tired, +from not sleeping last night.' + +'No,' she answered, and nodded to Mrs. Devereux, beside whom Mr. Lydiard +stood: 'You will not drive down alone, you see.' + +For a young lady threatened with a tempest in her heart, as disturbing to +her as the one gathering in the West for ships at sea, Miss Halkett bore +herself well. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +THE DRIVE INTO BEVISHAM + +Beauchamp was requested by Cecilia to hold the reins. His fair companion +in the pony-carriage preferred to lean back musing, and he had leisure to +think over the blow dealt him by his uncle Everard with so sure an aim so +ringingly on the head. And in the first place he made no attempt to +disdain it because it was nothing but artful and heavy-handed, after the +mediaeval pattern. Of old he himself had delighted in artfulness as well +as boldness and the unmistakeable hit. Highly to prize generalship was +in his blood, though latterly the very forces propelling him to his +political warfare had forbidden the use of it to him. He saw the patient +veteran laying his gun for a long shot--to give as good as he had +received; and in realizing Everard Romfrey's perfectly placid bearing +under provocation, such as he certainly would have maintained while +preparing his reply to it, the raw fighting humour of the plot touched +the sense of justice in Beauchamp enough to make him own that he had been +the first to offend. + +He could reflect also on the likelihood that other offended men of his +uncle's age and position would have sulked or stormed, threatening the +Parthian shot of the vindictive testator. If there was godlessness in +turning to politics for a weapon to strike a domestic blow, manfulness in +some degree signalized it. Beauchamp could fancy his uncle crying out, +Who set the example? and he was not at that instant inclined to dwell on +the occult virtues of the example he had set. To be honest, this +elevation of a political puppet like Cecil Baskelett, and the starting +him, out of the same family which Turbot, the journalist, had magnified, +into Bevisham with such pomp and flourish in opposition to the serious +young champion of popular rights and the Puritan style, was ludicrously +effective. Conscienceless of course. But that was the way of the Old +School. + +Beauchamp broke the silence by thanking Cecilia once more for saving him +from the absurd exhibition of the Radical candidate on the Tory coach- +box, and laughing at the grimmish slyness of his uncle Everard's +conspiracy a something in it that was half-smile half-sneer; not exactly +malignant, and by no means innocent; something made up of the simplicity +of a lighted match, and its proximity to powder, yet neither deadly, in +spite of a wicked twinkle, nor at all pretending to be harmless: in +short, a specimen of old English practical humour. + +He laboured to express these or corresponding views of it, with tolerably +natural laughter, and Cecilia rallied her spirits at his pleasant manner +of taking his blow. + +'I shall compliment the baron when I meet him tonight,' he said. 'What +can we compare him to?' + +She suggested the Commander of the Faithful, the Lord Haroun, who +likewise had a turn for buffooneries to serve a purpose, and could direct +them loftily and sovereignty. + +'No: Everard Romfrey's a Northerner from the feet up,' said Beauchamp. + +Cecilia compliantly offered him a sketch of the Scandinavian Troll: much +nearer the mark, he thought, and exclaimed: 'Baron Troll! I'm afraid, +Cecilia, you have robbed him of the best part of his fun. And you will +owe it entirely to him if you should be represented in Parliament by my +cousin Basketett.' + +'Promise me, Nevit, that you will, when you meet Captain Baskelett, not +forget I did you some service, and that I wish, I shall be so glad if you +do not resent certain things . . . .Very objectionable, we all think.' + +He released her from the embarrassing petition: 'Oh! now I know my man, +you may be sure I won't waste a word on him. The fact is, he would not +understand a word, and would require more--and that I don't do. When I +fancied Mr. Austin was the responsible person, I meant to speak to him.' + +Cecilia smiled gratefully. + +The sweetness of a love-speech would not have been sweeter to her than +this proof of civilized chivalry in Nevil. + +They came to the fir-heights overlooking Bevisham. Here the breezy +beginning of a South-western autumnal gale tossed the ponies' manes and +made threads of Cecilia's shorter locks of beautiful auburn by the +temples and the neck, blustering the curls that streamed in a thick +involution from the silken band gathering them off her uncovered clear- +swept ears. + +Beauchamp took an impression of her side face. It seemed to offer him +everything the world could offer of cultivated purity, intelligent beauty +and attractiveness; and 'Wilt thou?' said the winged minute. Peace, a +good repute in the mouths of men, home, and a trustworthy woman for mate, +an ideal English lady, the rarest growth of our country, and friends and +fair esteem, were offered. Last night he had waltzed with her, and the +manner of this tall graceful girl in submitting to the union of the +measure and reserving her individual distinction, had exquisitely +flattered his taste, giving him an auspicious image of her in +partnership, through the uses of life. + +He looked ahead at the low dead-blue cloud swinging from across channel. +What could be the riddle of Renee's letter! It chained him completely. + +'At all events, I shall not be away longer than three days,' he said; +paused, eyed Cecilia's profile, and added, 'Do we differ so much?' + +'It may not be so much as we think,' said she. + +'But if we do!' + +'Then, Nevil, there is a difference between us.' + +'But if we keep our lips closed?' + +'We should have to shut our eyes as well!' + +A lovely melting image of her stole over him; all the warmer for her +unwittingness in producing it: and it awakened a tenderness toward the +simple speaker. + +Cecilia's delicate breeding saved her from running on figuratively. She +continued: 'Intellectual differences do not cause wounds, except when +very unintellectual sentiments are behind them:--my conceit, or your +impatience, Nevil? "Noi veggiam come quei, che ha mala luce." . . . +I can confess my sight to be imperfect: but will you ever do so?' + +Her musical voice in Italian charmed his hearing. + +'What poet was that you quoted?' + +'The wisest: Dante.' + +'Dr. Shrapnel's favourite! I must try to read him.' + +'He reads Dante?' Cecilia threw a stress on the august name; and it was +manifest that she cared not for the answer. + +Contemptuous exclusiveness could not go farther. + +'He is a man of cultivation,' Beauchamp said cursorily, trying to avoid +dissension, but in vain. 'I wish I were half as well instructed, and the +world half as charitable as he!--You ask me if I shall admit my sight to +be imperfect. Yes; when you prove to me that priests and landlords are +willing to do their duty by the people in preference to their churches +and their property: but will you ever shake off prejudice?' + +Here was opposition sounding again. Cecilia mentally reproached Dr. +Shrapnel for it. + +'Indeed, Nevil, really, must not--may I not ask you this?--must not every +one feel the evil spell of some associations? And Dante and Dr. +Shrapnel!' + +'You don't know him, Cecilia.' + +'I saw him yesterday.' + +'You thought him too tall?' + +'I thought of his character.' + +'How angry I should be with you if you were not so beautiful!' + +'I am immensely indebted to my unconscious advocate.' + +'You are clad in steel; you flash back; you won't answer me out of the +heart. I 'm convinced it is pure wilfulness that makes you oppose me.' + +'I fancy you must be convinced because you cannot imagine women to have +any share of public spirit, Nevil.' + +A grain of truth in that remark set Nevil reflecting. + +'I want them to have it,' he remarked, and glanced at a Tory placard, +probably the puppet's fresh-printed address to the electors, on one of +the wayside fir-trees. 'Bevisham looks well from here. We might make a +North-western Venice of it, if we liked.' + +'Papa told you it would be money sunk in mud.' + +'Did I mention it to him?--Thoroughly Conservative!--So he would leave +the mud as it is. They insist on our not venturing anything--those +Tories! exactly as though we had gained the best of human conditions, +instead of counting crops of rogues, malefactors, egoists, noxious and +lumbersome creatures that deaden the country. Your town down there is +one of the ugliest and dirtiest in the kingdom: it might be the fairest.' + +'I have often thought that of Bevisham, Nevil.' + +He drew a visionary sketch of quays, embankments, bridged islands, public +buildings, magical emanations of patriotic architecture, with a practical +air, an absence of that enthusiasm which struck her with suspicion when +it was not applied to landscape or the Arts; and she accepted it, and +warmed, and even allowed herself to appear hesitating when he returned to +the similarity of the state of mud-begirt Bevisham and our great sluggish +England. + +Was he not perhaps to be pitied in his bondage to the Frenchwoman, who +could have no ideas in common with him? + +The rare circumstance that she and Nevil Beauchamp had found a subject of +agreement, partially overcame the sentiment Cecilia entertained for the +foreign lady; and having now one idea in common with him, she conceived +the possibility that there might be more. There must be many, for he +loved England, and she no less. She clung, however, to the topic of +Bevisham, preferring to dream of the many more, rather than run risks. +Undoubtedly the town was of an ignoble aspect; and it was declining in +prosperity; and it was consequently over-populated. And undoubtedly (so +she was induced to coincide for the moment) a Government, acting to any +extent like a supervising head, should aid and direct the energies of +towns and ports and trades, and not leave everything everywhere to +chance: schools for the people, public morality, should be the charge of +Government. Cecilia had surrendered the lead to him, and was forced to +subscribe to an equivalent of 'undoubtedly' the Tories just as little as +the Liberals had done these good offices. Party against party, neither +of them had a forethoughtful head for the land at large. They waited for +the Press to spur a great imperial country to be but defensively armed, +and they accepted the so-called volunteers, with a nominal one-month's +drill per annum, as a guarantee of defence! + +Beauchamp startled her, actually kindled her mind to an activity of +wonder and regret, with the statement of how much Government, acting with +some degree of farsightedness, might have won to pay the public debt and +remit taxation, by originally retaining the lines of railway, and +fastening on the valuable land adjoining stations. Hundreds of millions +of pounds! + +She dropped a sigh at the prodigious amount, but inquired, 'Who has +calculated it?' + +For though perfectly aware that this kind of conversation was a special +compliment paid to her by her friend Nevil, and dimly perceiving that it +implied something beyond a compliment-in fact, that it was his manner of +probing her for sympathy, as other men would have conducted the process +preliminary to deadly flattery or to wooing, her wits fenced her heart +about; the exercise of shrewdness was an instinct of self-preservation. +She had nothing but her poor wits, daily growing fainter, to resist him +with. And he seemed to know it, and therefore assailed them, never +trying at the heart. + +That vast army of figures might be but a phantom army conjured out of the +Radical mists, might it not? she hinted. And besides, we cannot surely +require a Government to speculate in the future, can we? + +Possibly not, as Governments go, Beauchamp said. + +But what think you of a Government of landowners decreeing the enclosure +of millions of acres of common land amongst themselves; taking the +property of the people to add to their own! Say, is not that plunder? +Public property, observe; decreed to them by their own law-making, under +the pretence that it was being reclaimed for cultivation, when in reality +it has been but an addition to their pleasure-grounds: a flat robbery of +pasture from the poor man's cow and goose, and his right of cutting furze +for firing. Consider that! Beauchamp's eyes flashed democratic in +reciting this injury to the objects of his warm solicitude--the man, the +cow, and the goose. But so must he have looked when fronting England's +enemies, and his aspect of fervour subdued Cecilia. She confessed her +inability to form an estimate of such conduct. + +'Are they doing it still?' she asked. + +'We owe it to Dr. Shrapnel foremost that there is now a watch over them +to stop them. But for him, Grancey Lespel would have enclosed half of +Northeden Heath. As it is, he has filched bits here and there, and he +will have to put back his palings.' + +However, now let Cecilia understand that we English, calling ourselves +free, are under morally lawless rule. Government is what we require, and +our means of getting it must be through universal suffrage. At present +we have no Government; only shifting Party Ministries, which are the +tools of divers interests, wealthy factions, to the sacrifice of the +Commonwealth. + +She listened, like Rosamund Culling overborne by Dr. Shrapnel, inwardly +praying that she might discover a man to reply to him. + +'A Despotism, Nevil?' + +He hoped not, declined the despot, was English enough to stand against +the best of men in that character; but he cast it on Tory, Whig, and +Liberal, otherwise the Constitutionalists, if we were to come upon the +despot. + +'They see we are close on universal suffrage; they've been bidding each +in turn for "the people," and that has brought them to it, and now +they're alarmed, and accuse one another of treason to the Constitution, +and they don't accept the situation: and there's a fear, that to carry on +their present system, they will be thwarting the people or corrupting +them: and in that case we shall have our despot in some shape or other, +and we shall suffer.' + +'Nevil,' said Cecilia, 'I am out of my depth.' + +'I'll support you; I can swim for two,' said he. + +'You are very self-confident, but I find I am not fit for battle; at +least not in the front ranks.' + +'Nerve me, then: will you? Try to comprehend once for all what the +battle is.' + +'I am afraid I am too indifferent; I am too luxurious. That reminds me: +you want to meet your uncle Everard and if you will sleep at Mount +Laurels to-night, the Esperanza shall take you to France to-morrow +morning, and can wait to bring you back.' + +As she spoke she perceived a flush mounting over Nevil's face. Soon it +was communicated to hers. + +The strange secret of the blood electrified them both, and revealed the +burning undercurrent running between them from the hearts of each. The +light that showed how near they were to one another was kindled at the +barrier dividing them. It remained as good as a secret, unchallenged +until they had separated, and after midnight Cecilia looked through her. +chamber windows at the driving moon of a hurricane scud, and read clearly +his honourable reluctance to be wafted over to his French love by her +assistance; and Beauchamp on board the tossing steamboat perceived in her +sympathetic reddening that she had divined him. + +This auroral light eclipsed the other events of the day. He drove into a +town royally decorated, and still humming with the ravishment of the Tory +entrance. He sailed in the schooner to Mount Laurels, in the society of +Captain Baskelett and his friends, who, finding him tamer than they +expected, bantered him in the cheerfullest fashion. He waited for his +uncle Everard several hours at Mount Laurels, perused the junior Tory's +address to the Electors, throughout which there was not an idea--safest +of addresses to canvass upon! perused likewise, at Captain Baskelett's +request, a broad sheet of an article introducing the new candidate to +Bevisham with the battle-axe Romfreys to back him, in high burlesque of +Timothy Turbot upon Beauchamp: and Cecil hoped his cousin would not +object to his borrowing a Romfrey or two for so pressing an occasion. +All very funny, and no doubt the presence of Mr. Everard Romfrey would +have heightened the fun from the fountain-head; but he happened to be +delayed, and Beauchamp had to leave directions behind him in the town, +besides the discussion of a whole plan of conduct with Dr. Shrapnel, so +he was under the necessity of departing without seeing his uncle, really +to his regret. He left word to that effect. + +Taking leave of Cecilia, he talked of his return 'home' within three or +four days as a certainty. + +She said: 'Canvassing should not be neglected now.' + +Her hostility was confused by what she had done to save him from +annoyance, while his behaviour to his cousin Cecil increased her respect +for him. She detected a pathetic meaning in his mention of the word +home; she mused on his having called her beautiful: whither was she +hurrying? Forgetful of her horror of his revolutionary ideas, forgetful +of the elevation of her own, she thrilled secretly on hearing it stated +by the jubilant young Tories at Mount Laurels, as a characteristic of +Beauchamp, that he was clever in parrying political thrusts, and slipping +from the theme; he who with her gave out unguardedly the thoughts deepest +in him. And the thoughts!--were they not of generous origin? Where so +true a helpmate for him as the one to whom his mind appealed? It could +not be so with the Frenchwoman. Cecilia divined a generous nature by +generosity, and set herself to believe that in honour he had not yet +dared to speak to her from the heart, not being at heart quite free. She +was at the same time in her remains of pride cool enough to examine and +rebuke the weakness she succumbed to in now clinging to him by that which +yesterday she hardly less than loathed, still deeply disliked. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +TOURDESTELLE + +On the part of Beauchamp, his conversation with Cecilia during the drive +into Bevisham opened out for the first time in his life a prospect of +home; he had felt the word in speaking it, and it signified an end to the +distractions produced by the sex, allegiance to one beloved respected +woman, and also a basis of operations against the world. For she was +evidently conquerable, and once matched with him would be the very woman +to nerve and sustain him. Did she not listen to him? He liked her +resistance. That element of the barbarous which went largely to form his +emotional nature was overjoyed in wresting such a woman from the enemy, +and subduing her personally. She was a prize. She was a splendid prize, +cut out from under the guns of the fort. He rendered all that was due to +his eminently good cause for its part in so signal a success, but +individual satisfaction is not diminished by the thought that the +individual's discernment selected the cause thus beneficent to him. + +Beauchamp's meditations were diverted by the sight of the coast of France +dashed in rain-lines across a weed-strewn sea. The 'three days' granted +him by Renee were over, and it scarcely troubled him that he should be +behind the time; he detested mystery, holding it to be a sign of +pretentious feebleness, often of imposture, it might be frivolity. +Punctilious obedience to the mysterious brevity of the summons, and not +to chafe at it, appeared to him as much as could be expected of a +struggling man. This was the state of the case with him, until he stood +on French earth, breathed French air, and chanced to hear the tongue of +France twittered by a lady on the quay. The charm was instantaneous. +He reminded himself that Renee, unlike her countrywomen, had no gift for +writing letters. They had never corresponded since the hour of her +marriage. They had met in Sicily, at Syracuse, in the presence of her +father and her husband, and so inanimate was she that the meeting seemed +like the conclusion of their history. Her brother Roland sent tidings of +her by fits, and sometimes a conventional message from Tourdestelle. +Latterly her husband's name had been cited as among the wildfires of +Parisian quays, in journals more or less devoted to those unreclaimed +spaces of the city. Well, if she was unhappy, was it not the fulfilment +of his prophecy in Venice? + +Renee's brevity became luminous. She needed him urgently, and knowing +him faithful to the death, she, because she knew him, dispatched purely +the words which said she needed him. Why, those brief words were the +poetry of noble confidence! But what could her distress be? The lover +was able to read that, 'Come; I give you three days,' addressed to him, +was not language of a woman free of her yoke. + +Excited to guess and guess, Beauchamp swept on to speculations of a +madness that seized him bodily at last. Were you loved, Cecilia? He +thought little of politics in relation to Renee; or of home, or of honour +in the world's eye, or of labouring to pay the fee for his share of life. +This at least was one of the forms of love which precipitate men: the +sole thought in him was to be with her. She was Renee, the girl of whom +he had prophetically said that she must come to regrets and tears. His +vision of her was not at Tourdestelle, though he assumed her to be there +awaiting him: she was under the sea-shadowing Alps, looking up to the red +and gold-rosed heights of a realm of morning that was hers inviolably, +and under which Renee was eternally his. + +The interval between then and now was but the space of an unquiet sea +traversed in the night, sad in the passage of it, but featureless--and it +had proved him right! It was to Nevil Beauchamp as if the spirit of his +old passion woke up again to glorious hopeful morning when he stood in +Renee's France. + +Tourdestelle enjoyed the aristocratic privilege of being twelve miles +from the nearest railway station. Alighting here on an evening of clear +sky, Beauchamp found an English groom ready to dismount for him and bring +on his portmanteau. The man said that his mistress had been twice to the +station, and was now at the neighbouring Chateau Dianet. Thither +Beauchamp betook himself on horseback. He was informed at the gates that +Madame la Marquise had left for Tourdestelle in the saddle only ten +minutes previously. The lodge-keeper had been instructed to invite him +to stay at Chateau Dianet in the event of his arriving late, but it would +be possible to overtake madame by a cut across the heights at a turn of +the valley. Beauchamp pushed along the valley for this visible +projection; a towering mass of woodland, in the midst of which a narrow +roadway, worn like the track of a torrent with heavy rain, wound upward. +On his descent to the farther side, he was to spy directly below in the +flat for Tourdestelle. He crossed the wooded neck above the valley, and +began descending, peering into gulfs of the twilight dusk. Some paces +down he was aided by a brilliant half-moon that divided the whole +underlying country into sharp outlines of dark and fair, and while +endeavouring to distinguish the chateau of Tourdestelle his eyes were +attracted to an angle of the downward zigzag, where a pair of horses +emerged into broad light swiftly; apparently the riders were disputing, +or one had overtaken the other in pursuit. Riding-habit and plumed hat +signalized the sex of one. Beauchamp sung out a gondolier's cry. He +fancied it was answered. + +He was heard, for the lady turned about, and as he rode down, still +uncertain of her, she came cantering up alone, and there could be no +uncertainty. + +Moonlight is friendless to eyes that would make sure of a face long +unseen. It was Renee whose hand he clasped, but the story of the years +on her, and whether she was in bloom, or wan as the beams revealing her, +he could not see. + +Her tongue sounded to him as if it were loosened without a voice. 'You +have come. That storm! You are safe!' + +So phantom-like a sound of speech alarmed him. 'I lost no time. But +you?' + +'I am well.' + +'Nothing hangs over you?' + +'Nothing.' + +'Why give me just three days?' + +'Pure impatience. Have you forgotten me?' + +Their horses walked on with them. They unlocked their hands. + +'You knew it was I?' said he. + +'Who else could it be? I heard Venice,' she replied. + +Her previous cavalier was on his feet, all but on his knees, it appeared, +searching for something that eluded him under the road-side bank. He +sprang at it and waved it, leapt in the saddle, and remarked, as he drew +up beside Renee: 'What one picks from the earth one may wear, I presume, +especially when we can protest it is our property.' + +Beauchamp saw him planting a white substance most carefully at the breast +buttonhole of his coat. It could hardly be a flower. Some drooping +exotic of the conservatory perhaps resembled it. + +Renee pronounced his name: 'M. le Comte Henri d'Henriel.' + +He bowed to Beauchamp with an extreme sweep of the hat. + +'Last night, M. Beauchamp, we put up vows for you to the Marine God, +beseeching an exemption from that horrible mal de mer. Thanks to the +storm, I suppose, I have won. I must maintain, madame, that I won.' + +'You wear your trophy,' said Renee, and her horse reared and darted +ahead. + +The gentleman on each side of her struck into a trot. Beauchamp glanced +at M. d'Henriel's breast-decoration. Renee pressed the pace, and +threading dense covers of foliage they reached the level of the valley, +where for a couple of miles she led them, stretching away merrily, now in +shadow, now in moonlight, between high land and meadow land, and a line +of poplars in the meadows winding with the river that fed the vale and +shot forth gleams of silvery disquiet by rustic bridge and mill. + +The strangeness of being beside her, not having yet scanned her face, +marvelling at her voice--that was like and unlike the Renee of old, full +of her, but in another key, a mellow note, maturer--made the ride magical +to Beauchamp, planting the past in the present like a perceptible ghost. + +Renee slackened speed, saying: 'Tourdestelle spans a branch of our little +river. This is our gate. Had it been daylight I would have taken you by +another way, and you would have seen the black tower burnt in the +Revolution; an imposing monument, I am assured. However, you will think +it pretty beside the stream. Do you come with us, M. le Comte?' + +His answer was inaudible to Beauchamp; he did not quit them. + +The lamp at the lodge-gates presented the young man's face in full view, +and Beauchamp thought him supremely handsome. He perceived it to be a +lady's glove that M. d'Henriel wore at his breast. + +Renee walked her horse up the park-drive, alongside the bright running +water. It seemed that she was aware of the method of provoking or +reproving M. d'Henriel. He endured some minutes of total speechlessness +at this pace, and abruptly said adieu and turned back. + +Renee bounded like a vessel free of her load. 'But why should we hurry?' +said she, and checked her course to the walk again. 'I hope you like our +Normandy, and my valley. You used to love France, Nevil; and Normandy, +they tell me, is cousin to the opposite coast of England, in climate, +soil, people, it may be in manners too. A Beauchamp never can feel that +he is a foreigner in Normandy. We claim you half French. You have +grander parks, they say. We can give you sunlight.' + +'And it was really only the wish to see me?' said Beauchamp. + +'Only, and really. One does not live for ever--on earth; and it becomes +a question whether friends should be shadows to one another before death. +I wrote to you because I wished to see you: I was impatient because I am +Renee.' + +'You relieve me!' + +'Evidently you have forgotten my character, Nevil.' + +'Not a feature of it.' + +'Ah!' she breathed involuntarily. + +'Would you have me forget it?' + +'When I think by myself, quite alone, yes, I would. Otherwise how can +one hope that one's friend is friendship, supposing him to read us as we +are--minutely, accurately? And it is in absence that we desire our +friends to be friendship itself. And . . . and I am utterly astray! +I have not dealt in this language since I last thought of writing a +diary, and stared at the first line. If I mistake not, you are fond of +the picturesque. If moonlight and water will satisfy you, look yonder.' + +The moon launched her fairy silver fleets on a double sweep of the little +river round an island of reeds and two tall poplars. + +'I have wondered whether I should ever see you looking at that scene,' +said Renee. + +He looked from it to her, and asked if Roland was well, and her father; +then alluded to her husband; but the unlettering elusive moon, bright +only in the extension of her beams, would not tell him what story this +face, once heaven to him, wore imprinted on it. Her smile upon a parted +mouth struck him as two-edged in replying: 'I have good news to give you +of them all: Roland is in garrison at Rouen, and will come when I +telegraph. My father is in Touraine, and greets you affectionately; he +hopes to come. They are both perfectly happy. My husband is +travelling.' + +Beauchamp was conscious of some bitter taste; unaware of what it was, +though it led him to say, undesigningly: 'How very handsome that M. +d'Henriel is!--if I have his name correctly.' + +Renee answered: 'He has the misfortune to be considered the handsomest +young man in France.' + +'He has an Italian look.' + +'His mother was Provencale.' + +She put her horse in motion, saying: 'I agree with you that handsome men +are rarities. And, by the way, they do not set our world on fire quite +as much as beautiful women do yours, my friend. Acknowledge so much in +our favour.' + +He assented indefinitely. He could have wished himself away canvassing +in Bevisham. He had only to imagine himself away from her, to feel the +flood of joy in being with her. + +'Your husband is travelling?' + +'It is his pleasure.' + +Could she have intended to say that this was good news to give of him as +well as of the happiness of her father and brother? + +'Now look on Tourdestelle,' said Renee. 'You will avow that for an +active man to be condemned to seek repose in so dull a place, after the +fatigues of the season in Paris, it is considerably worse than for women, +so I am here to dispense the hospitalities. The right wing of the +chateau, on your left, is new. The side abutting the river is inhabited +by Dame Philiberte, whom her husband imprisoned for attempting to take +her pleasure in travel. I hear upon authority that she dresses in white, +and wears a black crucifix. She is many centuries old, and still she +lives to remind people that she married a Rouaillout. Do you not think +she should have come to me to welcome me? She never has; and possibly of +ladies who are disembodied we may say that they know best. For me, I +desire the interview--and I am a coward: I need not state it.' She +ceased; presently continuing: 'The other inhabitants are my sister, Agnes +d'Auffray, wife of a general officer serving in Afric--my sister by +marriage, and my friend; the baronne d'Orbec, a relation by marriage; M. +d'Orbec, her son, a guest, and a sportsman; M. Livret, an erudite. No +young ladies: I can bear much, but not their presence; girls are odious +to me. I knew one in Venice.' + +They came within the rays of the lamp hanging above the unpretending +entrance to the chateau. Renee's broad grey Longueville hat curved low +with its black plume on the side farthest from him. He was favoured by +the gallant lift of the brim on the near side, but she had overshadowed +her eyes. + +'He wears a glove at his breast,' said Beauchamp. + +'You speak of M. d'Henriel. He wears a glove at his breast; yes, it is +mine,' said Renee. + +She slipped from her horse and stood against his shoulder, as if waiting +to be questioned before she rang the bell of the chateau. + +Beauchamp alighted, burning with his unutterable questions concerning +that glove. + +'Lift your hat, let me beg you; let me see you,' he said. + +This was not what she had expected. With one heave of her bosom, and +murmuring: 'I made a vow I would obey you absolutely if you came,' she +raised the hat above her brows, and lightning would not have surprised +him more; for there had not been a single vibration of her voice to tell +him of tears running: nay, the absence of the usual French formalities in +her manner of addressing him, had seemed to him to indicate her intention +to put him at once on an easy friendly footing, such as would be natural +to her, and not painful to him. Now she said: + +'You perceive, monsieur, that I have my sentimental fits like others; but +in truth I am not insensible to the picturesque or to gratitude, and I +thank you sincerely for coming, considering that I wrote like a Sphinx-- +to evade writing comme une folle!' + +She swept to the bell. + +Standing in the arch of the entrance, she stretched her whip out to a +black mass of prostrate timber, saying: + +'It fell in the storm at two o'clock after midnight, and you on the sea!' + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +HIS HOLIDAY + +A single day was to be the term of his holiday at Tourdestelle; but it +stood forth as one of those perfect days which are rounded by an evening +before and a morning after, giving him two nights under the same roof +with Renee, something of a resemblance to three days of her; anticipation +and wonder filling the first, she the next, the adieu the last: every +hour filled. And the first day was not over yet. He forced himself to +calmness, that he might not fritter it, and walked up and down the room +he was dressing in, examining its foreign decorations, and peering +through the window, to quiet his nerves. He was in her own France with +her! The country borrowed hues from Renee, and lent some. This +chivalrous France framed and interlaced her image, aided in idealizing +her, and was in turn transfigured. Not half so well would his native +land have pleaded for the forgiveness of a British damsel who had wrecked +a young man's immoderate first love. That glorified self-love requires +the touch upon imagination of strangeness and an unaccustomed grace, to +subdue it and make it pardon an outrage to its temples and altars, and +its happy reading of the heavens, the earth too: earth foremost, we ought +perhaps to say. It is an exacting heathen, best understood by a glance +at what will appease it: beautiful, however, as everybody has proved; and +shall it be decried in a world where beauty is not overcommon, though it +would slaughter us for its angry satisfaction, yet can be soothed by a +tone of colour, as it were by a novel inscription on a sweetmeat? + +The peculiarity of Beauchamp was that he knew the slenderness of the +thread which was leading him, and foresaw it twisting to a coil unless he +should hold firm. His work in life was much above the love of a woman in +his estimation, so he was not deluded by passion when he entered the +chateau; it is doubtful whether he would not hesitatingly have sacrificed +one of the precious votes in Bevisham for the pleasure of kissing her +hand when they were on the steps. She was his first love and only love, +married, and long ago forgiven:--married; that is to say, she especially +among women was interdicted to him by the lingering shadow of the +reverential love gone by; and if the anguish of the lover's worse than +death survived in a shudder of memory at the thought of her not solely +lost to him but possessed by another, it did but quicken a hunger that +was three parts curiosity to see how she who had suffered this bore the +change; how like or unlike she might be to the extinct Renee; what traces +she kept of the face he had known. Her tears were startling, but tears +tell of a mood, they do not tell the story of the years; and it was that +story he had such eagerness to read in one brief revelation: an eagerness +born only of the last few hours, and broken by fears of a tarnished +aspect; these again being partly hopes of a coming disillusion that would +restore him his independence and ask him only for pity. The slavery of +the love of a woman chained like Renee was the most revolting of +prospects to a man who cherished his freedom that he might work to the +end of his time. Moreover, it swung a thunder-cloud across his holiday. +He recurred to the idea of the holiday repeatedly, and the more he did so +the thinner it waned. He was exhausting the very air and spirit of it +with a mind that ran incessantly forward and back; and when he and the +lady of so much speculation were again together, an incapacity of +observation seemed to have come over him. In reality it was the +inability to reflect on his observations. Her presence resembled those +dark sunsets throwing the spell of colour across the world; when there is +no question with us of morning or of night, but of that sole splendour +only. + +Owing to their arrival late at the chateau, covers were laid for them in +the boudoir of Madame la Marquise, where he had his hostess to himself, +and certainly the opportunity of studying her. An English Navy List, +solitary on a shelf, and laid within it an extract of a paper announcing +the return of the Ariadne to port, explained the mystery of her knowing +that he was in England, as well as the correctness of the superscription +of her letter to him. 'You see, I follow you,' she said. + +Beauchamp asked if she read English now. + +'A little; but the paper was dispatched to me by M. Vivian Ducie, of your +embassy in Paris. He is in the valley.' + +The name of Ducie recalled Lord Palmet's description of the dark beauty +of the fluttering pale gold ornaments. She was now dressed without one +decoration of gold or jewel, with scarcely a wave in the silk, a modesty +of style eloquent of the pride of her form. + +Could those eyes fronting him under the lamp have recently shed tears? +They were the living eyes of a brilliant unembarrassed lady; shields +flinging light rather than well-depths inviting it. + +Beauchamp tried to compare her with the Renee of Venice, and found +himself thinking of the glove she had surrendered to the handsomest young +man in France. The effort to recover the younger face gave him a dead +creature, with the eyelashes of Renee, the cast of her mouth and throat, +misty as a shape in a dream. + +He could compare her with Cecilia, who never would have risked a glove, +never have betrayed a tear, and was the statelier lady, not without +language: but how much less vivid in feature and the gift of speech! +Renee's gift of speech counted unnumbered strings which she played on +with a grace that clothed the skill, and was her natural endowment--an +art perfected by the education of the world. Who cannot talk!--but who +can? Discover the writers in a day when all are writing! It is as rare +an art as poetry, and in the mouths of women as enrapturing, richer than +their voices in music. + +This was the fascination Beauchamp felt weaving round him. Would you, +that are separable from boys and mobs, and the object malignly called the +Briton, prefer the celestial singing of a woman to her excellently +talking? But not if it were given you to run in unison with her genius +of the tongue, following her verbal ingenuities and feminine silk-flashes +of meaning; not if she led you to match her fine quick perceptions with +more or less of the discreet concordance of the violoncello accompanying +the viol. It is not high flying, which usually ends in heavy falling. +You quit the level of earth no more than two birds that chase from bush +to bush to bill in air, for mutual delight to make the concert heavenly. +Language flowed from Renee in affinity with the pleasure-giving laws that +make the curves we recognize as beauty in sublimer arts. Accept +companionship for the dearest of the good things we pray to have, and +what equalled her! Who could be her rival! + +Her girl's crown of irradiated Alps began to tremble over her dimly, as +from moment to moment their intimacy warmed, and Beauchamp saw the young +face vanishing out of this flower of womanhood. He did not see it +appearing or present, but vanishing like the faint ray in the rosier. +Nay, the blot of her faithlessness underwent a transformation: it +affected him somewhat as the patch cunningly laid on near a liquid dimple +in fair cheeks at once allures and evades a susceptible attention. + +Unused in his French of late, he stumbled at times, and she supplied the +needed phrase, taking no note of a blunder. Now men of sweet blood +cannot be secretly accusing or criticizing a gracious lady. Domestic men +are charged with thinking instantly of dark death when an ordinary +illness befalls them; and it may be so or not: but it is positive that +the gallant man of the world, if he is in the sensitive condition, and +not yet established as the lord of her, feels paralyzed in his masculine +sense of leadership the moment his lady assumes the initiative and +directs him: he gives up at once; and thus have many nimble-witted dames +from one clear start retained their advantage. + +Concerning that glove: well! the handsomest young man in France wore the +glove of the loveliest woman. The loveliest? The very loveliest in the +purity of her French style--the woman to challenge England for a type of +beauty to eclipse her. It was possible to conceive her country wagering +her against all women. + +If Renee had faults, Beauchamp thought of her as at sea breasting +tempests, while Cecilia was a vessel lying safe in harbour, untried, +however promising: and if Cecilia raised a steady light for him, it was +over the shores he had left behind, while Renee had really nothing to do +with warning or rescuing, or with imperilling; she welcomed him simply to +a holiday in her society. He associated Cecilia strangely with the +political labours she would have had him relinquish; and Renee with a +pleasant state of indolence, that her lightest smile disturbed. Shun +comparisons. + +It is the tricksy heart which sets up that balance, to jump into it on +one side or the other. Comparisons come of a secret leaning that is sure +to play rogue under its mien of honest dealer: so Beauchamp suffered +himself to be unjust to graver England, and lost the strength she would +have given him to resist a bewitchment. The case with him was, that his +apprenticeship was new; he had been trotting in harness as a veritable +cab-horse of politics--he by blood a racer; and his nature craved for +diversions, against his will, against his moral sense and born tenacity +of spirit. + +Not a word further of the glove. But at night, in his bed, the glove was +a principal actor in events of extraordinary magnitude and inconsequence. + +He was out in the grounds with the early morning light. Coffee and sweet +French bread were brought out to him, and he was informed of the hours of +reunion at the chateau, whose mistress continued invisible. She might be +sleeping. He strolled about, within view of the windows, wondering at +her subservience to sleep. Tourdestelle lay in one of those Norman +valleys where the river is the mother of rich pasture, and runs hidden +between double ranks of sallows, aspens and poplars, that mark its +winding line in the arms of trenched meadows. The high land on either +side is an unwatered flat up to the horizon, little varied by dusty +apple-trees planted in the stubble here and there, and brown mud walls of +hamlets; a church-top, a copse, an avenue of dwarf limes leading to the +three-parts farm, quarter residence of an enriched peasant striking new +roots, or decayed proprietor pinching not to be severed from ancient. +Descending on the deep green valley in Summer is like a change of climes. +The chateau stood square at a branch of the river, tossing three light +bridges of pretty woodwork to park and garden. Great bouquets of +swelling blue and pink hydrangia nestled at his feet on shaven grass. An +open window showed a cloth of colour, as in a reminiscence of Italy. + +Beauchamp heard himself addressed:--'You are looking for my sister-in- +law, M. Beauchamp?' + +The speaker was Madame d'Auffray, to whom he had been introduced +overnight--a lady of the aquiline French outline, not ungentle. + +Renee had spoken affectionately of her, he remembered. There was nothing +to make him be on his guard, and he stated that he was looking for Madame +de Rouaillout, and did not conceal surprise at the information that she +was out on horseback. + +'She is a tireless person,' Madame d'Auffray remarked. 'You will not +miss her long. We all meet at twelve, as you know.' + +'I grudge an hour, for I go to-morrow,' said Beauchamp. + +The notification of so early a departure, or else his bluntness, +astonished her. She fell to praising Renee's goodness. He kept her to +it with lively interrogations, in the manner of a, guileless boy urging +for eulogies of his dear absent friend. Was it duplicity in him or +artlessness? + +'Has she, do you think, increased in beauty?' Madame d'Auffray inquired: +an insidious question, to which he replied: + +'Once I thought it would be impossible.' + +Not so bad an answer for an Englishman, in a country where speaking is +fencing; the race being little famous for dialectical alertness: but was +it artful or simple? + +They skirted the chateau, and Beauchamp had the history of Dame +Philiberte recounted to him, with a mixture of Gallic irony, innuendo, +openness, touchingness, ridicule, and charity novel to his ears. Madame +d'Auffray struck the note of intimacy earlier than is habitual. She +sounded him in this way once or twice, carelessly perusing him, and +waiting for the interesting edition of the Book of Man to summarize its +character by showing its pages or remaining shut. It was done +delicately, like the tap of a finger-nail on a vase. He rang clear; he +had nothing to conceal; and where he was reserved, that is, in speaking +of the developed beauty and grace of Renee, he was transparent. She read +the sort of man he was; she could also hazard a guess as to the man's +present state. She ventured to think him comparatively harmless--for the +hour: for she was not the woman to be hoodwinked by man's dark nature +because she inclined to think well of a particular man; nor was she one +to trust to any man subject to temptation. The wisdom of the +Frenchwoman's fortieth year forbade it. A land where the war between +the sexes is honestly acknowledged, and is full of instruction, abounds +in precepts; but it ill becomes the veteran to practise rigorously what +she would prescribe to young women. She may discriminate; as thus:-- +Trust no man. Still, this man may be better than that man; and it is bad +policy to distrust a reasonably guileless member of the preying sex +entirely, and so to lose his good services. Hawks have their uses in +destroying vermin; and though we cannot rely upon the taming of hawks, +one tied by the leg in a garden preserves the fruit. + +'There is a necessity for your leaving us to-morrow; M. Beauchamp?' + +'I regret to say, it is imperative, madame.' + +'My husband will congratulate me on the pleasure I have, and have long +desired, of making your acquaintance, and he will grieve that he has not +been so fortunate; he is on service in Africa. My brother, I need not +say, will deplore the mischance which has prevented him from welcoming +you. I have telegraphed to him; he is at one of the Baths in Germany, +and will come assuredly, if there is a prospect of finding you here. +None? Supposing my telegram not to fall short of him, I may count on his +being here within four days.' + +Beauchamp begged her to convey the proper expressions of his regret to M. +le Marquis. + +'And M. de Croisnel? And Roland, your old comrade and brother-in-arms? +What will be their disappointment!' she said. + +'I intend to stop for an hour at Rouen on my way back,' said Beauchamp. + +She asked if her belle-soeur was aware of the short limitation of his +visit. + +He had not mentioned it to Madame la Marquise. + +'Perhaps you may be moved by the grief of a friend: Renee may persuade +you to stay.' + +'I came imagining I could be of some use to Madame la Marquise. She +writes as if she were telegraphing.' + +'Perfectly true of her! For that matter, I saw the letter. Your looks +betray a very natural jealousy; but seeing it or not it would have been +the same: she and I have no secrets. She was, I may tell you, strictly +unable to write more words in the letter. Which brings me to inquire +what impression M. d'Henriel made on you yesterday evening.' + +'He is particularly handsome.' + +'We women think so. Did you take him to be . . . eccentric?' + +Beauchamp gave a French jerk of the shoulders. + +It confessed the incident of the glove to one who knew it as well as he: +but it masked the weight he was beginning to attach to that incident, and +Madame d'Auffray was misled. Truly, the Englishman may be just such an +ex-lover, uninflammable by virtue of his blood's native coldness; endued +with the frozen vanity called pride, which does not seek to be revenged. +Under wary espionage, he might be a young woman's friend, though male +friend of a half-abandoned wife should write himself down morally saint, +mentally sage, medically incurable, if he would win our confidence. + +This lady of sharp intelligence was the guardian of Renee during the +foolish husband's flights about Paris and over Europe, and, for a proof +of her consummate astuteness, Renee had no secrets and had absolute +liberty. And hitherto no man could build a boast on her reputation. The +liberty she would have had at any cost, as Madame d'Auffray knew; and an +attempt to restrict it would have created secrets. + +Near upon the breakfast-hour Renee was perceived by them going toward the +chateau at a walking pace. They crossed one of the garden bridges to +intercept her. She started out of some deep meditation, and raised her +whip hand to Beauchamp's greeting. 'I had forgotten to tell you, +monsieur, that I should be out for some hours in the morning.' + +'Are you aware,' said Madame d'Auffray, 'that M. Beauchamp leaves us +to-morrow?' + +'So soon?' It was uttered hardly with a tone of disappointment. + +The marquise alighted, crying hold, to the stables, caressed her horse, +and sent him off with a smack on the smoking flanks to meet the groom. + +'To-morrow? That is very soon; but M. Beauchamp is engaged in an +Election, and what have we to induce him to stay?' + +'Would it not be better to tell M. Beauchamp why he was invited to come?' +rejoined Madame d'Auffray. + +The sombre light in Renee's eyes quickened through shadowy spheres of +surprise and pain to resolution. She cried, 'You have my full consent,' +and left them. + +Madame d'Auffray smiled at Beauchamp, to excuse the childishness of the +little story she was about to relate; she gave it in the essence, without +a commencement or an ending. She had in fact but two or three hurried +minutes before the breakfast-bell would ring; and the fan she opened and +shut, and at times shaded her head with, was nearly as explicit as her +tongue. + +He understood that Renee had staked her glove on his coming within a +certain number of hours to the briefest wording of invitation possible. +Owing to his detention by the storm, M. d'Henriel had won the bet, and +now insisted on wearing the glove. 'He is the privileged young madman +our women make of a handsome youth,' said Madame d'Auffray. + +Where am I? thought Beauchamp--in what land, he would have phrased it, +of whirlwinds catching the wits, and whipping the passions? Calmer than +they, but unable to command them, and guessing that Renee's errand of the +morning, by which he had lost hours of her, pertained to the glove, he +said quiveringly, 'Madame la Marquise objects?' + +'We,' replied Madame d'Auffray, 'contend that the glove was not loyally +won. The wager was upon your coming to the invitation, not upon your +conquering the elements. As to his flaunting the glove for a favour, +I would ask you, whom does he advertize by that? Gloves do not wear +white; which fact compromises none but the wearer. He picked it up from +the ground, and does not restore it; that is all. You see a boy who +catches at anything to placard himself. There is a compatriot of yours, +a M. Ducie, who assured us you must be with an uncle in your county of +Sussex. Of course we ran the risk of the letter missing you, but the +chance was worth a glove. Can you believe it, M. Beauchamp? it was I, +old woman as I am, I who provoked the silly wager. I have long desired +to meet you; and we have little society here, we are desperate with +loneliness, half mad with our whims. I said, that if you were what I had +heard of you, you would come to us at a word. They dared Madame la +Marquise to say the same. I wished to see the friend of Frenchmen, +as M. Roland calls you; not merely to see him--to know him, whether he is +this perfect friend whose absolute devotion has impressed my dear sister +Renee's mind. She respects you: that is a sentiment scarcely +complimentary to the ideas of young men. She places you above human +creatures: possibly you may not dislike to be worshipped. It is not to +be rejected when one's influence is powerful for good. But you leave us +to-morrow!' + +'I' might stay . . .' Beauchamp hesitated to name the number of hours. +He stood divided between a sense of the bubbling shallowness of the life +about him, and a thought, grave as an eye dwelling on blood, of sinister +things below it. + +'I may stay another day or two,' he said, 'if I can be of any earthly +service.' + +Madame d'Auffray bowed as to a friendly decision on his part, saying, +'It would be a thousand pities to disappoint M. Roland; and it will be +offering my brother an amicable chance. I will send him word that you +await him; at least, that you defer your departure as long as possible. +Ah! now you perceive, M. Beauchamp, now you have become aware of our +purely infantile plan to bring you over to us, how very ostensible a +punishment it would be were you to remain so short a period.' + +Having no designs, he was neither dupe nor sceptic; but he felt oddly +entangled, and the dream of his holiday had fled like morning's beams, +as a self-deception will at a very gentle shaking. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +THE ADVENTURE OF THE BOAT + +Madame d'Auffray passed Renee, whispering on her way to take her seat at +the breakfast-table. + +Renee did not condescend to whisper. 'Roland will be glad,' she said +aloud. + +Her low eyelids challenged Beauchamp for a look of indifference. There +was more for her to unbosom than Madame d'Auffray had revealed, but the +comparative innocence of her position in this new light prompted her to +meet him defiantly, if he chose to feel injured. He was attracted by a +happy contrast of colour between her dress and complexion, together with +a cavalierly charm in the sullen brows she lifted; and seeing the reverse +of a look of indifference on his face, after what he had heard of her +frivolousness, she had a fear that it existed. + +'Are we not to have M. d'Henriel to-day? he amuses me,' the baronne +d'Orbec remarked. + +'If he would learn that he was fashioned for that purpose!' exclaimed +little M. Livret. + +'Do not ask young men for too much head, my friend; he would cease to be +amusing.' + +'D'Henriel should have been up in the fields at ten this morning,' said +M. d'Orbec. 'As to his head, I back him for a clever shot.' + +'Or a duelling-sword,' said Renee. 'It is a quality, count it for what +we will. Your favourite, Madame la Baronne, is interdicted from +presenting himself here so long as he persists in offending me.' + +She was requested to explain, and, with the fair ingenuousness which +outshines innocence, she touched on the story of the glove. + +Ah! what a delicate, what an exciting, how subtle a question! + +Had M. d'Henriel the right to possess it? and, having that, had he the +right to wear it at his breast? + +Beauchamp was dragged into the discussion of the case. + +Renee waited curiously for his judgement. + +Pleading an apology for the stormy weather, which had detained him, and +for his ignorance that so precious an article was at stake, he held, that +by the terms of the wager, the glove was lost; the claim to wear it was a +matter of taste. + +'Matters of taste, monsieur, are not, I think, decided by weapons in your +country?' said M. d'Orbec. + +'We have no duelling,' said Beauchamp. + +The Frenchman imagined the confession to be somewhat humbling, and +generously added, 'But you have your volunteers--a magnificent spectacle +of patriotism and national readiness for defence!' + +A shrewd pang traversed Beauchamp's heart, as he looked back on his +country from the outside and the inside, thinking what amount of +patriotic readiness the character of the volunteering signified, in the +face of all that England has to maintain. Like a politic islander, he +allowed the patriotic spectacle to be imagined; reflecting that it did a +sort of service abroad, and had only to be unmasked at home. + +'But you surrendered the glove, marquise!' The baronne d'Orbec spoke +judicially. + +'I flung it to the ground: that made it neutral,' said Renee. + +'Hum. He wears it with the dust on it, certainly.' + +'And for how long a time,' M. Livret wished to know, 'does this amusing +young man proclaim his intention of wearing the glove?' + +'Until he can see with us that his Order of Merit is utter kid,' said +Madame d'Auffray; and as she had spoken more or less neatly, satisfaction +was left residing in the ear of the assembly, and the glove was permitted +to be swept away on a fresh tide of dialogue. + +The admirable candour of Renee in publicly alluding to M. d'Henriel's +foolishness restored a peep of his holiday to Beauchamp. Madame +d'Auffray took note of the effect it produced, and quite excused her +sister-in-law for intending to produce is; but that speaking out the +half-truth that we may put on the mask of the whole, is no new trick; and +believing as she did that Renee was in danger with the handsome Count +Henri, the practice of such a kind of honesty on her part appeared +alarming. + +Still it is imprudent to press for confidences when our friend's heart is +manifestly trifling with sincerity. Who knows but that some foregone +reckless act or word may have superinduced the healthy shame which cannot +speak, which must disguise itself, and is honesty in that form, but +roughly troubled would resolve to rank dishonesty? So thought the +patient lady, wiser in that than in her perceptions. + +Renee made a boast of not persuading her guest to stay, avowing that she +would not willingly have him go. Praising him equably, she listened to +praise of him with animation. She was dumb and statue-like when Count +Henri's name was mentioned. Did not this betray liking for one, +subjection to the other? Indeed, there was an Asiatic splendour of +animal beauty about M. d'Henriel that would be serpent with most women, +Madame d'Auffray conceived; why not with the deserted Renee, who adored +beauty of shape and colour, and was compassionate toward a rashness of +character that her own unnatural solitariness and quick spirit made her +emulous of? + +Meanwhile Beauchamp's day of adieu succeeded that of his holiday, and no +adieu was uttered. The hours at Tourdestelle had a singular turn for +slipping. Interlinked and all as one they swam by, brought evening, +brought morning, never varied. They might have varied with such a +division as when flame lights up the night or a tempest shades the day, +had Renee chosen; she had that power over him. She had no wish to use +it; perhaps she apprehended what it would cause her to forfeit. She +wished him to respect her; felt that she was under the shadow of the +glove, slight though it was while it was nothing but a tale of a lady and +a glove; and her desire, like his, was that they should meet daily and +dream on, without a variation. He noticed how seldom she led him beyond +the grounds of the chateau. They were to make excursions when her +brother came, she said. Roland de Croisnel's colonel, Coin de +Grandchamp, happened to be engaged in a duel, which great business +detained Roland. It supplied Beauchamp with an excuse for staying, that +he was angry with himself for being pleased to have; so he attacked the +practice of duelling, and next the shrug, wherewith M. Livret and M. +d'Orbec sought at first to defend the foul custom, or apologize for it, +or plead for it philosophically, or altogether cast it off their +shoulders; for the literal interpretation of the shrug in argument is +beyond human capacity; it is the point of speech beyond our treasury of +language. He attacked the shrug, as he thought, very temperately; but in +controlling his native vehemence he grew, perforce of repression, and of +incompetency to deliver himself copiously in French, sarcastic. In fine, +his contrast of the pretence of their noble country to head civilization, +and its encouragement of a custom so barbarous, offended M. d'Orbec and +irritated M. Livret. + +The latter delivered a brief essay on Gallic blood; the former maintained +that Frenchmen were the best judges of their own ways and deeds. +Politeness reigned, but politeness is compelled to throw off cloak and +jacket when it steps into the arena to meet the encounter of a bull. +Beauchamp drew on their word 'solidaire' to assist him in declaring that +no civilized nation could be thus independent. Imagining himself in the +France of brave ideas, he contrived to strike out sparks of Legitimist +ire around him, and found himself breathing the atmosphere of the most +primitive nursery of Toryism. Again he encountered the shrug, and he +would have it a verbal matter. M. d'Orbec gravely recited the programme +of the country party in France. M. Livret carried the war across +Channel. You English have retired from active life, like the exhausted +author, to turn critic--the critic that sneers: unless we copy you +abjectly we are execrable. And what is that sneer? Materially it is an +acrid saliva, withering where it drops; in the way of fellowship it is a +corpse-emanation. As to wit, the sneer is the cloak of clumsiness; it is +the Pharisee's incense, the hypocrite's pity, the post of exaltation of +the fat citizen, etc.; but, said M. Livret, the people using it should +have a care that they keep powerful: they make no friends. He terminated +with this warning to a nation not devoid of superior merit. M. d'Orbec +said less, and was less consoled by his outburst. + +In the opinion of Mr. Vivian Ducie, present at the discussion, Beauchamp +provoked the lash; for, in the first place, a beautiful woman's apparent +favourite should be particularly discreet in all that he says: and next, +he should have known that the Gallic shrug over matters political is +volcanic--it is the heaving of the mountain, and, like the proverbial +Russ, leaps up Tartarly at a scratch. Our newspapers also had been flea- +biting M. Livret and his countrymen of late; and, to conclude, over in +old England you may fly out against what you will, and there is little +beyond a motherly smile, a nurse's rebuke, or a fool's rudeness to answer +you. In quick-blooded France you have whip for whip, sneer, sarcasm, +claw, fang, tussle, in a trice; and if you choose to comport yourself +according to your insular notion of freedom, you are bound to march out +to the measured ground at an invitation. To begin by saying that your +principles are opposed to it, naturally excites a malicious propensity to +try your temper. + +A further cause, unknown to Mr. Ducie, of M. Livret's irritation was, +that Beauchamp had vexed him on a subject peculiarly dear to him. The +celebrated Chateau Dianet was about to be visited by the guests at +Tourdestelle. In common with some French philosophers and English +matrons, he cherished a sentimental sad enthusiasm for royal concubines; +and when dilating upon one among them, the ruins of whose family's castle +stood in the neighbourhood-Agrees, who was really a kindly soul, though +not virtuous--M. Livret had been traversed by Beauchamp with questions as +to the condition of the people, the peasantry, that were sweated in taxes +to support these lovely frailties. They came oddly from a man in the +fire of youth, and a little old gentleman somewhat seduced by the melting +image of his theme might well blink at him to ask, of what flesh are you, +then? His historic harem was insulted. Personally too, the fair +creature picturesquely soiled, intrepid in her amorousness, and +ultimately absolved by repentance (a shuddering narrative of her sins +under showers of salt drops), cried to him to champion her. Excited by +the supposed cold critical mind in Beauchamp, M. Livret painted and +painted this lady, tricked her in casuistical niceties, scenes of pomp +and boudoir pathos, with many shifting sidelights and a risky word or +two, until Renee cried out, 'Spare us the esprit Gaulois, M. Livret!' +There was much to make him angry with this Englishman. + +'The esprit Gaulois is the sparkle of crystal common sense, madame, and +may we never abandon it for a Puritanism that hides its face to conceal +its filthiness, like a stagnant pond,' replied M. Livret, flashing. + +'It seems, then, that there are two ways of being objectionable,' said +Renee. + +'Ah! Madame la Marquise, your wit is French,' he breathed low; 'keep your +heart so!' + +Both M. Livret and M. d'Orbec had forgotten that when Count Henri +d'Henriel was received at Tourdestelle, the arrival of the Englishman was +pleasantly anticipated by them as an eclipse of the handsome boy; but a +foreign interloper is quickly dispossessed of all means of pleasing save +that one of taking his departure; and they now talked of Count Henri's +disgrace and banishment in a very warm spirit of sympathy, not at all +seeing why it should be made to depend upon the movements of this M. +Beauchamp, as it appeared to be. Madame d'Auffray heard some of their +dialogue, and hurried with a mouth full of comedy to Renee, who did not +reproach them for silly beings, as would be done elsewhere. On the +contrary, she appreciated a scene of such absolute comedy, recognizing it +instantly as a situation plucked out of human nature. She compared them +to republicans that regretted the sovereign they had deposed for a +pretender to start up and govern them. + +'Who hurries them round to the legitimate king again!' said Madame +d'Auffray. + +Renee cast her chin up. 'How, my dear?' + +'Your husband.' + +'What of him?' + +'He is returning.' + +'What brings him?' + +'You should ask who, my Renee! I was sure he would not hear of M. +Beauchamp's being here, without an effort to return and do the honours of +the chateau.' + +Renee looked hard at her, saying, 'How thoughtful of you! You must have +made use of the telegraph wires to inform him that M. Beauchamp was with +us.' + +'More; I made use of them to inform him that M. Beauchamp was expected.' + +'And that was enough to bring him! He pays M. Beauchamp a wonderful +compliment.' + +'Such as he would pay to no other man, my Renee. Virtually it is the +highest of compliments to you. I say that to M. Beauchamp's credit; for +Raoul has met him, and, whatever his personal feeling may be, must know +your friend is a man of honour.' + +'My friend is . . . yes, I have no reason to think otherwise,' Renee +replied. Her husband's persistent and exclusive jealousy of Beauchamp +was the singular point in the character of one who appeared to have no +sentiment of the kind as regarded men that were much less than men of +honour. 'So, then, my sister Agnes,' she said, 'you suggested the +invitation of M. Beauchamp for the purpose of spurring my husband to +return! Apparently he and I are surrounded by plotters.' + +'Am I so very guilty?' said Madame d'Auffray. + +'If that mad boy, half idiot, half panther, were by chance to insult +M. Beauchamp, you would feel so.' + +'You have taken precautions to prevent their meeting; and besides, +M. Beauchamp does not fight.' + +Renee flushed crimson. + +Madame d'Auffray added, 'I do not say that he is other than a perfectly +brave and chivalrous gentleman.' + +'Oh!' cried Renee, 'do not say it, if ever you should imagine it. +Bid Roland speak of him. He is changed, oppressed: I did him a terrible +wrong . . . .' She checked herself. 'But the chief thing to do is to +keep M. d'Henriel away from him. I suspect M. d'Orbec of a design to +make them clash: and you, my dear, will explain why, to flatter me. +Believe me, I thirst for flattery; I have had none since M. Beauchamp +came: and you, so acute, must have seen the want of it in my face. But +you, so skilful, Agnes, will manage these men. Do you know, Agnes, that +the pride of a woman so incredibly clever as you have shown me you are +should resent their intrigues and overthrow them. As for me, I thought +I could command M. d'Henriel, and I find he has neither reason in him nor +obedience. Singular to say, I knew him just as well a week back as I do +now, and then I liked him for his qualities--or the absence of any. But +how shall we avoid him on the road to Dianet? He is aware that we are +going.' + +'Take M. Beauchamp by boat,' said Madame d'Auffray. + +'The river winds to within a five minutes' walk of Dianet; we could go by +boat,' Renee said musingly. 'I thought of the boat. But does it not +give the man a triumph that we should seem to try to elude him? What +matter! Still, I do not like him to be the falcon, and Nevil Beauchamp +the . . . little bird. So it is, because we began badly, Agnes!' + +'Was it my fault?' + +'Mine. Tell me: the legitimate king returns when?' + +'In two days or three.' + +'And his rebel subjects are to address him--how?' + +Madame d'Auffray smote the point of a finger softly on her cheek. + +'Will they be pardoned?' said Renee. + +'It is for him to kneel, my dearest.' + +'Legitimacy kneeling for forgiveness is a painful picture, Agnes. +Legitimacy jealous of a foreigner is an odd one. However, we are women, +born to our lot. If we could rise en masse!--but we cannot. Embrace +me.' + +Madame d'Auffray embraced her, without an idea that she assisted in +performing the farewell of their confidential intimacy. + +When Renee trifled with Count Henri, it was playing with fire, and she +knew it; and once or twice she bemoaned to Agnes d'Auffray her abandoned +state, which condemned her, for the sake of the sensation of living, to +have recourse to perilous pastimes; but she was revolted, as at a piece +of treachery, that Agnes should have suggested the invitation of Nevil +Beauchamp with the secret design of winning home her husband to protect +her. This, for one reason, was because Beauchamp gave her no notion of +danger; none, therefore, of requiring protection; and the presence of her +husband could not but be hateful to him, an undeserved infliction. To +her it was intolerable that they should be brought into contact. It +seemed almost as hard that she should have to dismiss Beauchamp to +preclude their meeting. She remembered, nevertheless, a certain +desperation of mind, scarce imaginable in the retrospect, by which, +trembling, fever-smitten, scorning herself, she had been reduced to hope +for Nevil Beauchamp's coming as for a rescue. The night of the storm had +roused her heart. Since then his perfect friendliness had lulled, his +air of thoughtfulness had interested it; and the fancy that he, who +neither reproached nor sentimentalized, was to be infinitely +compassionated, stirred up remorse. She could not tell her friend Agnes +of these feelings while her feelings were angered against her friend. +So she talked lightly of 'the legitimate king,' and they embraced: a +situation of comedy quite as true as that presented by the humble +admirers of the brilliant chatelaine. + +Beauchamp had the pleasure of rowing Madame la Marquise to the short +shaded walk separating the river from Chateau Dianet, whither M. d'Orbec +went on horseback, and Madame d'Auffray and M. Livret were driven. +The portrait of Diane of Dianet was praised for the beauty of the dame, +a soft-fleshed acutely featured person, a fresh-of-the-toilette face, +of the configuration of head of the cat, relieved by a delicately +aquiline nose; and it could only be the cat of fairy metamorphosis which +should stand for that illustration: brows and chin made an acceptable +triangle, and eyes and mouth could be what she pleased for mice or +monarchs. M. Livret did not gainsay the impeachment of her by a great +French historian, tender to women, to frailties in particular--yes, she +was cold, perhaps grasping: but dwell upon her in her character of woman; +conceive her existing, to estimate the charm of her graciousness. Name +the two countries which alone have produced THE WOMAN, the ideal woman, +the woman of art, whose beauty, grace, and wit offer her to our +contemplation in an atmosphere above the ordinary conditions of the +world: these two countries are France and Greece! None other give you +the perfect woman, the woman who conquers time, as she conquers men, +by virtue of the divinity in her blood; and she, as little as illustrious +heroes, is to be judged by the laws and standards of lesser creatures. +In fashioning her, nature and art have worked together: in her, poetry +walks the earth. The question of good or bad is entirely to be put +aside: it is a rustic's impertinence--a bourgeois' vulgarity. She is +preeminent, voila tout. Has she grace and beauty? Then you are +answered: such possessions are an assurance that her influence in the +aggregate must be for good. Thunder, destructive to insects, refreshes +earth: so she. So sang the rhapsodist. Possibly a scholarly little +French gentleman, going down the grey slopes of sixty to second +childishness, recovers a second juvenility in these enthusiasms; +though what it is that inspires our matrons to take up with them is +unimaginable. M. Livret's ardour was a contrast to the young +Englishman's vacant gaze at Diane, and the symbols of her goddesship +running along the walls, the bed, the cabinets, everywhere that the +chaste device could find frontage and a corner. + +M. d'Orbec remained outside the chateau inspecting the fish-ponds. When +they rejoined him he complimented Beauchamp semi-ironically on his choice +of the river's quiet charms in preference to the dusty roads. Madame de +Rouaillout said, 'Come, M. d'Orbec; what if you surrender your horse to +M. Beauchamp, and row me back?' He changed colour, hesitated, and +declined he had an engagement to call on M. d'Henriel. + +'When did you see him?' said she. + +He was confused. 'It is not long since, madame.' + +'On the road?' + +'Coming along-the road.' + +'And our glove?' + +'Madame la Marquise, if I may trust my memory, M. d'Henriel was not in +official costume.' + +Renee allowed herself to be reassured. + +A ceremonious visit that M. Livret insisted on was paid to the chapel of +Diane, where she had worshipped and laid her widowed ashes, which, said +M. Livret, the fiends of the Revolution would not let rest. + +He raised his voice to denounce them. + +It was Roland de Croisnel that answered: 'The Revolution was our +grandmother, monsieur, and I cannot hear her abused.' + +Renee caught her brother by the hand. He stepped out of the chapel with +Beauchamp to embrace him; then kissed Renee, and, remarking that she was +pale, fetched flooding colour to her cheeks. He was hearty air to them +after the sentimentalism they had been hearing. Beauchamp and he walked +like loving comrades at school, questioning, answering, chattering, +laughing,--a beautiful sight to Renee, and she looked at Agrnes d'Auffray +to ask her whether 'this Englishman' was not one of them in his frankness +and freshness. + +Roland stopped to turn to Renee. 'I met d'Henriel on my ride here,' he +said with a sharp inquisitive expression of eye that passed immediately. + +'You rode here from Tourdestelle, then,' said Renee. + +'Has he been one of the company, marquise?' + +'Did he ride by you without speaking, Roland?' + +'Thus.' Roland described a Spanish caballero's formallest salutation, +saying to Beauchamp, 'Not the best sample of our young Frenchman;--woman- +spoiled! Not that the better kind of article need be spoiled by them-- +heaven forbid that! Friend Nevil,' he spoke lower, 'do you know, you +have something of the prophet in you? I remember: much has come true. +An old spoiler of women is worse than one spoiled by them! Ah, well: and +Madame Culling? and your seven-feet high uncle? And have you a fleet to +satisfy Nevil Beauchamp yet? You shall see a trial of our new field-guns +at Rouen.' + +They were separated with difficulty. + +Renee wished her brother to come in the boat; and he would have done so, +but for his objection to have his Arab bestridden by a man unknown to +him. + +'My love is a four-foot, and here's my love,' Roland said, going outside +the gilt gate-rails to the graceful little beast, that acknowledged his +ownership with an arch and swing of the neck round to him. + +He mounted and called, 'Au revoir, M. le Capitaine.' + +'Au revoir, M. le Commandant,' cried Beauchamp. + +'Admiral and marshal, each of us in good season,' said Roland. 'Thanks +to your promotion, I had a letter from my sister. Advance a grade, and I +may get another.' + +Beauchamp thought of the strange gulf now between him and the time when +he pined to be a commodore, and an admiral. The gulf was bridged as he +looked at Renee petting Roland's horse. + +'Is there in the world so lovely a creature?' she said, and appealed +fondlingly to the beauty that brings out beauty, and, bidding it disdain +rivalry, rivalled it insomuch that in a moment of trance Beauchamp with +his bodily vision beheld her, not there, but on the Lido of Venice, +shining out of the years gone. + +Old love reviving may be love of a phantom after all. We can, if it must +revive, keep it to the limits of a ghostly love. The ship in the Arabian +tale coming within the zone of the magnetic mountain, flies all its bolts +and bars, and becomes sheer timbers, but that is the carelessness of the +ship's captain; and hitherto Beauchamp could applaud himself for steering +with prudence, while Renee's attractions warned more than they beckoned. +She was magnetic to him as no other woman was. Then whither his course +but homeward? + +After they had taken leave of their host and hostess of Chateau Dianet, +walking across a meadow to a line of charmilles that led to the river- +side, he said, 'Now I have seen Roland I shall have to decide upon +going.' + +'Wantonly won is deservedly lost,' said Renee. 'But do not disappoint my +Roland much because of his foolish sister. Is he not looking handsome? +And he is young to be a commandant, for we have no interest at this +Court. They kept him out of the last war! My father expects to find you +at Tourdestelle, and how account to him for your hurried flight? save +with the story of that which brought you to us!' + +'The glove? I shall beg for the fellow to it before I depart, marquise.' + +'You perceived my disposition to light-headedness, monsieur, when I was a +girl.' + +'I said that I--But the past is dust. Shall I ever see you in +England?' + +'That country seems to frown on me. But if I do not go there, nor you +come here, except to imperious mysterious invitations, which will not be +repeated, the future is dust as well as the past: for me, at least. Dust +here, dust there!--if one could be like a silk-worm, and live lying on +the leaf one feeds on, it would be a sort of answer to the riddle--living +out of the dust, and in the present. I find none in my religion. No +doubt, Madame de Breze did: why did you call Diane so to M. Livret?' + +She looked at him smiling as they came out of the shadow of the clipped +trees. He was glancing about for the boat. + +'The boat is across the river,' Renee said, in a voice that made him seek +her eyes for an explanation of the dead sound. She was very pale. 'You +have perfect command of yourself? For my sake!' she said. + +He looked round. + +Standing up in the boat, against the opposite bank, and leaning with +crossed legs on one of the sculls planted in the gravel of the river, +Count Henri d'Henriel's handsome figure presented itself to Beauchamp's +gaze. + +With a dryness that smacked of his uncle Everard Romfrey, Beauchamp said +of the fantastical posture of the young man, 'One can do that on fresh +water.' + +Renee did not comprehend the sailor-sarcasm of the remark; but she also +commented on the statuesque appearance of Count Henri: 'Is the pose for +photography or for sculpture?' + +Neither of them showed a sign of surprise or of impatience. + +M. d'Henriel could not maintain the attitude. He uncrossed his legs +deliberately, drooped hat in hand, and came paddling over; apologized +indolently, and said, 'I am not, I believe, trespassing on the grounds +of Tourdestelle, Madame la Marquise!' + +'You happen to be in my boat, M. le Comte,' said Renee. + +'Permit me, madame.' He had set one foot on shore, with his back to +Beauchamp, and reached a hand to assist her step into the boat. + +Beauchamp caught fast hold of the bows while Renee laid a finger on Count +Henri's shoulder to steady herself. + +The instant she had taken her seat, Count Henri dashed the scull's blade +at the bank to push off with her, but the boat was fast. His manoeuvre +had been foreseen. Beauchamp swung on board like the last seaman of a +launch, and crouched as the boat rocked away to the stream; and still +Count Henri leaned on the scull, not in a chosen attitude, but for +positive support. He had thrown his force into the blow, to push off +triumphantly, and leave his rival standing. It occurred that the boat's +brief resistance and rocking away agitated his artificial equipoise, and, +by the operation of inexorable laws, the longer he leaned across an +extending surface the more was he dependent; so that when the measure of +the water exceeded the length of his failing support on land, there was +no help for it: he pitched in. His grimace of chagrin at the sight of +Beauchamp securely established, had scarcely yielded to the grimness of +feature of the man who feels he must go, as he took the plunge; and these +two emotions combined to make an extraordinary countenance. + +He went like a gallant gentleman; he threw up his heels to clear the +boat, dropping into about four feet of water, and his first remark on +rising was, 'I trust, madame, I have not had the misfortune to splash +you.' + +Then he waded to the bank, scrambled to his feet, and drew out his +moustachios to their curving ends. Renee nodded sharply to Beauchamp to +bid him row. He, with less of wisdom, having seized the floating scull +abandoned by Count Henri, and got it ready for the stroke, said a word of +condolence to the dripping man. + +Count Henri's shoulders and neck expressed a kind of negative that, like +a wet dog's shake of the head, ended in an involuntary whole length +shudder, dog-like and deplorable to behold. He must have been conscious +of this miserable exhibition of himself; he turned to Beauchamp: 'You +are, I am informed, a sailor, monsieur. I compliment you on your naval +tactics: our next meeting will be on land. Au revoir, monsieur. Madame +la Marquise, I have the honour to salute you.' + +With these words he retreated. + +'Row quickly, I beg of you,' Renee said to Beauchamp. Her desire was to +see Roland, and open her heart to her brother; for now it had to be +opened. Not a minute must be lost to prevent further mischief. And who +was guilty? she. Her heart clamoured of her guilt to waken a cry of +innocence. A disdainful pity for the superb young savage just made +ludicrous, relieved him of blame, implacable though he was. He was +nothing; an accident--a fool. But he might become a terrible instrument +of punishment. The thought of that possibility gave it an aspect of +retribution, under which her cry of innocence was insufferable in its +feebleness. It would have been different with her if Beauchamp had taken +advantage of her fever of anxiety, suddenly appeased by the sight of him +on the evening of his arrival at Tourdestelle after the storm, to attempt +a renewal of their old broken love-bonds. Then she would have seen only +a conflict between two men, neither of whom could claim a more secret +right than the other to be called her lover, and of whom both were on a +common footing, and partly despicable. But Nevil Beauchamp had behaved +as her perfect true friend, in the character she had hoped for when she +summoned him. The sense of her guilt lay in the recognition that he had +saved her. From what? From the consequences of delirium rather than +from love--surely delirium, founded on delusion; love had not existed. +She had said to Count Henri, 'You speak to me of love. I was beloved +when I was a girl, before my marriage, and for years I have not seen or +corresponded with the man who loved me, and I have only to lift my finger +now and he will come to me, and not once will he speak to me of love.' +Those were the words originating the wager of the glove. But what of +her, if Nevil Beauchamp had not come? + +Her heart jumped, and she blushed ungovernably in his face,--as if he +were seeing her withdraw her foot from the rock's edge, and had that +instant rescued her. But how came it she had been so helpless? She +could ask; she could not answer. + +Thinking, talking to her heart, was useless. The deceiver simply feigned +utter condemnation to make partial comfort acceptable. She burned to do +some act of extreme self-abasement that should bring an unwonted degree +of wrath on her externally, and so re-entitle her to consideration in her +own eyes. She burned to be interrogated, to have to weep, to be scorned, +abused, and forgiven, that she might say she did not deserve pardon. +Beauchamp was too English, evidently too blind, for the description of +judge-accuser she required; one who would worry her without mercy, until- +disgraced by the excess of torture inflicted--he should reinstate her by +as much as he had overcharged his accusation, and a little more. +Reasonably enough, instinctively in fact, she shunned the hollow of an +English ear. A surprise was in reserve for her. + +Beauchamp gave up rowing. As he rested on the sculls, his head was bent +and turned toward the bank. Renee perceived an over-swollen monster +gourd that had strayed from a garden adjoining the river, and hung +sliding heavily down the bank on one greenish yellow cheek, in prolonged +contemplation of its image in the mirror below. Apparently this obese +Narcissus enchained his attention. + +She tapped her foot. 'Are you tired of rowing, monsieur?' + +'It was exactly here,' said he, 'that you told me you expected your +husband's return.' + +She glanced at the gourd, bit her lip, and, colouring, said, 'At what +point of the river did I request you to congratulate me on it?' + +She would not have said that, if she had known the thoughts at work +within him. + +He set the boat swaying from side to side, and at once the hugeous +reflection of that conceivably self-enamoured bulk quavered and +distended, and was shattered in a thousand dancing fragments, to re-unite +and recompose its maudlin air of imaged satisfaction. + +She began to have a vague idea that he was indulging grotesque fancies. + +Very strangely, the ridiculous thing, in the shape of an over-stretched +likeness, that she never would have seen had he indicated it directly, +became transfused from his mind to hers by his abstract, half-amused +observation of the great dancing gourd--that capering antiquity, +lumbering volatility, wandering, self-adored, gross bald Cupid, elatest +of nondescripts! Her senses imagined the impressions agitating +Beauchamp's, and exaggerated them beyond limit; and when he amazed her +with a straight look into her eyes, and the words, 'Better let it be a +youth--and live, than fall back to that!' she understood him immediately; +and, together with her old fear of his impetuosity and downrightness, +came the vivid recollection, like a bright finger pointing upon darkness, +of what foul destiny, magnified by her present abhorrence of it, he would +have saved her from in the days of Venice and Touraine, and unto what +loathly example of the hideous grotesque she, in spite of her lover's +foresight on her behalf, had become allied. + +Face to face as they sat, she had no defence for her scarlet cheeks; her +eyes wavered. + +'We will land here; the cottagers shall row the boat up,' she said. + +'Somewhere--anywhere,' said Beauchamp. 'But I must speak. I will tell +you now. I do not think you to blame--barely; not in my sight; though no +man living would have suffered as I should. Probably some days more and +you would have been lost. You looked for me! Trust your instinct now +I'm with you as well as when I'm absent. Have you courage? that 's the +question. You have years to live. Can you live them in this place--with +honour? and alive really?' + +Renee's eyes grew wide; she tried to frown, and her brows merely +twitched; to speak, and she was inarticulate. His madness, miraculous +penetration, and the super-masculine charity in him, unknown to the world +of young men in their treatment of women, excited, awed, and melted her. +He had seen the whole truth of her relations with M. d'Henriel!--the +wickedness of them in one light, the innocence in another; and without +prompting a confession he forgave her. Could she believe it? This was +love, and manly love. + +She yearned to be on her feet, to feel the possibility of an escape from +him. + +She pointed to a landing. He sprang to the bank. 'It could end in +nothing else,' he said, 'unless you beat cold to me. And now I have your +hand, Renee! It's the hand of a living woman, you have no need to tell +me that; but faithful to her comrade! I can swear it for her--faithful +to a true alliance! You are not married, you are simply chained: and you +are terrorized. What a perversion of you it is! It wrecks you. But +with me? Am I not your lover? You and I are one life. What have we +suffered for but to find this out and act on it? Do I not know that a +woman lives, and is not the rooted piece of vegetation hypocrites and +tyrants expect her to be? Act on it, I say; own me, break the chains, +come to me; say, Nevil Beauchamp or death! And death for you? But you +are poisoned and thwart-eddying, as you live now: worse, shaming the +Renee I knew. Ah-Venice! But now we are both of us wiser and stronger: +we have gone through fire. Who foretold it? This day, and this misery +and perversion that we can turn to joy, if we will--if you will! No +heart to dare is no heart to love!--answer that! Shall I see you cower +away from me again? Not this time!' + +He swept on in a flood, uttered mad things, foolish things, and things of +an insight electrifying to her. Through the cottager's garden, across a +field, and within the park gates of Tourdestelle it continued +unceasingly; and deeply was she won by the rebellious note in all that +he said, deeply too by his disregard of the vulgar arts of wooers: she +detected none. He did not speak so much to win as to help her to see +with her own orbs. Nor was it roughly or chidingly, though it was +absolutely, that he stripped her of the veil a wavering woman will keep +to herself from her heart's lord if she can. + +They arrived long after the boat at Tourdestelle, and Beauchamp might +believe he had prevailed with her, but for her forlorn repetition of +the question he had put to her idly and as a new idea, instead of +significantly, with a recollection and a doubt 'Have I courage, Nevil?' + +The grain of common sense in cowardice caused her to repeat it when her +reason was bedimmed, and passion assumed the right to show the way of +right and wrong. + + + + +ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + +A cloud of millinery shoots me off a mile from a woman +A string of pearls: a woman who goes beyond that's in danger +Admires a girl when there's no married woman or widow in sight +After forty, men have married their habits +An old spoiler of women is worse than one spoiled by them! +And never did a stroke of work in my life +Are we practical?' penetrates the bosom of an English audience +As to wit, the sneer is the cloak of clumsiness +Contemptuous exclusiveness could not go farther +Discover the writers in a day when all are writing! +Feigned utter condemnation to make partial comfort acceptable +Frozen vanity called pride, which does not seek to be revenged +Half-truth that we may put on the mask of the whole +Hopes of a coming disillusion that would restore him +How angry I should be with you if you were not so beautiful! +I can confess my sight to be imperfect: but will you ever do so? +If there's no doubt about it, how is it I have a doubt about it? +It is not high flying, which usually ends in heavy falling +Let none of us be so exalted above the wit of daily life +No heart to dare is no heart to love! +Oggler's genial piety made him shrink with nausea +Past fairness, vaguely like a snow landscape in the thaw +Planting the past in the present like a perceptible ghost +Pleasure-giving laws that make the curves we recognize as beauty +Practical or not, the good people affectingly wish to be +Shun comparisons +So the frog telleth tadpoles +Socially and politically mean one thing in the end +Story that she believed indeed, but had not quite sensibly felt +The critic that sneers +The language of party is eloquent +The slavery of the love of a woman chained +There may be women who think as well as feel; I don't know them +Trust no man Still, this man may be better than that man +Use your religion like a drug +Who cannot talk!--but who can? +Wives are only an item in the list, and not the most important +Women don't care uncommonly for the men who love them +You are not married, you are simply chained + + + + +End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Beauchamp's Career, v3 +by George Meredith + + + + + + +BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER + +By GEORGE MEREDITH + +1897 + + + +BOOK 4. + +XXVI. MR. BLACKBURN TUCKHAM +XXVII. A SHORT SIDELOOK AT THE ELECTION +XXVIII. TOUCHING A YOUNG LADY'S HEART AND HER INTELLECT +XXIX. THE EPISTLE OF DR. SHRAPNEL TO COMMANDER BEAUCHAMP +XXX. THE BAITING OF DR. SHRAPNEL +XXXI. SHOWING A CHIVALROUS GENTLEMAN SET IN MOTION +XXXII. AN EFFORT TO CONQUER CECILIA IN BEAUCHAMP'S FASHION +XXXIII. THE FIRST ENCOUNTER AT STEYNHAM + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + +MR. BLACKBURN TUCKHAM + +Some time after Beauchamp had been seen renewing his canvass in Bevisham +a report reached Mount Laurels that he was lame of a leg. The wits of +the opposite camp revived the FRENCH MARQUEES, but it was generally +acknowledged that he had come back without the lady: she was invisible. +Cecilia Halkett rode home with her father on a dusky Autumn evening, and +found the card of Commander Beauchamp awaiting her. He might have stayed +to see her, she thought. Ladies are not customarily so very late in +returning from a ride on chill evenings of Autumn. Only a quarter of an +hour was between his visit and her return. The shortness of the interval +made it appear the deeper gulf. She noticed that her father particularly +inquired of the man-servant whether Captain Beauchamp limped. It seemed +a piece of kindly anxiety on his part. The captain was mounted, the man +said. Cecilia was conscious of rumours being abroad relating to Nevil's +expedition to France; but he had enemies, and was at war with them, and +she held herself indifferent to tattle. This card bearing his name, +recently in his hand, was much more insidious and precise. She took it +to her room to look at it. Nothing but his name and naval title was +inscribed; no pencilled line; she had not expected to discover one. The +simple card was her dark light, as a handkerchief, a flower, a knot of +riband, has been for men luridly illuminated by such small sparks to +fling their beams on shadows and read the monstrous things for truths. +Her purer virgin blood was, not inflamed. She read the signification of +the card sadly as she did clearly. What she could not so distinctly +imagine was, how he could reconcile the devotion to his country, which he +had taught her to put her faith in, with his unhappy subjection to Madame +de Rouaillout. How could the nobler sentiment exist side by side with +one that was lawless? Or was the wildness characteristic of his +political views proof of a nature inclining to disown moral ties? She +feared so; he did not speak of the clergy respectfully. Reading in the +dark, she was forced to rely on her social instincts, and she distrusted +her personal feelings as much as she could, for she wished to know the +truth of him; anything, pain and heartrending, rather than the shutting +of the eyes in an unworthy abandonment to mere emotion and fascination. +Cecilia's love could not be otherwise given to a man, however near she +might be drawn to love--though she should suffer the pangs of love +cruelly. + +She placed his card in her writing-desk; she had his likeness there. +Commander Beauchamp encouraged the art of photography, as those that make +long voyages do, in reciprocating what they petition their friends for. +Mrs. Rosamund Culling had a whole collection of photographs of him, +equal to a visual history of his growth in chapters, from boyhood to +midshipmanship and to manhood. The specimen possessed by Cecilia was one +of a couple that Beauchamp had forwarded to Mrs. Grancey Lespel on the +day of his departure for France, and was a present from that lady, +purchased, like so many presents, at a cost Cecilia would have paid +heavily in gold to have been spared, namely, a public blush. She was +allowed to make her choice, and she chose the profile, repeating a remark +of Mrs. Culling's, that it suggested an arrow-head in the upflight; +whereupon Mr. Stukely Culbrett had said, 'Then there is the man, for he +is undoubtedly a projectile'; nor were politically-hostile punsters on an +arrow-head inactive. But Cecilia was thinking of the side-face she (less +intently than Beauchamp at hers) had glanced at during the drive into +Bevisham. At that moment, she fancied Madame de Rouaillout might be +doing likewise; and oh that she had the portrait of the French lady as +well! + +Next day her father tossed her a photograph of another gentleman, coming +out of a letter he had received from old Mrs. Beauchamp. He asked her +opinion of it. She said, 'I think he would have suited Bevisham better +than Captain Baskelett.' Of the original, who presented himself at Mount +Laurels in the course of the week, she had nothing to say, except that he +was very like the photograph, very unlike Nevil Beauchamp. 'Yes, there +I'm of your opinion,' her father observed. The gentleman was Mr. +Blackburn Tuckham, and it was amusing to find an exuberant Tory in one +who was the reverse of the cavalier type. Nevil and he seemed to have +been sorted to the wrong sides. Mr. Tuckham had a round head, square +flat forehead, and ruddy face; he stood as if his feet claimed the earth +under them for his own, with a certain shortness of leg that detracted +from the majesty of his resemblance to our Eighth Harry, but increased +his air of solidity; and he was authoritative in speaking. 'Let me set +you right, sir,' he said sometimes to Colonel Halkett, and that was his +modesty. 'You are altogether wrong,' Miss Halkett heard herself +informed, which was his courtesy. He examined some of her water-colour +drawings before sitting down to dinner, approved of them, but thought it +necessary to lay a broad finger on them to show their defects. On the +question of politics, 'I venture to state,' he remarked, in anything but +the tone of a venture, 'that no educated man of ordinary sense who has +visited our colonies will come back a Liberal.' As for a man of sense +and education being a Radical, he scouted the notion with a pooh +sufficient to awaken a vessel in the doldrums. He said carelessly of +Commander Beauchamp, that he might think himself one. Either the Radical +candidate for Bevisham stood self-deceived, or--the other supposition. +Mr. Tuckham would venture to state that no English gentleman, exempt from +an examination by order of the Commissioners of Lunacy, could be +sincerely a Radical. 'Not a bit of it; nonsense,' he replied to Miss +Halkett's hint at the existence of Radical views; 'that is, those views +are out of politics; they are matters for the police. Dutch dykes are +built to shut away the sea from cultivated land, and of course it's a +part of the business of the Dutch Government to keep up the dykes,--and +of ours to guard against the mob; but that is only a political +consideration after the mob has been allowed to undermine our defences.' + +'They speak,' said Miss Halkett, 'of educating the people to fit them--' + +'They speak of commanding the winds and tides,' he cut her short, with no +clear analogy; 'wait till we have a storm. It's a delusion amounting to +dementedness to suppose, that with the people inside our defences, we can +be taming them and tricking them. As for sending them to school after +giving them power, it's like asking a wild beast to sit down to dinner +with us--he wants the whole table and us too. The best education for the +people is government. They're beginning to see that in Lancashire at +last. I ran down to Lancashire for a couple of days on my landing, and +I'm thankful to say Lancashire is preparing to take a step back. +Lancashire leads the country. Lancashire men see what this Liberalism +has done for the Labour-market.' + +'Captain Beauchamp considers that the political change coming over the +minds of the manufacturers is due to the large fortunes they have made,' +said Miss Halkett, maliciously associating a Radical prophet with him. + +He was unaffected by it, and continued: 'Property is ballast as well as +treasure. I call property funded good sense. I would give it every +privilege. If we are to speak of patriotism, I say the possession of +property guarantees it. I maintain that the lead of men of property is +in most cases sure to be the safe one.' + +'I think so,' Colonel Halkett interposed, and he spoke as a man of +property. + +Mr. Tuckham grew fervent in his allusions to our wealth and our commerce. +Having won the race and gained the prize, shall we let it slip out of our +grasp? Upon this topic his voice descended to tones of priestlike awe: +for are we not the envy of the world? Our wealth is countless, fabulous. +It may well inspire veneration. And we have won it with our hands, +thanks (he implied it so) to our religion. We are rich in money and +industry, in those two things only, and the corruption of an energetic +industry is constantly threatened by the profusion of wealth giving it +employment. This being the case, either your Radicals do not know the +first conditions of human nature, or they do; and if they do they are +traitors, and the Liberals opening the gates to them are fools: and some +are knaves. We perish as a Great Power if we cease to look sharp ahead, +hold firm together, and make the utmost of what we possess. The word for +the performance of those duties is Toryism: a word with an older flavour +than Conservatism, and Mr. Tuckham preferred it. By all means let +workmen be free men but a man must earn his freedom daily, or he will +become a slave in some form or another: and the way to earn it is by work +and obedience to right direction. In a country like ours, open on all +sides to the competition of intelligence and strength, with a Press that +is the voice of all parties and of every interest; in a country offering +to your investments three and a half and more per cent., secure as the +firmament! + +He perceived an amazed expression on Miss Halkett's countenance; and +'Ay,' said he, 'that means the certainty of food to millions of mouths, +and comforts, if not luxuries, to half the population. A safe percentage +on savings is the basis of civilization.' + +But he had bruised his eloquence, for though you may start a sermon from +stones to hit the stars, he must be a practised orator who shall descend +out of the abstract to take up a heavy lump of the concrete without +unseating himself, and he stammered and came to a flat ending: 'In such a +country--well, I venture to say, we have a right to condemn in advance +disturbers of the peace, and they must show very good cause indeed for +not being summarily held--to account for their conduct.' + +The allocution was not delivered in the presence of an audience other +than sympathetic, and Miss Halkett rightly guessed that it was intended +to strike Captain Beauchamp by ricochet. He puffed at the mention of +Beauchamp's name. He had read a reported speech or two of Beauchamp's, +and shook his head over a quotation of the stuff, as though he would have +sprung at him like a lion, but for his enrolment as a constable. + +Not a whit the less did Mr. Tuckham drink his claret relishingly, and he +told stories incidental to his travels now and then, commended the +fishing here, the shooting there, and in some few places the cookery, +with much bright emphasis when it could be praised; it appeared to be an +endearing recollection to him. Still, as a man of progress, he declared +his belief that we English would ultimately turn out the best cooks, +having indubitably the best material. 'Our incomprehensible political +pusillanimity' was the one sad point about us: we had been driven from +surrender to surrender. + +'Like geese upon a common, I have heard it said,' Miss Halkett assisted +him to Dr. Shrapnel's comparison. + +Mr. Tuckham laughed, and half yawned and sighed, 'Dear me!' + +His laughter was catching, and somehow more persuasive of the soundness +of the man's heart and head than his remarks. + +She would have been astonished to know that a gentleman so uncourtly, +if not uncouth--judged by the standard of the circle she moved in--and so +unskilled in pleasing the sight and hearing of ladies as to treat them +like junior comrades, had raised the vow within himself on seeing her: +You, or no woman! + +The colonel delighted in him, both as a strong and able young fellow, and +a refreshingly aggressive recruit of his party, who was for onslaught, +and invoked common sense, instead of waving the flag of sentiment in +retreat; a very horse-artillery man of Tories. Regretting immensely that +Mr. Tuckham had not reached England earlier, that he might have occupied +the seat for Bevisham, about to be given to Captain Baskelett, Colonel +Halkett set up a contrast of Blackburn Tuckham and Nevil Beauchamp; a +singular instance of unfairness, his daughter thought, considering that +the distinct contrast presented by the circumstances was that of Mr. +Tuckham and Captain Baskelett. + +'It seems to me, papa,--that you are contrasting the idealist and the +realist,' she said. + +'Ah, well, we don't want the idealist in politics,' muttered the colonel. + +Latterly he also had taken to shaking his head over Nevil: Cecilia dared +not ask him why. + +Mr. Tuckham arrived at Mount Laurels on the eve of the Nomination day in +Bevisham. An article in the Bevisham Gazette calling upon all true +Liberals to demonstrate their unanimity by a multitudinous show of hands, +he ascribed to the writing of a child of Erin; and he was highly diverted +by the Liberal's hiring of Paddy to 'pen and spout' for him. +'A Scotchman manages, and Paddy does the sermon for all their journals,' +he said off-hand; adding: 'And the English are the compositors, +I suppose.' You may take that for an instance of the national spirit +of Liberal newspapers! + +'Ah!' sighed the colonel, as at a case clearly demonstrated against +them. + +A drive down to Bevisham to witness the ceremony of the nomination in the +town-hall sobered Mr. Tuckham's disposition to generalize. Beauchamp had +the show of hands, and to say with Captain Baskelett, that they were a +dirty majority, was beneath Mr. Tuckham's verbal antagonism. He fell +into a studious reserve, noting everything, listening to everybody, +greatly to Colonel Halkett's admiration of one by nature a talker and a +thunderer. + +The show of hands Mr. Seymour Austin declared to be the most delusive of +electoral auspices; and it proved so. A little later than four o'clock +in the afternoon of the election-day, Cecilia received a message from her +father telling her that both of the Liberals were headed; 'Beauchamp +nowhere.' + +Mrs. Grancey Lespel was the next herald of Beauchamp's defeat. She +merely stated the fact that she had met the colonel and Mr. Blackburn +Tuckham driving on the outskirts of the town, and had promised to bring +Cecilia the final numbers of the poll. Without naming them, she unrolled +the greater business in her mind. + +'A man who in the middle of an Election goes over to France to fight a +duel, can hardly expect to win; he has all the morality of an English +borough opposed to him,' she said; and seeing the young lady stiffen: +'Oh! the duel is positive,' she dropped her voice. 'With the husband. +Who else could it be? And returns invalided. That is evidence. My +nephew Palmet has it from Vivian Ducie, and he is acquainted with her +tolerably intimately, and the story is, she was overtaken in her flight +in the night, and the duel followed at eight o'clock in the morning; but +her brother insisted on fighting for Captain Beauchamp, and I cannot tell +you how--but his place in it I can't explain--there was a beau jeune +homme, and it's quite possible that he should have been the person to +stand up against the marquis. At any rate, he insulted Captain +Beauchamp, or thought your hero had insulted him, and the duel was with +one or the other. It matters exceedingly little with whom, if a duel was +fought, and you see we have quite established that.' + +'I hope it is not true,' said Cecilia. + +'My dear, that is the Christian thing to do,' said Mrs. Lespel. +'Duelling is horrible: though those Romfreys!--and the Beauchamps were +just as bad, or nearly. Colonel Richard fought for a friend's wife or +sister. But in these days duelling is incredible. It was an inhuman +practice always, and it is now worse--it is a reach of manners. I would +hope it is not true; and you may mean that I have it from Lord Palmet. +But I know Vivian Ducie as well as I know my nephew, and if he distinctly +mentions an occurrence, we may too surely rely on the truth of it; he is +not a man to spread mischief. Are you unaware that he met Captain +Beauchamp at the chateau of the marquise? The whole story was acted +under his eyes. He had only to take up his pen. Generally he favours +me with his French gossip. I suppose there were circumstances in this +affair more suitable to Palmet than to me. He wrote a description of +Madame de Rouaillout that set Palmet strutting about for an hour. I have +no doubt she must be a very beautiful woman, for a Frenchwoman: not +regular features; expressive, capricious. Vivian Ducie lays great stress +on her eyes and eyebrows, and, I think, her hair. With a Frenchwoman's +figure, that is enough to make men crazy. He says her husband deserves-- +but what will not young men write? It is deeply to be regretted that +Englishmen abroad--women the same, I fear--get the Continental tone in +morals. But how Captain Beauchamp could expect to carry on an Election +and an intrigue together, only a head like his can tell us. Grancey is +in high indignation with him. It does not concern the Election, you can +imagine. Something that man Dr. Shrapnel has done, which he says Captain +Beauchamp could have prevented. Quarrels of men! I have instructed +Palmet to write to Vivian Ducie for a photograph of Madame de Rouaillout. +Do you know, one has a curiosity to see the face of the woman for whom a +man ruins himself. But I say again, he ought to be married.' + +'That there may be two victims?' Cecilia said it smiling. + +She was young in suffering, and thought, as the unseasoned and +inexperienced do, that a mask is a concealment. + +'Married--settled; to have him bound in honour,' said Mrs. Lespel. +'I had a conversation with him when he was at Itchincope; and his look, +and what I know of his father, that gallant and handsome Colonel Richard +Beauchamp, would give one a kind of confidence in him; supposing always +that he is not struck with one of those deadly passions that are like +snakes, like magic. I positively believe in them. I have seen them. +And if they end, they end as if the man were burnt out, and was ashes +inside; as you see Mr. Stukely Culbrett, all cynicism. You would not now +suspect him of a passion! It is true. Oh, I know it! That is what the +men go to. The women die. Vera Winter died at twenty-three. Caroline +Ormond was hardly older. You know her story; everybody knows it. The +most singular and convincing case was that of Lord Alfred Burnley and +Lady Susan Gardiner, wife of the general; and there was an instance of +two similarly afflicted--a very rare case, most rare: they never could +meet to part! It was almost ludicrous. It is now quite certain that +they did not conspire to meet. At last the absolute fatality became so +well understood by the persons immediately interested--You laugh?' + +'Do I laugh?' said Cecilia. + +'We should all know the world, my dear, and you are a strong head. The +knowledge is only dangerous for fools. And if romance is occasionally +ridiculous, as I own it can be, humdrum, I protest, is everlastingly so. +By-the-by, I should have told you that Captain Beauchamp was one hundred +and ninety below Captain Baskelett when the state of the poll was handed +to me. The gentleman driving with your father compared the Liberals to a +parachute cut away from the balloon. Is he army or navy?' + +'He is a barrister, and some cousin of Captain Beauchamp.' + +'I should not have taken him for a Beauchamp,' said Mrs. Lespel; and, +resuming her worldly sagacity, 'I should not like to be in opposition to +that young man.' + +She seemed to have a fancy unexpressed regarding Mr. Tuckham. Reminding +herself that she might be behind time at Itchincope, where the guests +would be numerous that evening, and the song of triumph loud, with +Captain Baskelett to lead it, she kissed the young lady she had +unintentionally been torturing so long, and drove away. + +Cecilia hoped it was not true. Her heart sank heavily under the belief +that it was. She imagined the world abusing Nevil and casting him out, +as those electors of Bevisham had just done, and impulsively she pleaded +for him, and became drowned in criminal blushes that forced her to defend +herself with a determination not to believe the dreadful story, though +she continued mitigating the wickedness of it; as if, by a singular +inversion of the fact, her clear good sense excused, and it was her heart +that condemned him. She dwelt fondly on an image of the 'gallant and +handsome Colonel Richard Beauchamp,' conjured up in her mind from the +fervour of Mrs. Lespel when speaking of Nevil's father, whose chivalry +threw a light on the son's, and whose errors, condoned by time, and with +a certain brilliancy playing above them, interceded strangely on behalf +of Nevil. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + +A SHORT SIDELOOK AT THE ELECTION + +The brisk Election-day, unlike that wearisome but instructive canvass of +the Englishman in his castle vicatim, teaches little; and its humours are +those of a badly managed Christmas pantomime without a columbine--old +tricks, no graces. Nevertheless, things hang together so that it cannot +be passed over with a bare statement of the fact of the Liberal-Radical +defeat in Bevisham: the day was not without fruit in time to come for him +whom his commiserating admirers of the non-voting sex all round the +borough called the poor dear commander. Beauchamp's holiday out of +England had incited Dr. Shrapnel to break a positive restriction put upon +him by Jenny Denham, and actively pursue the canvass and the harangue in +person; by which conduct, as Jenny had foreseen, many temperate electors +were alienated from Commander Beauchamp, though no doubt the Radicals +were made compact: for they may be the skirmishing faction--poor +scattered fragments, none of them sufficiently downright for the other; +each outstripping each; rudimentary emperors, elementary prophets, +inspired physicians, nostrum-devouring patients, whatsoever you will; +and still here and there a man shall arise to march them in close +columns, if they can but trust him; in perfect subordination, a model +even for Tories while they keep shoulder to shoulder. And to behold such +a disciplined body is intoxicating to the eye of a leader accustomed to +count ahead upon vapourish abstractions, and therefore predisposed to add +a couple of noughts to every tangible figure in his grasp. Thus will a +realized fifty become five hundred or five thousand to him: the very +sense of number is instinct with multiplication in his mind; and those +years far on in advance, which he has been looking to with some fatigue +to the optics, will suddenly and rollickingly roll up to him at the +shutting of his eyes in a temporary fit of gratification. So, by looking +and by not looking, he achieves his phantom victory--embraces his cloud. + +Dr. Shrapnel conceived that the day was to be a Radical success; and he, +a citizen aged and exercised in reverses, so rounded by the habit of them +indeed as to tumble and recover himself on the wind of the blow that +struck him, was, it must be acknowledged, staggered and cast down when he +saw Beauchamp drop, knowing full well his regiment had polled to a man. +Radicals poll early; they would poll at cockcrow if they might; they +dance on the morning. As for their chagrin at noon, you will find +descriptions of it in the poet's Inferno. They are for lifting our clay +soil on a lever of Archimedes, and are not great mathematicians. They +have perchance a foot of our earth, and perpetually do they seem to be +producing an effect, perpetually does the whole land roll back on them. +You have not surely to be reminded that it hurts them; the weight is +immense. Dr. Shrapnel, however, speedily looked out again on his vast +horizon, though prostrate. He regained his height of stature with no +man's help. Success was but postponed for a generation or two. Is it so +very distant? Gaze on it with the eye of our parent orb! 'I shall not +see it here; you may,' he said to Jenny Denham; and he fortified his +outlook by saying to Mr. Lydiard that the Tories of our time walked, or +rather stuck, in the track of the Radicals of a generation back. Note, +then, that Radicals, always marching to the triumph, never taste it; and +for Tories it is Dead Sea fruit, ashes in their mouths! Those Liberals, +those temporisers, compromisers, a concourse of atoms! glorify +themselves in the animal satisfaction of sucking the juice of the fruit, +for which they pay with their souls. They have no true cohesion, for +they have no vital principle. + +Mr. Lydiard being a Liberal, bade the doctor not to forget the work of +the Liberals, who touched on Tory and Radical with a pretty steady swing, +from side to side, in the manner of the pendulum of a clock, which is the +clock's life, remember that. The Liberals are the professors of the +practicable in politics. + +'A suitable image for time-servers!' Dr. Shrapnel exclaimed, intolerant +of any mention of the Liberals as a party, especially in the hour of +Radical discomfiture, when the fact that compromisers should exist +exasperates men of a principle. 'Your Liberals are the band of Pyrrhus, +an army of bastards, mercenaries professing the practicable for pay. +They know us the motive force, the Tories the resisting power, and they +feign to aid us in battering our enemy, that they may stop the shock. +We fight, they profit. What are they? Stranded Whigs, crotchetty +manufacturers; dissentient religionists; the half-minded, the hare- +hearted; the I would and I would-not--shifty creatures, with youth's +enthusiasm decaying in them, and a purse beginning to jingle; fearing +lest we do too much for safety, our enemy not enough for safety. They a +party? Let them take action and see! We stand a thousand defeats; they +not one! Compromise begat them. Once let them leave sucking the teats +of compromise, yea, once put on the air of men who fight and die for a +cause, they fly to pieces. And whither the fragments? Chiefly, my +friend, into the Tory ranks. Seriously so I say. You between future and +past are for the present--but with the hunted look behind of all godless +livers in the present. You Liberals are Tories with foresight, Radicals +without faith. You start, in fear of Toryism, on an errand of +Radicalism, and in fear of Radicalism to Toryism you draw back. There is +your pendulum-swing!' + +Lectures to this effect were delivered by Dr. Shrapnel throughout the +day, for his private spiritual solace it may be supposed, unto Lydiard, +Turbot, Beauchamp, or whomsoever the man chancing to be near him, and +never did Sir Oracle wear so extraordinary a garb. The favourite +missiles of the day were flour-bags. Dr. Shrapnel's uncommon height, and +his outrageous long brown coat, would have been sufficient to attract +them, without the reputation he had for desiring to subvert everything +old English. The first discharges gave him the appearance of a thawing +snowman. Drenchings of water turned the flour to ribs of paste, and in +colour at least he looked legitimately the cook's own spitted hare, +escaped from her basting ladle, elongated on two legs. It ensued that +whenever he was caught sight of, as he walked unconcernedly about, the +young street-professors of the decorative arts were seized with a frenzy +to add their share to the whitening of him, until he might have been +taken for a miller that had gone bodily through his meal. The popular +cry proclaimed him a ghost, and he walked like one, impassive, blanched, +and silent amid the uproar of mobs of jolly ruffians, for each of whom it +was a point of honour to have a shy at old Shrapnel. + +Clad in this preparation of pie-crust, he called from time to time at +Beauchamp's hotel, and renewed his monologue upon that Radical empire in +the future which was for ever in the future for the pioneers of men, yet +not the less their empire. 'Do we live in our bodies?' quoth he, +replying to his fiery interrogation: 'Ay, the Tories! the Liberals!' +They lived in their bodies. Not one syllable of personal consolation did +he vouchsafe to Beauchamp. He did not imagine it could be required by a +man who had bathed in the pure springs of Radicalism; and it should be +remarked that Beauchamp deceived him by imitating his air of happy +abstraction, or subordination of the faculties to a distant view, +comparable to a ship's crew in difficulties receiving the report of the +man at the masthead. Beauchamp deceived Miss Denham too, and himself, +by saying, as if he cherished the philosophy of defeat, besides the +resolution to fight on: + +'It's only a skirmish lost, and that counts for nothing in a battle +without end: it must be incessant.' + +'But does incessant battling keep the intellect clear?' was her +memorable answer. + +He glanced at Lydiard, to indicate that it came of that gentleman's +influence upon her mind. It was impossible for him to think that women +thought. The idea of a pretty woman exercising her mind independently, +and moreover moving him to examine his own, made him smile. Could a +sweet-faced girl, the nearest to Renee in grace of manner and in feature +of all women known to him, originate a sentence that would set him +reflecting? He was unable to forget it, though he allowed her no credit +for it. + +On the other hand, his admiration of her devotedness to Dr. Shrapnel was +unbounded. There shone a strictly feminine quality! according to the +romantic visions of the sex entertained by Commander Beauchamp, and by +others who would be the objects of it. But not alone the passive virtues +were exhibited by Jenny Denham: she proved that she had high courage. +No remonstrance could restrain Dr. Shrapnel from going out to watch the +struggle, and she went with him as a matter of course on each occasion. +Her dress bore witness to her running the gauntlet beside him. + +'It was not thrown at me purposely,' she said, to quiet Beauchamp's +wrath. She saved the doctor from being rough mobbed. Once when they +were surrounded she fastened his arm under hers, and by simply moving on +with an unswerving air of serenity obtained a passage for him. So much +did she make herself respected, that the gallant rascals became emulous +in dexterity to avoid powdering her, by loudly execrating any but dead +shots at the detested one, and certain boys were maltreated for an ardour +involving clumsiness. A young genius of this horde conceiving, in the +spirit of the inventors of our improved modern ordnance, that it was vain +to cast missiles which left a thing standing, hurled a stone wrapped in +paper. It missed its mark. Jenny said nothing about it. The day closed +with a comfortable fight or two in by-quarters of the town, probably to +prove that an undaunted English spirit, spite of fickle Fortune, survived +in our muscles. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + +TOUCHING A YOUNG LADY'S HEART AND HER INTELLECT + +Mr. Tuckham found his way to Dr. Shrapnel's cottage to see his kinsman on +the day after the election. There was a dinner in honour of the Members +for Bevisham at Mount Laurels in the evening, and he was five minutes +behind military time when he entered the restive drawing-room and stood +before the colonel. No sooner had he stated that he had been under the +roof of Dr. Shrapnel, than his unpunctuality was immediately overlooked +in the burst of impatience evoked by the name. + +'That pestilent fellow!' Colonel Halkett ejaculated. 'I understand he +has had the impudence to serve a notice on Grancey Lespel about +encroachments on common land.' + +Some one described Dr. Shrapnel's appearance under the flour storm. + +'He deserves anything,' said the colonel, consulting his mantelpiece +clock. + +Captain Baskelett observed: 'I shall have my account to settle with Dr. +Shrapnel.' He spoke like a man having a right to be indignant, but +excepting that the doctor had bestowed nicknames upon him in a speech at +a meeting, no one could discover the grounds for it. He nodded briefly. +A Radical apple had struck him on the left cheekbone as he performed his +triumphal drive through the town, and a slight disfigurement remained, to +which his hand was applied sympathetically at intervals, for the cheek- +bone was prominent in his countenance, and did not well bear enlargement. +And when a fortunate gentleman, desiring to be still more fortunate, +would display the winning amiability of his character, distension of one +cheek gives him an afflictingly false look of sweetness. + +The bent of his mind, nevertheless, was to please Miss Halkett. He would +be smiling, and intimately smiling. Aware that she had a kind of pitiful +sentiment for Nevil, he smiled over Nevil--poor Nevil! 'I give you my +word, Miss Halkett, old Nevil was off his head yesterday. I daresay he +meant to be civil. I met him; I called out to him, "Good day, cousin, +I'm afraid you're beaten" and says he, "I fancy you've gained it, uncle." +He didn't know where he was; all abroad, poor boy. Uncle!--to me!' + +Miss Halkett would have accepted the instance for a proof of Nevil's +distraction, had not Mr. Seymour Austin, who sat beside her, laughed and +said to her: 'I suppose "uncle" was a chance shot, but it's equal to a +poetic epithet in the light it casts on the story.' Then it seemed to +her that Nevil had been keenly quick, and Captain Baskelett's +impenetrability was a sign of his density. Her mood was to think Nevil +Beauchamp only too quick, too adventurous and restless: one that wrecked +brilliant gifts in a too general warfare; a lover of hazards, a hater of +laws. Her eyes flew over Captain Baskelett as she imagined Nevil +addressing him as uncle, and, to put aside a spirit of mockery rising +within her, she hinted a wish to hear Seymour Austin's opinion of Mr. +Tuckham. He condensed it in an interrogative tone: 'The other extreme?' +The Tory extreme of Radical Nevil Beauchamp. She assented. Mr. Tuckham +was at that moment prophesying the Torification of mankind; not as the +trembling venturesome idea which we cast on doubtful winds, but as a ship +is launched to ride the waters, with huzzas for a thing accomplished. +Mr. Austin raised his shoulders imperceptibly, saying to Miss Halkett: +'The turn will come to us as to others--and go. Nothing earthly can +escape that revolution. We have to meet it with a policy, and let it +pass with measures carried and our hands washed of some of our party +sins. I am, I hope, true to my party, but the enthusiasm of party I do +not share. He is right, however, when he accuses the nation of cowardice +for the last ten years. One third of the Liberals have been with us at +heart, and dared not speak, and we dared not say what we wished. We +accepted a compact that satisfied us both--satisfied us better than when +we were opposed by Whigs--that is, the Liberal reigned, and we governed: +and I should add, a very clever juggler was our common chief. Now we +have the consequences of hollow peacemaking, in a suffrage that bids fair +to extend to the wearing of hats and boots for a qualification. The +moral of it seems to be that cowardice is even worse for nations than for +individual men, though the consequences come on us more slowly.' + +'You spoke of party sins,' Miss Halkett said incredulously. + +'I shall think we are the redoubtable party when we admit the charge.' + +'Are you alluding to the landowners?' + +'Like the land itself, they have rich veins in heavy matter. For +instance, the increasing wealth of the country is largely recruiting our +ranks; and we shall be tempted to mistake numbers for strength, and +perhaps again be reading Conservatism for a special thing of our own--a +fortification. That would be a party sin. Conservatism is a principle +of government; the best because the safest for an old country; and the +guarantee that we do not lose the wisdom of past experience in our +struggle with what is doubtful. Liberalism stakes too much on the chance +of gain. It is uncomfortably seated on half-a-dozen horses; and it has +to feed them too, and on varieties of corn.' + +'Yes,' Miss Halkett said, pausing, 'and I know you would not talk down to +me, but the use of imagery makes me feel that I am addressed as a +primitive intelligence.' + +'That's the fault of my trying at condensation, as the hieroglyphists put +an animal for a paragraph. I am incorrigible, you see; but the lecture +in prose must be for by-and-by, if you care to have it.' + +'If you care to read it to me. Did a single hieroglyphic figure stand +for so much?' + +'I have never deciphered one.' + +'You have been speaking to me too long in earnest, Mr. Austin!' + +'I accept the admonition, though it is wider than the truth. Have you +ever consented to listen to politics before?' + +Cecilia reddened faintly, thinking of him who had taught her to listen, +and of her previous contempt of the subject. + +A political exposition devoid of imagery was given to her next day on the +sunny South-western terrace of Mount Laurels, when it was only by +mentally translating it into imagery that she could advance a step beside +her intellectual guide; and she was ashamed of the volatility of her +ideas. She was constantly comparing Mr. Austin and Nevil Beauchamp, +seeing that the senior and the junior both talked to her with the +familiar recognition of her understanding which was a compliment without +the gross corporeal phrase. But now she made another discovery, that +should have been infinitely more of a compliment, and it was bewildering, +if not repulsive to her:--could it be credited? Mr. Austin was a firm +believer in new and higher destinies for women. He went farther than she +could concede the right of human speculation to go; he was, in fact, as +Radical there as Nevil Beauchamp politically; and would not the latter +innovator stare, perchance frown conservatively, at a prospect of woman +taking counsel, in council, with men upon public affairs, like the women +in the Germania! Mr. Austin, if this time he talked in earnest, deemed +that Englishwomen were on the road to win such a promotion, and would win +it ultimately. He said soberly that he saw more certain indications of +the reality of progress among women than any at present shown by men. +And he was professedly temperate. He was but for opening avenues to the +means of livelihood for them, and leaving it to their strength to conquer +the position they might wish to win. His belief that they would do so +was the revolutionary sign. + +'Are there points of likeness between Radicals and Tories?' she +inquired. + +'I suspect a cousinship in extremes,' he answered. + +'If one might be present at an argument,' said she. + +'We have only to meet to fly apart as wide as the Poles,' Mr. Austin +rejoined. + +But she had not spoken of a particular person to meet him; and how, then, +had she betrayed herself? She fancied he looked unwontedly arch as he +resumed: + +'The end of the argument would see us each entrenched in his party. +Suppose me to be telling your Radical friend such truisms as that we +English have not grown in a day, and were not originally made free and +equal by decree; that we have grown, and must continue to grow, by the +aid and the development of our strength; that ours is a fairly legible +history, and a fair example of the good and the bad in human growth; that +his landowner and his peasant have no clear case of right and wrong to +divide them, one being the descendant of strong men, the other of weak +ones; and that the former may sink, the latter may rise--there is no +artificial obstruction; and if it is difficult to rise, it is easy to +sink. Your Radical friend, who would bring them to a level by +proclamation, could not adopt a surer method for destroying the manhood +of a people: he is for doctoring wooden men, and I for not letting our +stout English be cut down short as Laplanders; he would have them in a +forcing house, and I in open air, as hitherto. Do you perceive a +discussion? and you apprehend the nature of it. We have nerves. That is +why it is better for men of extremely opposite opinions not to meet. I +dare say Radicalism has a function, and so long as it respects the laws I +am ready to encounter it where it cannot be avoided. Pardon my prosing.' + +'Recommend me some hard books to study through the Winter,' said Cecilia, +refreshed by a discourse that touched no emotions, as by a febrifuge. +Could Nevil reply to it? She fancied him replying, with that wild head +of his--wildest of natures. She fancied also that her wish was like Mr. +Austin's not to meet him. She was enjoying a little rest. + +It was not quite generous in Mr. Austin to assume that 'her Radical +friend' had been prompting her. However, she thanked him in her heart +for the calm he had given her. To be able to imagine Nevil Beauchamp +intellectually erratic was a tonic satisfaction to the proud young lady, +ashamed of a bondage that the bracing and pointing of her critical powers +helped her to forget. She had always preferred the society of men of Mr. +Austin's age. How old was he? Her father would know. And why was he +unmarried? A light frost had settled on the hair about his temples; his +forehead was lightly wrinkled; but his mouth and smile, and his eyes, +were lively as a young man's, with more in them. His age must be +something less than fifty. O for peace! she sighed. When he stepped +into his carriage, and stood up in it to wave adieu to her, she thought +his face and figure a perfect example of an English gentleman in his +prime. + +Captain Baskelett requested the favour of five minutes of conversation +with Miss Halkett before he followed Mr. Austin, on his way to Steynham. + +She returned from that colloquy to her father and Mr. Tuckham. The +colonel looked straight in her face, with an elevation of the brows. +To these points of interrogation she answered with a placid fall of her +eyelids. He sounded a note of approbation in his throat. + +All the company having departed, Mr. Tuckham for the first time spoke of +his interview with his kinsman Beauchamp. Yesterday evening he had +slurred it, as if he had nothing to relate, except the finding of an old +schoolfellow at Dr. Shrapnel's named Lydiard, a man of ability fool +enough to have turned author on no income. But that which had appeared +to Miss Halkett a want of observancy, became attributable to depth of +character on its being clear that he had waited for the departure of the +transient guests of the house, to pour forth his impressions without +holding up his kinsman to public scorn. He considered Shrapnel mad and +Beauchamp mad. No such grotesque old monster as Dr. Shrapnel had he seen +in the course of his travels. He had never listened to a madman running +loose who was at all up to Beauchamp. At a loss for words to paint him, +he said: 'Beauchamp seems to have a head like a firework manufactory, +he's perfectly pyrocephalic.' For an example of Dr. Shrapnel's talk: 'I +happened,' said Mr. Tuckham, 'casually, meaning no harm, and not +supposing I was throwing a lighted match on powder, to mention the word +Providence. I found myself immediately confronted by Shrapnel-- +overtopped, I should say. He is a lank giant of about seven feet in +height; the kind of show man that used to go about in caravans over the +country; and he began rocking over me like a poplar in a gale, and cries +out: "Stay there! away with that! Providence? Can you set a thought on +Providence, not seeking to propitiate it? And have you not there the +damning proof that you are at the foot of an Idol?"--The old idea about a +special Providence, I suppose. These fellows have nothing new but their +trimmings. And he went on with: "Ay, invisible," and his arm chopping, +"but an Idol! an Idol!"--I was to think of "nought but Laws." He +admitted there might be one above the Laws. "To realize him is to fry +the brains in their pan," says he, and struck his forehead--a slap: and +off he walked down the garden, with his hands at his coat-tails. I +venture to say it may be taken for a proof of incipient insanity to care +to hear such a fellow twice. And Beauchamp holds him up for a sage and a +prophet!' + +'He is a very dangerous dog,' said Colonel Halkett. + +'The best of it is--and I take this for the strongest possible proof that +Beauchamp is mad--Shrapnel stands for an advocate of morality against +him. I'll speak of it . . . .' + +Mr. Tuckham nodded to the colonel, who said: 'Speak out. My daughter has +been educated for a woman of the world.' + +'Well, sir, it's nothing to offend a young lady's ears. Beauchamp is for +socially enfranchising the sex--that is all. Quite enough. Not a whit +politically. Love is to be the test: and if a lady ceases to love her +husband . . . if she sets her fancy elsewhere, she's bound to leave +him. The laws are tyrannical, our objections are cowardly. Well, this +Dr. Shrapnel harangued about society; and men as well as women are to +sacrifice their passions on that altar. If he could burlesque himself it +would be in coming out as a cleric--the old Pagan!' + +'Did he convince Captain Beauchamp?' the colonel asked, manifestly for +his daughter to hear the reply; which was: 'Oh dear, no!' + +'Were you able to gather from Captain Beauchamp's remarks whether he is +much disappointed by the result of the election?' said Cecilia. + +Mr. Tuckham could tell her only that Captain Beauchamp was incensed +against an elector named Tomlinson for withdrawing a promised vote on +account of lying rumours, and elated by the conquest of a Mr. Carpendike, +who was reckoned a tough one to drag by the neck. 'The only sane +people in the house are a Miss Denham and the cook: I lunched there,' +Mr. Tuckham nodded approvingly. 'Lydiard must be mad. What he's wasting +his time there for I can't guess. He says he's engaged there in writing +a prefatory essay to a new publication of Harry Denham's poems--whoever +that may be. And why wasting it there? I don't like it. He ought to be +earning his bread. He'll be sure to be borrowing money by-and-by. We've +got ten thousand too many fellows writing already, and they 've seen a +few inches of the world, on the Continent! He can write. But it's all +unproductive-dead weight on the country, these fellows with their +writings! He says Beauchamp's praise of Miss Denham is quite deserved. +He tells me, that at great peril to herself--and she nearly had her arm +broken by a stone he saved Shrapnel from rough usage on the election- +day.' + +'Hum!' Colonel Halkett grunted significantly. + +'So I thought,' Mr. Tuckham responded. 'One doesn't want the man to be +hurt, but he ought to be put down in some way. My belief is he's a Fire- +worshipper. I warrant I would extinguish him if he came before me. He's +an incendiary, at any rate.' + +'Do you think,' said Cecilia, 'that Captain Beauchamp is now satisfied +with his experience of politics?' + +'Dear me, no,' said Mr. Tuckham. 'It's the opening of a campaign. He's +off to the North, after he has been to Sussex and Bucks. He's to be at +it all his life. One thing he shows common sense in. If I heard him +once I heard him say half-a-dozen times, that he must have money:-- +"I must have money!" And so he must if he 's to head the Radicals. He +wants to start a newspaper! Is he likely to get money from his uncle +Romfrey?' + +'Not for his present plan of campaign.' Colonel Halkett enunciated the +military word sarcastically. 'Let's hope he won't get money.' + +'He says he must have it.' + +'Who is to stand and deliver, then?' + +'I don't know; I only repeat what he says: unless he has an eye on my +Aunt Beauchamp; and I doubt his luck there, if he wants money for +political campaigning.' + +'Money!' Colonel Halkett ejaculated. + +That word too was in the heart of the heiress. + +Nevil must have money! Could he have said it? Ordinary men might say or +think it inoffensively; Captain Baskelett, for instance: but not Nevil +Beauchamp. + +Captain Baskelett, as she had conveyed the information to her father for +his comfort in the dumb domestic language familiar between them on these +occasions, had proposed to her unavailingly. Italian and English +gentlemen were in the list of her rejected suitors: and hitherto she had +seen them come and go, one might say, from a watchtower in the skies. +None of them was the ideal she waited for: what their feelings were, +their wishes, their aims, she had not reflected on. They dotted the +landscape beneath the unassailable heights, busy after their fashion, +somewhat quaint, much like the pigmy husbandmen in the fields were to the +giant's daughter, who had more curiosity than Cecilia. But Nevil +Beauchamp had compelled her to quit her lofty station, pulled her low as +the littlest of women that throb and flush at one man's footstep: and +being well able to read the nature and aspirations of Captain Baskelett, +it was with the knowledge of her having been proposed to as heiress of a +great fortune that she chanced to hear of Nevil's resolve to have money. +If he did say it! And was anything likelier? was anything unlikelier? +His foreign love denied to him, why, now he devoted himself to money: +money--the last consideration of a man so single-mindedly generous as he! +But he must have money to pursue his contest! But would he forfeit the +truth in him for money for any purpose? + +The debate on this question grew as incessant as the thought of him. +Was it not to be supposed that the madness of the pursuit of his +political chimaera might change his character? + +She hoped he would not come to Mount Laurels, thinking she should esteem +him less if he did; knowing that her defence of him, on her own behalf, +against herself, depended now on an esteem lodged perhaps in her +wilfulness. Yet if he did not come, what an Arctic world! + +He came on a November afternoon when the woods glowed, and no sun. The +day was narrowed in mist from earth to heaven: a moveless and possessing +mist. It left space overhead for one wreath of high cloud mixed with +touches of washed red upon moist blue, still as the mist, insensibly +passing into it. Wet webs crossed the grass, chill in the feeble light. +The last flowers of the garden bowed to decay. Dead leaves, red and +brown and spotted yellow, fell straight around the stems of trees, lying +thick. The glow was universal, and the chill. + +Cecilia sat sketching the scene at a window of her study, on the level of +the drawing-room, and he stood by outside till she saw him. He greeted +her through the glass, then went round to the hall door, giving her time +to recover, if only her heart had been less shaken. + +Their meeting was like the features of the day she set her brush to +picture: characteristic of a season rather than cheerless in tone, though +it breathed little cheer. Is there not a pleasure in contemplating that +which is characteristic? Her unfinished sketch recalled him after he had +gone: he lived in it, to startle her again, and bid her heart gallop and +her cheeks burn. The question occurred to her: May not one love, not +craving to be beloved? Such a love does not sap our pride, but supports +it; increases rather than diminishes our noble self-esteem. To attain +such a love the martyrs writhed up to the crown of saints. For a while +Cecilia revelled in the thought that she could love in this most saint- +like manner. How they fled, the sordid ideas of him which accused him +of the world's one passion, and were transferred to her own bosom in +reproach that she should have imagined them existing in his! He talked +simply and sweetly of his defeat, of time wasted away from the canvass, +of loss of money: and he had little to spare, he said. The water-colour +drawing interested him. He said he envied her that power of isolation, +and the eye for beauty in every season. She opened a portfolio of Mr. +Tuckham's water-colour drawings in every clime; scenes of Europe, Asia, +and the Americas; and he was to be excused for not caring to look through +them. His remark, that they seemed hard and dogged, was not so unjust, +she thought, smiling to think of the critic criticized. His wonderment +that a young man like his Lancastrian cousin should be 'an unmitigated +Tory' was perhaps natural. + +Cecilia said, 'Yet I cannot discern in him a veneration for aristocracy.' +'That's not wanted for modern Toryism,' said Nevil. 'One may venerate +old families when they show the blood of the founder, and are not dead +wood. I do. And I believe the blood of the founder, though the man may +have been a savage and a robber, had in his day finer elements in it than +were common. But let me say at a meeting that I respect true +aristocracy, I hear a growl and a hiss beginning: why? Don't judge them +hastily: because the people have seen the aristocracy opposed to the +cause that was weak, and only submitting to it when it commanded them to +resist at their peril; clinging to traditions, and not anywhere standing +for humanity: much more a herd than the people themselves. Ah! well, we +won't talk of it now. I say that is no aristocracy, if it does not head +the people in virtue--military, political, national: I mean the qualities +required by the times for leadership. I won't bother you with my ideas +now. I love to see you paint-brush in hand.' + +Her brush trembled on the illumination of a scarlet maple. 'In this +country we were not originally made free and equal by decree, Nevil.' + +'No,' said he, 'and I cast no blame on our farthest ancestors.' + +It struck her that this might be an outline of a reply to Mr. Austin. + +'So you have been thinking over it?' he asked. + +'Not to conclusions,' she said, trying to retain in her mind the +evanescent suggestiveness of his previous remark, and vexed to find +herself upon nothing but a devious phosphorescent trail there. + +Her forehead betrayed the unwonted mental action. He cried out for +pardon. 'What right have I to bother you? I see it annoys you. The +truth is, I came for peace. I think of you when they talk of English +homes.' + +She felt then that he was comparing her home with another, a foreign +home. After he had gone she felt that there had been a comparison of two +persons. She remembered one of his observations: 'Few women seem to have +courage'; when his look at her was for an instant one of scrutiny or +calculation. Under a look like that we perceive that we are being +weighed. She had no clue to tell her what it signified. + +Glorious and solely glorious love, that has risen above emotion, quite +independent of craving! That is to be the bird of upper air, poised on +his wings. It is a home in the sky. Cecilia took possession of it +systematically, not questioning whether it would last; like one who is +too enamoured of the habitation to object to be a tenant-at-will. If it +was cold, it was in recompense immeasurably lofty, a star-girdled place; +and dwelling in it she could avow to herself the secret which was now +working self-deception, and still preserve her pride unwounded. Her +womanly pride, she would have said in vindication of it: but Cecilia +Halkett's pride went far beyond the merely womanly. + +Thus she was assisted to endure a journey down to Wales, where Nevil +would surely not be. She passed a Winter without seeing him. She +returned to Mount Laurels from London at Easter, and went on a visit to +Steynham, and back to London, having sight of him nowhere, still firm in +the thought that she loved ethereally, to bless, forgive, direct, +encourage, pray for him, impersonally. She read certain speeches +delivered by Nevil at assemblies of Liberals or Radicals, which were +reported in papers in the easy irony of the style of here and there a +sentence, here and there a summary: salient quotations interspersed with +running abstracts: a style terrible to friends of the speaker so +reported, overwhelming if they differ in opinion: yet her charity was a +match for it. She was obliged to have recourse to charity, it should be +observed. Her father drew her attention to the spectacle of R. C. S. +Nevil Beauchamp, Commander R.N., fighting those reporters with letters in +the newspapers, and the dry editorial comment flanked by three stars on +the left. He was shocked to see a gentleman writing such letters to the +papers. 'But one thing hangs on another,' said he. + +'But you seem angry with Nevil, papa,' said she. + +'I do hate a turbulent, restless fellow, my dear,' the colonel burst out. + +'Papa, he has really been unfairly reported.' + +Cecilia laid three privately-printed full reports of Commander +Beauchamp's speeches (very carefully corrected by him) before her father. + +He suffered his eye to run down a page. 'Is it possible you read this?-- +this trash!--dangerous folly, I call it.' + +Cecilia's reply, 'In the interests of justice, I do,' was meant to +express her pure impartiality. By a toleration of what is detested we +expose ourselves to the keenness of an adverse mind. + +'Does he write to you, too?' said the colonel. + +She answered: 'Oh, no; I am not a politician.' + +'He seems to have expected you to read those tracts of his, though.' + +'Yes, I think he would convert me if he could,' said Cecilia. + +'Though you're not a politician.' + +'He relies on the views he delivers in public, rather than on writing to +persuade; that was my meaning, papa.' + +'Very well,' said the colonel, not caring to show his anxiety. + +Mr. Tuckham dined with them frequently in London. This gentleman betrayed +his accomplishments one by one. He sketched, and was no artist; he +planted, and was no gardener; he touched the piano neatly, and was no +musician; he sang, and he had no voice. Apparently he tried his hand at +anything, for the privilege of speaking decisively upon all things. He +accompanied the colonel and his daughter on a day's expedition to Mrs. +Beauchamp, on the Upper Thames, and they agreed that he shone to great +advantage in her society. Mrs. Beauchamp said she had seen her great- +nephew Nevil, but without a comment on his conduct or his person; grave +silence. Reflecting on it, Cecilia grew indignant at the thought that +Mr. Tuckham might have been acting a sinister part. Mrs. Beauchamp +alluded to a newspaper article of her favourite great-nephew Blackburn, +written, Cecilia knew through her father, to controvert some tremendous +proposition of Nevil's. That was writing, Mrs. Beauchamp said. 'I am +not in the habit of fearing a conflict, so long as we have stout +defenders. I rather like it,' she said. + +The colonel entertained Mrs. Beauchamp, while Mr. Tuckham led Miss +Halkett over the garden. Cecilia considered that his remarks upon Nevil +were insolent. + +'Seriously, Miss Halkett, to take him at his best, he is a very good +fellow, I don't doubt; I am told so; and a capital fellow among men, a +good friend and not a bad boon-fellow, and for that matter, the smoking- +room is a better test than the drawing-room; all he wants is emphatically +school--school--school. I have recommended the simple iteration of that +one word in answer to him at his meetings, and the printing of it as a +foot-note to his letters.' + +Cecilia's combative spirit precipitated her to say, 'I hear the mob in it +shouting Captain Beauchamp down.' + +'Ay,' said Mr. Tuckham, 'it would be setting the mob to shout wisely at +last.' + +'The mob is a wild beast.' + +'Then we should hear wisdom coming out of the mouth of the wild beast.' + +'Men have the phrase, "fair play."' + +'Fair play, I say, is not applicable to a man who deliberately goes about +to stir the wild beast. He is laughed at, plucked, hustled, and robbed, +by those who deafen him with their "plaudits"--their roars. Did you see +his advertisement of a great-coat, lost at some rapscallion gathering +down in the North, near my part of the country? A great-coat and a +packet of letters. He offers a reward of L10. But that's honest robbery +compared with the bleeding he'll get.' + +'Do you know Mr. Seymour Austin?' Miss Halkett asked him. + +'I met him once at your father's table. Why?' + +'I think you would like to listen to him.' + +'Yes, my fault is not listening enough,' said Mr. Tuckham. + +He was capable of receiving correction. + +Her father told her he was indebted to Mr. Tuckham past payment in coin, +for services rendered by him on a trying occasion among the miners in +Wales during the first spring month. 'I dare say he can speak +effectively to miners,' Cecilia said, outvying the contemptuous young man +in superciliousness, but with effort and not with satisfaction. + +She left London in July, two days before her father could be induced to +return to Mount Laurels. Feverish, and strangely subject to caprices +now, she chose the longer way round by Sussex, and alighted at the +station near Steynham to call on Mrs. Culling, whom she knew to be at the +Hall, preparing it for Mr. Romfrey's occupation. In imitation of her +father she was Rosamund's fast friend, though she had never quite +realized her position, and did not thoroughly understand her. Would it +not please her father to hear that she had chosen the tedious route for +the purpose of visiting this lady, whose champion he was? + +So she went to Steynham, and for hours she heard talk of no one, of +nothing, but her friend Nevil. Cecilia was on her guard against +Rosamund's defence of his conduct in France. The declaration that there +had been no misbehaviour at all could not be accepted; but the news of +Mr. Romfrey's having installed Nevil in Holdesbury to manage that +property, and of his having mooted to her father the question of an +alliance between her and Nevil, was wonderful. Rosamund could not say +what answer her father had made: hardly favourable, Cecilia supposed, +since he had not spoken of the circumstance to her. But Mr. Romfrey's +influence with him would certainly be powerful. + +It was to be assumed, also, that Nevil had been consulted by his uncle. +Rosamund said full-heartedly that this alliance had for years been her +life's desire, and then she let the matter pass, nor did she once loop at +Cecilia searchingly, or seem to wish to probe her. Cecilia disagreed +with Rosamund on an insignificant point in relation to something Mr. +Romfrey and Captain Baskelett had done, and, as far as she could +recollect subsequently, there was a packet of letters, or a pocket-book +containing letters of Nevil's which he had lost, and which had been +forwarded to Mr. Romfrey; for the pocket-book was originally his, and his +address was printed inside. But among these letters was one from Dr. +Shrapnel to Nevil: a letter so horrible that Rosamund frowned at the +reminiscence of it, holding it to be too horrible for the quotation of a +sentence. She owned she had forgotten any three consecutive words. Her +known dislike of Captain Baskelett, however, was insufficient to make her +see that it was unjustifiable in him to run about London reading it, with +comments of the cruellest. Rosamund's greater detestation of Dr. +Shrapnel blinded her to the offence committed by the man she would +otherwise have been very ready to scorn. So small did the circumstance +appear to Cecilia, notwithstanding her gentle opposition at the time she +listened to it, that she never thought of mentioning it to her father, +and only remembered it when Captain Baskelett, with Lord Palmet in his +company, presented himself at Mount Laurels, and proposed to the colonel +to read to him 'a letter from that scoundrelly old Shrapnel to Nevil +Beauchamp, upon women, wives, thrones, republics, British loyalty, et +caetera,'--an et caetera that rolled a series of tremendous +reverberations down the list of all things held precious by freeborn +Englishmen. + +She would have prevented the reading. But the colonel would have it. + +'Read on,' said he. 'Mr. Romfrey saw no harm.' + +Captain Baskelett held up Dr. Shrapnel's letter to Commander Beauchamp, +at about half a yard's distance on the level of his chin, as a big- +chested singer in a concert-room holds his music-scroll. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + +THE EPISTLE OF DR. SHRAPNEL TO COMMANDER BEAUCHAMP + +Before we give ear to the recital of Dr. Shrapnel's letter to his pupil +in politics by the mouth of Captain Baskelett, it is necessary to defend +this gentleman, as he would handsomely have defended himself, from the +charge that he entertained ultimate designs in regard to the really +abominable scrawl, which was like a child's drawing of ocean with here +and there a sail capsized, and excited his disgust almost as much as did +the contents his great indignation. He was prepared to read it, and +stood blown out for the task, but it was temporarily too much for him. +'My dear Colonel, look at it, I entreat you,' he said, handing the letter +for exhibition, after fixing his eye-glass, and dropping it in repulsion. +The common sentiment of mankind is offended by heterodoxy in mean attire; +for there we see the self-convicted villain--the criminal caught in the +act; we try it and convict it by instinct without the ceremony of a jury; +and so thoroughly aware of our promptitude in this respect has our arch- +enemy become since his mediaeval disgraces that his particular advice to +his followers is now to scrupulously copy the world in externals; never +to appear poorly clothed, nor to impart deceptive communications in bad +handwriting. We can tell black from white, and our sagacity has taught +him a lesson. + +Colonel Halkett glanced at the detestable penmanship. Lord Palmet did +the same, and cried, 'Why, it's worse than mine!' + +Cecilia had protested against the reading of the letter, and she declined +to look at the writing. She was entreated, adjured to look, in Captain +Baskelett's peculiarly pursuing fashion; a 'nay, but you shall,' that she +had been subjected to previously, and would have consented to run like a +schoolgirl to escape from. + +To resume the defence of him: he was a man incapable of forming plots, +because his head would not hold them. He was an impulsive man, who could +impale a character of either sex by narrating fables touching persons of +whom he thought lightly, and that being done he was devoid of malice, +unless by chance his feelings or his interests were so aggrieved that his +original haphazard impulse was bent to embrace new circumstances and be +the parent of a line of successive impulses, in the main resembling an +extremely far-sighted plot, whereat he gazed back with fondness, all the +while protesting sincerely his perfect innocence of anything of the kind. +Circumstances will often interwind with the moods of simply irritated +men. In the present instance he could just perceive what might +immediately come of his reading out of this atrocious epistle wherein +Nevil Beauchamp was displayed the dangling puppet of a mountebank wire- +pulley, infidel, agitator, leveller, and scoundrel. Cognizant of Mr. +Romfrey's overtures to Colonel Halkett, he traced them to that scheming +woman in the house at Steynham, and he was of opinion that it was a +friendly and good thing to do to let the old colonel and Cissy Halkett +know Mr. Nevil through a bit of his correspondence. This, then, was a +matter of business and duty that furnished an excuse for his going out of +his, way to call at Mount Laurels on the old familiar footing, so as not +to alarm the heiress. + +A warrior accustomed to wear the burnished breastplates between London +and Windsor has, we know, more need to withstand than to discharge the +shafts of amorous passion; he is indeed, as an object of beauty, +notoriously compelled to be of the fair sex in his tactics, and must +practise the arts and whims of nymphs to preserve himself: and no doubt +it was the case with the famous Captain Baskelett, in whose mind sweet +ladies held the place that the pensive politician gives to the masses, +dreadful in their hatred, almost as dreadful in their affection. But an +heiress is a distinct species among women; he hungered for the heiress; +his elevation to Parliament made him regard her as both the ornament and +the prop of his position; and it should be added that his pride, all the +habits of thought of a conqueror of women, had been shocked by that +stupefying rejection of him, which Cecilia had intimated to her father +with the mere lowering of her eyelids. Conceive the highest bidder at an +auction hearing the article announce that it will not have him! Captain +Baskelett talked of it everywhere for a month or so:--the girl could not +know her own mind, for she suited him exactly! and he requested the world +to partake of his astonishment. Chronicles of the season in London +informed him that he was not the only fellow to whom the gates were shut. +She could hardly be thinking of Nevil? However, let the epistle be read. +'Now for the Shrapnel shot,' he nodded finally to Colonel Halkett, +expanded his bosom, or natural cuirass, as before-mentioned, and was +vocable above the common pitch:-- + + '"MY BRAVE BEAUCHAMP,--On with your mission, and never a summing of + results in hand, nor thirst for prospects, nor counting upon + harvests; for seed sown in faith day by day is the nightly harvest + of the soul, and with the soul we work. With the soul we see."' + +Captain Baskelett intervened: 'Ahem! I beg to observe that this +delectable rubbish is underlined by old Nevil's pencil.' He promised to +do a little roaring whenever it occurred, and continued with ghastly +false accentuation, an intermittent sprightliness and depression of tone +in the wrong places. + +'"The soul," et caetera. Here we are! + + "Desires to realize our gains are akin to the passion of usury; + these are tricks of the usurer to grasp his gold in act and + imagination. Have none of them. Work at the people!" + +--At them, remark!-- + + "Moveless do they seem to you? Why, so is the earth to the sowing + husbandman, and though we cannot forecast a reaping season, we have + in history durable testification that our seasons come in the souls + of men, yea, as a planet that we have set in motion, and faster and + faster are we spinning it, and firmer and firmer shall we set it to + regularity of revolution. That means life!" + +--Shrapnel roars: you will have Nevil in a minute. + + "Recognize that now we have bare life; at best for the bulk of men + the Saurian lizard's broad back soaking and roasting in primeval + slime; or say, in the so-called teachers of men, as much of life as + pricks the frog in March to stir and yawn, and up on a flaccid leap + that rolls him over some three inches nearer to the ditchwater + besought by his instinct." + +'I ask you, did you ever hear? The flaccid frog! But on we go.' + + '"Professors, prophets, masters, each hitherto has had his creed and + system to offer, good mayhap for the term; and each has put it forth + for the truth everlasting, to drive the dagger to the heart of time, + and put the axe to human growth!--that one circle of wisdom issuing + of the experience and needs of their day, should act the despot over + all other circles for ever!--so where at first light shone to light + the yawning frog to his wet ditch, there, with the necessitated + revolution of men's minds in the course of ages, darkness radiates." + +'That's old Nevil. Upon my honour, I haven't a notion of what it all +means, and I don't believe the old rascal Shrapnel has himself. And pray +be patient, my dear colonel. You will find him practical presently. +I'll skip, if you tell me to. Darkness radiates, does it! + + '"The creed that rose in heaven sets below; and where we had an + angel we have claw-feet and fangs. Ask how that is! The creed is + much what it was when the followers diverged it from the Founder. + But humanity is not where it was when that creed was food and + guidance. Creeds will not die not fighting. We cannot root them up + out of us without blood." + +'He threatens blood!--' + + '"Ours, my Beauchamp, is the belief that humanity advances beyond + the limits of creeds, is to be tied to none. We reverence the + Master in his teachings; we behold the limits of him in his creed-- + and that is not his work. We truly are his disciples, who see how + far it was in him to do service; not they that made of his creed a + strait-jacket for humanity. So, in our prayers we dedicate the + world to God, not calling him great for a title, no--showing him we + know him great in a limitless world, lord of a truth we tend to, + have not grasped. I say Prayer is good. I counsel it to you again + and again: in joy, in sickness of heart. The infidel will not pray; + the creed-slave prays to the image in his box."' + +'I've had enough!' Colonel Halkett ejaculated. + +'"We,"' Captain Baskelett put out his hand for silence with an ineffable +look of entreaty, for here was Shrapnel's hypocrisy in full bloom: + + '"We make prayer a part of us, praying for no gifts, no + interventions; through the faith in prayer opening the soul to the + undiscerned. And take this, my Beauchamp, for the good in prayer, + that it makes us repose on the unknown with confidence, makes us + flexible to change, makes us ready for revolution--for life, then! + He who has the fountain of prayer in him will not complain of + hazards. Prayer is the recognition of laws; the soul's exercise and + source of strength; its thread of conjunction with them. Prayer for + an object is the cajolery of an idol; the resource of superstition. + There you misread it, Beauchamp. We that fight the living world + must have the universal for succour of the truth in it. Cast forth + the soul in prayer, you meet the efuence of the outer truth, you + join with the creative elements giving breath to you; and that crust + of habit which is the soul's tomb; and custom, the soul's tyrant; + and pride, our volcano-peak that sinks us in a crater; and fear, + which plucks the feathers from the wings of the soul and sits it + naked and shivering in a vault, where the passing of a common + hodman's foot above sounds like the king of terrors coming,--you are + free of them, you live in the day and for the future, by this + exercise and discipline of the soul's faith. Me it keeps young + everlastingly, like the fountain of . . ."' + +'I say I cannot sit and hear any more of it!' exclaimed the colonel, +chafing out of patience. + +Lord Palmet said to Miss Halkett: 'Isn't it like what we used to remember +of a sermon?' + +Cecilia waited for her father to break away, but Captain Baskelett had +undertaken to skip, and was murmuring in sing-song some of the phrases +that warned him off: + +'"History--Bible of Humanity; . . . Permanency--enthusiast's dream-- +despot's aim--clutch of dead men's fingers in live flesh . . . Man +animal; man angel; man rooted; man winged": . . . Really, all this is +too bad. Ah! here we are: "At them with outspeaking, Beauchamp!" Here +we are, colonel, and you will tell me whether you think it treasonable or +not. "At them," et caetera: "We have signed no convention to respect +their"--he speaks of Englishmen, Colonel Halkett--"their passive +idolatries; a people with whom a mute conformity is as good as worship, +but a word of dissent holds you up to execration; and only for the +freedom won in foregone days their hate would be active. As we have them +in their present stage,"--old Nevil's mark--"We are not parties to the +tacit agreement to fill our mouths and shut our eyes. We speak because +it is better they be roused to lapidate us than soused in their sty, with +none to let them hear they live like swine, craving only not to be +disturbed at the trough. The religion of this vast English middle-class +ruling the land is Comfort. It is their central thought; their idea of +necessity; their sole aim. Whatsoever ministers to Comfort, seems to +belong to it, pretends to support it, they yield their passive worship +to. Whatsoever alarms it they join to crush. There you get at their +point of unity. They will pay for the security of Comfort, calling it +national worship, or national defence, if too much money is not +subtracted from the means of individual comfort: if too much foresight +is not demanded for the comfort of their brains. Have at them there. +Speak. Moveless as you find them, they are not yet all gross clay, and I +say again, the true word spoken has its chance of somewhere alighting and +striking root. Look not to that. Seeds perish in nature; good men fail. +Look to the truth in you, and deliver it, with no afterthought of hope, +for hope is dogged by dread; we give our courage as hostage for the +fulfilment of what we hope. Meditate on that transaction. Hope is for +boys and girls, to whom nature is kind. For men to hope is to tremble. +Let prayer--the soul's overflow, the heart's resignation--supplant it . +. ." + +'Pardon, colonel; I forgot to roar, but old Nevil marks all down that +page for encomium,' said Captain Baskelett. 'Oh! here we are. English +loyalty is the subject. Now, pray attend to this, colonel. Shrapnel +communicates to Beauchamp that if ten Beauchamps were spouting over the +country without intermission he might condescend to hope. So on--to +British loyalty. We are, so long as our sovereigns are well-conducted +persons, and we cannot unseat them--observe; he is eminently explicit, +the old traitor!--we are to submit to the outward forms of respect, but +we are frankly to say we are Republicans; he has the impudence to swear +that England is a Republican country, and calls our thoroughgoing loyalty +--yours and mine, colonel--disloyalty. Hark: "Where kings lead, it is to +be supposed they are wanted. Service is the noble office on earth, and +where kings do service let them take the first honours of the State: +but"--hark at this--"the English middle-class, which has absorbed the +upper, and despises, when it is not quaking before it, the lower, will +have nothing above it but a ricketty ornament like that you see on a +confectioner's twelfth-cake."' + +'The man deserves hanging!' said Colonel Halkett. + +'Further, my dear colonel, and Nevil marks it pretty much throughout: +"This loyalty smacks of a terrible perfidy. Pass the lords and squires; +they are old trees, old foundations, or joined to them, whether old or +new; they naturally apprehend dislocation when a wind blows, a river +rises, or a man speaks;--that comes of age or aping age: their hearts are +in their holdings! For the loyalty of the rest of the land, it is the +shopkeeper's loyalty, which is to be computed by the exact annual sum of +his net profits. It is now at high tide. It will last with the +prosperity of our commerce."--The insolent old vagabond!--"Let commercial +disasters come on us, and what of the loyalty now paying its hundreds of +thousands, and howling down questioners! In a day of bankruptcies, how +much would you bid for the loyalty of a class shivering under deprivation +of luxuries, with its God Comfort beggared? Ay, my Beauchamp,"--the most +offensive thing to me is that "my Beauchamp," but old Nevil has evidently +given himself up hand and foot to this ruffian--"ay, when you reflect +that fear of the so-called rabble, i.e. the people, the unmoneyed class, +which knows not Comfort, tastes not of luxuries, is the main component of +their noisy frigid loyalty, and that the people are not with them but +against, and yet that the people might be won by visible forthright +kingly service to a loyalty outdoing theirs as the sun the moon; ay, that +the people verily thirst to love and reverence; and that their love is +the only love worth having, because it is disinterested love, and +endures, and takes heat in adversity,--reflect on it and wonder at the +inversion of things! So with a Church. It lives if it is at home with +the poor. In the arms of enriched shopkeepers it rots, goes to decay in +vestments--vestments! flakes of mummy-wraps for it! or else they use it +for one of their political truncheons--to awe the ignorant masses: I +quote them. So. Not much ahead of ancient Egyptians in spirituality or +in priestcraft! They call it statesmanship. O for a word for it! Let +Palsy and Cunning go to form a word. Deadmanship, I call it."--To quote +my uncle the baron, this is lunatic dribble!--"Parsons and princes are +happy with the homage of this huge passive fleshpot class. It is enough +for them. Why not? The taxes are paid and the tithes. Whilst +commercial prosperity lasts!"' + +Colonel Halkett threw his arms aloft. + + '"Meanwhile, note this: the people are the Power to come. + Oppressed, unprotected, abandoned; left to the ebb and flow of the + tides of the market, now taken on to work, now cast off to starve, + committed to the shifting laws of demand and supply, slaves of + Capital-the whited name for old accursed. Mammon: and of all the. + ranked and black-uniformed host no pastor to come out of the + association of shepherds, and proclaim before heaven and man the + primary claim of their cause; they are, I say, the power, worth the + seduction of by another Power not mighty in England now: and likely + in time to set up yet another Power not existing in England now. + What if a passive comfortable clergy hand them over to men on the + models of Irish pastors, who will succour, console, enfold, champion + them? what if, when they have learnt to use their majority, sick of + deceptions and the endless pulling of interests, they raise ONE + representative to force the current of action with an authority as + little fictitious as their preponderance of numbers? The despot and + the priest! There I see our danger, Beauchamp. You and I and some + dozen labour to tie and knot them to manliness. We are few; they + are many and weak. Rome offers them real comfort in return for + their mites in coin, and--poor souls! mites in conscience, many of + them. A Tyrant offers them to be directly their friend. Ask, + Beauchamp, why they should not have comfort for pay as well as the + big round--"' + +Captain Baskelett stopped and laid the letter out for Colonel Halkett to +read an unmentionable word, shamelessly marked by Nevil's pencil: + + "--belly-class!" Ask, too, whether the comfort they wish for is not + approaching divine compared with the stagnant fleshliness of that + fat shopkeeper's Comfort. + + '"Warn the people of this. Ay, warn the clergy. It is not only the + poor that are caught by ranters. Endeavour to make those + accommodating shepherds understand that they stand a chance of + losing rich as well as poor! It should awaken them. The helpless + poor and the uneasy rich are alike open to the seductions of Romish + priests and intoxicated ranters. I say so it will be if that band + of forty thousand go on slumbering and nodding. They walk in a + dream. The flesh is a dream. The soul only is life." + +'Now for you, colonel. + + '"No extension of the army--no! A thousand times no. Let India go, + then! Good for India that we hold India? Ay, good: but not at such + a cost as an extra tax, or compulsory service of our working man. + If India is to be held for the good of India, throw open India to + the civilized nations, that they help us in a task that overstrains + us. At present India means utter perversion of the policy of + England. Adrift India! rather than England red-coated. We dissent, + Beauchamp! For by-and-by." + +'That is,' Captain Baskelett explained, 'by-and-by Shrapnel will have old +Nevil fast enough.' + +'Is there more of it?' said Colonel Halkett, flapping his forehead for +coolness. + +'The impudence of this dog in presuming to talk about India!--eh, +colonel? Only a paragraph or two more: I skip a lot . . . . Ah! +here we are.' Captain Baskelett read to himself and laughed in derision: +'He calls our Constitution a compact unsigned by the larger number +involved in it. What's this? "A band of dealers in fleshpottery." Do +you detect a gleam of sense? He underscores it. Then he comes to this': +Captain Baskelett requested Colonel Halkett to read for himself: 'The +stench of the trail of Ego in our History.' + +The colonel perused it with an unsavoury expression of his features, and +jumped up. + +'Oddly, Mr. Romfrey thought this rather clever,' said Captain Baskelett, +and read rapidly: + + '"Trace the course of Ego for them: first the king who conquers and + can govern. In his egoism he dubs him holy; his family is of a + selected blood; he makes the crown hereditary--Ego. Son by son the + shame of egoism increases; valour abates; hereditary Crown, no + hereditary qualities. The Barons rise. They in turn hold sway, and + for their order--Ego. The traders overturn them: each class rides + the classes under it while it can. It is ego--ego, the fountain + cry, origin, sole source of war! Then death to ego, I say! If + those traders had ruled for other than ego, power might have rested + with them on broad basis enough to carry us forward for centuries. + The workmen have ever been too anxious to be ruled. Now comes on + the workman's era. Numbers win in the end: proof of small wisdom in + the world. Anyhow, with numbers there is rough nature's wisdom and + justice. With numbers ego is inter-dependent and dispersed; it is + universalized. Yet these may require correctives. If so, they will + have it in a series of despots and revolutions that toss, mix, and + bind the classes together: despots, revolutions; panting + alternations of the quickened heart of humanity." + +'Marked by our friend Nevil in notes of admiration.' + +'Mad as the writer,' groaned Colonel Halkett. 'Never in my life have I +heard such stuff.' + +'Stay, colonel; here's Shrapnel defending Morality and Society,' said +Captain Baskelett. + +Colonel Halkett vowed he was under no penal law to listen, and would not; +but Captain Baskelett persuaded him: 'Yes, here it is: I give you my +word. Apparently old Nevil has been standing up for every man's right to +run away with . . . Yes, really! I give you my word; and here we have +Shrapnel insisting on respect for the marriage laws. Do hear this; here +it is in black and white:-- + + "Society is our one tangible gain, our one roofing and flooring in a + world of most uncertain structures built on morasses. Toward the + laws that support it men hopeful of progress give their adhesion. + If it is martyrdom, what then? Let the martyrdom be. Contumacy is + animalism. And attend to me," says Shrapnel, "the truer the love + the readier for sacrifice! A thousand times yes. Rebellion against + Society, and advocacy of Humanity, run counter. Tell me Society is + the whited sepulchre, that it is blotched, hideous, hollow: and I + say, add not another disfigurement to it; add to the purification of + it. And you, if you answer, what can only one? I say that is the + animal's answer, and applies also to politics, where the question, + what can one? put in the relapsing tone, shows the country decaying + in the individual. Society is the protection of the weaker, + therefore a shield of women, who are our temple of civilization, to + be kept sacred; and he that loves a woman will assuredly esteem and + pity her sex, and not drag her down for another example of their + frailty. Fight this out within you--!" + +But you are right, colonel; we have had sufficient. I shall be getting a +democratic orator's twang, or a crazy parson's, if I go on much further. +He covers thirty-two pages of letter-paper. The conclusion is:--"Jenny +sends you her compliments, respects, and best wishes, and hopes she may +see you before she goes to her friend Clara Sherwin and the General."' + +'Sherwin? Why, General Sherwin's a perfect gentleman,' Colonel Halkett +interjected; and Lord Palmet caught the other name: 'Jenny? That's Miss +Denham, Jenny Denham; an amazingly pretty girl: beautiful thick brown +hair, real hazel eyes, and walks like a yacht before the wind.' + +'Perhaps, colonel, Jenny accounts for the defence of society,' said +Captain Baskelett. 'I have no doubt Shrapnel has a scheme for Jenny. +The old communist and socialist!' He folded up the letter: 'A curious +composition, is it not, Miss Halkett?' + +Cecilia was thinking that he tempted her to be the apologist of even such +a letter. + +'One likes to know the worst, and what's possible,' said the colonel. + +After Captain Baskelett had gone, Colonel Halkett persisted in talking of +the letter, and would have impressed on his daughter that the person to +whom the letter was addressed must be partly responsible for the contents +of it. Cecilia put on the argumentative air of a Court of Equity to +discuss the point with him. + +'Then you defend that letter?' he cried. + +Oh, no: she did not defend the letter; she thought it wicked and +senseless. 'But,' said she, 'the superior strength of men to women seems +to me to come from their examining all subjects, shrinking from none. At +least, I should not condemn Nevil on account of his correspondence.' + +'We shall see,' said her father, sighing rather heavily. 'I must have a +talk with Mr. Romfrey about that letter.' + + + + +CHAPTER XXX + +THE BAITING OF DR. SHRAPNEL + +Captain Baskelett went down from Mount Laurels to Bevisham to arrange for +the giving of a dinner to certain of his chief supporters in the borough, +that they might know he was not obliged literally to sit in Parliament in +order to pay a close attention to their affairs. He had not +distinguished himself by a speech during the session, but he had stored +a political precept or two in his memory, and, as he told Lord Palmet, +he thought a dinner was due to his villains. 'The way to manage your +Englishman, Palmet, is to dine him.' As the dinner would decidedly be +dull, he insisted on having Lord Palmet's company. + +They crossed over to the yachting island, where portions of the letter +of Commander Beauchamp's correspondent were read at the Club, under the +verandah, and the question put, whether a man who held those opinions had +a right to wear his uniform. + +The letter was transmitted to Steynham in time to be consigned to the +pocket-book before Beauchamp arrived there on one of his rare visits. +Mr. Romfrey handed him the pocketbook with the frank declaration that he +had read Shrapnel's letter. 'All is fair in war, Sir!' Beauchamp quoted +him ambiguously. + +The thieves had amused Mr. Romfrey by their scrupulous honesty in +returning what was useless to them, while reserving the coat: but +subsequently seeing the advertized reward, they had written to claim it; +and, according to Rosamund Culling, he had been so tickled that he had +deigned to reply to them, very briefly, but very comically. + +Speaking of the matter with her, Beauchamp said (so greatly was he +infatuated with the dangerous man) that the reading of a letter of Dr. +Shrapnel's could do nothing but good to any reflecting human creature: +he admitted that as the lost pocket-book was addressed to Mr. Romfrey, +it might have been by mistake that he had opened it, and read the topmost +letter lying open. But he pressed Rosamund to say whether that one only +had been read. + +'Only Dr. Shrapnel's letter,' Rosamund affirmed. 'The letter from +Normandy was untouched by him.' + +'Untouched by anybody?' + +'Unopened, Nevil. You look incredulous.' + +'Not if I have your word, ma'am.' + +He glanced somewhat contemptuously at his uncle Everard's anachronistic +notions of what was fair in war. + +To prove to him Mr. Romfrey's affectionate interest in his fortunes, +Rosamund mentioned the overtures which had been made to Colonel Halkett +for a nuptial alliance between the two houses; and she said: 'Your uncle +Everard was completely won by your manly way of taking his opposition to +you in Bevisham. He pays for Captain Baskelett, but you and your +fortunes are nearest his heart, Nevil.' + +Beauchamp hung silent. His first remark was, 'Yes, I want money. I must +have money.' By degrees he seemed to warm to some sense of gratitude. +'It was kind of the baron,' he said. + +'He has a great affection for you, Nevil, though you know he spares no +one who chooses to be antagonistic. All that is over. But do you not +second him, Nevil? You admire her? You are not adverse?' + +Beauchamp signified the horrid intermixture of yes and no, frowned in +pain of mind, and Walked up and down. 'There's no living woman I admire +so much.' + +'She has refused the highest matches.' + +'I hold her in every way incomparable.' + +'She tries to understand your political ideas, if she cannot quite +sympathize with them, Nevil. And consider how hard it is for a young +English lady, bred in refinement, to understand such things.' + +'Yes,' Beauchamp nodded; yes. Well, more 's the pity for me!' + +'Ah! Nevil, that fatal Renee!' + +'Ma'am, I acquit you of any suspicion of your having read her letter in +this pocket-book. She wishes me to marry. You would have seen it +written here. She wishes it.' + +'Fly, clipped wing!' murmured Rosamund, and purposely sent a buzz into +her ears to shut out his extravagant talk of Renee's friendly wishes. + +'How is it you women will not believe in the sincerity of a woman!' he +exclaimed. + +'Nevil, I am not alluding to the damage done to your election.' + +'To my candidature, ma'am. You mean those rumours, those lies of the +enemy. Tell me how I could suppose you were alluding to them. You bring +them forward now to justify your charge of "fatal" against her. She has +one fault; she wants courage; she has none other, not one that is not +excuseable. We won't speak of France. What did her father say?' + +'Colonel Halkett? I do not know. He and his daughter come here next +week, and the colonel will expect to meet you here. That does not look +like so positive an objection to you?' + +'To me personally, no,' said Beauchamp. 'But Mr. Romfrey has not told me +that I am to meet them.' + +'Perhaps he has not thought it worth while. It is not his way. He has +asked you to come. You and Miss Halkett will be left to yourselves. Her +father assured Mr. Romfrey that he should not go beyond advising her. +His advice might not be exactly favourable to you at present, but if you +sued and she accepted--and she would, I am convinced she would; she was +here with me, talking of you a whole afternoon, and I have eyes--then he +would not oppose the match, and then I should see you settled, the +husband of the handsomest wife and richest heiress in England.' + +A vision of Cecilia swam before him, gracious in stateliness. + +Two weeks back Renee's expression of a wish that he would marry had +seemed to him an idle sentence in a letter breathing of her own +intolerable situation. The marquis had been struck down by illness. +What if she were to be soon suddenly free? But Renee could not be +looking to freedom, otherwise she never would have written the wish for +him to marry. She wrote perhaps hearing temptation whisper; perhaps +wishing to save herself and him by the aid of a tie that would bring his +honour into play and fix his loyalty. He remembered Dr. Shrapnel's +written words: 'Rebellion against society and advocacy of humanity run +counter.' They had a stronger effect on him than when he was ignorant of +his uncle Everard's plan to match him with Cecilia. He took refuge from +them in the image of that beautiful desolate Renee, born to be beloved, +now wasted, worse than trodden under foot--perverted; a life that looked +to him for direction and resuscitation. She was as good as dead in her +marriage. It was impossible for him ever to think of Renee without the +surprising thrill of his enchantment with her, and tender pity that drew +her closer to him by darkening her brightness. + +Still a man may love his wife. A wife like Cecilia was not to be +imagined coldly. Let the knot once be tied, it would not be regretted, +could not be; hers was a character, and hers a smile, firmly assuring him +of that. + +He told Mr. Romfrey that he should be glad to meet Colonel Halkett and +Cecilia. Business called him to Holdesbury. Thence he betook himself to +Dr. Shrapnel's cottage to say farewell to Jenny Denham previous to her +departure for Switzerland with her friend Clara Sherwin. She had never +seen a snow-mountain, and it was pleasant to him to observe in her eyes, +which he had known weighing and balancing intellectual questions more +than he quite liked, a childlike effort to conjure in imagination the +glories of the Alps. She appeared very happy, only a little anxious +about leaving Dr. Shrapnel with no one to take care of him for a whole +month. Beauchamp promised he would run over to him from Holdesbury, only +an hour by rail, as often as he could. He envied her the sight of the +Alps, he said, and tried to give her an idea of them, from which he broke +off to boast of a famous little Jersey bull that he had won from a rival, +an American, deeply in love with the bull; cutting him out by telegraph +by just five minutes. The latter had examined the bull in the island and +had passed on to Paris, not suspecting there would be haste to sell him. +Beauchamp, seeing the bull advertized, took him on trust, galloped to the +nearest telegraph station forthwith, and so obtained possession of him; +and the bull was now shipped on the voyage. But for this precious bull, +however, and other business, he would have been able to spend almost the +entire month with Dr. Shrapnel, he said regretfully. Miss Denham on the +contrary did not regret his active occupation. The story of his rush +from the breakfast-table to the stables, and gallop away to the station, +while the American Quaker gentleman soberly paced down a street in Paris +on the same errand, in invisible rivalry, touched her risible fancy. She +was especially pleased to think of him living in harmony with his uncle-- +that strange, lofty, powerful man, who by plot or by violence punished +opposition to his will, but who must be kind at heart, as well as +forethoughtful of his nephew's good; the assurance of it being, that when +the conflict was at an end he had immediately installed him as manager of +one of his estates, to give his energy play and make him practically +useful. + +The day before she left home was passed by the three in botanizing, some +miles distant from Bevisham, over sand country, marsh and meadow; Dr. +Shrapnel, deep in the science, on one side of her, and Beauchamp, +requiring instruction in the names and properties of every plant and +simple, on the other. It was a day of summer sweetness, gentle laughter, +conversation, and the happiest homeliness. The politicians uttered +barely a syllable of politics. The dinner basket was emptied heartily to +make way for herb and flower, and at night the expedition homeward was +crowned with stars along a road refreshed by mid-day thunder-showers and +smelling of the rain in the dust, past meadows keenly scenting, gardens +giving out their innermost balm and odour. Late at night they drank tea +in Jenny's own garden. They separated a little after two in the morning, +when the faded Western light still lay warm on a bow of sky, and on the +level of the East it quickened. Jenny felt sure she should long for that +yesterday when she was among foreign scenes, even among high Alps-those +mysterious eminences which seemed in her imagination to know of heaven +and have the dawn of a new life for her beyond their peaks. + +Her last words when stepping into the railway carriage were to Beauchamp: +'Will you take care of him?' She flung her arms round Dr. Shrapnel's +neck, and gazed at him under troubled eyelids which seemed to be passing +in review every vision of possible harm that might come to him during her +absence; and so she continued gazing, and at no one but Dr. Shrapnel +until the bend of the line cut him from her sight. Beauchamp was a very +secondary person on that occasion, and he was unused to being so in the +society of women--unused to find himself entirely eclipsed by their +interest in another. He speculated on it, wondering at her concentrated +fervency; for he had not supposed her to possess much warmth. + +After she was fairly off on her journey, Dr. Shrapnel mentioned to +Beauchamp a case of a Steynham poacher, whom he had thought it his duty +to supply with means of defence. It was a common poaching case. + +Beauchamp was not surprised that Mr. Romfrey and Dr. Shrapnel should come +to a collision; the marvel was that it had never occurred before, and +Beauchamp said at once: 'Oh, my uncle Mr. Romfrey would rather see them +stand their ground than not.' He was disposed to think well of his +uncle. The Jersey bull called him away to Holdesbury. + +Captain Baskelett heard of this poaching case at Steynham, where he had +to appear in person when he was in want of cheques, and the Bevisham +dinner furnished an excuse for demanding one. He would have preferred a +positive sum annually. Mr. Romfrey, however, though he wrote his cheques +out like the lord he was by nature, exacted the request for them; a +system that kept the gallant gentleman on his good behaviour, probably at +a lower cost than the regular stipend. In handing the cheque to Cecil +Baskelett, Mr. Romfrey spoke of a poacher, of an old poaching family +called the Dicketts, who wanted punishment and was to have it, but Mr. +Romfrey's local lawyer had informed him that the man Shrapnel was, as +usual, supplying the means of defence. For his own part, Mr. Romfrey +said, he had no objection to one rascal's backing another, and Shrapnel +might hit his hardest, only perhaps Nevil might somehow get mixed up in +it, and Nevil was going on quietly now--he had in fact just done +capitally in lassoing with a shot of the telegraph a splendid little +Jersey bull that a Yankee was after: and on the whole it was best to try +to keep him quiet, for he was mad about that man Shrapnel; Shrapnel was +his joss: and if legal knocks came of this business Nevil might be +thinking of interfering: 'Or he and I may be getting to exchange a lot of +shindy letters,' Mr. Romfrey said. 'Tell him I take Shrapnel just like +any other man, and don't want to hear apologies, and I don't mix him up +in it. Tell him if he likes to have an explanation from me, I'll give it +him when he comes here. You can run over to Holdesbury the morning after +your dinner.' + +Captain Baskelett said he would go. He was pleased with his cheque at +the time, but hearing subsequently that Nevil was coming to Steynham to +meet Colonel Halkett and his daughter, he became displeased, considering +it a very silly commission. The more he thought of it the more +ridiculous and unworthy it appeared. He asked himself and Lord Palmet +also why he should have to go to Nevil at Holdesbury to tell him of +circumstances that he would hear of two or three days later at Steynham. +There was no sense in it. The only conclusion for him was that the +scheming woman Culling had determined to bring down every man concerned +in the Bevisham election, and particularly Mr. Romfrey, on his knees +before Nevil. Holdesbury had been placed at his disposal, and the use of +the house in London, which latter would have been extremely serviceable +to Cecil as a place of dinners to the Parliament of Great Britain in lieu +of the speech-making generally expected of Members, and not so +effectively performed. One would think the baron had grown afraid of old +Nevil! He had spoken as if he were. + +Cecil railed unreservedly to Lord Palmet against that woman 'Mistress +Culling,' as it pleased him to term her, and who could be offended by his +calling her so? His fine wit revelled in bestowing titles that were at +once batteries directed upon persons he hated, and entrenchments for +himself. + +At four o'clock on a sultry afternoon he sat at table with his Bevisham +supporters, and pledged them correspondingly in English hotel champagne, +sherry and claret. At seven he was rid of them, but parched and heated, +as he deserved to be, he owned, for drinking the poison. It would be a +good subject for Parliament if he could get it up, he reflected. + +'And now,' said he to Palmet, 'we might be crossing over to the Club if I +hadn't to go about that stupid business to Holdesbury to-morrow morning. +We shall miss the race, or, at least, the start.' + +The idea struck him: 'Ten to one old Nevil 's with Shrapnel,' and no idea +could be more natural. + +'We 'll call on Shrapnel,' said Palmet. 'We shall see Jenny Denham. +He gives her out as his niece. Whatever she is she's a brimming little +beauty. I assure you, Bask, you seldom see so pretty a girl.' + +Wine, which has directed men's footsteps upon more marvellous adventures, +took them to a chemist's shop for a cooling effervescent draught, and +thence through the town to the address, furnished to them by the chemist, +of Dr. Shrapnel on the common. + +Bad wine, which is responsible for the fate of half the dismal bodies +hanging from trees, weltering by rocks, grovelling and bleaching round +the bedabbled mouth of the poet's Cave of Despair, had rendered Captain +Baskelett's temper extremely irascible; so when he caught sight of Dr. +Shrapnel walling in his garden, and perceived him of a giant's height, +his eyes fastened on the writer of the abominable letter with an +exultation peculiar to men having a devil inside them that kicks to be +out. The sun was low, blazing among the thicker branches of the pollard +forest trees, and through sprays of hawthorn. Dr. Shrapnel stopped, +facing the visible master of men, at the end of his walk before he turned +his back to continue the exercise and some discourse he was holding aloud +either to the heavens or bands of invisible men. + +'Ahem, Dr. Shrapnel!' He was accosted twice, the second time +imperiously. + +He saw two gentlemen outside the garden-hedge. + +'I spoke, sir,' said Captain Baskelett. + +'I hear you now, sir,' said the doctor, walking in a parallel line with +them. + +'I desired to know, sir, if you are Dr. Shrapnel?' + +'I am.' + +They arrived at the garden-gate. + +'You have a charming garden, Dr. Shrapnel,' said Lord Palmet, very +affably and loudly, with a steady observation of the cottage windows. + +Dr. Shrapnel flung the gate open. + +Lord Palmet raised his hat and entered, crying loudly, 'A very charming +garden, upon my word!' + +Captain Baskelett followed him, bowing stiffly. + +'I am,' he said, 'Captain Beauchamp's cousin. I am Captain Baskelett, +one of the Members for the borough.' + +The doctor said, 'Ah.' + +'I wish to see Captain Beauchamp, sir. He is absent?' + +'I shall have him here shortly, sir.' + +'Oh, you will have him!' Cecil paused. + +'Admirable roses!' exclaimed Lord Palmet. + +'You have him, I think,' said Cecil, 'if what we hear is correct. I wish +to know, sir, whether the case you are conducting against his uncle is +one you have communicated to Captain Beauchamp. I repeat, I am here to +inquire if he is privy to it. You may hold family ties in contempt--Now, +sir! I request you abstain from provocations with me.' + +Dr. Shrapnel had raised his head, with something of the rush of a rocket, +from the stooping posture to listen, and his frown of non-intelligence +might be interpreted as the coming on of the fury Radicals are prone to, +by a gentleman who believed in their constant disposition to explode. + +Cecil made play with a pacifying hand. 'We shall arrive at no +understanding unless you are good enough to be perfectly calm. I repeat, +my cousin Captain Beauchamp is more or less at variance with his family, +owing to these doctrines of yours, and your extraordinary Michael-Scott- +the-wizard kind of spell you seem to have cast upon his common sense as a +man of the world. You have him, as you say. I do not dispute it. I +have no, doubt you have him fast. But here is a case demanding a certain +respect for decency. Pray, if I may ask you, be still, be quiet, and +hear me out if you can. I am accustomed to explain myself to the +comprehension of most men who are at large, and I tell you candidly I am +not to be deceived or diverted from my path by a show of ignorance.' + +'What is your immediate object, sir?' said Dr. Shrapnel, chagrined by +the mystification within him, and a fear that his patience was going. + +'Exactly,' Cecil nodded. He was acute enough to see that he had +established the happy commencement of fretfulness in the victim, which is +equivalent to a hook well struck in the mouth of your fish, and with an +angler's joy he prepared to play his man. 'Exactly. I have stated it. +And you ask me. But I really must decline to run over the whole ground +again for you. I am here to fulfil a duty to my family; a highly +disagreeable one to me. I may fail, like the lady who came here previous +to the Election, for the result of which I am assured I ought to thank +your eminently disinterested services. I do. You recollect a lady +calling on you?' + +Dr. Shrapnel consulted his memory. 'I think I have a recollection of +some lady calling.' + +'Oh! you think you have a recollection of some lady calling.' + +'Do you mean a lady connected with Captain Beauchamp?' + +'A lady connected with Captain Beauchamp. You are not aware of the +situation of the lady?' + +'If I remember, she was a kind of confidential housekeeper, some one +said, to Captain Beauchamp's uncle.' + +'A kind of confidential housekeeper! She is recognized in our family as +a lady, sir. I can hardly expect better treatment at your hands than she +met with, but I do positively request you to keep your temper whilst I am +explaining my business to you. Now, sir! what now?' + +A trifling breeze will set the tall tree bending, and Dr. Shrapnel did +indeed appear to display the agitation of a full-driving storm when he +was but harassed and vexed. + +'Will you mention your business concisely, if you Please?' he said. + +'Precisely; it is my endeavour. I supposed I had done so. To be frank, +I would advise you to summon a member of your household, wife, daughter, +housekeeper, any one you like, to whom you may appeal, and I too, +whenever your recollections are at fault.' + +'I am competent,' said the doctor. + +'But in justice to you,' urged Cecil considerately. + +Dr. Shrapnel smoothed his chin hastily. 'Have you done?' + +'Believe me, the instant I have an answer to my question, I have done.' + +'Name your question.' + +'Very well, sir. Now mark, I will be plain with you. There is no escape +for you from this. You destroy my cousin's professional prospects--I +request you to listen--you blast his career in the navy; it was +considered promising. He was a gallant officer and a smart seaman. Very +well. You set him up as a politician, to be knocked down, to a dead +certainty. You set him against his class; you embroil him with his +family . . .' + +'On all those points,' interposed Dr. Shrapnel, after dashing a hand to +straighten his forelock; but Cecil vehemently entreated him to control +his temper. + +'I say you embroil him with his family, you cause him to be in +everlasting altercation with his uncle Mr. Romfrey, materially to his +personal detriment; and the question of his family is one that every man +of sense would apprehend on the spot; for we, you should know, have, sir, +an opinion of Captain Beauchamp's talents and abilities forbidding us to +think he could possibly be the total simpleton you make him appear, +unless to the seductions of your political instructions, other seductions +were added . . . . You apprehend me, I am sure.' + +'I don't,' cried the doctor, descending from his height and swinging +about forlornly. + +'Oh! yes, you do; you do indeed, you cannot avoid it; you quite +apprehend me; it is admitted that you take my meaning: I insist on that. +I have nothing to say but what is complimentary of the young lady, +whoever she may turn out to be; bewitching, no doubt; and to speak +frankly, Dr. Shrapnel, I, and I am pretty certain every honest man would +think with me, I take it to be ten times more creditable to my cousin +Captain Beauchamp that he should be under a lady's influence than under +yours. Come, sir! I ask you. You must confess that a gallant officer +and great admirer of the sex does not look such a donkey if he is led in +silken strings by a beautiful creature. And mark--stop! mark this, Dr. +Shrapnel: I say, to the lady we can all excuse a good deal, and at the +same time you are to be congratulated on first-rate diplomacy in +employing so charming an agent. I wish, I really wish you did it +generally, I assure you: only, mark this--I do beg you to contain +yourself for a minute, if possible--I say, my cousin Captain Beauchamp is +fair game to hunt, and there is no law to prevent the chase, only you +must not expect us to be quiet spectators of your sport; and we have, I +say, undoubtedly a right to lay the case before the lady, and induce her +to be a peace-agent in the family if we can. Very well.' + +'This garden is redolent of a lady's hand,' sighed Palmet, poetical in +his dejection. + +'Have you taken too much wine, gentlemen?' said Dr. Shrapnel. + +Cecil put this impertinence aside with a graceful sweep of his fingers. +'You attempt to elude me, sir.' + +'Not I! You mention some lady.' + +'Exactly. A young lady.' + +'What is the name of the lady?' + +'Oh! You ask the name of the lady. And I too. What is it? I have heard +two or three names.' + +'Then you have heard villanies.' + +'Denham, Jenny Denham, Miss Jenny Denham,' said Palmet, rejoiced at the +opportunity of trumpeting her name so that she should not fail to hear +it. + +'I stake my reputation I have heard her called Shrapnel--Miss Shrapnel,' +said Cecil. + +The doctor glanced hastily from one to the other of his visitors. 'The +young lady is my ward; I am her guardian,' he said. + +Cecil pursed his mouth. 'I have heard her called your niece.' + +'Niece--ward; she is a lady by birth and education, in manners, +accomplishments, and character; and she is under my protection,' cried +Dr. Shrapnel. + +Cecil bowed. 'So you are for gentle birth? I forgot you are for +morality too, and for praying; exactly; I recollect. But now let me tell +you, entirely with the object of conciliation, my particular desire is to +see the young lady, in your presence of course, and endeavour to persuade +her, as I have very little doubt I shall do, assuming that you give me +fair play, to exercise her influence, on this occasion contrary to yours, +and save my cousin Captain Beauchamp from a fresh misunderstanding with +his uncle Mr. Romfrey. Now, sir; now, there!' + +'You will not see Miss Denham with my sanction ever,' said Dr. Shrapnel. + +'Oh! Then I perceive your policy. Mark, sir, my assumption was that the +young lady would, on hearing my representations, exert herself to heal +the breach between Captain Beauchamp and his family. You stand in the +way. You treat me as you treated the lady who came here formerly to +wrest your dupe from your clutches. If I mistake not, she saw the young +lady you acknowledge to be your ward.' + +Dr. Shrapnel flashed back: 'I acknowledge? Mercy and justice! is there +no peace with the man? You walk here to me, I can't yet guess why, from +a town where I have enemies, and every scandal flies touching me and +mine; and you--' He stopped short to master his anger. He subdued it so +far as to cloak it in an attempt to speak reasoningly, as angry men +sometimes deceive themselves in doing, despite the good maxim for the +wrathful--speak not at all. 'See,' said he, 'I was never married. My +dear friend dies, and leaves me his child to protect and rear; and though +she bears her father's name, she is most wrongly and foully made to share +the blows levelled at her guardian. Ay, have at me, all of you, as much +as you will! Hold off from her. Were it true, the cowardice would be +not a whit the smaller. Why, casting a stone like that, were it the size +of a pebble and the weight of a glance, is to toss the whole cowardly +world on an innocent young girl. And why suspect evil? You talk of that +lady who paid me a visit here once, and whom I treated becomingly, I +swear. I never do otherwise. She was a handsome woman; and what was +she? The housekeeper of Captain Beauchamp's uncle. Hear me, if you +please! To go with the world, I have as good a right to suppose the +worst of an attractive lady in that situation as you regarding my ward: +better warrant for scandalizing, I think; to go with the world. +But now--' + +Cecil checked him, ejaculating, 'Thank you, Dr. Shrapnel; I thank you +most cordially,' with a shining smile. 'Stay, sir! no more. I take my +leave of you. Not another word. No "buts"! I recognize that +conciliation is out of the question: you are the natural protector of +poachers, and you will not grant me an interview with the young lady you +call your ward, that I may represent to her, as a person we presume to +have a chance of moving you, how easily--I am determined you shall hear +me, Dr. Shrapnel!--how easily the position of Captain Beauchamp may +become precarious with his uncle Mr. Romfrey. And let me add--"but" and +"but" me till Doomsday, sir!--if you were--I do hear you, sir, and you +shall hear me--if you were a younger man, I say, I would hold you +answerable to me for your scandalous and disgraceful insinuations.' + +Dr. Shrapnel was adroitly fenced and over-shouted. He shrugged, +stuttered, swayed, wagged a bulrush-head, flapped his elbows, puffed like +a swimmer in the breakers, tried many times to expostulate, and finding +the effort useless, for his adversary was copious and commanding, +relapsed, eyeing him as an object far removed. + +Cecil rounded one of his perplexingly empty sentences and turned on his +heel. + +'War, then!' he said. + +'As you like,' retorted the doctor. + +'Oh! Very good. Good evening.' Cecil slightly lifted his hat, with the +short projection of the head of the stately peacock in its walk, and +passed out of the garden. Lord Palmet, deeply disappointed and +mystified, went after him, leaving Dr. Shrapnel to shorten his garden +walk with enormous long strides. + +'I'm afraid you didn't manage the old boy,' Palmet complained. 'They're +people who have tea in their gardens; we might have sat down with them +and talked, the best friends in the world, and come again to-morrow might +have called her Jenny in a week. She didn't show her pretty nose at any +of the windows.' + +His companion pooh-poohed and said: 'Foh! I'm afraid I permitted myself +to lose my self-command for a moment.' + +Palmet sang out an amorous couplet to console himself. Captain Baskelett +respected the poetic art for its magical power over woman's virtue, but +he disliked hearing verses, and they were ill-suited to Palmet. He +abused his friend roundly, telling him it was contemptible to be quoting +verses. He was irritable still. + +He declared himself nevertheless much refreshed by his visit to Dr. +Shrapnel. 'We shall have to sleep tonight in this unhallowed town, +but I needn't be off to Holdesbury in the morning; I've done my business. +I shall write to the baron to-night, and we can cross the water to-morrow +in time for operations.' + +The letter to Mr. Romfrey was composed before midnight. It was a long +one, and when he had finished it, Cecil remembered that the act of +composition had been assisted by a cigar in his mouth, and Mr. Romfrey +detested the smell of tobacco. There was nothing to be done but to write +the letter over again, somewhat more briefly: it ran thus: + +'Thinking to kill two birds at a blow, I went yesterday with Palmet after +the dinner at this place to Shrapnel's house, where, as I heard, I stood +a chance of catching friend Nevil. The young person living under the +man's protection was absent, and so was the "poor dear commander," +perhaps attending on his bull. Shrapnel said he was expecting him. I +write to you to confess I thought myself a cleverer fellow than I am. I +talked to Shrapnel and tried hard to reason with him. I hope I can keep +my temper under ordinary circumstances. You will understand that it +required remarkable restraint when I make you acquainted with the fact +that a lady's name was introduced, which, as your representative in +relation to her, I was bound to defend from a gratuitous and scoundrelly +aspersion. Shrapnel's epistle to "brave Beauchamp" is Church +hymnification in comparison with his conversation. He is indubitably one +of the greatest ruffians of his time. + +'I took the step with the best of intentions, and all I can plead is that +I am not a diplomatist of sixty. His last word was that he is for war +with us. As far as we men are concerned it is of small importance. I +should think that the sort of society he would scandalize a lady in is +not much to be feared. I have given him his warning. He tops me by +about a head, and loses his temper every two minutes. I could have drawn +him out deliciously if he had not rather disturbed mine. By this time my +equanimity is restored. The only thing I apprehend is your displeasure +with me for having gone to the man. I have done no good, and it prevents +me from running over to Holdesbury to see Nevil, for if "shindy letters," +as you call them, are bad, shindy meetings are worse. I should be +telling him my opinion of Shrapnel, he would be firing out, I should +retort, he would yell, I should snap my fingers, and he would go into +convulsions. I am convinced that a cattle-breeder ought to keep himself +particularly calm. So unless I have further orders from you I refrain +from going. + +'The dinner was enthusiastic. I sat three hours among my Commons, they +on me for that length of time--fatiguing, but a duty.' + +Cecil subscribed his name with the warmest affection toward his uncle. + +The brevity of the second letter had not brought him nearer to the truth +in rescinding the picturesque accessories of his altercation with Dr. +Shrapnel, but it veraciously expressed the sentiments he felt, and that +was the palpable truth for him. + +He posted the letter next morning. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + +SHOWING A CHIVALROUS GENTLEMAN SET IN MOTION + +About noon the day following, on board the steam-yacht of the Countess of +Menai, Cecil was very much astonished to see Mr. Romfrey descending into +a boat hard by, from Grancey Lespel's hired cutter. Steam was up, and +the countess was off for a cruise in the Channel, as it was not a race- +day, but seeing Mr. Romfrey's hand raised, she spoke to Cecil, and +immediately gave orders to wait for the boat. This lady was a fervent +admirer of the knightly gentleman, and had reason to like him, for he had +once been her champion. Mr. Romfrey mounted the steps, received her +greeting, and beckoned to Cecil. He carried a gold-headed horsewhip +under his arm. Lady Menai would gladly have persuaded him to be one of +her company for the day's voyage, but he said he had business in +Bevisham, and moving aside with Cecil, put the question to him abruptly: +'What were the words used by Shrapnel?' + +'The identical words?' Captain Baskelett asked. He could have tripped +out the words with the fluency of ancient historians relating what great +kings, ambassadors, or Generals may well have uttered on State occasions, +but if you want the identical words, who is to remember them the day +after they have been delivered? He said: + +'Well, as for the identical words, I really, and I was tolerably excited, +sir, and upon my honour, the identical words are rather difficult to....' +He glanced at the horsewhip, and pricked by the sight of it to proceed, +thought it good to soften the matter if possible. 'I don't quite +recollect . . . I wrote off to you rather hastily. I think he said-- +but Palmet was there.' + +'Shrapnel spoke the words before Lord Palmet?' said Mr. Romfrey +austerely. + +Captain Baskelett summoned Palmet to come near, and inquired of him what +he had heard Shrapnel say, suggesting: 'He spoke of a handsome woman for +a housekeeper, and all the world knew her character?' + +Mr. Romfrey cleared his throat. + +'Or knew she had no character,' Cecil pursued in a fit of gratified +spleen, in scorn of the woman. 'Don't you recollect his accent in +pronouncing housekeeper?' + +The menacing thunder sounded from Mr. Romfrey. He was patient in +appearance, and waited for Cecil's witness to corroborate the evidence. + +It happened (and here we are in one of the circles of small things +producing great consequences, which have inspired diminutive philosophers +with ironical visions of history and the littleness of man), it happened +that Lord Palmet, the humanest of young aristocrats, well-disposed toward +the entire world, especially to women, also to men in any way related to +pretty women, had just lit a cigar, and it was a cigar that he had been +recommended to try the flavour of; and though he, having his wits about +him, was fully aware that shipboard is no good place for a trial of the +delicacy of tobacco in the leaf, he had begun puffing and sniffing in a +critical spirit, and scarcely knew for the moment what to decide as to +this particular cigar. He remembered, however, Mr. Romfrey's objection +to tobacco. Imagining that he saw the expression of a profound distaste +in that gentleman's more than usually serious face, he hesitated between +casting the cigar into the water and retaining it. He decided upon the +latter course, and held the cigar behind his back, bowing to Mr. Romfrey +at about a couple of yards distance, and saying to Cecil, 'Housekeeper; +yes, I remember hearing housekeeper. I think so. Housekeeper? yes, oh +yes.' + +'And handsome housekeepers were doubtful characters,' Captain Baskelett +prompted him. + +Palmet laughed out a single 'Ha!' that seemed to excuse him for +lounging away to the forepart of the vessel, where he tugged at his fine +specimen of a cigar to rekindle it, and discharged it with a wry grimace, +so delicate is the flavour of that weed, and so adversely ever is it +affected by a breeze and a moist atmosphere. He could then return +undivided in his mind to Mr. Romfrey and Cecil, but the subject was not +resumed in his presence. + +The Countess of Menai steamed into Bevisham to land Mr. Romfrey there. +'I can be out in the Channel any day; it is not every day that I see +you,' she said, in support of her proposal to take him over. + +They sat together conversing, apart from the rest of the company, until +they sighted Bevisham, when Mr. Romfrey stood up, and a little crowd of +men came round him to enjoy his famous racy talk. Captain Baskelett +offered to land with him. He declined companionship. Dropping her hand +in his, the countess asked him what he had to do in that town, and he +replied, 'I have to demand an apology.' + +Answering the direct look of his eyes, she said, 'Oh, I shall not speak +of it.' + +In his younger days, if the rumour was correct, he had done the same on +her account. + +He stepped into the boat, and presently they saw him mount the pier- +steps, with the riding-whip under his arm, his head more than commonly +bent, a noticeable point in a man of his tall erect figure. The ladies +and some of the gentlemen thought he was looking particularly grave, even +sorrowful. + +Lady Menai inquired of Captain Baskelett whether he knew the nature of +his uncle's business in Bevisham, the town he despised. + +What could Cecil say but no? His uncle had not imparted it to him. + +She was flattered in being the sole confidante, and said no more. + +The sprightly ingenuity of Captain Baskelett's mind would have informed +him of the nature of his uncle's expedition, we may be sure, had he put +it to the trial; for Mr. Romfrey was as plain to read as a rudimentary +sum in arithmetic, and like the tracings of a pedigree-map his +preliminary steps to deeds were seen pointing on their issue in lines of +straight descent. But Cecil could protest that he was not bound to know, +and considering that he was neither bound to know nor to speculate, he +determined to stand on his right. So effectually did he accomplish the +task, that he was frequently surprised during the evening and the night +by the effervescence of a secret exultation rising imp-like within him, +that was, he assured himself, perfectly unaccountable. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + +AN EFFORT TO CONQUER CECILIA IN BEAUCHAMP'S FASHION + +The day after Mr. Romfrey's landing in Bevisham a full South-wester +stretched the canvas of yachts of all classes, schooner, cutter and yawl, +on the lively green water between the island and the forest shore. +Cecilia's noble schooner was sure to be out in such a ringing breeze, for +the pride of it as well as the pleasure. She landed her father at the +Club steps, and then bore away Eastward to sight a cutter race, the +breeze beginning to stiffen. Looking back against sun and wind, she saw +herself pursued by a saucy little 15-ton craft that had been in her track +since she left the Otley river before noon, dipping and straining, with +every inch of sail set; as mad a stern chase as ever was witnessed: and +who could the man at the tiller, clad cap-A-pie in tarpaulin, be? She +led him dancing away, to prove his resoluteness and laugh at him. She +had the powerful wings, and a glory in them coming of this pursuit: her +triumph was delicious, until the occasional sparkle of the tarpaulin was +lost, the small boat appeared a motionless object far behind, and all +ahead of her exceedingly dull, though the race hung there and the crowd +of sail. + +Cecilia's transient flutter of coquettry created by the animating air and +her queenly flight was over. She fled splendidly and she came back +graciously. But he refused her open hand, as it were. He made as if to +stand across her tack, and, reconsidering it, evidently scorned his +advantage and challenged the stately vessel for a beat up against the +wind. It was as pretty as a Court minuet. But presently Cecilia stood +too far on one tack, and returning to the centre of the channel, found +herself headed by seamanship. He waved an ironical salute with his +sou'wester. Her retort consisted in bringing her vessel to the wind, and +sending a boat for him. + +She did it on the impulse; had she consulted her wishes she would rather +have seen him at his post, where he seemed in his element, facing the +spray and cunningly calculating to get wind and tide in his favour. +Partly with regret she saw him, stripped of his tarpaulin, jump into her +boat, as though she had once more to say farewell to sailor Nevil +Beauchamp; farewell the bright youth, the hero, the true servant of his +country! + +That feeling of hers changed when he was on board. The stirring cordial +day had put new breath in him. + +'Should not the flag be dipped?' he said, looking up at the peak, where +the white flag streamed. + +'Can you really mistake compassion for defeat?' said she, with a smile. + +'Oh! before the wind of course I hadn't a chance.' + +'How could you be so presumptuous as to give chase? And who has lent you +that little cutter?' + +Beauchamp had hired her for a month, and he praised her sailing, and +pretended to say that the race was not always to the strong in a stiff +breeze. + +'But in point' of fact I was bent on trying how my boat swims, and had no +idea of overhauling you. To-day our salt-water lake is as fine as the +Mediterranean.' + +'Omitting the islands and the Mediterranean colour, it is. I have often +told you how I love it. I have landed papa at the Club. Are you aware +that we meet you at Steynham the day after to-morrow?' + +'Well, we can ride on the downs. The downs between three and four of a +summer's morning are as lovely as anything in the world. They have the +softest outlines imaginable . . . and remind me of a friend's upper +lip when she deigns to smile.' + +'Is one to rise at that hour to behold the effect? And let me remind you +further, Nevil, that the comparison of nature's minor work beside her +mighty is an error, if you will be poetical.' + +She cited a well-known instance of degradation in verse. + +But a young man who happens to be intimately acquainted with a certain +'dark eye in woman' will not so lightly be brought to consider that the +comparison of tempestuous night to the flashing of those eyes of hers +topples the scene headlong from grandeur. And if Beauchamp remembered +rightly, the scene was the Alps at night. + +He was prepared to contest Cecilia's judgement. At that moment the +breeze freshened and the canvas lifted from due South the yacht swung her +sails to drive toward the West, and Cecilia's face and hair came out +golden in the sunlight. Speech was difficult, admiration natural, so he +sat beside her, admiring in silence. + +She said a good word for the smartness of his little yacht. + +'This is my first trial of her,' said Beauchamp. 'I hired her chiefly to +give Dr. Shrapnel a taste of salt air. I 've no real right to be idling +about. His ward Miss Denham is travelling in Switzerland; the dear old +man is alone, and not quite so well as I should wish. Change of scene +will do him good. I shall land him on the French coast for a couple of +days, or take him down Channel.' + +Cecilia gazed abstractedly at a passing schooner. + +'He works too hard,' said Beauchamp. + +'Who does?' + +'Dr. Shrapnel.' + +Some one else whom we have heard of works too hard, and it would be happy +for mankind if he did not. + +Cecilia named the schooner; an American that had beaten our crack yachts. +Beauchamp sprang up to spy at the American. + +'That's the Corinne, is she!' + +Yankee craftiness on salt water always excited his respectful attention +as a spectator. + +'And what is the name of your boat, Nevil?' + +'The fool of an owner calls her the Petrel. It's not that I'm +superstitious, but to give a boat a name of bad augury to sailors appears +to me . . . however, I 've argued it with him and I will have her +called the Curlew. Carrying Dr. Shrapnel and me, Petrel would be thought +the proper title for her isn't that your idea?' + +He laughed and she smiled, and then he became overcast with his political +face, and said, 'I hope--I believe--you will alter your opinion of him. +Can it be an opinion when it's founded on nothing? You know really +nothing of him. I have in my pocket what I believe would alter your mind +about him entirely. I do think so; and I think so because I feel you +would appreciate his deep sincerity and real nobleness.' + +'Is it a talisman that you have, Nevil?' + +'No, it's a letter.' + +Cecilia's cheeks took fire. + +'I should so much like to read it to you,' said he. + +'Do not, please,' she replied with a dash of supplication in her voice. + +'Not the whole of it--an extract here and there? I want you so much to +understand him.' + +'I am sure I should not.' + +'Let me try you!' + +'Pray do not.' + +'Merely to show you...' + +'But, Nevil, I do not wish to understand him.' + +'But you have only to listen for a few minutes, and I want you to know +what good reason I have to reverence him as a teacher and a friend.' + +Cecilia looked at Beauchamp with wonder. A confused recollection of the +contents of the letter declaimed at Mount Laurels in Captain Baskelett's +absurd sing-song, surged up in her mind revoltingly. She signified a +decided negative. Something of a shudder accompanied the expression of +it. + +But he as little as any member of the Romfrey blood was framed to let the +word no stand quietly opposed to him. And the no that a woman utters! +It calls for wholesome tyranny. Those old, those hoar-old duellists, Yes +and No, have rarely been better matched than in Beauchamp and Cecilia. +For if he was obstinate in attack she had great resisting power. Twice +to listen to that letter was beyond her endurance. Indeed it cast a +shadow on him and disfigured him; and when, affecting to plead, he said: +'You must listen to it to please me, for my sake, Cecilia,' she answered: +'It is for your sake, Nevil, I decline to.' + +'Why, what do you know of it?' he exclaimed. + +'I know the kind of writing it would be.' + +'How do you know it?' + +'I have heard of some of Dr. Shrapnel's opinions.' + +'You imagine him to be subversive, intolerant, immoral, and the rest! +all that comes under your word revolutionary.' + +'Possibly; but I must defend myself from hearing what I know will be +certain to annoy me.' + +'But he is the reverse of immoral: and I intend to read you parts of the +letter to prove to you that he is not the man you would blame, but I, and +that if ever I am worthier . . . worthier of you, as I hope to become, +it will be owing to this admirable and good old man.' + +Cecilia trembled: she was touched to the quick. Yet it was not pleasant +to her to be wooed obliquely, through Dr. Shrapnel. + +She recognized the very letter, crowned with many stamps, thick with many +pages, in Beauchamp's hands. + +'When you are at Steynham you will probably hear my uncle Everard's +version of this letter,' he said. 'The baron chooses to think everything +fair in war, and the letter came accidentally into his hands with the +seal broken; well, he read it. And, Cecilia, you can fancy the sort of +stuff he would make of it. Apart from that, I want you particularly to +know how much I am indebted to Dr. Shrapnel. Won't you learn to like him +a little? Won't you tolerate him?--I could almost say, for my sake! He +and I are at variance on certain points, but taking him altogether, I am +under deeper obligations to him than to any man on earth. He has found +where I bend and waver.' + +'I recognize your chivalry, Nevil.' + +'He has done his best to train me to be of some service. Where's the +chivalry in owning a debt? He is one of our true warriors; fearless and +blameless. I have had my heroes before. You know how I loved Robert +Hall: his death is a gap in my life. He is a light for fighting +Englishmen--who fight with the sword. But the scale of the war, the +cause, and the end in view, raise Dr. Shrapnel above the bravest I have +ever had the luck to meet. Soldiers and sailors have their excitement to +keep them up to the mark; praise and rewards. He is in his eight-and- +sixtieth year, and he has never received anything but obloquy for his +pains. Half of the small fortune he has goes in charities and +subscriptions. Will that touch you? But I think little of that, and so +does he. Charity is a common duty. The dedication of a man's life and +whole mind to a cause, there's heroism. I wish I were eloquent; I wish I +could move you.' + +Cecilia turned her face to him. 'I listen to you with pleasure, Nevil; +but please do not read the letter.' + +'Yes; a paragraph or two I must read.' + +She rose. + +He was promptly by her side. 'If I say I ask you for one sign that you +care for me in some degree?' + +'I have not for a moment ceased to be your friend, Nevil, since I was a +child.' + +'But if you allow yourself to be so prejudiced against my best friend +that you will not hear a word of his writing, are you friendly?' + +'Feminine, and obstinate,' said Cecilia. + +'Give me your eyes an instant. I know you think me reckless and lawless: +now is not that true? You doubt whether, if a lady gave me her hand I +should hold to it in perfect faith. Or, perhaps not that: but you do +suspect I should be capable of every sophism under the sun to persuade a +woman to break her faith, if it suited me: supposing some passion to be +at work. Men who are open to passion have to be taught reflection before +they distinguish between the woman they should sue for love because she +would be their best mate, and the woman who has thrown a spell on them. +Now, what I beg you to let me read you in this letter is a truth nobly +stated that has gone into my blood, and changed me. It cannot fail, too, +in changeing your opinion of Dr. Shrapnel. It makes me wretched that you +should be divided from me in your ideas of him. I, you see--and I +confess I think it my chief title to honour--reverence him.' + +'I regret that I am unable to utter the words of Ruth,' said Cecilia, in +a low voice. She felt rather tremulously; opposed only to the letter and +the writer of it, not at all to Beauchamp, except on account of his +idolatry of the wicked revolutionist. Far from having a sense of +opposition to Beauchamp; she pitied him for his infatuation, and in her +lofty mental serenity she warmed to him for the seeming boyishness of his +constant and extravagant worship of the man, though such an enthusiasm +cast shadows on his intellect. + +He was reading a sentence of the letter. + +'I hear nothing but the breeze, Nevil,' she said. + +The breeze fluttered the letter-sheets: they threatened to fly. Cecilia +stepped two paces away. + +'Hark; there is a military band playing on the pier,' said she. 'I am so +fond of hearing music a little off shore.' + +Beauchamp consigned the letter to his pocket. + +'You are not offended, Nevil?' + +'Dear me, no. You haven't a mind for tonics, that's all.' + +'Healthy persons rarely have,' she remarked, and asked him, smiling +softly, whether he had a mind for music. + +His insensibility to music was curious, considering how impressionable he +was to verse, and to songs of birds. He listened with an oppressed look, +as to something the particular secret of which had to be reached by a +determined effort of sympathy for those whom it affected. He liked it if +she did, and said he liked it, reiterated that he liked it, clearly +trying hard to comprehend it, as unmoved by the swell and sigh of the +resonant brass as a man could be, while her romantic spirit thrilled to +it, and was bountiful in glowing visions and in tenderness. + +There hung her hand. She would not have refused to yield it. The hero +of her childhood, the friend of her womanhood, and her hero still, might +have taken her with half a word. + +Beauchamp was thinking: She can listen to that brass band, and she shuts +her ears to this letter: + +The reading of it would have been a prelude to the opening of his heart +to her, at the same time that it vindicated his dear and honoured master, +as he called Dr. Shrapnel. To speak, without the explanation of his +previous reticence which this letter would afford, seemed useless: even +the desire to speak was absent, passion being absent. + +'I see papa; he is getting into a boat with some one,' said Cecilia, and +gave orders for the yacht to stand in toward the Club steps. 'Do you +know, Nevil, the Italian common people are not so subject to the charm of +music as other races? They have more of the gift, and I think less of +the feeling. You do not hear much music in Italy. I remember in the +year of Revolution there was danger of a rising in some Austrian city, +and a colonel of a regiment commanded his band to play. The mob was put +in good humour immediately.' + +'It's a soporific,' said Beauchamp. + +'You would not rather have had them rise to be slaughtered?' + +'Would you have them waltzed into perpetual servility?' + +Cecilia hummed, and suggested: 'If one can have them happy in any way?' + +'Then the day of destruction may almost be dated.' + +'Nevil, your terrible view of life must be false.' + +'I make it out worse to you than to any one else, because I want our +minds to be united.' + +'Give me a respite now and then.' + +'With all my heart. And forgive me for beating my drum. I see what +others don't see, or else I feel it more; I don't know; but it appears to +me our country needs rousing if it's to live. There 's a division +between poor and rich that you have no conception of, and it can't safely +be left unnoticed. I've done.' + +He looked at her and saw tears on her under-lids. + +'My dearest Cecilia!' + +'Music makes me childish,' said she. + +Her father was approaching in the boat. Beside him sat the Earl of +Lockrace, latterly classed among the suitors of the lady of Mount +Laurels. + +A few minutes remained to Beauchamp of his lost opportunity. Instead of +seizing them with his usual promptitude, he let them slip, painfully +mindful of his treatment of her last year after the drive into Bevisham, +when she was England, and Renee holiday France. + +This feeling he fervently translated into the reflection that the bride +who would bring him beauty and wealth, and her especial gift of tender +womanliness, was not yet so thoroughly mastered as to grant her husband +his just prevalence with her, or even indeed his complete independence of +action, without which life itself was not desireable. + +Colonel Halkett stared at Beauchamp as if he had risen from the deep. + +'Have you been in that town this morning?' was one of his first +questions to him when he stood on board. + +'I came through it,' said Beauchamp, and pointed to his little cutter +labouring in the distance. 'She's mine for a month; I came from +Holdesbury to try her; and then he stated how he had danced attendance on +the schooner for a couple of hours before any notice was taken of him, +and Cecilia with her graceful humour held up his presumption to scorn. + +Her father was eyeing Beauchamp narrowly, and appeared troubled. + +'Did you see Mr. Romfrey yesterday, or this morning?' the colonel asked +him, mentioning that Mr. Romfrey had been somewhere about the island +yesterday, at which Beauchamp expressed astonishment, for his uncle +Everard seldom visited a yachting station. + +Colonel Halkett exchanged looks with Cecilia. Hers were inquiring, and +he confirmed her side-glance at Beauchamp. She raised her brows; he +nodded, to signify that there was gravity in the case. Here the +signalling stopped short; she had to carry on a conversation with Lord +Lockrace, one of those men who betray the latent despot in an exhibition +of discontentment unless they have all a lady's hundred eyes attentive to +their discourse. + +At last Beauchamp quitted the vessel. + +When he was out of hearing, Colonel Halkett said to Cecilia: 'Grancey +Lespel tells me that Mr. Romfrey called on the man Shrapnel yesterday +evening at six o'clock.' + +'Yes, Papa?' + +'Now come and see the fittings below,' the colonel addressed Lord +Lockrace, and murmured to his daughter: + +'And soundly horsewhipped him!' + +Cecilia turned on the instant to gaze after Nevil Beauchamp. She could +have wept for pity. Her father's emphasis on 'soundly' declared an +approval of the deed, and she was chilled by a sickening abhorrence and +dread of the cruel brute in men, such as, awakened by she knew not what, +had haunted her for a year of her girlhood. + +'And he deserved it!' the colonel pursued, on emerging from the cabin at +Lord Lockrace's heels. 'I've no doubt he richly deserved it. The writer +of that letter we heard Captain Baskelett read the other day deserves the +very worst he gets.' + +'Baskelett bored the Club the other night with a letter of a Radical +fellow,' said Lord Lockrace. 'Men who write that stuff should be strung +up and whipped by the common hangman.' + +'It was a private letter,' said Cecilia. + +'Public or private, Miss Halkett.' + +Her mind flew back to Seymour Austin for the sense of stedfastness when +she heard such language as this, which, taken in conjunction with Dr. +Shrapnel's, seemed to uncloak our Constitutional realm and show it +boiling up with the frightful elements of primitive societies. + +'I suppose we are but half civilized,' she said. + +'If that,' said the earl. + +Colonel Halkett protested that he never could quite make out what +Radicals were driving at. + +'The rents,' Lord Lockrace observed in the conclusive tone of brevity. +He did not stay very long. + +The schooner was boarded subsequently by another nobleman, an Admiral of +the Fleet and ex-minister of the Whig Government, Lord Croyston, who was +a friend of Mr. Romfrey's, and thought well of Nevil Beauchamp as a +seaman and naval officer, but shook an old head over him as a politician. +He came to beg a passage across the water to his marine Lodge, an +accident having happened early in the morning to his yacht, the Lady +Violet. He was able to communicate the latest version of the +horsewhipping of Dr. Shrapnel, from which it appeared that after Mr. +Romfrey had handsomely flogged the man he flung his card on the prostrate +body, to let men know who was responsible for the act. He expected that +Mr. Romfrey would be subjected to legal proceedings. 'But if there's a +pleasure worth paying for it's the trouncing of a villain,' said he; and +he had been informed that Dr. Shrapnel was a big one. Lord Croyston's +favourite country residence was in the neighbourhood of old Mrs. +Beauchamp, on the Upper Thames. Speaking of Nevil Beauchamp a second +time, he alluded to his relations with his great-aunt, said his prospects +were bad, that she had interdicted her house to him, and was devoted to +her other great-nephew. + +'And so she should be,' said Colonel Halkett. 'That's a young man who's +an Englishman without French gunpowder notions in his head. He works for +us down at the mine in Wales a good part of the year, and has tided us +over a threatening strike there: gratuitously: I can't get him to accept +anything. I can't think why he does it.' + +'He'll have plenty,' said Lord Croyston, levelling his telescope to sight +the racing cutters. + +Cecilia fancied she descried Nevil's Petrel, dubbed Curlew, to Eastward, +and had a faint gladness in the thought that his knowledge of his uncle +Everard's deed of violence would be deferred for another two or three +hours. + +She tried to persuade her father to wait for Nevil, and invite him to +dine at Mount Laurels, and break the news to him gently. Colonel Halkett +argued that in speaking of the affair he should certainly not commiserate +the man who had got his deserts, and saying this he burst into a petty +fury against the epistle of Dr. Shrapnel, which appeared to be growing +more monstrous in proportion to his forgetfulness of the details, as +mountains gather vastness to the eye at a certain remove. Though he +could not guess the reason for Mr. Romfrey's visit to Bevisham, he was, +he said, quite prepared to maintain that Mr. Romfrey had a perfect +justification for his conduct. + +Cecilia hinted at barbarism. The colonel hinted at high police duties +that gentlemen were sometimes called on to perform for the protection of +society. 'In defiance of its laws?' she asked; and he answered: 'Women +must not be judging things out of their sphere,' with the familiar accent +on 'women' which proves their inferiority. He was rarely guilty of it +toward his daughter. Evidently he had resolved to back Mr. Romfrey +blindly. That epistle of Dr. Shrapnel's merited condign punishment and +had met with it, he seemed to rejoice in saying: and this was his +abstract of the same: 'An old charlatan who tells his dupe to pray every +night of his life for the beheading of kings and princes, and scattering +of the clergy, and disbanding the army, that he and his rabble may fall +upon the wealthy, and show us numbers win; and he'll undertake to make +them moral!' + +'I wish we were not going to Steynham,' said Cecilia. + +'So do I. Well, no, I don't,' the colonel corrected himself, 'no; it 's +an engagement. I gave my consent so far. We shall see whether Nevil +Beauchamp's a man of any sense.' + +Her heart sank. This was as much as to let her know that if Nevil broke +with his uncle, the treaty of union between the two families, which her +father submitted to entertain out of consideration for Mr. Romfrey, would +be at an end. + +The wind had fallen. Entering her river, Cecilia gazed back at the +smooth broad water, and the band of golden beams flung across it from the +evening sun over the forest. No little cutter was visible. She could +not write to Nevil to bid him come and concert with her in what spirit to +encounter his uncle Everard at Steynham. And guests would be at Mount +Laurels next day; Lord Lockrace, Lord Croyston, and the Lespels; she +could not drive down to Bevisham on the chance of seeing him. Nor was it +to be acknowledged even to herself that she so greatly desired to see him +and advise him. Why not? Because she was one of the artificial +creatures called women (with the accent) who dare not be spontaneous, and +cannot act independently if they would continue to be admirable in the +world's eye, and who for that object must remain fixed on shelves, like +other marketable wares, avoiding motion to avoid shattering or +tarnishing. This is their fate, only in degree less inhuman than that of +Hellenic and Trojan princesses offered up to the Gods, or pretty slaves +to the dealers. Their artificiality is at once their bane and their +source of superior pride. + +Seymour Austin might have reason for seeking to emancipate them, she +thought, and blushed in thought that she could never be learning anything +but from her own immediate sensations. + +Of course it was in her power to write to Beauchamp, just as it had been +in his to speak to her, but the fire was wanting in her blood and absent +from his mood, so they were kept apart. + +Her father knew as little as she what was the positive cause of Mr. +Romfrey's chastisement of Dr. Shrapnel. 'Cause enough, I don't doubt,' +he said, and cited the mephitic letter. + +Cecilia was not given to suspicions, or she would have had them kindled +by a certain wilfulness in his incessant reference to the letter, and +exoneration, if not approval, of Mr. Romfrey's conduct. + +How did that chivalrous gentleman justify himself for condescending to +such an extreme as the use of personal violence? Was there a possibility +of his justifying it to Nevil? She was most wretched in her reiteration +of these inquiries, for, with a heart subdued, she had still a mind whose +habit of independent judgement was not to be constrained, and while she +felt that it was only by siding with Nevil submissively and blindly in +this lamentable case that she could hope for happiness, she foresaw the +likelihood of her not being able to do so as much as he would desire and +demand. This she took for the protest of her pure reason. In reality, +grieved though she was on account of that Dr. Shrapnel, her captive heart +resented the anticipated challenge to her to espouse his cause or +languish. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII + +THE FIRST ENCOUNTER AT STEYNHAM + +The judge pronouncing sentence of condemnation on the criminal is +proverbially a sorrowfully-minded man; and still more would he be so had +he to undertake the part of executioner as well. This is equivalent to +saying that the simple pleasures are no longer with us; it must be a +personal enemy now to give us any satisfaction in chastising and slaying. +Perhaps by-and-by that will be savourless: we degenerate. There is, +nevertheless, ever (and let nature be praised for it) a strong +sustainment in the dutiful exertion of our physical energies, and Mr. +Everard Romfrey experienced it after he had fulfilled his double office +on the person of Dr. Shrapnel by carrying out his own decree. His +conscience approved him cheerlessly, as it is the habit of that secret +monitor to do when we have no particular advantage coming of the act we +have performed; but the righteous labour of his arm gave him high +breathing and an appetite. + +He foresaw that he and Nevil would soon be having a wrestle over the +matter, hand and thigh; but a gentleman in the right engaged with a +fellow in the wrong has nothing to apprehend; is, in fact, in the +position of a game-preserver with a poacher. The nearest approach to +gratification in that day's work which Mr. Romfrey knew was offered by +the picture of Nevil's lamentable attitude above his dirty idol. He +conceived it in the mock-mediaeval style of our caricaturists:--Shrapnel +stretched at his length, half a league, in slashed yellows and blacks, +with his bauble beside him, and prodigious pointed toes; Nevil in parti- +coloured tights, on one leg, raising his fists in imprecation to a nose +in the firmament. + +Gentlemen of an unpractised imaginative capacity cannot vision for +themselves exactly what they would, being unable to exercise authority +over the proportions and the hues of the objects they conceive, which are +very much at the mercy of their sportive caprices; and the state of mind +of Mr. Romfrey is not to be judged by his ridiculous view of the pair. +In the abstract he could be sorry for Shrapnel. As he knew himself +magnanimous, he promised himself to be forbearing with Nevil. + +Moreover, the month of September was drawing nigh; he had plenty to think +of. The entire land (signifying all but all of those who occupy the +situation of thinkers in it) may be said to have been exhaling the same +thought in connection with September. Our England holds possession of a +considerable portion of the globe, and it keeps the world in awe to see +her bestowing so considerable a portion of her intelligence upon her +recreations. To prosecute them with her whole heart is an ingenious +exhibition of her power. Mr. Romfrey was of those who said to his +countrymen, 'Go yachting; go cricketing; go boat-racing; go shooting; go +horseracing, nine months of the year, while the other Europeans go +marching and drilling.' Those occupations he considered good for us; and +our much talking, writing, and thinking about them characteristic, and +therefore good. And he was not one of those who do penance for that +sweating indolence in the fits of desperate panic. Beauchamp's argument +that the rich idler begets the idling vagabond, the rich wagerer the +brutal swindler, the general thirst for a mad round of recreation a +generally-increasing disposition to avoid serious work, and the unbraced +moral tone of the country an indifference to national responsibility (an +argument doubtless extracted from Shrapnel, talk tall as the very +demagogue when he stood upright), Mr. Romfrey laughed at scornfully, +affirming that our manufactures could take care of themselves. As for +invasion, we are circled by the sea. Providence has done that for us, +and may be relied on to do more in an emergency.--The children of wealth +and the children of the sun alike believe that Providence is for them, +and it would seem that the former can do without it less than the latter, +though the former are less inclined to give it personification. + +This year, however, the array of armaments on the Continent made Mr. +Romfrey anxious about our navy. Almost his first topic in welcoming +Colonel Halkett and Cecilia to Steynham was the rottenness of navy +administration; for if Providence is to do anything for us it must have a +sea-worthy fleet for the operation. How loudly would his contemptuous +laughter have repudiated the charge that he trusted to supernatural +agency for assistance in case of need! But so it was: and he owned to +believing in English luck. Partly of course he meant that steady fire of +combat which his countrymen have got heated to of old till fortune +blessed them. + +'Nevil is not here?' the colonel asked. + +'No, I suspect he's gruelling and plastering a doctor of his +acquaintance,' Mr. Romfrey said, with his nasal laugh composed of scorn +and resignation. + +'Yes, yes, I've heard,' said Colonel Halkett hastily. + +He would have liked to be informed of Dr. Shrapnel's particular offence: +he mentioned the execrable letter. + +Mr. Romfrey complacently interjected: 'Drug-vomit!' and after an +interval: 'Gallows!' + +'That man has done Nevil Beauchamp a world of mischief, Romfrey.' + +'We'll hope for a cure, colonel.' + +'Did the man come across you?' + +'He did.' + +Mr. Romfrey was mute on the subject. Colonel Halkett abstained from +pushing his inquiries. + +Cecilia could only tell her father when they were alone in the drawing- +room a few minutes before dinner that Mrs. Culling was entirely ignorant +of any cause to which Nevil's absence might be attributed. + +'Mr. Romfrey had good cause,' the colonel said, emphatically. + +He repeated it next day, without being a bit wiser of the cause. + +Cecilia's happiness or hope was too sensitive to allow of a beloved +father's deceiving her in his opposition to it. + +She saw clearly now that he had fastened on this miserable incident, +expecting an imbroglio that would divide Nevil and his uncle, and be an +excuse for dividing her and Nevil. O for the passionate will to make +head against what appeared as a fate in this matter! She had it not. + +Mr. and Mrs. Wardour-Devereux, Sir John and Lady Baskelett, and the +Countess of Welshpool, another sister of Mr. Romfrey's, arrived at +Steynham for a day and a night. Lady Baskelett and Lady Welshpool came +to see their brother, not to countenance his household; and Mr. Wardour- +Devereux could not stay longer than a certain number of hours under a +roof where tobacco was in evil odour. From her friend Louise, his wife, +Cecilia learnt that Mr. Lydiard had been summoned to Dr. Shrapnel's +bedside, as Mrs. Devereux knew by a letter she had received from Mr. +Lydiard, who was no political devotee of that man, she assured Cecilia, +but had an extraordinary admiration for the Miss Denham living with him. +This was kindly intended to imply that Beauchamp was released from his +attendance on Dr. Shrapnel, and also that it was not he whom the Miss +Denham attracted. + +'She is in Switzerland,' said Cecilia. + +'She is better there,' said Mrs. Devereux. + +Mr. Stukely Culbrett succeeded to these visitors. He heard of the case +of Dr. Shrapnel from Colonel Halkett, and of Beauchamp's missing of his +chance with the heiress from Mr. Romfrey. + +Rosamund Culling was in great perplexity about Beauchamp's prolonged +absence; for he had engaged to come, he had written to her to say he +would be sure to come; and she feared he was ill. She would have +persuaded Mr. Culbrett to go down to Bevisham to see him: she declared +that she could even persuade herself to call on Dr. Shrapnel a second +time, in spite of her horror of the man. Her anger at the thought of his +keeping Nevil away from good fortune and happiness caused her to speak in +resentment and loathing of the man. + +'He behaved badly when you saw him, did he?' said Stukely. + +'Badly, is no word. He is detestable,' Rosamund replied. + +'You think he ought to be whipped?' + +She feigned an extremity of vindictiveness, and twisted her brows in +comic apology for the unfeminine sentiment, as she said: 'I really do.' + +The feminine gentleness of her character was known to Stukely, so she +could afford to exaggerate the expression of her anger, and she did not +modify it, forgetful that a woman is the representative of the sex with +cynical men, and escapes from contempt at the cost of her sisterhood. + +Looking out of an upper window in the afternoon she beheld Nevil +Beauchamp in a group with his uncle Everard, the colonel and Cecilia, and +Mr. Culbrett. Nevil was on his feet; the others were seated under the +great tulip-tree on the lawn. + +A little observation of them warned her that something was wrong. There +was a vacant chair; Nevil took it in his hand at times, stamped it to the +ground, walked away and sharply back fronting his uncle, speaking +vehemently, she perceived, and vainly, as she judged by the cast of his +uncle's figure. Mr. Romfrey's head was bent, and wagged slightly, as he +screwed his brows up and shot his eyes, queerly at the agitated young +man. Colonel Halkett's arms crossed his chest. Cecilia's eyelids +drooped their, lashes. Mr. Culbrett was balancing on the hind-legs of +his chair. No one appeared to be speaking but Nevil. + +It became evident that Nevil was putting a series of questions to his +uncle. Mechanical nods were given him in reply. + +Presently Mr. Romfrey rose, thundering out a word or two, without a +gesture. + +Colonel Halkett rose. + +Nevil flung his hand out straight to the house. + +Mr. Romfrey seemed to consent; the colonel shook his head: Nevil +insisted. + +A footman carrying a tea-tray to Miss Halkett received some commission +and swiftly disappeared, making Rosamund wonder whether sugar, milk or +cream had been omitted. + +She met him on the first landing, and heard that Mr. Romfrey requested +her to step out on the lawn. + +Expecting to hear of a piece of misconduct on the part of the household +servants, she hurried forth, and found that she had to traverse the whole +space of the lawn up to the tuliptree. Colonel Halkett and Mr. Romfrey +had resumed their seats. The colonel stood up and bowed to her. + +Mr. Romfrey said: 'One question to you, ma'am, and you shall not be +detained. Did not that man Shrapnel grossly insult you on the day you +called on him to see Captain Beauchamp about a couple of months before +the Election?' + +'Look at me when you speak, ma'am,' said Beauchamp. + +Rosamund looked at him. + +The whiteness of his face paralyzed her tongue. A dreadful levelling of +his eyes penetrated and chilled her. Instead of thinking of her answer +she thought of what could possibly have happened. + +'Did he insult you at all, ma'am?' said Beauchamp. + +Mr. Romfrey reminded him that he was not a cross-examining criminal +barrister. + +They waited for her to speak. + +She hesitated, coloured, betrayed confusion; her senses telling her of a +catastrophe, her conscience accusing her as the origin of it. + +'Did Dr. Shrapnel, to your belief, intentionally hurt your feelings or +your dignity?' said Beauchamp, and made the answer easier: + +'Not intentionally, surely: not . . . I certainly do not accuse him.' + +'Can you tell me you feel that he wounded you in the smallest degree? +And if so, how? I ask you this, because he is anxious, if he lives, to +apologize to you for any offence that he may have been guilty of: he was +ignorant of it. I have his word for that, and his commands to me to bear +it to you. I may tell you I have never known him injure the most feeble +thing--anything alive, or wish to.' + +Beauchamp's voice choked. Rosamund saw tears leap out of the stern face +of her dearest now in wrath with her. + +'Is he ill?' she faltered. + +'He is. You own to a strong dislike of him, do you not?' + +'But not to desire any harm to him.' + +'Not a whipping,' Mr. Culbrett murmured. + +Everard Romfrey overheard it. + +He had allowed Mrs. Culling to be sent for, that she might with a bare +affirmative silence Nevil, when his conduct was becoming intolerable +before the guests of the house. + +'That will do, ma'am,' he dismissed her. + +Beauchamp would not let her depart. + +'I must have your distinct reply, and in Mr. Romfrey's presence:--say, +that if you accused him you were mistaken, or that they were mistaken who +supposed you had accused him. I must have the answer before you go.' + +'Sir, will you learn manners!' Mr. Romfrey said to him, with a rattle of +the throat. + +Beauchamp turned his face from-her. + +Colonel Halkett offered her his arm to lead her away. + +'What is it? Oh, what is it?' she whispered, scarcely able to walk, but +declining the colonel's arm. + +'You ought not to have been dragged out here,' said he. 'Any one might +have known there would be no convincing of Captain Beauchamp. That old +rascal in Bevisham has been having a beating; that's all. And a very +beautiful day it is!--a little too hot, though. Before we leave, you +must give me a lesson or two in gardening.' + +'Dr. Shrapnel--Mr. Romfrey!' said Rosamund half audibly under the +oppression of the more she saw than what she said. + +The colonel talked of her renown in landscape-gardening. He added +casually: 'They met the other day.' + +'By accident?' + +'By chance, I suppose. Shrapnel defends one of your Steynham poaching +vermin.' + +'Mr. Romfrey struck him?--for that? Oh, never!' Rosamund exclaimed. + +'I suppose he had a long account to settle.' + +She fetched her breath painfully. 'I shall never be forgiven.' + +'And I say that a gentleman has no business with idols,' the colonel +fumed as he spoke. 'Those letters of Shrapnel to Nevil Beauchamp are a +scandal on the name of Englishman.' + +'You have read that shocking one, Colonel Halkett?' + +'Captain Baskelett read it out to us.' + +'He? Oh! then . . .' She stopped:--Then the author of this mischief +is clear to me! her divining hatred of Cecil would have said, but her +humble position did not warrant such speech. A consideration of the +lowliness necessitating this restraint at a moment when loudly to +denounce another's infamy with triumphant insight would have solaced and +supported her, kept Rosamund dumb. + +She could not bear to think of her part in the mischief. + +She was not bound to think of it, knowing actually nothing of the +occurrence. + +Still she felt that she was on her trial. She detected herself running +in and out of her nature to fortify it against accusations rather than +cleanse it for inspection. It was narrowing in her own sight. The +prospect of her having to submit to a further interrogatory, shut it up +entrenched in the declaration that Dr. Shrapnel had so far outraged her +sentiments as to be said to have offended her: not insulted, perhaps, but +certainly offended. + +And this was a generous distinction. It was generous; and, having +recognized the generosity, she was unable to go beyond it. + +She was presently making the distinction to Miss Halkett. The colonel +had left her at the door of the house: Miss Halkett sought admission to +her private room on an errand of condolence, for she had sympathized with +her very much in the semi-indignity Nevil had forced her to undergo: and +very little indeed had she been able to sympathize with Nevil, who had +been guilty of the serious fault of allowing himself to appear moved by +his own commonplace utterances; or, in other words, the theme being +hostile to his audience, he had betrayed emotion over it without first +evoking the spirit of pathos. + +'As for me,' Rosamund replied, to some comforting remarks of Miss +Halkett's, 'I do not understand why I should be mixed up in Dr. +Shrapnel's misfortunes: I really am quite unable to recollect his words +to me or his behaviour: I have only a positive impression that I left his +house, where I had gone to see Captain Beauchamp, in utter disgust, so +repelled by his language that I could hardly trust myself to speak of the +man to Mr. Romfrey when he questioned me. I did not volunteer it. I am +ready to say that I believe Dr. Shrapnel did not intend to be insulting. +I cannot say that he was not offensive. + +You know, Miss Halkett, I would willingly, gladly have saved him from +anything like punishment.' + +'You are too gentle to have thought of it,' said Cecilia. + +'But I shall never be forgiven by Captain Beauchamp. I see in his eyes +that he accuses me and despises me.' + +'He will not be so unjust, Mrs. Culling.' + +Rosamund begged that she might hear what Nevil had first said on his +arrival. + +Cecilia related that they had seen him walking swiftly across the park, +and that Mr. Romfrey had hailed him, and held his hand out; and that +Captain Beauchamp had overlooked it, saying he feared Mr. Romfrey's work +was complete. He had taken her father's hand and hers and his touch was +like ice. + +'His worship of that Dr. Shrapnel is extraordinary,' quoth Rosamund. +'And how did Mr. Romfrey behave to him?' + +'My father thinks, very forbearingly.' + +Rosamund sighed and made a semblance of wringing her hands. 'It seems to +me that I anticipated ever since I heard of the man . . . or at least +ever since I saw him and heard him, he would be the evil genius of us +all: if I dare include myself. But I am not permitted to escape! And, +Miss Halkett, can you tell me how it was that my name--that I became +involved? I cannot imagine the circumstances which would bring me +forward in this unhappy affair.' + +Cecilia replied: 'The occasion was, that Captain Beauchamp so scornfully +contrasted the sort of injury done by Dr. Shrapnel's defence of a poacher +on his uncle's estate, with the severe chastisement inflicted by Mr. +Romfrey in revenge for it. He would not leave the subject.' + +'I see him--see his eyes!' cried Rosamund, her bosom heaving and sinking +deep, as her conscience quavered within her. 'At last Mr. Romfrey +mentioned me?' + +'He stood up and said you had been personally insulted by Dr. Shrapnel.' + +Rosamund meditated in a distressing doubt of her conscientious +truthfulness. + +'Captain Beauchamp will be coming to me; and how can I answer him? +Heaven knows I would have shielded the poor man, if possible--poor +wretch! Wicked though he is, one has only to hear of him suffering! +But what can I answer? I do recollect now that Mr. Romfrey compelled +me from question to question to confess that the man had vexed me. +Insulted, I never said. At the worst, I said vexed. I would not have +said insulted, or even offended, because Mr. Romfrey . . . ah! we +know him. What I did say, I forget. I have no guide to what I said but +my present feelings, and they are pity for the unfortunate man much more +than dislike.--Well, I must go through the scene with Nevil!' Rosamund +concluded her outcry of ostensible exculpation. + +She asked in a cooler moment how it was that Captain Beauchamp had so far +forgotten himself as to burst out on his uncle before the guests of the +house. It appeared that he had wished his uncle to withdraw with him, +and Mr. Romfrey had bidden him postpone private communications. Rosamund +gathered from one or two words of Cecilia's that Mr. Romfrey, until +finally stung by Nevil, had indulged in his best-humoured banter. + + + + +ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + +Alike believe that Providence is for them +Better for men of extremely opposite opinions not to meet +Convict it by instinct without the ceremony of a jury +Cowardice is even worse for nations than for individual men +Give our courage as hostage for the fulfilment of what we hope +Good maxim for the wrathful--speak not at all +Impossible for him to think that women thought +Leader accustomed to count ahead upon vapourish abstractions +Love, that has risen above emotion, quite independent of craving +Made of his creed a strait-jacket for humanity +Mankind is offended by heterodoxy in mean attire +May not one love, not craving to be beloved? +People with whom a mute conformity is as good as worship +Prayer for an object is the cajolery of an idol +Rebellion against society and advocacy of humanity run counter +Small things producing great consequences +That a mask is a concealment +The girl could not know her own mind, for she suited him exactly +The religion of this vast English middle-class--Comfort +The turn will come to us as to others--and go +Women must not be judging things out of their sphere + + + + +End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Beauchamp's Career, v4 +by George Meredith + + + + + + +BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER + +By GEORGE MEREDITH + +1897 + + + +BOOK 5. + +XXXIV. THE FACE OF RENEE +XXXV. THE RIDE IN THE WRONG DIRECTION +XXXVI. PURSUIT OF THE APOLOGY OF MR. ROMFREY TO DR. SHRAPNEL +XXXVII. CECILIA CONQUERED +XXXVIII. LORD AVONLEY +XXXIX. BETWEEN BEAUCHAMP AND CECILIA +XL. A TRIAL OF HIM +XLI. A LAME VICTORY + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV + +THE FACE OF RENEE + +Shortly before the ringing of the dinner-bell Rosamund knocked at +Beauchamp's dressing-room door, the bearer of a telegram from Bevisham. +He read it in one swift run of the eyes, and said: 'Come in, ma'am, I +have something for you. Madame de Rouaillout sends you this.' + +Rosamund saw her name written in a French hand on the back of the card. + +'You stay with us, Nevil?' + +'To-night and to-morrow, perhaps. The danger seems to be over.' + +'Has Dr. Shrapnel been in danger?' + +'He has. If it's quite over now!' + +'I declare to you, Nevil . . .' + +'Listen to me, ma'am; I'm in the dark about this murderous business:--an +old man, defenceless, harmless as a child!--but I know this, that you are +somewhere in it.' + +'Nevil, do you not guess at some one else?' + +'He! yes, he! But Cecil Baskelett led no blind man to Dr. Shrapnel's +gate.' + +'Nevil, as I live, I knew nothing of it!' + +'No, but you set fire to the train. You hated the old man, and you +taught Mr. Romfrey to think that you had been insulted. I see it all. +Now you must have the courage to tell him of your error. There's no +other course for you. I mean to take Mr. Romfrey to Dr. Shrapnel, to +save the honour of our family, as far as it can be saved.' + +'What? Nevil!' exclaimed Rosamund, gaping. + +'It seems little enough, ma'am. But he must go. I will have the apology +spoken, and man to man.' + +'But you would never tell your uncle that?' + +He laughed in his uncle's manner. + +'But, Nevil, my dearest, forgive me, I think of you--why are the Halketts +here? It is not entirely with Colonel Halkett's consent. It is your +uncle's influence with him that gives you your chance. Do you not care +to avail yourself of it? Ever since he heard Dr. Shrapnel's letter to +you, Colonel Halkett has, I am sure, been tempted to confound you with +him in his mind: ah! Nevil, but recollect that it is only Mr. Romfrey who +can help to give you your Cecilia. There is no dispensing with him. +Postpone your attempt to humiliate--I mean, that is, Oh! Nevil, whatever +you intend to do to overcome your uncle, trust to time, be friends with +him; be a little worldly! for her sake! to ensure her happiness!' + +Beauchamp obtained the information that his cousin Cecil had read out the +letter of Dr. Shrapnel at Mount Laurels. + +The bell rang. + +'Do you imagine I should sit at my uncle's table if I did not intend to +force him to repair the wrong he has done to himself and to us?' he said. + +'Oh! Nevil, do you not see Captain Baskelett at work here?' + +'What amends can Cecil Baskelett make? My uncle is a man of honour: it +is in his power. There, I leave you to speak to him; you will do it +to-night, after we break up in the drawing-room.' + +Rosamund groaned: 'An apology to Dr. Shrapnel from Mr. Romfrey! It is an +impossibility, Nevil! utter!' + +'So you say to sit idle: but do as I tell you.' + +He went downstairs. + +He had barely reproached her. She wondered at that; and then remembered +his alien sad half-smile in quitting the room. + +Rosamund would not present herself at her lord's dinner-table when there +were any guests at Steynham. She prepared to receive Miss Halkett in the +drawing-room, as the guests of the house this evening chanced to be her +friends. + +Madame de Rouaillout's present to her was a photograph of M. de Croisnel, +his daughter and son in a group. Rosamund could not bear to look at the +face of Renee, and she put it out of sight. But she had looked. She was +reduced to look again. + +Roland stood beside his father's chair; Renee sat at his feet, clasping +his right hand. M. de Croisnel's fallen eyelids and unshorn white chin +told the story of the family reunion. He was dying: his two children +were nursing him to the end. + +Decidedly Cecilia was a more beautiful woman than Renee: but on which +does the eye linger longest--which draws the heart? a radiant landscape, +where the tall ripe wheat flashes between shadow and shine in the stately +march of Summer, or the peep into dewy woodland on to dark water? + +Dark-eyed Renee was not beauty but attraction; she touched the double +chords within us which are we know not whether harmony or discord, +but a divine discord if an uncertified harmony, memorable beyond plain +sweetness or majesty. There are touches of bliss in anguish that +superhumanize bliss, touches of mystery in simplicity, of the eternal in +the variable. These two chords of poignant antiphony she struck +throughout the range of the hearts of men, and strangely intervolved them +in vibrating unison. Only to look at her face, without hearing her +voice, without the charm of her speech, was to feel it. On Cecilia's +entering the drawing-room sofa, while the gentlemen drank claret, +Rosamund handed her the card of the photographic artist of Tours, +mentioning no names. + +'I should say the portrait is correct. A want of spirituality,' Rosamund +said critically, using one of the insular commonplaces, after that manner +of fastening upon what there is not in a piece of Art or nature. + +Cecilia's avidity to see and study the face preserved her at a higher +mark. + +She knew the person instantly; had no occasion to ask who this was. She +sat over the portrait blushing burningly: 'And that is a brother?' she +said. + +'That is her brother Roland, and very like her, except in complexion,' +said Rosamund. + +Cecilia murmured of a general resemblance in the features. Renee +enchained her. Though but a sun-shadow, the vividness of this French +face came out surprisingly; air was in the nostrils and speech flew from +the tremulous mouth. The eyes? were they quivering with internal light, +or were they set to seem so in the sensitive strange curves of the +eyelids whose awakened lashes appeared to tremble on some borderland +between lustreful significance and the mists? She caught at the nerves +like certain aoristic combinations in music, like tones of a stringed +instrument swept by the wind, enticing, unseizable. Yet she sat there at +her father's feet gazing out into the world indifferent to spectators, +indifferent even to the common sentiment of gracefulness. Her left hand +clasped his right, and she supported herself on the floor with the other +hand leaning away from him, to the destruction of conventional symmetry +in the picture. None but a woman of consummate breeding dared have done +as she did. It was not Southern suppleness that saved her from the +charge of harsh audacity, but something of the kind of genius in her mood +which has hurried the greater poets of sound and speech to impose their +naturalness upon accepted laws, or show the laws to have been our meagre +limitations. + +The writer in this country will, however, be made safest, and the +excellent body of self-appointed thongmen, who walk up and down our ranks +flapping their leathern straps to terrorize us from experiments in +imagery, will best be satisfied, by the statement that she was +indescribable: a term that exacts no labour of mind from him or from +them, for it flows off the pen as readily as it fills a vacuum. + +That posture of Renee displeased Cecilia and fascinated her. In an +exhibition of paintings she would have passed by it in pure displeasure: +but here was Nevil's first love, the woman who loved him; and she was +French. After a continued study of her Cecilia's growing jealousy +betrayed itself in a conscious rivalry of race, coming to the admission +that Englishwomen cannot fling themselves about on the floor without +agonizing the graces: possibly, too, they cannot look singularly without +risks in the direction of slyness and brazen archness; or talk animatedly +without dipping in slang. Conventional situations preserve them and +interchange dignity with them; still life befits them; pre-eminently that +judicial seat from which in briefest speech they deliver their judgements +upon their foreign sisters. Jealousy it was that plucked Cecilia from +her majestic place and caused her to envy in Renee things she would +otherwise have disapproved. + +At last she had seen the French lady's likeness! The effect of it was a +horrid trouble in Cecilia's cool blood, abasement, a sense of eclipse, +hardly any sense of deserving worthiness: 'What am I but an heiress!' +Nevil had once called her beautiful; his praise had given her beauty. +But what is beauty when it is outshone! Ask the owners of gems. You +think them rich; they are pining. + +Then, too, this Renee, who looked electrical in repose, might really love +Nevil with a love that sent her heart out to him in his enterprises, +justifying and adoring him, piercing to the hero in his very thoughts. +Would she not see that his championship of the unfortunate man +Dr. Shrapnel was heroic? + +Cecilia surrendered the card to Rosamund, and it was out of sight when +Beauchamp stepped in the drawing-room. His cheeks were flushed; he had +been one against three for the better part of an hour. + +'Are you going to show me the downs to-morrow morning?' Cecilia said to +him; and he replied, 'You will have to be up early.' + +'What's that?' asked the colonel, at Beauchamp's heels. + +He was volunteering to join the party of two for the early morning's ride +to the downs. Mr. Romfrey pressed his shoulder, saying, 'There's no +third horse can do it in my stables.' + +Colonel Halkett turned to him. + +'I had your promise to come over the kennels with me and see how I treat +a cry of mad dog, which is ninety-nine times out of a hundred mad fool +man,' Mr. Romfrey added. + +By that the colonel knew he meant to stand by Nevil still and offer him +his chance of winning Cecilia. + +Having pledged his word not to interfere, Colonel Halkett submitted, and +muttered, 'Ah! the kennels.' Considering however what he had been +witnessing of Nevil's behaviour to his uncle, the colonel was amazed at +Mr. Romfrey's magnanimity in not cutting him off and disowning him. + +'Why the downs?' he said. + +'Why the deuce, colonel?' A question quite as reasonable, and Mr. +Romfrey laughed under his breath. To relieve an uncertainty in Cecilia's +face, that might soon have become confusion, he described the downs +fronting the paleness of earliest dawn, and then their arch and curve and +dip against the pearly grey of the half-glow; and then, among their +hollows, lo, the illumination of the East all around, and up and away, +and a gallop for miles along the turfy thymy rolling billows, land to +left, sea to right, below you. 'It's the nearest hit to wings we can +make, Cecilia.' He surprised her with her Christian name, which kindled +in her the secret of something he expected from that ride on the downs. +Compare you the Alps with them? If you could jump on the back of an +eagle, you might. The Alps have height. But the downs have swiftness. +Those long stretching lines of the downs are greyhounds in full career. +To look at them is to set the blood racing! Speed is on the downs, +glorious motion, odorous air of sea and herb, exquisite as in the isles +of Greece. And the Continental travelling ninnies leave England for +health!--run off and forth from the downs to the steamboat, the railway, +the steaming hotel, the tourist's shivering mountain-top, in search of +sensations! There on the downs the finest and liveliest are at their +bidding ready to fly through them like hosts of angels. + +He spoke somewhat in that strain, either to relieve Cecilia or prepare +the road for Nevil, not in his ordinary style; on the contrary, with a +swing of enthusiasm that seemed to spring of ancient heartfelt fervours. +And indeed soon afterward he was telling her that there on those downs, +in full view of Steynham, he and his wife had first joined hands. + +Beauchamp sat silent. Mr. Romfrey despatched orders to the stables, +and Rosamund to the kitchen. Cecilia was rather dismayed by the formal +preparations for the ride. She declined the early cup of coffee. Mr. +Romfrey begged her to take it. 'Who knows the hour when you 'll be +back?' he said. Beauchamp said nothing. + +The room grew insufferable to Cecilia. She would have liked to be wafted +to her chamber in a veil, so shamefully unveiled did she seem to be. But +the French lady would have been happy in her place! Her father kissed +her as fathers do when they hand the bride into the travelling-carriage. +His 'Good-night, my darling!' was in the voice of a soldier on duty. +For a concluding sign that her dim apprehensions pointed correctly, Mr. +Romfrey kissed her on the forehead. She could not understand how it had +come to pass that she found herself suddenly on this incline, +precipitated whither she would fain be going, only less hurriedly, less +openly, and with her secret merely peeping, like a dove in the breast. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV + +THE RIDE IN THE WRONG DIRECTION + +That pure opaque of the line of downs ran luminously edged against the +pearly morning sky, with its dark landward face crepusculine yet clear in +every combe, every dotting copse and furze-bush, every wavy fall, and the +ripple, crease, and rill-like descent of the turf. Beauty of darkness +was there, as well as beauty of light above. + +Beauchamp and Cecilia rode forth before the sun was over the line, while +the West and North-west sides of the rolling downs were stamped with such +firmness of dusky feature as you see on the indentations of a shield of +tarnished silver. The mounting of the sun behind threw an obscurer +gloom, and gradually a black mask overcame them, until the rays shot +among their folds and windings, and shadows rich as the black pansy, +steady as on a dialplate rounded with the hour. + +Mr. Everard Romfrey embraced this view from Steynham windows, and loved +it. The lengths of gigantic 'greyhound backs' coursing along the South +were his vision of delight; no image of repose for him, but of the life +in swiftness. He had known them when the great bird of the downs was not +a mere tradition, and though he owned conscientiously to never having +beheld the bird, a certain mystery of holiness hung about the region +where the bird had been in his time. There, too, with a timely word he +had gained a wealthy and good wife. He had now sent Nevil to do the +same. + +This astute gentleman had caught at the idea of a ride of the young +couple to the downs with his customary alacrity of perception as being +the very best arrangement for hurrying them to the point. At Steynham +Nevil was sure to be howling all day over his tumbled joss Shrapnel. +Once away in the heart of the downs, and Cecilia beside him, it was a +matter of calculation that two or three hours of the sharpening air would +screw his human nature to the pitch. In fact, unless each of them was +reluctant, they could hardly return unbetrothed. Cecilia's consent was +foreshadowed by her submission in going: Mr. Romfrey had noticed her +fright at the suggestive formalities he cast round the expedition, and +felt sure of her. Taking Nevil for a man who could smell the perfume of +a ripe affirmative on the sweetest of lips, he was pretty well sure of +him likewise. And then a truce to all that Radical rageing and hot- +pokering of the country! and lie in peace, old Shrapnel! and get on your +legs when you can, and offend no more; especially be mindful not to let +fly one word against a woman! With Cecilia for wife, and a year of +marriage devoted to a son and heir, Nevil might be expected to resume his +duties as a naval officer, and win an honourable name for the inheritance +of the young one he kissed. + +There was benevolence in these previsions of Mr. Romfrey, proving how +good it is for us to bow to despotic authority, if only we will bring +ourselves unquestioningly to accept the previous deeds of the directing +hand. + +Colonel Halkett gave up his daughter for lost when she did not appear at +the breakfast-table: for yet more decidedly lost when the luncheon saw +her empty place; and as time drew on toward the dinner-hour, he began to +think her lost beyond hope, embarked for good and all with the madbrain. +Some little hope of a dissension between the pair, arising from the +natural antagonism of her strong sense to Nevil's extravagance, had +buoyed him until it was evident that they must have alighted at an inn to +eat, which signified that they had overleaped the world and its hurdles, +and were as dreamy a leash of lovers as ever made a dreamland of hard +earth. The downs looked like dreamland through the long afternoon. They +shone as in a veil of silk-softly fair, softly dark. No spot of +harshness was on them save where a quarry South-westward gaped at the +evening sun. + +Red light struck into that round chalk maw, and the green slopes and +channels and half-circle hollows were brought a mile-stride higher +Steynham by the level beams. + +The poor old colonel fell to a more frequent repetition of the 'Well!' +with which he had been unconsciously expressing his perplexed mind in the +kennels and through the covers during the day. None of the gentlemen +went to dress. Mr. Culbrett was indoors conversing with Rosamund +Culling. + +'What's come to them?' the colonel asked of Mr. Romfrey, who said +shrugging, 'Something wrong with one of the horses.' It had happened to +him on one occasion to set foot in the hole of a baked hedgehog that had +furnished a repast, not without succulence, to some shepherd of the +downs. Such a case might have recurred; it was more likely to cause an +upset at a walk than at a gallop: or perhaps a shoe had been cast; and +young people break no bones at a walking fall; ten to one if they do at +their top speed. Horses manage to kill their seniors for them: the young +are exempt from accident. + +Colonel Halkett nodded and sighed: 'I daresay they're safe. It's that +man Shrapnel's letter--that letter, Romfrey! A private letter, I know; +but I've not heard Nevil disown the opinions expressed in it. I submit. +It's no use resisting. I treat my daughter as a woman capable of judging +for herself. I repeat, I submit. I haven't a word against Nevil except +on the score of his politics. I like him. All I have to say is, I don't +approve of a republican and a sceptic for my son-in-law. I yield to you, +and my daughter, if she . . . !' + +'I think she does, colonel. Marriage 'll cure the fellow. Nevil will +slough his craze. Off! old coat. Cissy will drive him in strings. +"My wife!" I hear him.' Mr. Romfrey laughed quietly. 'It's all "my +country," now. The dog'll be uxorious. He wants fixing; nothing worse.' + +'How he goes on about Shrapnel!' + +'I shouldn't think much of him if he didn't.' + +'You're one in a thousand, Romfrey. I object to seeing a man +worshipped.' + +'It's Nevil's green-sickness, and Shrapnel's the god of it.' + +'I trust to heaven you're right. It seems to me young fellows ought to +be out of it earlier.' + +'They generally are.' Mr. Romfrey named some of the processes by which +they are relieved of brain-flightiness, adding philosophically, 'This way +or that.' + +His quick ear caught a sound of hoofs cantering down the avenue on the +Northern front of the house. + +He consulted his watch. 'Ten minutes to eight. Say a quarter-past for +dinner. They're here, colonel.' + +Mr. Romfrey met Nevil returning from the stables. Cecilia had +disappeared. + +'Had a good day?' said Mr. Romfrey. + +Beauchamp replied: 'I'll tell you of it after dinner,' and passed by him. + +Mr. Romfrey edged round to Colonel Halkett, conjecturing in his mind: +They have not hit it; as he remarked: 'Breakfast and luncheon have been +omitted in this day's fare,' which appeared to the colonel a confirmation +of his worst fears, or rather the extinction of his last spark of hope. + +He knocked at his daughter's door in going upstairs to dress. + +Cecilia presented herself and kissed him. + +'Well?' said he. + +'By-and-by, papa,' she answered. 'I have a headache. Beg Mr. Romfrey to +excuse me.' + +'No news for me?' + +She had no news. + +Mrs. Culling was with her. The colonel stepped on mystified to his room. + +When the door had closed Cecilia turned to Rosamund and burst into tears. +Rosamund felt that it must be something grave indeed for the proud young +lady so to betray a troubled spirit. + +'He is ill--Dr. Shrapnel is very ill,' Cecilia responded to one or two +subdued inquiries in as clear a voice as she could command. + +'Where have you heard of him?' Rosamund asked. + +'We have been there.' + +'Bevisham? to Bevisham?' Rosamund was considering the opinion Mr. +Romfrey would form of the matter from the point of view of his horses. + +'It was Nevil's wish,' said Cecilia. + +'Yes? and you went with him,' Rosamund encouraged her to proceed, +gladdened at hearing her speak of Nevil by that name; 'you have not been +on the downs at all?' + +Cecilia mentioned a junction railway station they had ridden to; and +thence, boxing the horses, by train to Bevisham. Rosamund understood +that some haunting anxiety had fretted Nevil during the night; in the +morning he could not withstand it, and he begged Cecilia to change their +destination, apparently with a vehemence of entreaty that had been +irresistible, or else it was utter affection for him had reduced her to +undertake the distasteful journey. She admitted that she was not the +most sympathetic companion Nevil could have had on the way, either going +or coming. She had not entered Dr. Shrapnel's cottage. Remaining on +horseback she had seen the poor man reclining in his garden chair. Mr. +Lydiard was with him, and also his ward Miss Denham, who had been +summoned by telegraph by one of the servants from Switzerland. And +Cecilia had heard Nevil speak of his uncle to her, and too humbly, she +hinted. Nor had the expression of Miss Denham's countenance in listening +to him pleased her; but it was true that a heavily burdened heart cannot +be expected to look pleasing. On the way home Cecilia had been compelled +in some degree to defend Mr. Romfrey. Blushing through her tears at the +remembrance of a past emotion that had been mixed with foresight, she +confessed to Rosamund she thought it now too late to prevent a rupture +between Nevil and his uncle. Had some one whom Nevil trusted and cared +for taken counsel with him and advised him before uncle and nephew met to +discuss this most unhappy matter, then there might have been hope. As it +was, the fate of Dr. Shrapnel had gained entire possession of Nevil. +Every retort of his uncle's in reference to it rose up in him: he used +language of contempt neighbouring abhorrence: he stipulated for one sole +thing to win back his esteem for his uncle; and that was, the apology to +Dr. Shrapnel. + +'And to-night,' Cecilia concluded, 'he will request Mr. Romfrey to +accompany. him to Bevisham to-morrow morning, to make the apology in +person. He will not accept the slightest evasion. He thinks Dr. +Shrapnel may die, and the honour of the family--what is it he says of +it?' Cecilia raised her eyes to the ceiling, while Rosamund blinked in +impatience and grief, just apprehending the alien state of the young +lady's mind in her absence of recollection, as well as her bondage in the +effort to recollect accurately. + +'Have you not eaten any food to-day, Miss Halkett?' she said; for it +might be the want of food which had broken her and changed her manner. + +Cecilia replied that she had ridden for an hour to Mount Laurels. + +'Alone? Mr. Romfrey must not hear of that,' said Rosamund. + +Cecilia consented to lie down on her bed. She declined the dainties +Rosamund pressed on her. She was feverish with a deep and unconcealed +affliction, and behaved as if her pride had gone. But if her pride had +gone she would have eased her heart by sobbing outright. A similar +division harassed her as when her friend Nevil was the candidate for +Bevisham. She condemned his extreme wrath with his uncle, yet was +attracted and enchained by the fire of passionate attachment which +aroused it: and she was conscious that she had but shown obedience to +his wishes throughout the day, not sympathy with his feelings. Under +cover of a patient desire to please she had nursed irritation and +jealousy; the degradation of the sense of jealousy increasing the +irritation. Having consented to the ride to Dr. Shrapnel, should she +not, to be consistent, have dismounted there? O half heart! A whole +one, though it be an erring, like that of the French lady, does at least +live, and has a history, and makes music: but the faint and uncertain is +jarred in action, jarred in memory, ever behind the day and in the shadow +of it! Cecilia reviewed herself: jealous, disappointed, vexed, ashamed, +she had been all day a graceless companion, a bad actress: and at the +day's close she was loving Nevil the better for what had dissatisfied, +distressed, and wounded her. She was loving him in emulation of his +devotedness to another person: and that other was a revolutionary common +people's doctor! an infidel, a traitor to his country's dearest +interests! But Nevil loved him, and it had become impossible for her not +to covet the love, or to think of the old offender without the halo cast +by Nevil's attachment being upon him. So intensely was she moved by her +intertwisting reflections that in an access of bodily fever she stood up +and moved before the glass, to behold the image of the woman who could be +the victim of these childish emotions: and no wonderful contrast struck +her eyes; she appeared to herself as poor and small as they. How could +she aspire to a man like Nevil Beauchamp? If he had made her happy by +wooing her she would not have adored him as she did now. He likes my +hair, she said, smoothing it out, and then pressing her temples, like one +insane. Two minutes afterward she was telling Rosamund her head ached +less. + +'This terrible Dr. Shrapnel!' Rosamund exclaimed, but reported that no +loud voices were raised in the dining-room. + +Colonel Halkett came to see his daughter, full of anxiety and curiosity. +Affairs had been peaceful below, for he was ignorant of the expedition to +Bevisham. On hearing of it he frowned, questioned Cecilia as to whether +she had set foot on that man's grounds, then said: 'Ah! well, we leave +to-morrow: I must go, I have business at home; I can't delay it. I +sanctioned no calling there, nothing of the kind. From Steynham to +Bevisham? Goodness, it's rank madness. I'm not astonished you're sick +and ill.' + +He waited till he was assured Cecilia had no special matter to relate, +and recommending her to drink the tea Mrs. Culling had made for her, and +then go to bed and sleep, he went down to the drawing-room, charged with +the worst form of hostility toward Nevil, the partly diplomatic. + +Cecilia smiled at her father's mention of sleep. She was in the contest +of the two men, however inanimately she might be lying overhead, and the +assurance in her mind that neither of them would give ground, so similar +were they in their tenacity of will, dissimilar in all else, dragged her +this way and that till she swayed lifeless between them. One may be as a +weed of the sea while one's fate is being decided. To love is to be on +the sea, out of sight of land: to love a man like Nevil Beauchamp is to +be on the sea in tempest. Still to persist in loving would be noble, +and but for this humiliation of utter helplessness an enviable power. +Her thoughts ran thus in shame and yearning and regret, dimly discerning +where her heart failed in the strength which was Nevil's, though it was +a full heart, faithful and not void of courage. But he never brooded, +he never blushed from insufficiency-the faintness of a desire, the callow +passion that cannot fly and feed itself: he never tottered; he walked +straight to his mark. She set up his image and Renee's, and cowered +under the heroical shapes till she felt almost extinct. With her weak +limbs and head worthlessly paining, the little infantile I within her +ceased to wail, dwindled beyond sensation. Rosamund, waiting on her in +the place of her maid, saw two big drops come through her closed eyelids, +and thought that if it could be granted to Nevil to look for a moment on +this fair and proud young lady's loveliness in abandonment, it would +tame, melt, and save him. The Gods presiding over custom do not permit +such renovating sights to men. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI + +PURSUIT OF THE APOLOGY OF Mr. ROMFREY TO DR. SHRAPNEL + +The contest, which was an alternation of hard hitting and close +wrestling, had recommenced when Colonel Halkett stepped into the drawing- +room. + +'Colonel, I find they've been galloping to Bevisham and back,' said Mr. +Romfrey. + +'I've heard of it,' the colonel replied. Not perceiving a sign of +dissatisfaction on his friend's face, he continued:: 'To that man +Shrapnel.' + +'Cecilia did not dismount,' said Beauchamp. + +'You took her to that man's gate. It was not with my sanction. You know +my ideas of the man.' + +'If you were to see him now, colonel, I don't think you would speak +harshly of him.' + +'We 're not obliged to go and look on men who have, had their measure +dealt them.' + +'Barbarously,' said Beauchamp. + +Mr. Romfrey in the most placid manner took a chair. 'Windy talk, that!' +he said. + +Colonel Halkett seated himself. Stukely Culbrett turned a sheet of +manuscript he was reading. + +Beauchamp began a caged lion's walk on the rug under the mantelpiece. + +'I shall not spare you from hearing what I think of it, sir.' + +'We 've had what you think of it twice over,' said Mr. Romfrey. +'I suppose it was the first time for information, the second time for +emphasis, and the rest counts to keep it alive in your recollection.' + +'This is what you have to take to heart, sir; that Dr. Shrapnel is now +seriously ill.' + +'I'm sorry for it, and I'll pay the doctor's bill.' + +'You make it hard for me to treat you with respect.' + +'Fire away. Those Radical friends of yours have to learn a lesson, and +it's worth a purse to teach them that a lady, however feeble she may seem +to them, is exactly of the strength of the best man of her acquaintance.' + +'That's well said!' came from Colonel Halkett. + +Beauchamp stared at him, amazed by the commendation of empty language. + +'You acted in error; barbarously, but in error,' he addressed his uncle. + +'And you have got a fine topic for mouthing,' Mr. Romfrey rejoined. + +'You mean to sit still under Dr. Shrapnel's forgiveness?' + +'He's taken to copy the Christian religion, has he?' + +'You know you were deluded when you struck him.' + +'Not a whit.' + +'Yes, you know it now: Mrs. Culling--' + +'Drag in no woman, Nevil Beauchamp!' + +'She has confessed to you that Dr. Shrapnel neither insulted her nor +meant to ruffle her.' + +'She has done no such nonsense.' + +'If she has not!--but I trust her to have done it.' + +'You play the trumpeter, you terrorize her.' + +'Into opening her lips wider; nothing else. I'll have the truth from +her, and no mincing: and from Cecil Baskelett and Palmet.' + +'Give Cecil a second licking, if you can, and have him off to Shrapnel.' + +'You!' cried Beauchamp. + +At this juncture Stukely Culbrett closed the manuscript in his hands, and +holding it out to Beauchamp, said: + +'Here's your letter, Nevil. It's tolerably hard to decipher. It's mild +enough; it's middling good pulpit. I like it.' + +'What have you got there?' Colonel Halkett asked him. + +'A letter of his friend Dr. Shrapnel on the Country. Read a bit, +colonel.' + +'I? That letter! Mild, do you call it?' The colonel started back his +chair in declining to touch the letter. + +'Try it,' said Stukely. 'It's the letter they have been making the noise +about. It ought to be printed. There's a hit or two at the middle-class +that I should like to see in print. It's really not bad pulpit; and I +suspect that what you object to, colonel, is only the dust of a well- +thumped cushion. Shrapnel thumps with his fist. He doesn't say much +that's new. If the parsons were men they'd be saying it every Sunday. +If they did, colonel, I should hear you saying, amen.' + +'Wait till they do say it.' + +'That's a long stretch. They're turn-cocks of one Water-company--to wash +the greasy citizens!' + +'You're keeping Nevil on the gape;' said Mr. Romfrey, with a whimsical +shrewd cast of the eye at Beauchamp, who stood alert not to be foiled, +arrow-like in look and readiness to repeat his home-shot. Mr. Romfrey +wanted to hear more of that unintelligible 'You!' of Beauchamp's. But +Stukely Culbrett intended that the latter should be foiled, and he +continued his diversion from the angry subject. + +'We'll drop the sacerdotals,' he said. 'They're behind a veil for us, +and so are we for them. I'm with you, colonel; I wouldn't have them +persecuted; they sting fearfully when whipped. No one listens to them +now except the class that goes to sleep under them, to "set an example" +to the class that can't understand them. Shrapnel is like the breeze +shaking the turf-grass outside the church-doors; a trifle fresher. He +knocks nothing down.' + +'He can't!' ejaculated the colonel. + +'He sermonizes to shake, that's all. I know the kind of man.' + +'Thank heaven, it's not a common species in England!' + +'Common enough to be classed.' + +Beauchamp struck through the conversation of the pair: 'Can I see you +alone to-night, sir, or to-morrow morning?' + +'You may catch me where you can,' was Mr. Romfrey's answer. + +'Where's that? It's for your sake and mine, not for Dr. Shrapnel's. +I have to speak to you, and must. You have done your worst with him; +you can't undo it. You have to think of your honour as a gentleman. +I intend to treat you with respect, but wolf is the title now, whether +I say it or not.' + +'Shrapnel's a rather long-legged sheep?' + +'He asks for nothing from you.' + +'He would have got nothing, at a cry of peccavi!' + +'He was innocent, perfectly blameless; he would not lie to save himself. +You mistook that for--but you were an engine shot along a line of rails. +He does you the justice to say you acted in error.' + +'And you're his parrot.' + +'He pardons you.' + +'Ha! t' other cheek!' + +'You went on that brute's errand in ignorance. Will you keep to the +character now you know the truth? Hesitation about it doubles the +infamy. An old man! the best of men! the kindest and truest! the most +unselfish!' + +'He tops me by half a head, and he's my junior.' + +Beauchamp suffered himself to give out a groan of sick derision: 'Ah!' + +'And it was no joke holding him tight,' said Mr. Romfrey, 'I 'd as lief +snap an ash. The fellow (he leaned round to Colonel Halkett) must be a +fellow of a fine constitution. And he took his punishment like a man. +I've known worse: and far worse: gentlemen by birth. There's the choice +of taking it upright or fighting like a rabbit with a weasel in his hole. +Leave him to think it over, he'll come right. I think no harm of him, +I've no animus. A man must have his lesson at some time of life. I did +what I had to do.' + +'Look here, Nevil,' Stukely Culbrett checked Beauchamp in season: 'I beg +to inquire what Dr. Shrapnel means by "the people." We have in our +country the nobles and the squires, and after them, as I understand it, +the people: that's to say, the middle-class and the working-class--fat +and lean. I'm quite with Shrapnel when he lashes the fleshpots. They +want it, and they don't get it from "their organ," the Press. I fancy +you and I agree about their organ; the dismallest organ that ever ground +a hackneyed set of songs and hymns to madden the thoroughfares.' + +'The Press of our country!' interjected Colonel Halkett in moaning +parenthesis. + +'It's the week-day Parson of the middle-class, colonel. They have their +thinking done for them as the Chinese have their dancing. But, Nevil, +your Dr. Shrapnel seems to treat the traders as identical with the +aristocracy in opposition to his "people." The traders are the cursed +middlemen, bad friends of the "people," and infernally treacherous to the +nobles till money hoists them. It's they who pull down the country. +They hold up the nobles to the hatred of the democracy, and the democracy +to scare the nobles. One's when they want to swallow a privilege, and +the other's when they want to ring-fence their gains. How is it Shrapnel +doesn't expose the trick? He must see through it. I like that letter of +his. People is one of your Radical big words that burst at a query. +He can't mean Quince, and Bottom, and Starveling, Christopher Sly, Jack +Cade, Caliban, and poor old Hodge? No, no, Nevil. Our clowns are the +stupidest in Europe. They can't cook their meals. They can't spell; +they can scarcely speak. They haven't a jig in their legs. And I +believe they're losing their grin! They're nasty when their blood's up. +Shakespeare's Cade tells you what he thought of Radicalizing the people. +"And as for your mother, I 'll make her a duke"; that 's one of their +songs. The word people, in England, is a dyspeptic agitator's dream when +he falls nodding over the red chapter of French history. Who won the +great liberties for England? My book says, the nobles. And who made the +great stand later?--the squires. What have the middlemen done but bid +for the people they despise and fear, dishonour us abroad and make a hash +of us at home? Shrapnel sees that. Only he has got the word people in +his mouth. The people of England, my dear fellow, want heading. Since +the traders obtained power we have been a country on all fours. Of +course Shrapnel sees it: I say so. But talk to him and teach him where +to look for the rescue.' + +Colonel Halkett said to Stukely: 'If you have had a clear idea in what +you have just spoken, my head's no place for it!' + +Stukely's unusually lengthy observations had somewhat heated him, and he +protested with earnestness: 'It was pure Tory, my dear colonel.' + +But the habitually and professedly cynical should not deliver themselves +at length: for as soon as they miss their customary incision of speech +they are apt to aim to recover it in loquacity, and thus it may be that +the survey of their ideas becomes disordered. + +Mr. Culbrett endangered his reputation for epigram in a good cause, it +shall be said. + +These interruptions were torture to Beauchamp. Nevertheless the end was +gained. He sank into a chair silent. + +Mr. Romfrey wished to have it out with his nephew, of whose comic +appearance as a man full of thunder, and occasionally rattling, yet all +the while trying to be decorous and politic, he was getting tired. He +foresaw that a tussle between them in private would possibly be too hot +for his temper, admirably under control though it was. + +'Why not drag Cecil to Shrapnel?' he said, for a provocation. + +Beauchamp would not be goaded. + +Colonel Halkett remarked that he would have to leave Steynham the next +day. His host remonstrated with him. The colonel said: 'Early.' He had +very particular business at home. He was positive, and declined every +inducement to stay. Mr. Romfrey glanced at Nevil, thinking, You poor +fool! And then he determined to let the fellow have five minutes alone +with him. + +This occurred at midnight, in that half-armoury, half-library, which was +his private room. + +Rosamund heard their voices below. She cried out to herself that it was +her doing, and blamed her beloved, and her master, and Dr. Shrapnel, in +the breath of her self-recrimination. The demagogue, the over- +punctilious gentleman, the faint lover, surely it must be reason wanting +in the three for each of them in turn to lead the other, by an excess of +some sort of the quality constituting their men's natures, to wreck a +calm life and stand in contention! Had Shrapnel been commonly reasonable +he would have apologized to Mr. Romfrey, or had Mr. Romfrey, he would not +have resorted to force to punish the supposed offender, or had Nevil, he +would have held his peace until he had gained his bride. As it was; the +folly of the three knocked at her heart, uniting to bring the heavy +accusation against one poor woman, quite in the old way: the Who is she? +of the mocking Spaniard at mention of a social catastrophe. Rosamund had +a great deal of the pride of her sex, and she resented any slur on it. +She felt almost superciliously toward Mr. Romfrey and Nevil for their not +taking hands to denounce the plotter, Cecil Baskelett. They seemed a +pair of victims to him, nearly as much so as the wretched man Shrapnel. +It was their senselessness which made her guilty! And simply because she +had uttered two or three exclamations of dislike of a revolutionary and +infidel she was compelled to groan under her present oppression! Is +there anything to be hoped of men? Rosamund thought bitterly of Nevil's +idea of their progress. Heaven help them! But the unhappy creatures +have ceased to look to a heaven for help. + +We see the consequence of it in this Shrapnel complication. + +Three men: and one struck down; the other defeated in his benevolent +intentions; the third sacrificing fortune and happiness: all three owing +their mischance to one or other of the vague ideas disturbing men's +heads! Where shall we look for mother wit?--or say, common suckling's +instinct? Not to men, thought Rosamund. + +She was listening to the voices of Mr. Romfrey and Beauchamp in a fever. +Ordinarily the lord of Steynham was not out of his bed later than twelve +o'clock at night. His door opened at half-past one. Not a syllable was +exchanged by the couple in the hall. They had fought it out. Mr. +Romfrey came upstairs alone, and on the closing of his chamber-door she +slipped down to Beauchamp and had a dreadful hour with him that subdued +her disposition to sit in judgement upon men. The unavailing attempt to +move his uncle had wrought him to the state in which passionate thoughts +pass into speech like heat to flame. Rosamund strained her mental sight +to gain a conception of his prodigious horror of the treatment of Dr. +Shrapnel that she might think him sane: and to retain a vestige of +comfort in her bosom she tried to moderate and make light of as much as +she could conceive. Between the two efforts she had no sense but that of +helplessness. Once more she was reduced to promise that she would speak +the whole truth to Mr. Romfrey, even to the fact that she had experienced +a common woman's jealousy of Dr. Shrapnel's influence, and had alluded to +him jealously, spitefully, and falsely. There was no mercy in Beauchamp. +He was for action at any cost, with all the forces he could gather, and +without delays. He talked of Cecilia as his uncle's bride to him. +Rosamund could hardly trust her ears when he informed her he had told his +uncle of his determination to compel him to accomplish the act of +penitence. 'Was it prudent to say it, Nevil?' she asked. But, as in +his politics, he disdained prudence. A monstrous crime had been +committed, involving the honour of the family. No subtlety of +insinuation, no suggestion, could wean him from the fixed idea that the +apology to Dr. Shrapnel must be spoken by his uncle in person. + +'If one could only imagine Mr. Romfrey doing it!' Rosamund groaned. + +'He shall: and you will help him,' said Beauchamp. + +'If you loved a woman half as much as you do that man!' + +'If I knew a woman as good, as wise, as noble as he!' + +'You are losing her.' + +'You expect me to go through ceremonies of courtship at a time like this! +If she cares for me she will feel with me. Simple compassion--but let +Miss Halkett be. I'm afraid I overtasked her in taking her to Bevisham. +She remained outside the garden. Ma'am, she is unsullied by contact with +a single shrub of Dr. Shrapnel's territory.' + +'Do not be so bitterly ironical, Nevil. You have not seen her as I +have.' + +Rosamund essayed a tender sketch of the fair young lady, and fancied that +she drew forth a sigh; she would have coloured the sketch, but he +commanded her to hurry off to bed, and think of her morning's work. + +A commission of which we feel we can accurately forecast the unsuccessful +end is not likely to be undertaken with an ardour that might perhaps +astound the presageing mind with unexpected issues. Rosamund fulfilled +hers in the style of one who has learnt a lesson, and, exactly as she had +anticipated, Mr. Romfrey accused her of coming to him from a conversation +with that fellow Nevil overnight. He shrugged and left the house for his +morning's walk across the fields. + +Colonel Halkett and Cecilia beheld him from the breakfast-room returning +with Beauchamp, who had waylaid him and was hammering his part in the now +endless altercation. It could be descried at any distance; and how fine +was Mr. Romfrey's bearing!--truly noble by contrast, as of a grave big +dog worried by a small barking dog. There is to an unsympathetic +observer an intense vexatiousness in the exhibition of such pertinacity. +To a soldier accustomed at a glance to estimate powers of attack and +defence, this repeated puny assailing of a, fortress that required years +of siege was in addition ridiculous. Mr. Romfrey appeared impregnable, +and Beauchamp mad. 'He's foaming again!' said the colonel, and was only +ultra-pictorial. 'Before breakfast!' was a further slur on Beauchamp. + +Mr. Romfrey was elevated by the extraordinary comicality of the notion of +the proposed apology to heights of humour beyond laughter, whence we see +the unbounded capacity of the general man for folly, and rather +commiserate than deride him. He was quite untroubled. It demanded a +steady view of the other side of the case to suppose of one whose control +of his temper was perfect, that he could be in the wrong. He at least +did not think so, and Colonel Halkett relied on his common sense. +Beauchamp's brows were smouldering heavily, except when he had to talk. +He looked paleish and worn, and said he had been up early. Cecilia +guessed that he had not been to bed. + +It was dexterously contrived by her host, in spite of the colonel's +manifest anxiety to keep them asunder, that she should have some minutes +with Beauchamp out in the gardens. Mr. Romfrey led them out, and then +led the colonel away to offer him a choice of pups of rare breed. + +'Nevil,' said Cecilia, 'you will not think it presumption in me to give +you advice?' + +Her counsel to him was, that he should leave Steynham immediately, and +trust to time for his uncle to reconsider his conduct. + +Beauchamp urged the counter-argument of the stain on the family honour. + +She hinted at expediency; he frankly repudiated it. + +The downs faced them, where the heavenly vast 'might have been' of +yesterday wandered thinner than a shadow of to-day; weaving a story +without beginning, crisis, or conclusion, flowerless and fruitless, but +with something of infinite in it sweeter to brood on than the future of +her life to Cecilia. + +'If meanwhile Dr. Shrapnel should die, and repentance comes too late!' +said Beauchamp. + +She had no clear answer to that, save the hope of its being an unfounded +apprehension. 'As far as it is in my power, Nevil, I will avoid +injustice to him in my thoughts.' + +He gazed at her thankfully. 'Well,' said he, 'that's like sighting the +cliffs. But I don't feel home round me while the colonel is so strangely +prepossessed. For a high-spirited gentleman like your father to approve, +or at least accept, an act so barbarous is incomprehensible. Speak to +him, Cecilia, will you? Let him know your ideas.' + +She assented. He said instantly, 'Persuade him to speak to my uncle +Everard.' + +She was tempted to smile. + +'I must do only what I think wise, if I am to be of service, Nevil.' + +'True, but paint that scene to him. An old man, utterly defenceless, +making no defence! a cruel error. The colonel can't, or he doesn't, +clearly get it inside him, otherwise I'm certain it would revolt him: +just as I am certain my uncle Everard is at this moment a stone-blind +man. If he has done a thing, he can't question it, won't examine it. +The thing becomes a part of him, as much as his hand or his head. He 's +a man of the twelfth century. Your father might be helped to understand +him first.' + +'Yes,' she said, not very warmly, though sadly. + +'Tell the colonel how it must have been brought about. For Cecil +Baskelett called on Dr. Shrapnel two days before Mr. Romfrey stood at his +gate.' + +The name of Cecil caused her to draw in her shoulders in a half-shudder. +'It may indeed be Captain Baskelett who set this cruel thing in motion!' + +'Then point that out to your father, said he, perceiving a chance of +winning her to his views through a concrete object of her dislike, and +cooling toward the woman who betrayed a vulgar characteristic of her sex; +who was merely woman, unable sternly to recognize the doing of a foul +wrong because of her antipathy, until another antipathy enlightened her. + +He wanted in fact a ready-made heroine, and did not give her credit for +the absence of fire in her blood, as well as for the unexercised +imagination which excludes young women from the power to realize unwonted +circumstances. We men walking about the world have perhaps no more +imagination of matters not domestic than they; but what we have is quick +with experience: we see the thing we hear of: women come to it how they +can. + +Cecilia was recommended to weave a narrative for her father, and +ultimately induce him, if she could, to give a gentleman's opinion of the +case to Mr. Romfrey. + +Her sensitive ear caught a change of tone in the directions she received. +'Your father will say so and so: answer him with this and that.' +Beauchamp supplied her with phrases. She was to renew and renew the +attack; hammer as he did. Yesterday she had followed him: to-day she was +to march beside him--hardly as an equal. Patience! was the word she +would have uttered in her detection of the one frailty in his nature +which this hurrying of her off her feet opened her eyes to with unusual +perspicacity. Still she leaned to him sufficiently to admit that he had +grounds for a deep disturbance of his feelings. + +He said: 'I go to Dr. Shrapnel's cottage, and don't know how to hold up +my head before Miss Denham. She confided him to me when she left for +Switzerland!' + +There was that to be thought of, certainly. + +Colonel Halkett came round a box-bush and discovered them pacing together +in a fashion to satisfy his paternal scrutiny. + +'I've been calling you several times, my dear,' he complained. 'We start +in seven minutes. Bustle, and bonnet at once. Nevil, I'm sorry for this +business. Good-bye. Be a good boy, Nevil,' he murmured kindheartedly, +and shook Beauchamp's hand with the cordiality of an extreme relief in +leaving him behind. + +The colonel and Mr. Romfrey and Beauchamp were standing on the hall-steps +when Rosamund beckoned the latter and whispered a request for that letter +of Dr. Shrapnel's. 'It is for Miss Halkett, Nevil.' + +He plucked the famous epistle from his bulging pocketbook, and added a +couple of others in the same handwriting. + +'Tell her, a first reading--it's difficult to read at first,' he said, +and burned to read it to Cecilia himself: to read it to her with his +comments and explanations appeared imperative. It struck him in a flash +that Cecilia's counsel to him to quit Steynham for awhile was good. And +if he went to Bevisham he would be assured of Dr. Shrapnel's condition: +notes and telegrams from the cottage were too much tempered to console +and deceive him. + +'Send my portmanteau and bag after me to Bevisham,' he said Rosamund, and +announced to the woefully astonish colonel that he would have the +pleasure of journeying in his company as far as the town. + +'Are you ready? No packing?' said the colonel. + +'It's better to have your impediments in the rear of you, and march!' +said Mr. Romfrey. + +Colonel Halkett declined to wait for anybody. He shouted for his +daughter. The lady's maid appeared, and then Cecilia with Rosamund. + +'We can't entertain you, Nevil; we're away to the island: I'm sorry,' +said the colonel; and observing Cecilia's face in full crimson, he looked +at her as if he had lost a battle by the turn of events at the final +moment. + +Mr. Romfrey handed Cecilia into the carriage. He exchanged a friendly +squeeze with the colonel, and offered his hand to his nephew. Beauchamp +passed him with a nod and 'Good-bye, sir.' + +'Have ready at Holdesbury for the middle of the month,' said Mr. Romfrey, +unruffled, and bowed to Cecilia. + +'If you think of bringing my cousin Baskelett, give me warning, sir,' +cried Beauchamp. + +'Give me warning, if you want the house for Shrapnel,' replied his uncle, +and remarked to Rosamund, as the carriage wheeled round the mounded +laurels to the avenue, 'He mayn't be quite cracked. The fellow seems to +have a turn for catching his opportunity by the tail. He had better hold +fast, for it's his last.' + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII + +CECILIA CONQUERED + +The carriage rolled out of the avenue and through the park, for some time +parallel with the wavy downs. Once away from Steynham Colonel Halkett +breathed freely, as if he had dropped a load: he was free of his bond to +Mr. Romfrey, and so great was the sense of relief in him that he resolved +to do battle against his daughter, supposing her still lively blush to be +the sign of the enemy's flag run up on a surrendered citadel. His +authority was now to be thought of: his paternal sanction was in his own +keeping. Beautiful as she looked, it was hardly credible that a fellow +in possession of his reason could have let slip his chance of such a +prize; but whether he had or had not, the colonel felt that he occupied a +position enabling him either to out-manoeuvre, or, if need were, +interpose forcibly and punish him for his half-heartedness. + +Cecilia looked the loveliest of women to Beauchamp's eyes, with her +blush, and the letters of Dr. Shrapnel in her custody, at her express +desire. Certain terms in the letters here and there, unsweet to ladies, +began to trouble his mind. + +'By the way, colonel,' he said, 'you had a letter of Dr. Shrapnel's read +to you by Captain Baskelett.' + +'Iniquitous rubbish!' + +'With his comments on it, I dare say you thought it so. I won't speak of +his right to make it public. He wanted to produce his impressions of it +and me, and that is a matter between him and me. Dr. Shrapnel makes use +of strong words now and then, but I undertake to produce a totally +different impression on you by reading the letter myself--sparing you' +(he turned to Cecilia) 'a word or two, common enough to men who write in +black earnest and have humour.' He cited his old favourite, the black +and bright lecturer on Heroes. 'You have read him, I know, Cecilia. +Well, Dr. Shrapnel is another, who writes in his own style, not the +leading-article style or modern pulpit stuff. He writes to rouse.' + +'He does that to my temper,' said the colonel. + +'Perhaps here and there he might offend Cecilia's taste,' Beauchamp +pursued for her behoof. 'Everything depends on the mouthpiece. I should +not like the letter to be read without my being by;--except by men: any +just-minded man may read it: Seymour Austin, for example. Every line is +a text to the mind of the writer. Let me call on you to-morrow.' + +'To-morrow?' Colonel Halkett put on a thoughtful air. 'To-morrow we're +off to the island for a couple of days; and there's Lord Croyston's +garden party, and the Yacht Ball. Come this evening-dine with us. No +reading of letters, please. I can't stand it, Nevil.' + +The invitation was necessarily declined by a gentleman who could not +expect to be followed by supplies of clothes and linen for evening wear +that day. + +'Ah, we shall see you some day or other,' said the colonel. + +Cecilia was less alive to Beauchamp's endeavour to prepare her for the +harsh words in the letter than to her father's insincerity. She would +have asked her friend to come in the morning next day, but for the dread +of deepening her blush. + +'Do you intend to start so early in the morning, papa?' she ventured to +say; and he replied, 'As early as possible.' + +'I don't know what news I shall have in Bevisham, or I would engage to +run over to the island,' said Beauchamp, with a flattering persistency or +singular obtuseness. + +'You will dance,' he subsequently observed to Cecilia, out of the heart +of some reverie. He had been her admiring partner on the night before +the drive from Itchincope into Bevisham, and perhaps thought of her +graceful dancing at the Yacht Ball, and the contrast it would present to +his watch beside a sick man-struck down by one of his own family. + +She could have answered, 'Not if you wish me not to'; while smiling at +the quaint sorrowfulness of his tone. + +'Dance!' quoth Colonel Halkett, whose present temper discerned a healthy +antagonism to misanthropic Radicals in the performance, 'all young people +dance. Have you given over dancing?' + +'Not entirely, colonel.' + + +Cecilia danced with Mr. Tuckham at the Yacht Ball, and was vividly +mindful of every slight incident leading to and succeeding her lover's +abrupt, 'You will dance' which had all passed by her dream-like up to +that hour his attempt to forewarn her of the phrases she would deem +objectionable in Dr. Shrapnel's letter; his mild acceptation of her +father's hostility; his adieu to her, and his melancholy departure on +foot from the station, as she drove away to Mount Laurels and gaiety. +Why do I dance? she asked herself. It was not in the spirit of +happiness. Her heart was not with Dr. Shrapnel, but very near him, +and heavy as a chamber of the sick. She was afraid of her father's +favourite, imagining, from the colonel's unconcealed opposition to +Beauchamp, that he had designs in the interests of Mr. Tuckham. But the +hearty gentleman scattered her secret terrors by his bluffness and +openness. He asked her to remember that she had recommended him to +listen to Seymour Austin, and he had done so, he said. Undoubtedly he +was much improved, much less overbearing. + +He won her confidence by praising and loving her father, and when she +alluded to the wonderful services he had rendered on the Welsh estate, +he said simply that her father's thanks repaid him. He recalled his +former downrightness only in speaking of the case of Dr. Shrapnel, upon +which, both with the colonel and with her, he was unreservedly +condemnatory of Mr. Romfrey. Colonel Halkett's defence of the true +knight and guardian of the reputation of ladies, fell to pieces in the +presence of Mr. Tuckham. He had seen Dr. Shrapnel, on a visit to Mr. +Lydiard, whom he described as hanging about Bevisham, philandering as a +married man should not, though in truth he might soon expect to be +released by the death of his crazy wife. The doctor, he said, had been +severely shaken by the monstrous assault made on him, and had been most +unrighteously handled. The doctor was an inoffensive man in his private +life, detestable and dangerous though his teachings were. Outside +politics Mr. Tuckham went altogether with Beauchamp. He promised also +that old Mrs. Beauchamp should be accurately informed of the state of +matters between Captain Beauchamp and Mr. Romfrey. He left Mount Laurels +to go back in attendance on the venerable lady, without once afflicting +Cecilia with a shiver of well-founded apprehension, and she was grateful +to him almost to friendly affection in the vanishing of her unjust +suspicion, until her father hinted that there was the man of his heart. +Then she closed all avenues to her own. + +A period of maidenly distress not previously unknown to her ensued. +Proposals of marriage were addressed to her by two untitled gentlemen, +and by the Earl of Lockrace: three within a fortnight. The recognition +of the young heiress's beauty at the Yacht Ball was accountable for the +bursting out of these fires. Her father would not have deplored her +acceptance of the title of Countess of Lockrace. In the matter of +rejections, however, her will was paramount, and he was on her side +against relatives when the subject was debated among them. He called her +attention to the fact impressively, telling her that she should not hear +a syllable from him to persuade her to marry: the emphasis of which +struck the unspoken warning on her intelligence: Bring no man to me of +whom I do not approve! + +'Worthier of you, as I hope to become,' Beauchamp had said. Cecilia lit +on that part of Dr. Shrapnel's letter where 'Fight this out within you,' +distinctly alluded to the unholy love. Could she think ill of the man +who thus advised him? She shared Beauchamp's painful feeling for him in +a sudden tremour of her frame; as it were through his touch. To the rest +of the letter her judgement stood opposed, save when a sentence here and +there reminded her of Captain Baskelett's insolent sing-song declamation +of it: and that would have turned Sacred Writing to absurdity. + +Beauchamp had mentioned Seymour Austin as one to whom he would willingly +grant a perusal of the letter. Mr. Austin came to Mount Laurels about +the close of the yachting season, shortly after Colonel Halkett had spent +his customary days of September shooting at Steynham. Beauchamp's folly +was the colonel's theme, for the fellow had dragged Lord Palmet there, +and driven his uncle out of patience. Mr. Romfrey's monumental patience +had been exhausted by him. The colonel boiled over with accounts of +Beauchamp's behaviour toward his uncle, and Palmet, and Baskelett, and +Mrs. Culling: how he flew at and worried everybody who seemed to him to +have had a hand in the proper chastisement of that man Shrapnel. That +pestiferous letter of Shrapnel's was animadverted on, of course; and, +'I should like you to have heard it, Austin,' the colonel said, 'just for +you to have a notion of the kind of universal blow-up those men are +scheming, and would hoist us with, if they could get a little more +blasting-powder than they mill in their lunatic heads.' + +Now Cecilia wished for Mr. Austin's opinion of Dr. Shrapnel; and as the +delicate state of her inclinations made her conscious that to give him +the letter covertly would be to betray them to him, who had once, not +knowing it, moved her to think of a possible great change in her life, +she mustered courage to say, 'Captain Beauchamp at my request lent me the +letter to read; I have it, and others written by Dr. Shrapnel.' + +Her father hummed to himself, and immediately begged Seymour Austin not +to waste his time on the stuff, though he had no idea that a perusal of +it could awaken other than the gravest reprehension in so rational a Tory +gentleman. + +Mr. Austin read the letter through. He asked to see the other letters +mentioned by Cecilia, and read them calmly, without a frown or an +interjection. She sat sketching, her father devouring newspaper columns. + +'It's the writing of a man who means well,' Mr. Austin delivered his +opinion. + +' Why, the man's an infidel!' Colonel Halkett exclaimed. + +'There are numbers.' + +'They have the grace not to confess, then.' + +'It's as well to know what the world's made of, colonel. The clergy shut +their eyes. There's no treating a disease without reading it; and if we +are to acknowledge a "vice," as Dr. Shrapnel would say of the so-called +middle-class, it is the smirking over what they think, or their not +caring to think at all. Too many time-servers rot the State. I can +understand the effect of such writing on a mind like Captain Beauchamp's. +It would do no harm to our young men to have those letters read publicly +and lectured on-by competent persons. Half the thinking world may think +pretty much the same on some points as Dr. Shrapnel; they are too wise or +too indolent to say it: and of the other half, about a dozen members +would be competent to reply to him. He is the earnest man, and flies at +politics as uneasy young brains fly to literature, fancying they can +write because they can write with a pen. He perceives a bad adjustment +of things: which is correct. He is honest, and takes his honesty for a +virtue: and that entitles him to believe in himself: and that belief +causes him to see in all opposition to him the wrong he has perceived in +existing circumstances: and so in a dream of power he invokes the people: +and as they do not stir, he takes to prophecy. This is the round of the +politics of impatience. The study of politics should be guided by some +light of statesmanship, otherwise it comes to this wild preaching. + +These men are theory-tailors, not politicians. They are the men who make +the "strait-waistcoat for humanity." They would fix us to first +principles like tethered sheep or hobbled horses. I should enjoy +replying to him, if I had time. The whole letter is composed of +variations upon one idea. Still I must say the man interests me; I +should like to talk to him.' + +Mr. Austin paid no heed to the colonel's 'Dear me! dear me!' of +amazement. He said of the style of the letters, that it was the puffing +of a giant: a strong wind rather than speech: and begged Cecilia to note +that men who labour to force their dreams on mankind and turn vapour into +fact, usually adopt such a style. Hearing that this private letter had +been deliberately read through by Mr. Romfrey, and handed by him to +Captain Baskelett, who had read it out in various places, Mr. Austin +said: + +'A strange couple!' He appeared perplexed by his old friend's approval +of them. 'There we decidedly differ,' said he, when the case of Dr. +Shrapnel was related by the colonel, with a refusal to condemn Mr. +Romfrey. He pronounced Mr. Romfrey's charges against Dr. Shrapnel, taken +in conjunction with his conduct, to be baseless, childish, and wanton. +The colonel would not see the case in that light; but Cecilia did. It +was a justification of Beauchamp; and how could she ever have been blind +to it?--scarcely blind, she remembered, but sensitively blinking her +eyelids to distract her sight in contemplating it, and to preserve her +repose. As to Beauchamp's demand of the apology, Mr. Austin considered +that it might be an instance of his want of knowledge of men, yet could +not be called silly, and to call it insane was the rhetoric of an +adversary. + +'I do call it insane,' said the colonel. + +He separated himself from his daughter by a sharp division. + +Had Beauchamp appeared at Mount Laurels, Cecilia would have been ready to +support and encourage him, boldly. Backed by Mr. Austin, she saw some +good in Dr. Shrapnel's writing, much in Beauchamp's devotedness. He +shone clear to her reason, at last: partly because her father in his +opposition to him did not, but was on the contrary unreasonable, cased in +mail, mentally clouded. She sat with Mr. Austin and her father, trying +repeatedly, in obedience to Beauchamp's commands, to bring the latter to +a just contemplation of the unhappy case; behaviour on her part which +rendered the colonel inveterate. + +Beauchamp at this moment was occupied in doing secretary's work for Dr. +Shrapnel. So Cecilia learnt from Mr. Lydiard, who came to pay his +respects to Mrs. Wardour-Devereux at Mount Laurels. The pursuit of the +apology was continued in letters to his uncle and occasional interviews +with him, which were by no means instigated by the doctor, Mr. Lydiard +informed the ladies. He described Beauchamp as acting in the spirit of a +man who has sworn an oath to abandon every pleasure in life, that he may, +as far as it lies in his power, indemnify his friend for the wrong done +to him. + +'Such men are too terrible for me,' said Mrs. Devereux. + +Cecilia thought the reverse: Not for me! But she felt a strain upon +her nature, and she was miserable in her alienation from her father. +Kissing him one night, she laid her head on his breast, and begged his +forgiveness. He embraced her tenderly. 'Wait, only wait; you will see +I am right,' he said, and prudently said no more, and did not ask her +to speak. + +She was glad that she had sought the reconciliation from her heart's +natural warmth, on hearing some time later that M. de Croisnel was dead, +and that Beauchamp meditated starting for France to console his Renee. +Her continual agitations made her doubtful of her human feelings: she +clung to that instance of her filial stedfastness. + +The day before Cecilia and her father left Mount Laurels for their season +in Wales, Mr. Tuckham and Beauchamp came together to the house, and were +closeted an hour with her father. Cecilia sat in the drawing-room, +thinking that she did indeed wait, and had great patience. Beauchamp +entered the room alone. He looked worn and thin, of a leaden colour, +like the cloud that bears the bolt. News had reached him of the death of +Lord Avonley in the hunting-field, and he was going on to Steynham to +persuade his uncle to accompany him to Bevisham and wash the guilt of his +wrong-doing off him before applying for the title. 'You would advise me +not to go?' he said. 'I must. I should be dishonoured myself if I let +a chance pass. I run the risk of being a beggar: I'm all but one now.' + +Cecilia faltered: 'Do you see a chance?' + +'Hardly more than an excuse for trying it,' he replied. + +She gave him back Dr. Shrapnel's letters. 'I have read them,' was all +she said. For he might have just returned from France, with the breath +of Renee about him, and her pride would not suffer her to melt him in +rivalry by saying what she had been led to think of the letters. + +Hearing nothing from her, he silently put them in his pocket. The +struggle with his uncle seemed to be souring him or deadening him. + +They were not alone for long. Mr. Tuckham presented himself to take his +leave of her. Old Mrs. Beauchamp was dying, and he had only come to +Mount Laurels on special business. Beauchamp was just as anxious to +hurry away. + +Her father found her sitting in the solitude of a drawing-room at midday, +pale-faced, with unoccupied fingers, not even a book in her lap. + +He walked up and down the room until Cecilia, to say something, said: +'Mr. Tuckham could not stay.' + +'No,' said her father; 'he could not. He has to be back as quick as he +can to cut his legacy in halves!' + +Cecilia looked perplexed. + +'I'll speak plainly,' said the colonel. 'He sees that Nevil has ruined +himself with his uncle. The old lady won't allow Nevil to visit her; in +her condition it would be an excitement beyond her strength to bear. She +sent Blackburn to bring Nevil here, and give him the option of stating +before me whether those reports about his misconduct in France were true +or not. He demurred at first: however, he says they are not true. He +would have run away with the Frenchwoman, and he would have fought the +duel: but he did neither. Her brother ran ahead of him and fought for +him: so he declares and she wouldn't run. So the reports are false. We +shall know what Blackburn makes of the story when we hear of the legacy. +I have been obliged to write word to Mrs. Beauchamp that I believe Nevil +to have made a true statement of the facts. But I distinctly say, and so +I told Blackburn, I don't think money will do Nevil Beauchamp a +farthing's worth of good. Blackburn follows his own counsel. He induced +the old lady to send him; so I suppose he intends to let her share the +money between them. I thought better of him; I thought him a wiser man.' + +Gratitude to Mr. Tuckham on Beauchamp's behalf caused Cecilia to praise +him, in the tone of compliments. The difficulty of seriously admiring +two gentlemen at once is a feminine dilemma, with the maidenly among +women. + +'He has disappointed me,' said Colonel Halkett. + +'Would you have had him allow a falsehood to enrich him and ruin Nevil, +papa?' + +'My dear child, I'm sick to death of romantic fellows. I took Blackburn +for one of our solid young men. Why should he share his aunt's fortune?' + +'You mean, why should Nevil have money?' + +'Well, I do mean that. Besides, the story was not false as far as his +intentions went: he confessed it, and I ought to have put it in a +postscript. If Nevil wants money, let him learn to behave himself like a +gentleman at Steynham.' + +'He has not failed.' + +'I'll say, then, behave himself, simply. He considers it a point of +honour to get his uncle Everard to go down on his knees to Shrapnel. But +he has no moral sense where I should like to see it: none: he confessed +it.' + +'What were his words, papa?' + +'I don't remember words. He runs over to France, whenever it suits him, +to carry on there . . .' The colonel ended in a hum and buzz. + +'Has he been to France lately?' asked Cecilia. + +Her breath hung for the answer, sedately though she sat. + +'The woman's father is dead, I hear,' Colonel Halkett remarked. + +'But he has not been there?' + +'How can I tell? He's anywhere, wherever his passions whisk him.' + +'No!' + +'I say, yes. And if he has money, we shall see him going sky-high and +scattering it in sparks, not merely spending; I mean living immorally, +infidelizing, republicanizing, scandalizing his class and his country.' + +'Oh no!' exclaimed Cecilia, rising and moving to the window to feast her +eyes on driving clouds, in a strange exaltation of mind, secretly sure +now that her idea of Nevil's having gone over to France was groundless; +and feeling that she had been unworthy of him who strove to be 'worthier +of her, as he hoped to become.' + +Colonel Halkett scoffed at her 'Oh no,' and called it woman's logic. + +She could not restrain herself. 'Have you forgotten Mr. Austin, papa? +It is Nevil's perfect truthfulness that makes him appear worse to you +than men who are timeservers. Too many time-servers rot the State, Mr. +Austin said. Nevil is not one of them. I am not able to judge or +speculate whether he has a great brain or is likely to distinguish +himself out of his profession: I would rather he did not abandon it: but +Mr. Austin said to me in talking of him . . .' + +'That notion of Austin's of screwing women's minds up to the pitch of +men's!' interjected the colonel with a despairing flap of his arm. + +'He said, papa, that honestly active men in a country, who decline to +practise hypocrisy, show that the blood runs, and are a sign of health.' + +'You misunderstood him, my dear.' + +'I think I thoroughly understood him. He did not call them wise. He +said they might be dangerous if they were not met in debate. But he +said, and I presume to think truly, that the reason why they are decried +is, that it is too great a trouble for a lazy world to meet them. And, +he said, the reason why the honest factions agitate is because they +encounter sneers until they appear in force. If they were met earlier, +and fairly--I am only quoting him--they would not, I think he said, or +would hardly, or would not generally, fall into professional agitation.' + +'Austin's a speculative Tory, I know; and that's his weakness,' observed +the colonel. 'But I'm certain you misunderstood him. He never would +have called us a lazy people.' + +'Not in matters of business: in matters of thought.' + +'My dear Cecilia! You've got hold of a language!.... a way of speaking! +.... Who set you thinking on these things?' + +'That I owe to Nevil Beauchamp! + +Colonel Halkett indulged in a turn or two up and down the room. He threw +open a window, sniffed the moist air, and went to his daughter to speak +to her resolutely. + +'Between a Radical and a Tory, I don't know where your head has been +whirled to, my dear. Your heart seems to be gone: more sorrow for us! +And for Nevil Beauchamp to be pretending to love you while carrying on +with this Frenchwoman!' + +'He has never said that he loved me.' + +The splendour of her beauty in humility flashed on her father, and he +cried out: 'You are too good for any man on earth! We won't talk in the +dark, my darling. You tell me he has never, as they say, made love to +you?' + +'Never, papa.' + +'Well, that proves the French story. At any rate, he 's a man of honour. +But you love him?' + +'The French story is untrue, papa.' + +Cecilia stood in a blush like the burning cloud of the sunset.' + +'Tell me frankly: I'm your father, your old dada, your friend, my dear +girl! do you think the man cares for you, loves you?' + +She replied: 'I know, papa, the French story is untrue.' + +'But when I tell you, silly woman, he confessed it to me out of his own +mouth!' + +'It is not true now.' + +'It's not going on, you mean? How do you know?' + +'I know.' + +'Has he been swearing it?' + +'He has not spoken of it to me.' + +'Here I am in a woman's web!' cried the colonel. 'Is it your instinct +tells you it's not true? or what? what? You have not denied that you +love the man.' + +'I know he is not immoral.' + +'There you shoot again! Haven't you a yes or a no for your father?' + +Cecilia cast her arms round his neck, and sobbed. + +She could not bring it to her lips to say (she would have shunned the +hearing) that her defence of Beauchamp, which was a shadowed avowal of +the state of her heart, was based on his desire to read to her the +conclusion of Dr. Shrapnel's letter touching a passion to be overcome; +necessarily therefore a passion that was vanquished, and the fullest and +bravest explanation of his shifting treatment of her: nor would she +condescend to urge that her lover would have said he loved her when they +were at Steynham, but for the misery and despair of a soul too noble to +be diverted from his grief and sense of duty, and, as she believed, +unwilling to speak to win her while his material fortune was in jeopardy. + +The colonel cherished her on his breast, with one hand regularly patting +her shoulder: a form of consolation that cures the disposition to sob as +quickly as would the drip of water. + +Cecilia looked up into his eyes, and said, 'We will not be parted, papa, +ever.' + +The colonel said absently: 'No'; and, surprised at himself, added: 'No, +certainly not. How can we be parted? You won't run away from me? No, +you know too well I can't resist you. I appeal to your judgement, and I +must accept what you decide. But he is immoral. I repeat that. He has +no roots. We shall discover it before it's too late, I hope.' + +Cecilia gazed away, breathing through tremulous dilating nostrils. + +'One night after dinner at Steynham,' pursued the colonel, 'Nevil was +rattling against the Press, with Stukely Culbrett to prime him: and he +said editors of papers were growing to be like priests, and as timid as +priests, and arrogant: and for one thing, it was because they supposed +themselves to be guardians of the national morality. I forget exactly +what the matter was: but he sneered at priests and morality.' + +A smile wove round Cecilia's lips, and in her towering superiority to one +who talked nonsense, she slipped out of maiden shame and said: 'Attack +Nevil for his political heresies and his wrath with the Press for not +printing him. The rest concerns his honour, where he is quite safe, and +all are who trust him.' + +'If you find out you're wrong?' + +She shook her head. + +'But if you find out you're wrong about him,' her father reiterated +piteously, 'you won't tear me to strips to have him in spite of it?' + +'No, papa, not I. I will not.' + +'Well, that's something for me to hold fast to,' said Colonel Halkett, +sighing. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII + +LORD AVONLEY + +Mr. Everard Romfrey was now, by consent, Lord Avonley, mounted on his +direct heirship and riding hard at the earldom. His elevation occurred +at a period of life that would have been a season of decay with most men; +but the prolonged and lusty Autumn of the veteran took new fires from a +tangible object to live for. His brother Craven's death had slightly +stupefied, and it had grieved him: it seemed to him peculiarly pathetic; +for as he never calculated on the happening of mortal accidents to men of +sound constitution, the circumstance imparted a curious shake to his own +solidity. It was like the quaking of earth, which tries the balance of +the strongest. If he had not been raised to so splendid a survey of the +actual world, he might have been led to think of the imaginary, where +perchance a man may meet his old dogs and a few other favourites, in a +dim perpetual twilight. Thither at all events Craven had gone, and +goodnight to him! The earl was a rapidly lapsing invalid. There could +be no doubt that Everard was to be the head of his House. + +Outwardly he was the same tolerant gentleman who put aside the poor fools +of the world to walk undisturbed by them in the paths he had chosen: in +this aspect he knew himself: nor was the change so great within him as to +make him cognizant of a change. It was only a secret turn in the bent of +the mind, imperceptible as the touch of the cunning artist's brush on a +finished portrait, which will alter the expression without discomposing a +feature, so that you cannot say it is another face, yet it is not the +former one. His habits were invariable, as were his meditations. +He thought less of Romfrey Castle than of his dogs and his devices for +trapping vermin; his interest in birds and beasts and herbs, 'what +ninnies call Nature in books,' to quote him, was undiminished; +imagination he had none to clap wings to his head and be off with it. +He betrayed as little as he felt that the coming Earl of Romfrey was +different from the cadet of the family. + +A novel sharpness in the 'Stop that,' with which he crushed Beauchamp's +affectedly gentle and unusually roundabout opening of the vexed Shrapnel +question, rang like a shot in the room at Steynham, and breathed a +different spirit from his customary easy pugnacity that welcomed and +lured on an adversary to wild outhitting. Some sorrowful preoccupation +is, however, to be expected in the man who has lost a brother, and some +degree of irritability at the intrusion of past disputes. He chose to +repeat a similar brief forbidding of the subject before they started +together for the scene of the accident and Romfrey Castle. No notice was +taken of Beauchamp's remark, that he consented to go though his duty lay +elsewhere. Beauchamp had not the faculty of reading inside men, or he +would have apprehended that his uncle was engaged in silently heaping +aggravations to shoot forth one fine day a thundering and astonishing +counterstroke. + +He should have known his uncle Everard better. + +In this respect he seemed to have no memory. But who has much that has +given up his brains for a lodging to a single idea? It is at once a +devouring dragon, and an intractable steamforce; it is a tyrant that +has eaten up a senate, and a prophet with a message. Inspired of +solitariness and gigantic size, it claims divine origin. The world +can have no peace for it. + +Cecilia had not pleased him; none had. He did not bear in mind that the +sight of Dr. Shrapnel sick and weak, which constantly reanimated his +feelings of pity and of wrath, was not given to the others of whom he +demanded a corresponding energy of just indignation and sympathy. The +sense that he was left unaided to the task of bending his tough uncle, +combined with his appreciation of the righteousness of the task to +embitter him and set him on a pedestal, from which he descended at every +sign of an opportunity for striking, and to which he retired continually +baffled and wrathful, in isolation. + +Then ensued the dreadful division in his conception of his powers: for he +who alone saw the just and right thing to do, was incapable of compelling +it to be done. Lay on to his uncle as he would, that wrestler shook him +off. And here was one man whom he could not move! How move a nation? + +There came on him a thirst for the haranguing of crowds. They agree with +you or they disagree; exciting you to activity in either case. They do +not interpose cold Tory exclusiveness and inaccessibility. You have them +in the rough; you have nature in them, and all that is hopeful in nature. +You drive at, over, and through them, for their good; you plough them. +You sow them too. Some of them perceive that it is for their good, +and what if they be a minority? Ghastly as a minority is in an Election, +in a lifelong struggle it is refreshing and encouraging. The young world +and its triumph is with the minority. Oh to be speaking! Condemned to +silence beside his uncle, Beauchamp chafed for a loosed tongue and an +audience tossing like the well-whipped ocean, or open as the smooth sea- +surface to the marks of the breeze. Let them be hostile or amicable, he +wanted an audience as hotly as the humped Richard a horse. + +At Romfrey Castle he fell upon an audience that became transformed into a +swarm of chatterers, advisers, and reprovers the instant his lips were +parted. The ladies of the family declared his pursuit of the Apology to +be worse and vainer than his politics. The gentlemen said the same, but +they were not so outspoken to him personally, and indulged in asides, +with quotations of some of his uncle Everard's recent observations +concerning him: as for example, 'Politically he's a mad harlequin jumping +his tights and spangles when nobody asks him to jump; and in private life +he's a mad dentist poking his tongs at my sound tooth:' a highly +ludicrous image of the persistent fellow, and a reminder of situations in +Moliere, as it was acted by Cecil Baskelett and Lord Welshpool. +Beauchamp had to a certain extent restored himself to favour with his +uncle Everard by offering a fair suggestion on the fatal field to account +for the accident, after the latter had taken measurements and examined +the place in perplexity. His elucidation of the puzzle was referred to +by Lord Avonley at Romfrey, and finally accepted as possible and this +from a wiseacre who went quacking about the county, expecting to upset +the order of things in England! Such a mixing of sense and nonsense in a +fellow's noddle was never before met with, Lord Avonley said. Cecil took +the hint. He had been unworried by Beauchamp: Dr. Shrapnel had not been +mentioned: and it delighted Cecil to let it be known that he thought old +Nevil had some good notions, particularly as to the duties of the +aristocracy--that first war-cry of his when a midshipman. News of +another fatal accident in the hunting-field confirmed Cecil's higher +opinion of his cousin. On the day of Craven's funeral they heard at +Romfrey that Mr. Wardour-Devereux had been killed by a fall from his +horse. Two English gentlemen despatched by the same agency within a +fortnight! 'He smoked,' Lord Avonley said of the second departure, to +allay some perturbation in the bosoms of the ladies who had ceased to +ride, by accounting for this particular mishap in the most reassuring +fashion. Cecil's immediate reflection was that the unfortunate smoker +had left a rich widow. Far behind in the race for Miss Halkett, and +uncertain of a settled advantage in his other rivalry with Beauchamp, he +fixed his mind on the widow, and as Beauchamp did not stand in his way, +but on the contrary might help him--for she, like the generality of +women, admired Nevil Beauchamp in spite of her feminine good sense and +conservatism--Cecil began to regard the man he felt less opposed to with +some recognition of his merits. The two nephews accompanied Lord Avonley +to London, and slept at his town-house. + +They breakfasted together the next morning on friendly terms. Half an +hour afterward there was an explosion; uncle and nephews were scattered +fragments: and if Cecil was the first to return to cohesion with his lord +and chief, it was, he protested energetically, common policy in a man in +his position to do so: all that he looked for being a decent pension and +a share in the use of the town-house. Old Nevil, he related, began +cross-examining him and entangling him with the cunning of the deuce, in +my lord's presence, and having got him to make an admission, old Nevil +flung it at the baron, and even crossed him and stood before him when he +was walking out of the room. A furious wrangle took place. Nevil and +the baron gave it to one another unmercifully. The end of it was that +all three flew apart, for Cecil confessed to having a temper, and in +contempt of him for the admission wrung out of him, Lord Avonley had +pricked it. My lord went down to Steynham, Beauchamp to Holdesbury, and +Captain Baskelett to his quarters; whence in a few days he repaired +penitently to my lord--the most placable of men when a full submission +was offered to him. + +Beauchamp did nothing of the kind. He wrote a letter to Steynham in the +form of an ultimatum. + +This egregious letter was handed to Rosamund for a proof of her darling's +lunacy. She in conversation with Stukely Culbrett unhesitatingly accused +Cecil of plotting his cousin's ruin. + +Mr. Culbrett thought it possible that Cecil had been a little more than +humorous in the part he had played in the dispute, and spoke to him. + +Then it came out that Lord Avonley had also delivered an ultimatum to +Beauchamp. + +Time enough had gone by for Cecil to forget his ruffling, and relish the +baron's grandly comic spirit in appropriating that big word Apology, and +demanding it from Beauchamp on behalf of the lady ruling his household. +What could be funnier than the knocking of Beauchamp's blunderbuss out of +his hands, and pointing the muzzle at him! + +Cecil dramatized the fun to amuse Mr. Culbrett. Apparently Beauchamp had +been staggered on hearing himself asked for the definite article he +claimed. He had made a point of speaking of the Apology. Lord Avonley +did likewise. And each professed to exact it for a deeply aggrieved +person: each put it on the ground that it involved the other's rightful +ownership of the title of gentleman. + +"'An apology to the amiable and virtuous Mistress Culling?" says old +Nevil: "an apology? what for?"--"For unbecoming and insolent behaviour," +says my lord.' + +'I am that lady's friend,' Stukely warned Captain Baskelett. 'Don't let +us have a third apology in the field.' + +'Perfectly true; you are her friend, and you know what a friend of mine +she is,' rejoined Cecil. 'I could swear "that lady" flings the whole +affair at me. I give you my word, old Nevil and I were on a capital +footing before he and the baron broke up. I praised him for tickling the +aristocracy. I backed him heartily; I do now; I'll do it in Parliament. +I know a case of a noble lord, a General in the army, and he received an +intimation that he might as well attend the Prussian cavalry manoeuvres +last Autumn on the Lower Rhine or in Silesia--no matter where. He +couldn't go: he was engaged to shoot birds! I give you my word. Now +there I see old Nevil 's right. It 's as well we should know something +about the Prussian and Austrian cavalry, and if our aristocracy won't go +abroad to study cavalry, who is to? no class in the kingdom understands +horses as they do. My opinion is, they're asleep. Nevil should have +stuck to that, instead of trying to galvanize the country and turning +against his class. But fancy old Nevil asked for the Apology! It +petrified him. "I've told her nothing but the truth," says Nevil. +"Telling the truth to women is an impertinence," says my lord. Nevil +swore he'd have a revolution in the country before he apologized.' + +Mr. Culbrett smiled at the absurdity of the change of positions between +Beauchamp and his uncle Everard, which reminded him somewhat of the old +story of the highwayman innkeeper and the market farmer who had been +thoughtful enough to recharge his pistols after quitting the inn at +midnight. A practical 'tu quoque' is astonishingly laughable, and backed +by a high figure and manner it had the flavour of triumphant repartee. +Lord Avonley did not speak of it as a retort upon Nevil, though he +reiterated the word Apology amusingly. He put it as due to the lady +governing his household; and his ultimatum was, that the Apology should +be delivered in terms to satisfy him within three months of the date of +the demand for it: otherwise blank; but the shadowy index pointed to the +destitution of Nevil Beauchamp. + +No stroke of retributive misfortune could have been severer to Rosamund +than to be thrust forward as the object of humiliation for the man she +loved. She saw at a glance how much more likely it was (remote as the +possibility appeared) that her lord would perform the act of penitence +than her beloved Nevil. And she had no occasion to ask herself why. +Lord Avonley had done wrong, and Nevil had not. It was inconceivable +that Nevil should apologize to her. It was horrible to picture the act +in her mind. She was a very rational woman, quite a woman of the world, +yet such was her situation between these two men that the childish tale +of a close and consecutive punishment for sins, down to our little +naughtinesses and naturalnesses, enslaved her intelligence, and amazed +her with the example made of her, as it were to prove the tale true of +our being surely hauled back like domestic animals learning the habits of +good society, to the rueful contemplation of certain of our deeds, +however wildly we appeal to nature to stand up for them. + +But is it so with all of us? No, thought Rosamund, sinking dejectedly +from a recognition of the heavenliness of the justice which lashed her +and Nevil, and did not scourge Cecil Baskelett. That fine eye for +celestially directed consequences is ever haunted by shadows of unfaith +likely to obscure it completely when chastisement is not seen to fall on +the person whose wickedness is evident to us. It has been established +that we do not wax diviner by dragging down the Gods to our level. + +Rosamund knew Lord Avonley too well to harass him with further petitions +and explanations. Equally vain was it to attempt to persuade Beauchamp. +He made use of the house in London, where he met his uncle occasionally, +and he called at Steynham for money, that he could have obtained upon the +one condition, which was no sooner mentioned than fiery words flew in the +room, and the two separated. The leaden look in Beauchamp, noticed by +Cecilia Halkett in their latest interview, was deepening, and was of +itself a displeasure to Lord Avonley, who liked flourishing faces, and +said: 'That fellow's getting the look of a sweating smith': presumptively +in the act of heating his poker at the furnace to stir the country. + +It now became an offence to him that Beauchamp should continue doing this +in the speeches and lectures he was reported to be delivering; he stamped +his foot at the sight of his nephew's name in the daily journals; a novel +sentiment of social indignation was expressed by his crying out, at the +next request for money: 'Money to prime you to turn the country into a +rat-hole? Not a square inch of Pennsylvanian paper-bonds! What right +have you to be lecturing and orationing? You've no knowledge. All +you've got is your instincts, and that you show in your readiness to +exhibit them like a monkey. You ought to be turned inside out on your +own stage. You've lumped your brains on a point or two about Land, and +Commonland, and the Suffrage, and you pound away upon them, as if you had +the key of the difficulty. It's the Scotchman's metaphysics; you know +nothing clear, and your working-classes know nothing at all; and you blow +them with wind like an over-stuffed cow. What you're driving at is to +get hob-nail boots to dance on our heads. Stukely says you should be off +over to Ireland. There you'd swim in your element, and have speechifying +from instinct, and howling and pummelling too, enough to last you out. +I 'll hand you money for that expedition. You're one above the number +wanted here. You've a look of bad powder fit only to flash in the pan. +I saved you from the post of public donkey, by keeping you out of +Parliament. You're braying and kicking your worst for it still at these +meetings of yours. A naval officer preaching about Republicanism and +parcelling out the Land!' + +Beauchamp replied quietly, 'The lectures I read are Dr. Shrapnel's. When +I speak I have his knowledge to back my deficiencies. He is too ill to +work, and I consider it my duty to do as much of his work as I can +undertake.' + +'Ha! You're the old infidel's Amen clerk. It would rather astonish +orthodox congregations to see clerks in our churches getting into the +pulpit to read the sermon for sick clergymen,' said Lord Avonley. His +countenance furrowed. 'I'll pay that bill,' he added. + +'Pay down half a million!' thundered Beauchamp; and dropping his voice, +'or go to him.' + +'You remind me,' his uncle observed. 'I recommend you to ring that bell, +and have Mrs. Culling here.' + +'If she comes she will hear what I think of her.' + +'Then, out of the house!' + +'Very well, sir. You decline to supply me with money?' + +'I do.' + +'I must have it!' + +'I dare say. Money's a chain-cable for holding men to their senses.' + +'I ask you, my lord, how I am to carry on Holdesbury?' + +'Give it up.' + +'I shall have to,' said Beauchamp, striving to be prudent. + +'There isn't a doubt of it,' said his uncle, upon a series of nods +diminishing in their depth until his head assumed a droll interrogative +fixity, with an air of 'What next?' + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX + +BETWEEN BEAUCHAMP AND CECILIA + +Beauchamp quitted the house without answering as to what next, and +without seeing Rosamund. + +In the matter of money, as of his physical health, he wanted to do too +much at once; he had spent largely of both in his efforts to repair the +injury done to Dr. Shrapnel. He was overworked, anxious, restless, +craving for a holiday somewhere in France, possibly; he was all but +leaping on board the boat at times, and, unwilling to leave his dear old +friend who clung to him, he stayed, keeping his impulses below the tide- +mark which leads to action, but where they do not yield peace of spirit. +The tone of Renee's letters filled him with misgivings. She wrote word +that she had seen M. d'Henriel for the first time since his return from +Italy, and he was much changed, and inclined to thank Roland for the +lesson he had received from him at the sword's point. And next she urged +Beauchamp to marry, so that he and she might meet, as if she felt a +necessity for it. 'I shall love your wife; teach her to think amiably of +me,' she said. And her letter contained womanly sympathy for him in his +battle with his uncle. Beauchamp thought of his experiences of Cecilia's +comparative coldness. He replied that there was no prospect of his +marrying; he wished there were one of meeting! He forbore from writing +too fervently, but he alluded to happy days in Normandy, and proposed to +renew them if she would say she had need of him. He entreated her to +deal with him frankly; he reminded her that she must constantly look to +him, as she had vowed she would, when in any kind of trouble; and he +declared to her that he was unchanged. He meant, of an unchanged +disposition to shield and serve her; but the review of her situation, and +his knowledge of her quick blood, wrought him to some jealous lover's +throbs, which led him to impress his unchangeableness upon her, to bind +her to that standard. + +She declined his visit: not now; 'not yet': and for that he presumed to +chide her, half-sincerely. As far as he knew he stood against everybody +save his old friend and Renee; and she certainly would have refreshed his +heart for a day. In writing, however, he had an ominous vision of the +morrow to the day; and, both for her sake and his own, he was not +unrejoiced to hear that she was engaged day and night in nursing her +husband. Pursuing his vision of the morrow of an unreproachful day with +Renee, the madness of taking her to himself, should she surrender at last +to a third persuasion, struck him sharply, now that he and his uncle were +foot to foot in downright conflict, and money was the question. He had +not much remaining of his inheritance--about fifteen hundred pounds. +He would have to vacate Holdesbury and his uncle's town-house in a month. +Let his passion be never so desperate, for a beggared man to think of +running away with a wife, or of marrying one, the folly is as big as the +worldly offence: no justification is to be imagined. Nay, and there is +no justification for the breach of a moral law. Beauchamp owned it, +and felt that Renee's resistance to him in Normandy placed her above him. +He remembered a saying of his moralist: 'We who interpret things heavenly +by things earthly must not hope to juggle with them for our pleasures, +and can look to no absolution of evil acts.' The school was a hard one. +It denied him holidays; it cut him off from dreams. It ran him in heavy +harness on a rough highroad, allowing no turnings to right or left, no +wayside croppings; with the simple permission to him that he should daily +get thoroughly tired. And what was it Jenny Denham had said on the +election day? 'Does incessant battling keep the intellect clear?' + +His mind was clear enough to put the case, that either he beheld a +tremendous magnification of things, or else that other men did not attach +common importance to them; and he decided that the latter was the fact. + +An incessant struggle of one man with the world, which position usually +ranks his relatives against him, does not conduce to soundness of +judgement. He may nevertheless be right in considering that he is right +in the main. The world in motion is not so wise that it can pretend to +silence the outcry of an ordinarily generous heart even--the very infant +of antagonism to its methods and establishments. It is not so difficult +to be right against the world when the heart is really active; but the +world is our book of humanity, and before insisting that his handwriting +shall occupy the next blank page of it, the noble rebel is bound for the +sake of his aim to ask himself how much of a giant he is, lest he fall +like a blot on the page, instead of inscribing intelligible characters +there. + +Moreover, his relatives are present to assure him that he did not jump +out of Jupiter's head or come of the doctor. They hang on him like an +ill-conditioned prickly garment; and if he complains of the irritation +they cause him, they one and all denounce his irritable skin. + +Fretted by his relatives he cannot be much of a giant. + +Beauchamp looked from Dr. Shrapnel in his invalid's chair to his uncle +Everard breathing robustly, and mixed his uncle's errors with those of +the world which honoured and upheld him. His remainder of equability +departed; his impatience increased. His appetite for work at Dr. +Shrapnel's writing-desk was voracious. He was ready for any labour, the +transcribing of papers, writing from dictation, whatsoever was of service +to Lord Avonley's victim: and he was not like the Spartan boy with the +wolf at his vitals; he betrayed it in the hue his uncle Everard detested, +in a visible nervousness, and indulgence in fits of scorn. Sharp +epigrams and notes of irony provoked his laughter more than fun. He +seemed to acquiesce in some of the current contemporary despair of our +immoveable England, though he winced at a satire on his country, and +attempted to show that the dull dominant class of moneymakers was the +ruin of her. Wherever he stood to represent Dr. Shrapnel, as against Mr. +Grancey Lespel on account of the Itchincope encroachments, he left a +sting that spread the rumour of his having become not only a black torch +of Radicalism--our modern provincial estateholders and their wives bestow +that reputation lightly--but a gentleman with the polish scratched off +him in parts. And he, though individually he did not understand how +there was to be game in the land if game-preserving was abolished, signed +his name R. C. S. NEVIL BEAUCHAMP for Dr. SHRAPNEL, in the +communications directed to solicitors of the persecutors of poachers. + +His behaviour to Grancey Lespel was eclipsed by his treatment of Captain +Baskelett. Cecil had ample reason to suppose his cousin to be friendly +with him. He himself had forgotten Dr. Shrapnel, and all other +dissensions, in a supremely Christian spirit. He paid his cousin the +compliment to think that he had done likewise. At Romfrey and in London +he had spoken to Nevil of his designs upon the widow: Nevil said nothing +against it and it was under Mrs. Wardour-Devereux's eyes, and before a +man named Lydiard, that, never calling to him to put him on his guard, +Nevil fell foul of him with every capital charge that can be brought +against a gentleman, and did so abuse, worry, and disgrace him as to +reduce him to quit the house to avoid the scandal of a resort to a +gentleman's last appeal in vindication of his character. Mrs. Devereux +spoke of the terrible scene to Cecilia, and Lydiard to Miss Denham. The +injured person communicated it to Lord Avonley, who told Colonel Halkett +emphatically that his nephew Cecil deserved well of him in having kept +command of his temper out of consideration for the family. There was a +general murmur of the family over this incident. The widow was rich, and +it ranked among the unwritten crimes against blood for one offshoot of a +great house wantonly to thwart another in the wooing of her by humbling +him in her presence, doing his utmost to expose him as a schemer, a +culprit, and a poltroon. + +Could it be that Beauchamp had reserved his wrath with his cousin to +avenge Dr. Shrapnel upon him signally? Miss Denham feared her guardian +was the cause. Lydiard was indefinitely of her opinion. The idea struck +Cecilia Halkett, and as an example of Beauchamp's tenacity of purpose and +sureness of aim it fascinated her. But Mrs. Wardour-Devereux did not +appear to share it. She objected to Beauchamp's intemperateness and +unsparingness, as if she was for conveying a sisterly warning to Cecilia; +and that being off her mind, she added, smiling a little and colouring a +little: 'We learn only from men what men are.' How the scene commenced +and whether it was provoked, she failed to recollect. She described +Beauchamp as very self-contained in manner throughout his tongue was the +scorpion. Cecilia fancied he must have resembled his uncle Everard. + +Cecilia was conquered, but unclaimed. While supporting and approving him +in her heart she was dreading to receive some new problem of his conduct; +and still while she blamed him for not seeking an interview with her, she +liked him for this instance of delicacy in the present state of his +relations with Lord Avonley. + +A problem of her own conduct disturbed the young lady's clear conception +of herself: and this was a ruffling of unfaithfulness in her love of +Beauchamp, that was betrayed to her by her forgetfulness of him whenever +she chanced to be with Seymour Austin. In Mr. Austin's company she +recovered her forfeited repose, her poetry of life, her image of the +independent Cecilia throned above our dust of battle, gazing on broad +heaven. She carried the feeling so far that Blackburn Tuckham's +enthusiasm for Mr. Austin gave him grace in her sight, and praise of her +father's favourite from Mr. Austin's mouth made him welcome to her. The +image of that grave capable head, dusty-grey about the temples, and the +darkly sanguine face of the tried man, which was that of a seasoned +warrior and inspired full trust in him, with his vivid look, his personal +distinction, his plain devotion to the country's business, and the +domestic solitude he lived in, admired, esteemed, loved perhaps, but +unpartnered, was often her refuge and haven from tempestuous Beauchamp. +She could see in vision the pride of Seymour Austin's mate. It flushed +her reflectively. Conquered but not claimed, Cecilia was like the frozen +earth insensibly moving round to sunshine in nature, with one white +flower in her breast as innocent a sign of strong sweet blood as a woman +may wear. She ascribed to that fair mate of Seymour Austin's many lofty +charms of womanhood; above all, stateliness: her especial dream of an +attainable superlative beauty in women. And supposing that lady to be +accused of the fickle breaking of another love, who walked beside him, +matched with his calm heart and one with him in counsel, would the +accusation be repeated by them that beheld her husband? might it not +rather be said that she had not deviated, but had only stepped higher? +She chose no youth, no glistener, no idler: it was her soul striving +upward to air like a seed in the earth that raised her to him: and she +could say to the man once enchaining her: Friend, by the good you taught +me I was led to this! + +Cecilia's reveries fled like columns of mist before the gale when tidings +reached her of a positive rupture between Lord Avonley and Nevil +Beauchamp, and of the mandate to him to quit possession of Holdesbury and +the London house within a certain number of days, because of his refusal +to utter an apology to Mrs. Culling. Angrily on his behalf she prepared +to humble herself to him. Louise Wardour-Devereux brought them to a +meeting, at which Cecilia, with her heart in her hand, was icy. Mr. +Lydiard, prompted by Mrs. Devereux, gave him better reasons for her +singular coldness than Cecilia could give to herself, and some time +afterward Beauchamp went to Mount Laurels, where Colonel Halkett mounted +guard over his daughter, and behaved, to her thinking, cruelly. 'Now you +have ruined yourself there's nothing ahead for you but to go to the +Admiralty and apply for a ship,' he said, sugaring the unkindness with +the remark that the country would be the gainer. He let fly a side-shot +at London men calling themselves military men who sought to repair their +fortunes by chasing wealthy widows, and complimented Beauchamp: 'You're +not one of that sort.' + +Cecilia looked at Beauchamp stedfastly. 'Speak,' said the look. + +But he, though not blind, was keenly wounded. + +'Money I must have,' he said, half to the colonel, half to himself. + +Colonel Halkett shrugged. Cecilia waited for a directness in Beauchamp's +eyes. + +Her father was too wary to leave them. + +Cecilia's intuition told her that by leading to a discussion of politics, +and adopting Beauchamp's views, she could kindle him. Why did she +refrain? It was that the conquered young lady was a captive, not an +ally. To touch the subject in cold blood, voluntarily to launch on those +vexed waters, as if his cause were her heart's, as much as her heart was +the man's, she felt to be impossible. He at the same time felt that the +heiress, endowing him with money to speed the good cause, should be his +match in ardour for it, otherwise he was but a common adventurer, winning +and despoiling an heiress. + +They met in London. Beauchamp had not vacated either Holdesbury or the +town-house; he was defying his uncle Everard, and Cecilia thought with +him that it was a wise temerity. She thought with him passively +altogether. On this occasion she had not to wait for directness in his +eyes; she had to parry it. They were at a dinner-party at Lady Elsea's, +generally the last place for seeing Lord Palmet, but he was present, and +arranged things neatly for them, telling Beauchamp that he acted under +Mrs. Wardour-Devereux's orders. Never was an opportunity, more +propitious for a desperate lover. Had it been Renee next him, no petty +worldly scruples of honour would have held him back. And if Cecilia had +spoken feelingly of Dr. Shrapnel, or had she simulated a thoughtful +interest in his pursuits, his hesitations would have vanished. As it +was, he dared to look what he did not permit himself to speak. She was +nobly lovely, and the palpable envy of men around cried fool at his +delays. Beggar and heiress he said in his heart, to vitalize the three- +parts fiction of the point of honour which Cecilia's beauty was fast +submerging. When she was leaving he named a day for calling to see her. +Colonel Halkett stood by, and she answered, 'Come.' + +Beauchamp kept the appointment. Cecilia was absent. + +He was unaware that her father had taken her to old Mrs. Beauchamp's +death-bed. Her absence, after she had said, 'Come,' appeared a +confirmation of her glacial manner when they met at the house of Mrs. +Wardour-Devereux; and he charged her with waywardness. A wound of the +same kind that we are inflicting is about the severest we can feel. + +Beauchamp received intelligence of his venerable great-aunt's death from +Blackburn Tuckham, and after the funeral he was informed that eighty +thousand pounds had been bequeathed to him: a goodly sum of money for a +gentleman recently beggared; yet, as the political enthusiast could not +help reckoning (apart from a fervent sentiment of gratitude toward his +benefactress), scarcely enough to do much more than start and push for +three or more years a commanding daily newspaper, devoted to Radical +interests, and to be entitled THE DAWN. + +True, he might now conscientiously approach the heiress, take her hand +with an open countenance, and retain it. + +Could he do so quite conscientiously? The point of honour had been +centred in his condition of beggary. Something still was in his way. A +quick spring of his blood for air, motion, excitement, holiday freedom, +sent his thoughts travelling whither they always shot away when his +redoubtable natural temper broke loose. + +In the case of any other woman than Cecilia Halkett he would not have +been obstructed by the minor consideration as to whether he was wholly +heart-free to ask her in marriage that instant; for there was no +hindrance, and she was beautiful. She was exceedingly beautiful; and she +was an unequalled heiress. She would be able with her wealth to float +his newspaper, THE DAWN, so desired of Dr. Shrapnel!--the best +restorative that could be applied to him! Every temptation came +supplicating him to take the step which indeed he wished for: one feeling +opposed. He really respected Cecilia: it is not too much to say that he +worshipped her with the devout worship rendered to the ideal Englishwoman +by the heart of the nation. For him she was purity, charity, the keeper +of the keys of whatsoever is held precious by men; she was a midway +saint, a light between day and darkness, in whom the spirit in the flesh +shone like the growing star amid thin sanguine colour, the sweeter, the +brighter, the more translucent the longer known. And if the image will +allow it, the nearer down to him the holier she seemed. + +How offer himself when he was not perfectly certain that he was worthy of +her? + +Some jugglery was played by the adept male heart in these later +hesitations. Up to the extent of his knowledge of himself, the man was +fairly sincere. Passion would have sped him to Cecilia, but passion is +not invariably love; and we know what it can be. + +The glance he cast over the water at Normandy was withdrawn. He went to +Bevisham to consult with Dr. Shrapnel about the starting of a weekly +journal, instead of a daily, and a name for it--a serious question: for +though it is oftener weekly than daily that the dawn is visible in +England, titles must not invite the public jest; and the glorious project +of the daily DAWN was prudently abandoned for by-and-by. He thought +himself rich enough to put a Radical champion weekly in the field and +this matter, excepting the title, was arranged in Bevisham. Thence he +proceeded to Holdesbury, where he heard that the house, grounds, and farm +were let to a tenant preparing to enter. Indifferent to the blow, he +kept an engagement to deliver a speech at the great manufacturing town of +Gunningham, and then went to London, visiting his uncle's town-house for +recent letters. Not one was from Renee: she had not written for six +weeks, not once for his thrice! A letter from Cecil Baskelett informed +him that 'my lord' had placed the town-house at his disposal. Returning +to dress for dinner on a thick and murky evening of February, Beauchamp +encountered his cousin on the steps. He said to Cecil, 'I sleep here to- +night: I leave the house to you tomorrow.' + +Cecil struck out his underjaw to reply: 'Oh! good. You sleep here to- +night. You are a fortunate man. I congratulate you. I shall not +disturb you. I have just entered on my occupation of the house. I have +my key. Allow me to recommend you to go straight to the drawing-room. +And I may inform you that the Earl of Romfrey is at the point of death. +My lord is at the castle.' + +Cecil accompanied his descent of the steps with the humming of an opera +melody: Beauchamp tripped into the hall-passage. A young maid-servant +held the door open, and she accosted him: 'If you please, there is a lady +up-stairs in the drawing-room; she speaks foreign English, sir.' + +Beauchamp asked if the lady was alone, and not waiting for the answer, +though he listened while writing, and heard that she was heavily veiled, +he tore a strip from his notebook, and carefully traced half-a-dozen +telegraphic words to Mrs. Culling at Steynham. His rarely failing +promptness, which was like an inspiration, to conceive and execute +measures for averting peril, set him on the thought of possibly +counteracting his cousin Cecil's malignant tongue by means of a message +to Rosamund, summoning her by telegraph to come to town by the next train +that night. He despatched the old woman keeping the house, as trustier +than the young one, to the nearest office, and went up to the drawing- +room, with a quick thumping heart that was nevertheless as little +apprehensive of an especial trial and danger as if he had done nothing at +all to obviate it. Indeed he forgot that he had done anything when he +turned the handle of the drawing-room door. + + + + +CHAPTER XL + +A TRIAL OF HIM + +A low-burning lamp and fire cast a narrow ring on the shadows of the +dusky London room. One of the window-blinds was drawn up. Beauchamp +discerned a shape at that window, and the fear seized him that it might +be Madame d'Auffray with evil news of Renee: but it was Renee's name he +called. She rose from her chair, saying, 'I!' + +She was trembling. + +Beauchamp asked her whisperingly if she had come alone. + +'Alone; without even a maid,' she murmured. + +He pulled down the blind of the window exposing them to the square, and +led her into the light to see her face. + +The dimness of light annoyed him, and the miserable reception of her; +this English weather, and the gloomy house! And how long had she been +waiting for him? and what was the mystery? Renee in England seemed +magical; yet it was nothing stranger than an old dream realized. He +wound up the lamp, holding her still with one hand. She was woefully +pale; scarcely able to bear the increase of light. + +'It is I who come to you': she was half audible. + +'This time!' said he. 'You have been suffering?' + +'No.' + +Her tone was brief; not reassuring. + +'You came straight to me?' + +'Without a deviation that I know of.' + +'From Tourdestelle?' + +'You have not forgotten Tourdestelle, Nevil?' + +The memory of it quickened his rapture in reading her features. It was +his first love, his enchantress, who was here: and how? Conjectures shot +through him like lightnings in the dark. + +Irrationally, at a moment when reason stood in awe, he fancied it must be +that her husband was dead. He forced himself to think it, and could have +smiled at the hurry of her coming, one, without even a maid: and deeper +down in him the devouring question burned which dreaded the answer. + +But of old, in Normandy, she had pledged herself to join him with no +delay when free, if ever free! + +So now she was free. + +One side of him glowed in illumination; the other was black as Winter +night; but light subdues darkness; and in a situation like Beauchamp's, +the blood is livelier than the prophetic mind. + +'Why did you tell me to marry? What did that mean?' said he. 'Did you +wish me to be the one in chains? And you have come quite alone!--you +will give me an account of everything presently:--You are here! in +England! and what a welcome for you! You are cold.' + +'I am warmly clad,' said Renee, suffering her hand to be drawn to his +breast at her arm's-length, not bending with it. + +Alive to his own indirectness, he was conscious at once of the slight +sign of reservation, and said: 'Tell me . . .' and swerved sheer away +from his question: 'how is Madame d'Auffray?' + +'Agnes? I left her at Tourdestelle,' said Renee. + +'And Roland? He never writes to me.' + +'Neither he nor I write much. He is at the military camp of instruction +in the North.' + +'He will run over to us.' + +'Do not expect it.' + +'Why not?' + +Renee sighed. 'We shall have to live longer than I look for . . .' +she stopped. 'Why do you ask me why not? He is fond of us both, and +sorry for us; but have you forgotten Roland that morning on the +Adriatic?' + +Beauchamp pressed her hand. The stroke of Then and Now rang in his +breast like a bell instead of a bounding heart. Something had stunned +his heart. He had no clear central feeling; he tried to gather it from +her touch, from his joy in beholding her and sitting with her alone, from +the grace of her figure, the wild sweetness of her eyes, and the beloved +foreign lips bewitching him with their exquisite French and perfection of +speech. + +His nature was too prompt in responding to such a call on it for resolute +warmth. + +'If I had been firmer then, or you one year older!' he said. + +'That girl in Venice had no courage,' said Renee. + +She raised her head and looked about the room. + +Her instinct of love sounded her lover through, and felt the deficiency +or the contrariety in him, as surely as musical ears are pained by a +discord that they require no touchstone to detect. Passion has the +sensitiveness of fever, and is as cruelly chilled by a tepid air. + +'Yes, a London house after Venice and Normandy!' said Beauchamp, +following her look. + +'Sicily: do not omit Syracuse; you were in your naval uniform: Normandy +was our third meeting,' said Renee. 'This is the fourth. I should have +reckoned that.' + +'Why? Superstitiously?' + +'We cannot be entirely wise when we have staked our fate. Sailors are +credulous: you know them. Women are like them when they embark . . . +Three chances! Who can boast of so many, and expect one more! Will you +take me to my hotel, Nevil?' + +The fiction of her being free could not be sustained. + +'Take you and leave you? I am absolutely at your command. But leave +you? You are alone: and you have told me nothing.' + +What was there to tell? The desperate act was apparent, and told all. + +Renee's dark eyelashes lifted on him, and dropped. + +'Then things are as I left them in Normandy?' said he. + +She replied: 'Almost.' + +He quivered at the solitary word; for his conscience was on edge. It ran +the shrewdest irony through him, inexplicably. 'Almost': that is, 'with +this poor difference of one person, now finding herself worthless, +subtracted from the list; no other; it should be little to them as it is +little to you': or, reversing it, the substance of the word became +magnified and intensified by its humble slightness: 'Things are the same, +but for the jewel of the province, a lustre of France, lured hither to +her eclipse'--meanings various, indistinguishable, thrilling and piercing +sad as the half-tones humming round the note of a strung wire, which is a +blunt single note to the common ear. + +Beauchamp sprang to his feet and bent above her: 'You have come to me, +for the love of me, to give yourself to me, and for ever, for good, till +death? Speak, my beloved Renee.' + +Her eyes were raised to his: 'You see me here. It is for you to speak.' + +'I do. There's nothing I ask for now--if the step can't be retrieved.' + +'The step retrieved, my friend? There is no step backward in life.' + +'I am thinking of you, Renee.' + +'Yes, I know,' she answered hurriedly. + +'If we discover that the step is a wrong one?' he pursued: 'why is there +no step backward?' + +'I am talking of women,' said Renee. + +'Why not for women?' + +'Honourable women, I mean,' said Renee. + +Beauchamp inclined to forget his position in finding matter to contest. + +Yet it is beyond contest that there is no step backward in life. She +spoke well; better than he, and she won his deference by it. Not only +she spoke better: she was truer, distincter, braver: and a man ever on +the look-out for superior qualities, and ready to bow to them, could not +refuse her homage. With that a saving sense of power quitted him. + +'You wrote to me that you were unchanged, Nevil.' + +'I am.' + +'So, then, I came.' + +His rejoinder was the dumb one, commonly eloquent and satisfactory. + +Renee shut her eyes with a painful rigour of endurance. She opened them +to look at him steadily. + +The desperate act of her flight demanded immediate recognition from him +in simple language and a practical seconding of it. There was the test. + +'I cannot stay in this house, Nevil; take me away.' + +She named her hotel in her French English, and the sound of it penetrated +him with remorseful pity. It was for him, and of his doing, that she was +in an alien land and an outcast! + +'This house is wretched for you,' said he: 'and you must be hungry. Let +me . . .' + +'I cannot eat. I will ask you': she paused, drawing on her energies, and +keeping down the throbs of her heart: 'this: do you love me?' + +'I love you with all my heart and soul.' + +'As in Normandy?' + +'Yes.' + +'In Venice?' + +'As from the first, Renee! That I can swear.' + +'Oaths are foolish. I meant to ask you--my friend, there is no question +in my mind of any other woman: I see you love me: I am so used to +consider myself the vain and cowardly creature, and you the boldest and +faithfullest of men, that I could not abandon the habit if I would: I +started confiding in you, sure that I should come to land. But I have to +ask you: to me you are truth: I have no claim on my lover for anything +but the answer to this:--Am I a burden to you?' + +His brows flew up in furrows. He drew a heavy breath, for never had he +loved her more admiringly, and never on such equal terms. She was his +mate in love and daring at least. A sorrowful comparison struck him, of +a little boat sailing out to a vessel in deep seas and left to founder. + +Without knotting his mind to acknowledge or deny the burden, for he could +do neither, he stood silent, staring at her, not so much in weakness as +in positive mental division. No, would be false; and Yes, not less +false; and if the step was irretrievable, to say Yes would be to plunge a +dagger in her bosom; but No was a vain deceit involving a double wreck. +Assuredly a man standing against the world in a good cause, with a +runaway wife on his hands, carries a burden, however precious it be to +him. + +A smile of her lips, parted in an anguish of expectancy, went to death +over Renee's face. She looked at him tenderly. 'The truth,' she +murmured to herself, and her eyelids fell. + +'I am ready to bear anything,' said Beauchamp. 'I weigh what you ask me, +that is all. You a burden to me? But when you ask me, you make me turn +round and inquire how we stand before the world.' + +'The world does not stone men,' said Renee. + +'Can't I make you feel that I am not thinking of myself?' Beauchamp +stamped in his extreme perplexity. He was gagged; he could not possibly +talk to her, who had cast the die, of his later notions of morality and +the world's dues, fees, and claims on us. + +'No, friend, I am not complaining.' Renee put out her hand to him; with +compassionate irony feigning to have heard excuses. 'What right have I +to complain? I have not the sensation. I could not expect you to be +everlastingly the sentinel of love. Three times I rejected you! Now +that I have lost my father--Oh! poor father: I trifled with my lover, +I tricked him that my father might live in peace. He is dead. I wished +you to marry one of your own countrywomen, Nevil. You said it was +impossible; and I, with my snake at my heart, and a husband grateful +for nursing and whimpering to me for his youth like a beggar on the road, +I thought I owed you this debt of body and soul, to prove to you I have +some courage; and for myself, to reward myself for my long captivity and +misery with one year of life: and adieu to Roland my brother! adieu to +friends! adieu to France! Italy was our home. I dreamed of one year in +Italy; I fancied it might be two; more than that was unimaginable. +Prisoners of long date do not hope; they do not calculate: air, light, +they say; to breathe freely and drop down! They are reduced to the +instincts of the beasts. I thought I might give you happiness, pay part +of my debt to you. Are you remembering Count Henri? That paints what I +was! I could fly to that for a taste of life! a dance to death! And +again you ask: Why, if I loved you then, not turn to you in preference? +No, you have answered it yourself, Nevil;--on that day in the boat, when +generosity in a man so surprised me, it seemed a miracle to me; and it +was, in its divination. How I thank my dear brother Roland for saving me +the sight of you condemned to fight, against your conscience! He taught +poor M. d'Henriel his lesson. You, Nevil, were my teacher. And see how +it hangs: there was mercy for me in not having drawn down my father's +anger on my heart's beloved. He loved you. He pitied us. He reproached +himself. In his last days he was taught to suspect our story: perhaps +from Roland; perhaps I breathed it without speaking. He called heaven's +blessings on you. He spoke of you with tears, clutching my hand. He +made me feel he would have cried out: "If I were leaving her with Nevil +Beauchamp!" and "Beauchamp," I heard him murmuring once: "take down +Froissart": he named a chapter. It was curious: if he uttered my name +Renee, yours, "Nevil," soon followed. That was noticed by Roland. Hope +for us, he could not have had; as little as I! But we were his two: his +children. I buried him--I thought he would know our innocence, and now +pardon our love. I read your letters, from my name at the beginning, to +yours at the end, and from yours back to mine, and between the lines, for +any doubtful spot: and oh, rash! But I would not retrace the step for my +own sake. I am certain of your love for me, though . . .' She paused: +'Yes, I am certain of it. And if I am a burden to you?' + +'About as much as the air, which I can't do without since I began to +breathe it,' said Beauchamp, more clear-mindedly now that he supposed he +was addressing a mind, and with a peril to himself that escaped his +vigilance. There was a secret intoxication for him already in the half- +certainty that the step could not be retraced. The idea that he might +reason with her, made her seductive to the heart and head of him. + +'I am passably rich, Nevil,' she said. 'I do not care for money, except +that it gives wings. Roland inherits the chateau in Touraine. I have +one in Burgundy, and rentes and shares, my notary informs me.' + +'I have money,' said he. His heart began beating violently. He lost +sight of his intention of reasoning. 'Good God! if you were free!' + +She faltered: 'At Tourdestelle . . .' + +'Yes, and I am unchanged,' Beauchamp cried out. 'Your life there was +horrible, and mine's intolerable.' He stretched his arms cramped like +the yawning of a wretch in fetters. That which he would and would not +became so intervolved that he deemed it reasonable to instance their +common misery as a ground for their union against the world. And what +has that world done for us, that a joy so immeasurable should be rejected +on its behalf? And what have we succeeded in doing, that the childish +effort to move it should be continued at such a cost? + +For years, down to one year back, and less--yesterday, it could be said-- +all human blessedness appeared to him in the person of Renee, given him +under any condition whatsoever. She was not less adorable now. In her +decision, and a courage that he especially prized in women, she was a +sweeter to him than when he was with her in France: too sweet to be +looked at and refused. + +'But we must live in England,' he cried abruptly out of his inner mind. + +'Oh! not England, Italy, Italy!' Renee exclaimed: 'Italy, or Greece: +anywhere where we have sunlight. Mountains and valleys are my dream. +Promise it, Nevil. I will obey you; but this is my wish. Take me +through Venice, that I may look at myself and wonder. We can live at +sea, in a yacht; anywhere with you but in England. This country frowns +on me; I can hardly fetch my breath here, I am suffocated. The people +all walk in lines in England. Not here, Nevil! They are good people, +I am sure; and it is your country: but their faces chill me, their voices +grate; I should never understand them; they would be to me like their +fogs eternally; and I to them? O me! it would be like hearing sentence +in the dampness of the shroud perpetually. Again I say I do not doubt +that they are very good: they claim to be; they judge others; they may +know how to make themselves happy in their climate; it is common to most +creatures to do so, or to imagine it. Nevil! not England!' + +Truly 'the mad commander and his French marquise' of the Bevisham +Election ballad would make a pretty figure in England! + +His friends of his own class would be mouthing it. The story would be +a dogging shadow of his public life, and, quite as bad, a reflection on +his party. He heard the yelping tongues of the cynics. He saw the +consternation and grief of his old Bevisham hero, his leader and his +teacher. + +'Florence,' he said, musing on the prospect of exile and idleness: +'there's a kind of society to be had in Florence.' + +Renee asked him if he cared so much for society. + +He replied that women must have it, just as men must have exercise. + +'Old women, Nevil; intriguers, tattlers.' + +'Young women, Renee.' + +She signified no. + +He shook the head of superior knowledge paternally. + +Her instinct of comedy set a dimple faintly working in her cheek. + +'Not if they love, Nevil.' + +'At least,' said he, 'a man does not like to see the woman he loves +banished by society and browbeaten.' + +'Putting me aside, do you care for it, Nevil?' + +'Personally not a jot.' + +'I am convinced of that,' said Renee. + +She spoke suspiciously sweetly, appearing perfect candour. + +The change in him was perceptible to her. The nature of the change was +unfathomable. + +She tried her wits at the riddle. But though she could be an actress +before him with little difficulty, the torment of her situation roused +the fever within her at a bare effort to think acutely. Scarlet suffused +her face: her brain whirled. + +'Remember, dearest, I have but offered myself: you have your choice. +I can pass on. Yes, I know well I speak to Nevil Beauchamp; you have +drilled me to trust you and your word as a soldier trusts to his officer +--once a faint-hearted soldier! I need not remind you: fronting the +enemy now, in hard truth. But I want your whole heart to decide. Give +me no silly, compassion! Would it have been better to me to have written +to you? If I had written I should have clipped my glorious impulse, +brought myself down to earth with my own arrow. I did not write, for I +believed in you.' + +So firm had been her faith in him that her visions of him on the passage +to England had resolved all to one flash of blood-warm welcome awaiting +her: and it says much for her natural generosity that the savage delicacy +of a woman placed as she now was, did not take a mortal hurt from the +apparent voidness of this home of his bosom. The passionate gladness of +the lover was wanting: the chivalrous valiancy of manful joy. + +Renee shivered at the cloud thickening over her new light of intrepid +defiant life. + +'Think it not improbable that I have weighed everything I surrender in +quitting France,' she said. + +Remorse wrestled with Beauchamp and flung him at her feet. + +Renee remarked on the lateness of the hour. + +He promised to conduct her to her hotel immediately. + +'And to-morrow?' said Renee, simply, but breathlessly. + +'To-morrow, let it be Italy! But first I telegraph to Roland and +Tourdestelle. I can't run and hide. The step may be retrieved: or no, +you are right; the step cannot, but the next to it may be stopped--that +was the meaning I had! I 'll try. It 's cutting my hand off, tearing my +heart out; but I will. O that you were free! You left your husband at +Tourdestelle?' + +'I presume he is there at present: he was in Paris when I left.' + +Beauchamp spoke hoarsely and incoherently in contrast with her composure: +'You will misunderstand me for a day or two, Renee. I say if you were +free I should have my first love mine for ever. Don't fear me: I have no +right even to press your fingers. He may throw you into my arms. Now +you are the same as if you were in your own home: and you must accept me +for your guide. By all I hope for in life, I'll see you through it, and +keep the dogs from barking, if I can. Thousands are ready to give +tongue. And if they can get me in the character of a law-breaker!-- +I hear them.' + +'Are you imagining, Nevil, that there is a possibility of my returning to +him?' + +'To your place in the world! You have not had to endure tyranny?' + +'I should have had a certain respect for a tyrant, Nevil. At least I +should have had an occupation in mocking him and conspiring against him. +Tyranny! There would have been some amusement to me in that.' + +'It was neglect.' + +'If I could still charge it on neglect, Nevil! Neglect is very +endurable. He rewards me for nursing him . . . he rewards me with a +little persecution: wives should be flattered by it: it comes late.' + +'What?' cried Beauchamp, oppressed and impatient. + +Renee sank her voice. + +Something in the run of the unaccented French: 'Son amour, mon ami': +drove the significance of the bitterness of the life she had left behind +her burningly through him. This was to have fled from a dragon! was the +lover's thought: he perceived the motive of her flight: and it was a +vindication of it that appealed to him irresistibly. The proposal for +her return grew hideous: and this ever multiplying horror and sting of +the love of a married woman came on him with a fresh throbbing shock, +more venom. + +He felt for himself now, and now he was full of feeling for her. +Impossible that she should return! Tourdestelle shone to him like a +gaping chasm of fire. And becoming entirely selfish he impressed his +total abnegation of self upon Renee so that she could have worshipped +him. A lover that was like a starry frost, froze her veins, bewildered +her intelligence. She yearned for meridian warmth, for repose in a +directing hand; and let it be hard as one that grasps a sword: what +matter? unhesitatingness was the warrior virtue of her desire. And for +herself the worst might happen if only she were borne along. Let her +life be torn and streaming like the flag of battle, it must be forward to +the end. + +That was a quality of godless young heroism not unexhausted in +Beauchamp's blood. Reanimated by him, she awakened his imagination of +the vagrant splendours of existence and the rebel delights which have +their own laws and 'nature' for an applauding mother. Radiant Alps rose +in his eyes, and the morning born in the night suns that from mountain +and valley, over sea and desert, called on all earth to witness their +death. The magnificence of the contempt of humanity posed before him +superbly satanesque, grand as thunder among the crags and it was not a +sensual cry that summoned him from his pedlar labours, pack on back along +the level road, to live and breathe deep, gloriously mated: Renee kindled +his romantic spirit, and could strike the feeling into him that to be +proud of his possession of her was to conquer the fretful vanity to +possess. She was not a woman of wiles and lures. + +Once or twice she consulted her watch: but as she professed to have no +hunger, Beauchamp's entreaty to her to stay prevailed, and the subtle +form of compliment to his knightly manliness in her remaining with him, +gave him a new sense of pleasure that hung round her companionable +conversation, deepening the meaning of the words, or sometimes +contrasting the sweet surface commonplace with the undercurrent of +strangeness in their hearts, and the reality of a tragic position. Her +musical volubility flowed to entrance and divert him, as it did. + +Suddenly Beauchamp glanced upward. + +Renee turned from a startled contemplation of his frown, and beheld Mrs. +Rosamund Culling in the room. + + + + +CHAPTER XLI + +A LAME VICTORY + +The intruder was not a person that had power to divide them; yet she came +between their hearts with a touch of steel. + +'I am here in obedience to your commands in your telegram of this +evening,' Rosamund replied to Beauchamp's hard stare at her; she +courteously spoke French, and acquitted herself demurely of a bow to the +lady present. + +Renee withdrew her serious eyes from Beauchamp. She rose and +acknowledged the bow. + +'It is my first visit to England, madame! + +'I could have desired, Madame la marquise, more agreeable weather for +you.' + +'My friends in England will dispel the bad weather for me, madame'; Renee +smiled softly: 'I have been studying my French-English phrase-book, that +I may learn how dialogues are conducted in your country to lead to +certain ceremonies when old friends meet, and without my book I am at +fault. I am longing to be embraced by you . . . if it will not be +offending your rules?' + +Rosamund succumbed to the seductive woman, whose gentle tooth bit through +her tutored simplicity of manner and natural graciousness, administering +its reproof, and eluding a retort or an excuse. + +She gave the embrace. In doing so she fell upon her conscious +awkwardness for an expression of reserve that should be as good as irony +for irony, though where Madame de Rouaillout's irony lay, or whether it +was irony at all, our excellent English dame could not have stated, after +the feeling of indignant prudery responding to it so guiltily had +subsided. + +Beauchamp asked her if she had brought servants with her; and it +gratified her to see that he was no actor fitted to carry a scene through +in virtue's name and vice's mask with this actress. + +She replied, 'I have brought a man and a maid-servant. The establishment +will be in town the day after tomorrow, in time for my lord's return from +the Castle.' + +'You can have them up to-morrow morning.' + +'I could,' Rosamund admitted the possibility. Her idolatry of him was +tried on hearing him press the hospitality of the house upon Madame de +Rouaillout, and observing the lady's transparent feint of a reluctant +yielding. For the voluble Frenchwoman scarcely found a word to utter: +she protested languidly that she preferred the independence of her hotel, +and fluttered a singular look at him, as if overcome by his vehement +determination to have her in the house. Undoubtedly she had a taking +face and style. His infatuation, nevertheless, appeared to Rosamund +utter dementedness, considering this woman's position, and Cecilia +Halkett's beauty and wealth, and that the house was no longer at his +disposal. He was really distracted, to judge by his forehead, or else he +was over-acting his part. + +The absence of a cook in the house, Rosamund remarked, must prevent her +from seconding Captain Beauchamp's invitation. + +He turned on her witheringly. 'The telegraph will do that. You're in +London; cooks can be had by dozens. Madame de Rouaillout is alone here; +she has come to see a little of England, and you will do the honours of +the house.' + +'M. le marquis is not in London?' said Rosamund, disregarding the dumb +imprecation she saw on Beauchamp's features. + +'No, madame, my husband is not in London,' Renee rejoined collectedly. + +'See to the necessary comforts of the house instantly,' said Beauchamp, +and telling Renee, without listening to her, that he had to issue orders, +he led Rosamund, who was out of breath at the effrontery of the pair, +toward the door. 'Are you blind, ma'am? Have you gone foolish? What +should I have sent for you for, but to protect her? I see your mind; +and off with the prude, pray! Madame will have my room; clear away every +sign of me there. I sleep out; I can find a bed anywhere. And bolt and +chain the house-door to-night against Cecil Baskelett; he informs me that +he has taken possession.' + +Rosamund's countenance had become less austere. + +'Captain Baskelett!' she exclaimed, leaning to Beauchamp's views on the +side of her animosity to Cecil; 'he has been promised by his uncle the +use of a set of rooms during the year, when the mistress of the house is +not in occupation. I stipulated expressly that he was to see you and +suit himself to your convenience, and to let me hear that you and he had +agreed to an arrangement, before he entered the house. He has no right +to be here, and I shall have no hesitation in locking him out.' + +Beauchamp bade her go, and not be away more than five minutes; and then +he would drive to the hotel for the luggage. + +She scanned him for a look of ingenuousness that might be trusted, and +laughed in her heart at her credulity for expecting it of a man in such a +case. She saw Renee sitting stonily, too proudly self-respecting to put +on a mask of flippant ease. These lovers might be accomplices in +deceiving her; they were not happy ones, and that appeared to her to be +some assurance that she did well in obeying him. + +Beauchamp closed the door on her. He walked back to Renee with a +thoughtful air that was consciously acted; his only thought being--now +she knows me! + +Renee looked up at him once. Her eyes were unaccusing, unquestioning. + +With the violation of the secresy of her flight she had lost her +initiative and her intrepidity. The world of human eyes glared on her +through the windows of the two she had been exposed to, paralyzing her +brain and caging her spirit of revolt. That keen wakefulness of her +self-defensive social instinct helped her to an understanding of her +lover's plan to preserve her reputation, or rather to give her a corner +of retreat in shielding the worthless thing--twice detested as her cloak +of slavery coming from him! She comprehended no more. She was a house +of nerves crowding in against her soul like fiery thorns, and had no +space within her torture for a sensation of gratitude or suspicion; but +feeling herself hurried along at lightning speed to some dreadful shock, +her witless imagination apprehended it in his voice: not what he might +say, only the sound. She feared to hear him speak, as the shrinking ear +fears a thunder at the cavity; yet suspense was worse than the downward- +driving silence. + +The pang struck her when he uttered some words about Mrs. Culling, and +protection, and Roland. + +She thanked him. + +So have common executioners been thanked by queenly ladies baring their +necks to the axe. + +He called up the pain he suffered to vindicate him; and it was really an +agony of a man torn to pieces. + +'I have done the best.' + +This dogged and stupid piece of speech was pitiable to hear from Nevil +Beauchamp. + +'You think so?' said she; and her glass-like voice rang a tremour in its +mildness that swelled through him on the plain submissive note, which was +more assent than question. + +'I am sure of it. I believe it. I see it. At least I hope so.' + +'We are chiefly led by hope,' said Renee. + +'At least, if not!' Beauchamp cried. 'And it's not too late. I have no +right--I do what I can. I am at your mercy. Judge me later. If I am +ever to know what happiness is, it will be with you. It's not too late +either way. There is Roland--my brother as much as if you were my wife!' + +He begged her to let him have Roland's exact address. + +She named the regiment, the corps d'armee, the postal town, and the +department. + +'Roland will come at a signal,' he pursued; 'we are not bound to consult +others.' + +Renee formed the French word of 'we' on her tongue. + +He talked of Roland and Roland, his affection for him as a brother and as +a friend, and Roland's love of them both. + +'It is true,' said Renee. + +'We owe him this; he represents your father.' + +'All that you say is true, my friend.' + +'Thus, you have come on a visit to madame, your old friend here--oh! +your hand. What have I done?' + +Renee motioned her hand as if it were free to be taken, and smiled +faintly to make light of it, but did not give it. + +'If you had been widowed!' he broke down to the lover again. + +'That man is attached to the remnant of his life: I could not wish him +dispossessed of it,' said Rende. + +'Parted! who parts us? It's for a night. Tomorrow!' + +She breathed: 'To-morrow.' + +To his hearing it craved an answer. He had none. To talk like a lover, +or like a man of honour, was to lie. Falsehood hemmed him in to the +narrowest ring that ever statue stood on, if he meant to be stone. + +'That woman will be returning,' he muttered, frowning at the vacant door. +'I could lay out my whole life before your eyes, and show you I am +unchanged in my love of you since the night when Roland and I walked on +the Piazzetta . . .' + +'Do not remind me; let those days lie black!' A sympathetic vision of +her maiden's tears on the night of wonderful moonlight when, as it seemed +to her now, San Giorgio stood like a dark prophet of her present +abasement and chastisement, sprang tears of a different character, and +weak as she was with her soul's fever and for want of food, she was +piteously shaken. She said with some calmness: 'It is useless to look +back. I have no reproaches but for myself. Explain nothing to me. +Things that are not comprehended by one like me are riddles I must put +aside. I know where I am: I scarcely know more. Here is madame.' + +The door had not opened, and it did not open immediately. + +Beauchamp had time to say, 'Believe in me.' Even that was false to his +own hearing, and in a struggle with the painful impression of insincerity +which was denied and scorned by his impulse to fling his arms round her +and have her his for ever, he found himself deferentially accepting her +brief directions concerning her boxes at the hotel, with Rosamund Culling +to witness. + +She gave him her hand. + +He bowed over the fingers. 'Until to-morrow, madame.' + +'Adieu!' said Renee. + + + + +ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + +A wound of the same kind that we are inflicting +Affectedly gentle and unusually roundabout opening +Carry a scene through in virtue's name and vice's mask +Cordiality of an extreme relief in leaving +Dark-eyed Renee was not beauty but attraction +Decline to practise hypocrisy +Fine eye for celestially directed consequences is ever haunted +Fretted by his relatives he cannot be much of a giant +Given up his brains for a lodging to a single idea +He never calculated on the happening of mortal accidents +He smoked, Lord Avonley said of the second departure +Heights of humour beyond laughter +Irony provoked his laughter more than fun +Irritability at the intrusion of past disputes +Led him to impress his unchangeableness upon her +Money's a chain-cable for holding men to their senses +On which does the eye linger longest--which draws the heart? +Once called her beautiful; his praise had given her beauty +Passion is not invariably love +People is one of your Radical big words that burst at a query +Scotchman's metaphysics; you know nothing clear +Their not caring to think at all +There is no step backward in life +They have their thinking done for them +They may know how to make themselves happy in their climate +Thirst for the haranguing of crowds +Too many time-servers rot the State +We are chiefly led by hope +Welcomed and lured on an adversary to wild outhitting +What ninnies call Nature in books + + + + +End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Beauchamp's Career, v5 +by George Meredith + + + + + + +BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER + +By GEORGE MEREDITH + +1897 + + + +BOOK 6. + +XLII. THE TWO PASSIONS +XLIII. THE EARL OF ROMFREY AND THE COUNTESS +XLIV. THE NEPHEWS OF THE EARL, AND ANOTHER EXHIBITION OF THE TWO + PASSIONS IN BEAUCHAMP. +XLV. A LITTLE PLOT AGAINST CECILIA +XLVI. AS IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN FORESEEN +XLVII. THE REFUSAL OF HIM +XLVIII. OF THE TRIAL AWAITING THE EARL OF ROMFREY +XLIX. A FABRIC OF BARONIAL DESPOTISM CRUMBLES + + + +CHAPTER XLII + +THE TWO PASSIONS + +The foggy February night refreshed his head, and the business of fetching +the luggage from the hotel--a commission that necessitated the delivery +of his card and some very commanding language--kept his mind in order. +Subsequently he drove to his cousin Baskelett's Club, where he left a +short note to say the house was engaged for the night and perhaps a week +further. Concise, but sufficient: and he stated a hope to his cousin +that he would not be inconvenienced. This was courteous. + +He had taken a bed at Renee's hotel, after wresting her boxes from the +vanquished hotel proprietor, and lay there, hearing the clear sound of +every little sentence of hers during the absence of Rosamund: her +'Adieu,' and the strange 'Do you think so?' and 'I know where I am; I +scarcely know more.' Her eyes and their darker lashes, and the fitful +little sensitive dimples of a smile without joy, came with her voice, but +hardened to an aspect unlike her. Not a word could he recover of what +she had spoken before Rosamund's intervention. He fancied she must have +related details of her journey. Especially there must have been mention, +he thought, of her drive to the station from Tourdestelle; and this +flashed on him the scene of his ride to the chateau, and the meeting her +on the road, and the white light on the branching river, and all that was +Renee in the spirit of the place she had abandoned for him, believing in +him. She had proved that she believed in him. What in the name of +sanity had been the meaning of his language? and what was it between +them that arrested him and caused him to mumble absurdly of 'doing best,' +when in fact he was her bondman, rejoiced to be so, by his pledged word? +and when she, for some reason that he was sure she had stated, though he +could recollect no more than the formless hideousness of it, was debarred +from returning to Tourdestelle? + +He tossed in his bed as over a furnace, in the extremity of perplexity of +one accustomed to think himself ever demonstrably in the right, and now +with his whole nature in insurrection against that legitimate claim. It +led him to accuse her of a want of passionate warmth, in her not having +supplicated and upbraided him--not behaving theatrically, in fine, as the +ranting pen has made us expect of emergent ladies that they will +naturally do. Concerning himself, he thought commendingly, a tear would +have overcome him. She had not wept. The kaleidoscope was shaken in his +fragmentary mind, and she appeared thrice adorable for this noble +composure, he brutish. + +Conscience and reason had resolved to a dead weight in him, like an +inanimate force, governing his acts despite the man, while he was with +Renee. Now his wishes and waverings conjured up a semblance of a +conscience and much reason to assure him that he had done foolishly as +well as unkindly, most unkindly: that he was even the ghastly spectacle +of a creature attempting to be more than he can be. Are we never to +embrace our inclinations? Are the laws regulating an old dry man like +his teacher and guide to be the same for the young and vigorous? + +Is a good gift to be refused? And this was his first love! The +brilliant Renee, many-hued as a tropic bird! his lady of shining grace, +with her sole fault of want of courage devotedly amended! his pupil, he +might say, of whom he had foretold that she must come to such a pass, at +the same time prefixing his fidelity. And he was handing her over +knowingly to one kind of wretchedness--'son amour, mon ami,' shot through +him, lighting up the gulfs of a mind in wreck;--and one kind of happiness +could certainly be promised her! + +All these and innumerable other handsome pleadings of the simulacra of +the powers he had set up to rule, were crushed at daybreak by the +realities in a sense of weight that pushed him mechanically on. He +telegraphed to Roland, and mentally gave chase to the message to recall +it. The slumberer roused in darkness by the relentless insane-seeming +bell which hales him to duty, melts at the charms of sleep, and feels +that logic is with him in his preference of his pillow; but the tireless +revolving world outside, nature's pitiless antagonist, has hung one of +its balances about him, and his actions are directed by the state of the +scales, wherein duty weighs deep and desireability swings like a pendant +doll: so he throws on his harness, astounded, till his blood quickens +with work, at the round of sacrifices demanded of nature: which is indeed +curious considering what we are taught here and there as to the +infallibility of our august mother. Well, the world of humanity had done +this for Beauchamp. His afflicted historian is compelled to fling his +net among prosaic similitudes for an illustration of one thus degradedly +in its grip. If he had been off with his love like the rover! why, then +the Muse would have loosened her lap like May showering flower-buds, and +we might have knocked great nature up from her sleep to embellish his +desperate proceedings with hurricanes to be danced over, to say nothing +of imitative spheres dashing out into hurly-burly after his example. + +Conscious rectitude, too, after the pattern of the well-behaved AEneas +quitting the fair bosom of Carthage in obedience to the Gods, for an +example to his Roman progeny, might have stiffened his backbone and put a +crown upon his brows. It happened with him that his original training +rather imposed the idea that he was a figure to be derided. The approval +of him by the prudent was a disgust, and by the pious tasteless. He had +not any consolation in reverting to Dr. Shrapnel's heavy Puritanism. On +the contrary, such a general proposition as that of the sage of Bevisham +could not for a moment stand against the pathetic special case of Renee: +and as far as Beauchamp's active mind went, he was for demanding that +Society should take a new position in morality, considerably broader, and +adapted to very special cases. + +Nevertheless he was hardly grieved in missing Renee at Rosamund's +breakfast-table. Rosamund informed him that Madame de Rouaillout's door +was locked. Her particular news for him was of a disgraceful alarum +raised by Captain Baskelett in the night, to obtain admission; and of an +interview she had with him in the early morning, when he subjected her to +great insolence. Beauchamp's attention was drawn to her repetition of +the phrase 'mistress of the house.' However, she did him justice in +regard to Renee, and thoroughly entered into the fiction of Renee's visit +to her as her guest: he passed over everything else. + +To stop the mouth of a scandal-monger, he drove full speed to Cecil's +Club, where he heard that the captain had breakfasted and had just +departed for Romfrey Castle. He followed to the station. The train had +started. So mischief was rolling in that direction. + +Late at night Rosamund was allowed to enter the chill unlighted chamber, +where the unhappy lady had been lying for hours in the gloom of a London +Winter's daylight and gaslight. + +'Madame de Rouaillout is indisposed with headache,' was her report to +Beauchamp. + +The conventional phraseology appeased him, though he saw his grief behind +it. + +Presently he asked if Renee had taken food. + +'No: you know what a headache is,' Rosamund replied. + +It is true that we do not care to eat when we are in pain. + +He asked if she looked ill. + +'She will not have lights in the room,' said Rosamund. + +Piecemeal he gained the picture of Renee in an image of the death within +which welcomed a death without. + +Rosamund was impatient with him for speaking of medical aid. These men! +She remarked very honestly: + +'Oh, no; doctors are not needed.' + +'Has she mentioned me?' + +'Not once.' + +'Why do you swing your watch-chain, ma'am?' cried Beauchamp, bounding +off his chair. + +He reproached her with either pretending to indifference or feeling it; +and then insisted on his privilege of going up-stairs-accompanied by her, +of course; and then it was to be only to the door; then an answer to a +message was to satisfy him. + +'Any message would trouble her: what message would you send?' Rosamund +asked him. + +The weighty and the trivial contended; no fitting message could be +thought of. + +'You are unused to real suffering--that is for women!--and want to be +doing instead of enduring,' said Rosamund. + +She was beginning to put faith in the innocence of these two mortally +sick lovers. Beauchamp's outcries against himself gave her the shadows +of their story. He stood in tears--a thing to see to believe of Nevil +Beauchamp; and plainly he did not know it, or else he would have taken +her advice to him to leave the house at an hour that was long past +midnight. Her method for inducing him to go was based on her intimate +knowledge of him: she made as if to soothe and kiss him compassionately. + +In the morning there was a flying word from Roland, on his way to +England. Rosamund tempered her report of Renee by saying of her, that +she was very quiet. He turned to the window. + +'Look, what a climate ours is!' Beauchamp abused the persistent fog. +'Dull, cold, no sky, a horrible air to breathe! This is what she has +come to! Has she spoken of me yet?' + +'No.' + +'Is she dead silent?' + +'She answers, if I speak to her.' + +'I believe, ma'am,' said Beauchamp, 'that we are the coldest-hearted +people in Europe.' + +Rosamund did not defend us, or the fog. Consequently nothing was left +for him to abuse but himself. In that she tried to moderate him, and +drew forth a torrent of self-vituperation, after which he sank into the +speechless misery he had been evading; until sophistical fancy, another +evolution of his nature, persuaded him that Roland, seeing Renee, would +for love's sake be friendly to them. + +'I should have told you, Nevil, by the way, that the earl is dead,' said +Rosamund. + +'Her brother will be here to-day; he can't be later than the evening,' +said Beauchamp. 'Get her to eat, ma'am; you must. Command her to eat. +This terrible starvation!' + +'You ate nothing yourself, Nevil, all day yesterday.' + +He surveyed the table. 'You have your cook in town, I see. Here's a +breakfast to feed twenty hungry families in Spitalfields. Where does the +mass of meat go? One excess feeds another. You're overdone with +servants. Gluttony, laziness, and pilfering come of your host of +unmanageable footmen and maids; you stuff them, and wonder they're idle +and immoral. If--I suppose I must call him the earl now, or Colonel +Halkett, or any one of the army of rich men, hear of an increase of the +income-tax, or some poor wretch hints at a sliding scale of taxation, +they yell as if they were thumb-screwed: but five shillings in the pound +goes to the kitchen as a matter of course--to puff those pompous idiots! +and the parsons, who should be preaching against this sheer waste of food +and perversion of the strength of the nation, as a public sin, are +maundering about schism. There's another idle army! Then we have +artists, authors, lawyers, doctors--the honourable professions! all +hanging upon wealth, all ageing the rich, and all bearing upon labour! +it's incubus on incubus. In point of fact, the rider's too heavy for the +horse in England.' + +He began to nibble at bread. + +Rosamund pushed over to him a plate of the celebrated Steynham pie, of +her own invention, such as no douse in the county of Sussex could produce +or imitate. + +'What would you have the parsons do?' she said. + +'Take the rich by the throat and show them in the kitchen-mirror that +they're swine running down to the sea with a devil in them.' She had set +him off again, but she had enticed him to eating. 'Pooh! it has all +been said before. Stones are easier to move than your English. May I be +forgiven for saying it! an invasion is what they want to bring them to +their senses. I'm sick of the work. Why should I be denied--am I to +kill the woman I love that I may go on hammering at them? Their idea of +liberty is, an evasion of public duty. Dr. Shrapnel's right--it's a +money-logged Island! Men like the Earl of Romfrey, who have never done +work in their days except to kill bears and birds, I say they're stifled +by wealth: and he at least would have made an Admiral of mark, or a +General: not of much value, but useful in case of need. But he, like a +pretty woman, was under no obligation to contribute more than an +ornamental person to the common good. As to that, we count him by tens +of thousands now, and his footmen and maids by hundreds of thousands. +The rich love the nation through their possessions; otherwise they have +no country. If they loved the country they would care for the people. +Their hearts are eaten up by property. I am bidden to hold my tongue +because I have no knowledge. When men who have this "knowledge" will go +down to the people, speak to them, consult and argue with them, and come +into suitable relations with them--I don't say of lords and retainers, +but of knowers and doers, leaders and followers--out of consideration for +public safety, if not for the common good, I shall hang back gladly; +though I won't hear misstatements. My fault is, that I am too moderate. +I should respect myself more if I deserved their hatred. This flood of +luxury, which is, as Dr. Shrapnel says, the body's drunkenness and the +soul's death, cries for execration. I'm too moderate. But I shall quit +the country: I've no place here.' + +Rosamund ahemed. 'France, Nevil? I should hardly think that France +would please you, in the present state of things over there.' + +Half cynically, with great satisfaction, she had watched him fretting at +the savoury morsels of her pie with a fork like a sparrow-beak during the +monologue that would have been so dreary to her but for her appreciation +of the wholesome effect of the letting off of steam, and her admiration +of the fire of his eyes. After finishing his plate he had less the look +of a ship driving on to reef--some of his images of the country. He +called for claret and water, sighing as he munched bread in vast +portions, evidently conceiving that to eat unbuttered bread was to +abstain from luxury. He praised passingly the quality of the bread. It +came from Steynham, and so did the, milk and cream, the butter, chicken +and eggs. He was good enough not to object to the expenditure upon the +transmission of the accustomed dainties. Altogether the gradual act of +nibbling had conduced to his eating remarkably well-royally. Rosamund's +more than half-cynical ideas of men, and her custom of wringing unanimous +verdicts from a jury of temporary impressions, inclined her to imagine +him a lover that had not to be so very much condoled with, and a +politician less alarming in practice than in theory:--somewhat a +gentleman of domestic tirades on politics: as it is observed of your +generous young Radical of birth and fortune, that he will become on the +old high road to a round Conservatism. + +He pitched one of the morning papers to the floor in disorderly sheets, +muttering: 'So they're at me!' + +'Is Dr. Shrapnel better?' she asked. 'I hold to a good appetite as a +sign of a man's recovery.' + +Beauchamp was confronting the fog at the window. He swung round: 'Dr. +Shrapnel is better. He has a particularly clever young female cook.' + +'Ah! then . . .' + +'Yes, then, naturally! He would naturally hasten to recover to partake +of the viands, ma'am.' + +Rosamund murmured of her gladness that he should be able to enjoy them. + +'Oddly enough, he is not an eater of meat,' said Beauchamp. + +'A vegetarian!' + +'I beg you not to mention the fact to my lord. You see, you yourself can +scarcely pardon it. He does not exclude flesh from his table. Blackburn +Tuckham dined there once. "You are a thorough revolutionist, Dr. +Shrapnel," he observed. The doctor does not exclude wine, but he does +not drink it. Poor Tuckham went away entirely opposed to a Radical he +could not even meet as a boon-fellow. I begged him not to mention the +circumstances, as I have begged you. He pledged me his word to that +effect solemnly; he correctly felt that if the truth were known, there +would be further cause for the reprobation of the man who had been his +host.' + +'And that poor girl, Nevil?' + +'Miss Denham? She contracted the habit of eating meat at school, and +drinking wine in Paris, and continues it, occasionally. Now run +upstairs. Insist on food. Inform Madame de Rouaillout that her brother +M. le comte de Croisnel will soon be here, and should not find her ill. +Talk to her as you women can talk. Keep the blinds down in her room; +light a dozen wax-candles. Tell her I have no thought but of her. It's +a lie: of no woman but of her: that you may say. But that you can't say. +You can say I am devoted--ha, what stuff! I've only to open my mouth!-- +say nothing of me: let her think the worst--unless it comes to a question +of her life: then be a merciful good woman . . .' He squeezed her +fingers, communicating his muscular tremble to her sensitive woman's +frame, and electrically convincing her that he was a lover. + +She went up-stairs. In ten minutes she descended, and found him pacing +up and down the hall. 'Madame de Rouaillout is much the same,' she said. +He nodded, looked up the stairs, and about for his hat and gloves, drew +on the gloves, fixed the buttons, blinked at his watch, and settled his +hat as he was accustomed to wear it, all very methodically, and talking +rapidly, but except for certain precise directions, which were not needed +by so careful a housekeeper and nurse as Rosamund was known to be, she +could not catch a word of meaning. He had some appointment, it seemed; +perhaps he was off for a doctor--a fresh instance of his masculine +incapacity to understand patient endurance. After opening the housedoor, +and returning to the foot of the stairs, listening and sighing, he +disappeared. + +It struck her that he was trying to be two men at once. + +The litter of newspaper sheets in the morning-room brought his +exclamation to her mind: 'They're at me!' Her eyes ran down the columns, +and were seized by the print of his name in large type. A leading +article was devoted to Commander's Beauchamp's recent speech delivered +in the great manufacturing town of Gunningham, at a meeting under the +presidency of the mayor, and his replies to particular questions +addressed to him; one being, what right did he conceive himself to have +to wear the Sovereign's uniform in professing Republican opinions? +Rosamund winced for her darling during her first perusal of the article. +It was of the sarcastically caressing kind, masterly in ease of style, +as the flourish of the executioner well may be with poor Bare-back hung +up to a leisurely administration of the scourge. An allusion to 'Jack on +shore' almost persuaded her that his uncle Everard had inspired the +writer of the article. Beauchamp's reply to the question of his loyalty +was not quoted: he was, however, complimented on his frankness. At the +same time he was assured that his error lay in a too great proneness to +make distinctions, and that there was no distinction between sovereign +and country in a loyal and contented land, which could thank him for +gallant services in war, while taking him for the solitary example to be +cited at the present period of the evils of a comparatively long peace. + +'Doubtless the tedium of such a state to a man of the temperament of the +gallant commander,' etc., the termination of the article was indulgent. +Rosamund recurred to the final paragraph for comfort, and though she +loved Beauchamp, the test of her representative feminine sentiment +regarding his political career, when personal feeling on his behalf had +subsided, was, that the writer of the article must have received an +intimation to deal both smartly and forbearingly with the offender: and +from whom but her lord? Her notions of the conduct of the Press were +primitive. In a summary of the article Beauchamp was treated as naughty +boy, formerly brave boy, and likely by-and-by to be good boy. Her secret +heart would have spoken similarly, with more emphasis on the flattering +terms. + +A telegram arrived from her lord. She was bidden to have the house clear +for him by noon of the next day. + +How could that be done? + +But to write blankly to inform the Earl of Romfrey that he was excluded +from his own house was another impossibility. + +'Hateful man!' she apostrophized Captain Baskelett, and sat down, +supporting her chin in a prolonged meditation. + +The card of a French lady, bearing the name of Madame d'Auffray, was +handed to her. + +Beauchamp had gone off to his friend Lydiard, to fortify himself in his +resolve to reply to that newspaper article by eliciting counsel to the +contrary. Phrase by phrase he fought through the first half of his +composition of the reply against Lydiard, yielding to him on a point or +two of literary judgement, only the more vehemently to maintain his ideas +of discretion, which were, that he would not take shelter behind a single +subterfuge; that he would try this question nakedly, though he should +stand alone; that he would stake his position on it, and establish his +right to speak his opinions: and as for unseasonable times, he protested +it was the cry of a gorged middle-class, frightened of further action, +and making snug with compromise. Would it be a seasonable time when +there was uproar? Then it would be a time to be silent on such themes: +they could be discussed calmly now, and without danger; and whether he +was hunted or not, he cared nothing. He declined to consider the +peculiar nature of Englishmen: they must hear truth or perish. + +Knowing the difficulty once afflicting Beauchamp in the art of speaking +on politics tersely, Lydiard was rather astonished at his well-delivered +cannonade; and he fancied that his modesty had been displaced by the new +acquirement; not knowing the nervous fever of his friend's condition, for +which the rattle of speech was balm, and contention a native element, and +the assumption of truth a necessity. Beauchamp hugged his politics like +some who show their love of the pleasures of life by taking to them +angrily. It was all he had: he had given up all for it. He forced +Lydiard to lay down his pen and walk back to the square with him, and +went on arguing, interjecting, sneering, thumping the old country, +raising and oversetting her, treating her alternately like a disrespected +grandmother, and like a woman anciently beloved; as a dead lump, and as a +garden of seeds; reviewing prominent political men, laughing at the +dwarf-giants; finally casting anchor on a Mechanics' Institute that he +had recently heard of, where working men met weekly for the purpose of +reading the British poets. + +'That's the best thing I've heard of late,' he said, shaking Lydiard's +hand on the door-steps. + +'Ah! You're Commander Beauchamp; I think I know you. I've seen you on a +platform,' cried a fresh-faced man in decent clothes, halting on his way +along the pavement; 'and if you were in your uniform, you damned +Republican dog! I'd strip you with my own hands, for the disloyal +scoundrel you are, with your pimping Republicanism and capsizing +everything in a country like Old England. It's the cat-o'-nine-tails you +want, and the bosen to lay on; and I'd do it myself. And mind me, when +next I catch sight of you in blue and gold lace, I'll compel you to show +cause why you wear it, and prove your case, or else I'll make a Cupid of +you, and no joke about it. I don't pay money for a nincompoop to outrage +my feelings of respect and loyalty, when he's in my pay, d' ye hear? +You're in my pay: and you do your duty, or I 'll kick ye out of it. It's +no empty threat. You look out for your next public speech, if it's +anywhere within forty mile of London. Get along.' + +With a scowl, and a very ugly 'yah!' worthy of cannibal jaws, the man +passed off. + +Beauchamp kept eye on him. 'What class does a fellow like that come of?' + +'He's a harmless enthusiast,' said Lydiard. 'He has been reading the +article, and has got excited over it.' + +'I wish I had the fellow's address.' Beauchamp looked wistfully at +Lydiard, but he did not stimulate the generous offer to obtain it for +him. Perhaps it was as well to forget the fellow. + +'You see the effect of those articles,' he said. + +'You see what I mean by unseasonable times,' Lydiard retorted. + +'He didn't talk like a tradesman,' Beauchamp mused. + +'He may be one, for all that. It's better to class him as an +enthusiast.' + +'An enthusiast!' Beauchamp stamped: 'for what?' + +'For the existing order of things; for his beef and ale; for the titles +he is accustomed to read in the papers. You don't study your +countrymen.' + +'I'd study that fellow, if I had the chance.' + +'You would probably find him one of the emptiest, with a rather worse +temper than most of them.' + +Beauchamp shook Lydiard's hand, saying, 'The widow?' + +'There's no woman like her!' + +'Well, now you're free--why not? I think I put one man out of the +field.' + +'Too early! Besides--' + +'Repeat that, and you may have to say too late.' + +'When shall you go down to Bevisham?' + +'When? I can't tell: when I've gone through fire. There never was a +home for me like the cottage, and the old man, and the dear good girl-- +the best of girls! if you hadn't a little spoilt her with your +philosophy of the two sides of the case.' + +'I've not given her the brains.' + +'She's always doubtful of doing, doubtful of action: she has no will. So +she is fatalistic, and an argument between us ends in her submitting, as +if she must submit to me, because I'm overbearing, instead of accepting +the fact.' + +'She feels your influence.' + +'She's against the publication of THE DAWN--for the present. It's an +"unseasonable time." I argue with her: I don't get hold of her mind a +bit; but at last she says, "very well." She has your head.' + +And you have her heart, Lydiard could have rejoined. + +They said good-bye, neither of them aware of the other's task of +endurance. + +As they were parting, Beauchamp perceived his old comrade Jack Wilmore +walking past. + +'Jack!' he called. + +Wilmore glanced round. 'How do you do, Beauchamp?' + +'Where are you off to, Jack?' + +'Down to the Admiralty. I'm rather in a hurry; I have an appointment.' + +'Can't you stop just a minute?' + +'I'm afraid I can't. Good morning.' + +It was incredible; but this old friend, the simplest heart alive, +retreated without a touch of his hand, and with a sorely wounded air. + +'That newspaper article appears to have been generally read,' Beauchamp +said to Lydiard, who answered: + +'The article did not put the idea of you into men's minds, but gave +tongue to it: you may take it for an instance of the sagacity of the +Press.' + +'You wouldn't take that man and me to have been messmates for years! +Old Jack Wilmore! Don't go, Lydiard.' + +Lydiard declared that he was bound to go: he was engaged to read Italian +for an hour with Mrs. Wardour-Devereux. + +'Then go, by all means,' Beauchamp dismissed him. + +He felt as if he had held a review of his friends and enemies on the +door-step, and found them of one colour. If it was an accident befalling +him in a London square during a space of a quarter of an hour, what of +the sentiments of universal England? Lady Barbara's elopement with Lord +Alfred last year did not rouse much execration; hardly worse than gossip +and compassion. Beauchamp drank a great deal of bitterness from his +reflections. + +They who provoke huge battles, and gain but lame victories over +themselves, insensibly harden to the habit of distilling sour thoughts +from their mischances and from most occurrences. So does the world they +combat win on them. + +'For,' says Dr. Shrapnel, 'the world and nature, which are opposed in +relation to our vital interests, each agrees to demand of us a perfect +victory, on pain otherwise of proving it a stage performance; and the +victory over the world, as over nature, is over self: and this victory +lies in yielding perpetual service to the world, and none to nature: for +the world has to be wrought out, nature to be subdued.' + +The interior of the house was like a change of elements to Beauchamp. He +had never before said to himself, 'I have done my best, and I am beaten!' +Outside of it, his native pugnacity had been stimulated; but here, within +the walls where Renee lay silently breathing, barely breathing, it might +be dying, he was overcome, and left it to circumstance to carry him to a +conclusion. He went up-stairs to the drawing-room, where he beheld +Madame d'Auffray in conversation with Rosamund. + +'I was assured by Madame la Comtesse that I should see you to-day,' the +French lady said as she swam to meet him; 'it is a real pleasure': and +pressing his hand she continued, 'but I fear you will be disappointed of +seeing my sister. She would rashly try your climate at its worst period. +Believe me, I do not join in decrying it, except on her account: I could +have forewarned her of an English Winter and early Spring. You know her +impetuosity; suddenly she decided on accepting the invitation of Madame +la Comtesse; and though I have no fears of her health, she is at present +a victim of the inclement weather.' + +'You have seen her, madame?' said Beauchamp. So well had the clever +lady played the dupe that he forgot there was a part for him to play. +Even the acquiescence of Rosamund in the title of countess bewildered +him. + +'Madame d'Auffray has been sitting for an hour with Madame de +Rouaillout,' said Rosamund. + +He spoke of Roland's coming. + +'Ah?' said Madame d'Auffray, and turned to Rosamund: 'you have +determined to surprise us: then you will have a gathering of the whole +family in your hospitable house, Madame la Comtesse! + +'If M. la Marquis will do it that honour, madame! + +'My brother is in London,' Madame d'Auffray said to Beauchamp. + +The shattering blow was merited by one who could not rejoice that he had +acted rightly. + + + + +CHAPTER XLIII + +THE EARL OF ROMFREY AND THE COUNTESS + +An extraordinary telegraphic message, followed by a still more +extraordinary letter the next morning, from Rosamund Culling, all but +interdicted the immediate occupation of his house in town to Everard, now +Earl of Romfrey. She begged him briefly not to come until after the +funeral, and proposed to give him good reasons for her request at their +meeting. 'I repeat, I pledge myself to satisfy you on this point,' she +wrote. Her tone was that of one of your heroic women of history refusing +to surrender a fortress. + +Everard's wrath was ever of a complexion that could suffer postponements +without his having to fear an abatement of it. He had no business to +transact in London, and he had much at the Castle, so he yielded himself +up to his new sensations, which are not commonly the portion of gentlemen +of his years. He anticipated that Nevil would at least come down to the +funeral, but there was no appearance of him, nor a word to excuse his +absence. Cecil was his only supporter. They walked together between the +double ranks of bare polls of the tenantry and peasantry, resembling in a +fashion old Froissart engravings the earl used to dote on in his boyhood, +representing bodies of manacled citizens, whose humbled heads looked like +nuts to be cracked, outside the gates of captured French towns, awaiting +the disposition of their conqueror, with his banner above him and +prancing knights around. That was a glory of the past. He had no +successor. The thought was chilling; the solitariness of childlessness +to an aged man, chief of a most ancient and martial House, and proud of +his blood, gave him the statue's outlook on a desert, and made him feel +that he was no more than a whirl of the dust, settling to the dust. + +He listened to the parson curiously and consentingly. We are ashes. Ten +centuries had come to an end in him to prove the formula correct. The +chronicle of the House would state that the last Earl of Romfrey left no +heir. + +Cecil was a fine figure walking beside him. Measured by feet, he might +be a worthy holder of great lands. But so heartily did the earl despise +this nephew that he never thought of trying strength with the fellow, and +hardly cared to know what his value was, beyond his immediate uses as an +instrument to strike with. Beauchamp of Romfrey had been his dream, not +Baskelett: and it increased his disgust of Beauchamp that Baskelett +should step forward as the man. No doubt Cecil would hunt the county +famously: he would preserve game with the sleepless eye of a General of +the Jesuits. These things were to be considered. + +Two days after the funeral Lord Romfrey proceeded to London. He was met +at the station by Rosamund, and informed that his house was not yet +vacated by the French family. + +'And where have you arranged for me to go, ma'am?' he asked her +complacently. + +She named an hotel where she had taken rooms for him. + +He nodded, and was driven to the hotel, saying little on the road. + +As she expected, he was heavily armed against her and Nevil. + +'You're the slave of the fellow, ma'am. You are so infatuated that you +second his amours, in my house. I must wait for a clearance, it seems.' + +He cast a comical glance of disapprobation on the fittings of the hotel +apartment, abhorring gilt. + +'They leave us the day after to-morrow,' said Rosamund, out of breath +with nervousness at the commencement of the fray, and skipping over the +opening ground of a bold statement of facts. 'Madame de Rouaillout has +been unwell. She is not yet recovered; she has just risen. Her sister- +in-law has nursed her. Her husband seems much broken in health; he is +perfect on the points of courtesy.' + +'That is lucky, ma'am.' + +'Her brother, Nevil's comrade in the war, was there also.' + +'Who came first?' + +'My lord, you have only heard Captain Baskelett's version of the story. +She has been my guest since the first day of her landing in England. +There cannot possibly be an imputation on her.' + +'Ma'am, if her husband manages to be satisfied, what on earth have I to +do with it?' + +'I am thinking of Nevil, my lord.' + +'You're never thinking of any one else, ma'am.' + +'He sleeps here, at this hotel. He left the house to Madame de +Rouaillout. I bear witness to that.' + +'You two seem to have made your preparations to stand a criminal trial.' + +'It is pure truth, my lord.' + +'Do you take me to be anxious about the fellow's virtue?' + +'She is a lady who would please you.' + +'A scandal in my house does not please me.' + +'The only approach to a scandal was made by Captain Baskelett.' + +'A poor devil locked out of his bed on a Winter's night hullabaloos with +pretty good reason. I suppose he felt the contrast.' + +'My lord, this lady did me the honour to come to me on a visit. I have +not previously presumed to entertain a friend. She probably formed no +estimate of my exact position.' + +The earl with a gesture implied Rosamund's privilege to act the hostess +to friends. + +'You invited her?' he said. + +'That is, I had told her I hoped she would come to England.' + +'She expected you to be at the house in town on her arrival?' + +'It was her impulse to come.' + +'She came alone?' + +'She may have desired to be away from her own people for a time: there +may have been domestic differences. These cases are delicate.' + +'This case appears to have been so delicate that you had to lock out a +fourth party.' + +'It is indelicate and base of Captain Baskelett to complain and to hint. +Nevil had to submit to the same; and Captain Baskelett took his revenge +on the housedoor and the bells. The house was visited by the police next +morning.' + +'Do you suspect him to have known you were inside the house that night?' + +She could not say so: but hatred of Cecil urged her past the bounds of +habitual reticence to put it to her lord whether he, imagining the worst, +would have behaved like Cecil. + +To this he did not reply, but remarked, 'I am sorry he annoyed you, +ma'am.' + +'It is not the annoyance to me; it is the shocking, the unmanly insolence +to a lady, and a foreign lady.' + +'That's a matter between him and Nevil. I uphold him.' + +'Then, my lord, I am silent.' + +Silent she remained; but Lord Romfrey was also silent: and silence being +a weapon of offence only when it is practised by one out of two, she had +to reflect whether in speaking no further she had finished her business. + +'Captain Baskelett stays at the Castle?' she asked. + +'He likes his quarters there.' + +'Nevil could not go down to Romfrey, my lord. He was obliged to wait, +and see, and help me to entertain, her brother and her husband.' + +'Why, ma'am? But I have no objection to his making the marquis a happy +husband.' + +'He has done what few men would have done, that she may be a self- +respecting wife.' + +'The parson's in that fellow!' Lord Romfrey exclaimed. 'Now I have the +story. She came to him, he declined the gift, and you were turned into +the curtain for them. If he had only been off with her, he would have +done the country good service. Here he's a failure and a nuisance; he's +a common cock-shy for the journals. I'm tired of hearing of him; he's a +stench in our nostrils. He's tired of the woman.' + +'He loves her.' + +'Ma'am, you're hoodwinked. If he refused to have her, there 's a +something he loves better. I don't believe we've bred a downright +lackadaisical donkey in our family: I know him. He's not a fellow for +abstract morality: I know him. It's bargain against bargain with him; +I'll do him that justice. I hear he has ordered the removal of the +Jersey bull from Holdesbury, and the beast is mine,' Lord Romfrey +concluded in a lower key. + +'Nevil has taken him.' + +'Ha! pull and pull, then!' + +'He contends that he is bound by a promise to give an American gentleman +the refusal of the bull, and you must sign an engagement to keep the +animal no longer than two years.' + +'I sign no engagement. I stick to the bull.' + +'Consent to see Nevil to-night, my lord.' + +'When he has apologized to you, I may, ma'am.' + +'Surely he did more, in requesting me to render him a service.' + +'There's not a creature living that fellow wouldn't get to serve him, +if he knew the trick. We should all of us be marching on London at +Shrapnel's heels. The political mania is just as incurable as +hydrophobia, and he's bitten. That's clear.' + +'Bitten perhaps: but not mad. As you have always contended, the true +case is incurable, but it is very rare: and is this one?' + +'It's uncommonly like a true case, though I haven't seen him foam at the +mouth, and shun water-as his mob does.' + +Rosamund restrained some tears, betraying the effort to hide the +moisture. 'I am no match for you, my lord. I try to plead on his +behalf;--I do worse than if I were dumb. This I most earnestly say: he +is the Nevil Beauchamp who fought for his country, and did not abandon +her cause, though he stood there--we had it from Colonel Halkett--a +skeleton: and he is the Nevil who--I am poorly paying my debt to him! +--defended me from the aspersions of his cousin.' + +'Boys!' Lord Romfrey ejaculated. + +'It is the same dispute between them as men.' + +'Have you forgotten my proposal to shield you from liars and +scandalmongers?' + +'Could I ever forget it?' Rosamund appeared to come shining out of a +cloud. 'Princeliest and truest gentleman, I thought you then, and I know +you to be, my dear lord. I fancied I had lived the scandal down. I was +under the delusion that I had grown to be past backbiting: and that no +man could stand before me to insult and vilify me. But, for a woman in +any so-called doubtful position, it seems that the coward will not be +wanting to strike her. In quitting your service, I am able to affirm +that only once during the whole term of it have I consciously overstepped +the line of my duties: it was for Nevil: and Captain Baskelett undertook +to defend your reputation, in consequence.' + +'Has the rascal been questioning your conduct?' The earl frowned. + +'Oh, no! not questioning: he does not question, he accuses: he never +doubted: and what he went shouting as a boy, is plain matter of fact to +him now. He is devoted to you. It was for your sake that he desired me +to keep my name from being mixed up in a scandal he foresaw the +occurrence of in your house.' + +'He permitted himself to sneer at you?' + +'He has the art of sneering. On this occasion he wished to be direct and +personal.' + +'What sort of hints were they?' + +Lord Romfrey strode away from her chair that the answer might be easy to +her, for she was red, and evidently suffering from shame as well as +indignation. + +'The hints we call distinct.' said Rosamund. + +'In words?' + +'In hard words.' + +'Then you won't meet Cecil?' + +Such a question, and the tone of indifference in which it came, surprised +and revolted her so that the unreflecting reply leapt out: + +'I would rather meet a devil.' + +Of how tremblingly, vehemently, and hastily she had said it, she was +unaware. To her lord it was an outcry of nature, astutely touched by him +to put her to proof. + +He continued his long leisurely strides, nodding over his feet. + +Rosamund stood up. She looked a very noble figure in her broad black- +furred robe. 'I have one serious confession to make, sir.' + +'What's that?' said he. + +'I would avoid it, for it cannot lead to particular harm; but I have an +enemy who may poison your ear in my absence. And first I resign my +position. I have forfeited it.' + +'Time goes forward, ma'am, and you go round. Speak to the point. Do you +mean that you toss up the reins of my household?' + +'I do. You trace it to Nevil immediately?' + +'I do. The fellow wants to upset the country, and he begins with me.' + +'You are wrong, my lord. What I have done places me at Captain +Baskelett's mercy. It is too loathsome to think of: worse than the whip; +worse than your displeasure. It might never be known; but the thought +that it might gives me courage. You have said that to protect a woman +everything is permissible. It is your creed, my lord, and because the +world, I have heard you say, is unjust and implacable to women. In some +cases, I think so too. In reality I followed your instructions; I mean, +your example. Cheap chivalry on my part! But it pained me not a little. +I beg to urge that in my defence.' + +'Well, ma'am, you have tied the knot tight enough; perhaps now you'll cut +it,' said the earl. + +Rosamund gasped softly. 'M. le Marquis is a gentleman who, after a life +of dissipation, has been reminded by bad health that he has a young and +beautiful wife.' + +'He dug his pit to fall into it:--he's jealous?' + +She shook her head to indicate the immeasurable. + +'Senile jealousy is anxious to be deceived. He could hardly be deceived +so far as to imagine that Madame la Marquise would visit me, such as I +am, as my guest. Knowingly or not, his very clever sister, a good woman, +and a friend to husband and wife--a Frenchwoman of the purest type--gave +me the title. She insisted on it, and I presumed to guess that she +deemed it necessary for the sake of peace in that home.' + +Lord Romfrey appeared merely inquisitive; his eyebrows were lifted in +permanence; his eyes were mild. + +She continued: 'They leave England in a few hours. They are not likely +to return. I permitted him to address me with the title of countess.' + +'Of Romfrey?' said the earl. + +Rosamund bowed. + +His mouth contracted. She did not expect thunder to issue from it, but +she did fear to hear a sarcasm, or that she would have to endure a deadly +silence: and she was gathering her own lips in imitation of his, to nerve +herself for some stroke to come, when he laughed in his peculiar close- +mouthed manner. + +'I'm afraid you've dished yourself.' + +'You cannot forgive me, my lord?' + +He indulged in more of his laughter, and abruptly summoning gravity, bade +her talk to him of affairs. He himself talked of the condition of the +Castle, and with a certain off-hand contempt of the ladies of the family, +and Cecil's father, Sir John. 'What are they to me?' said he, and he +complained of having been called Last Earl of Romfrey. + +'The line ends undegenerate,' said Rosamund fervidly, though she knew not +where she stood. + +'Ends!' quoth the earl. + +'I must see Stukely,' he added briskly, and stooped to her: 'I beg you to +drive me to my Club, countess.' + +'Oh! sir.' + +'Once a countess, always a countess!' + +'But once an impostor, my lord?' + +'Not always, we'll hope.' + +He enjoyed this little variation in the language of comedy; letting it +drop, to say: 'Be here to-morrow early. Don't chase that family away +from the house. Do as you will, but not a word of Nevil to me: he's a +bad mess in any man's porringer; it's time for me to claim exemption of +him from mine.' + +She dared not let her thoughts flow, for to think was to triumph, and +possibly to be deluded. They came in copious volumes when Lord Romfrey, +alighting at his Club, called to the coachman: 'Drive the countess home.' + +They were not thoughts of triumph absolutely. In her cooler mind she +felt that it was a bad finish of a gallant battle. Few women had risen +against a tattling and pelting world so stedfastly; and would it not have +been better to keep her own ground, which she had won with tears and some +natural strength, and therewith her liberty, which she prized? The +hateful Cecil, a reminder of whom set her cheeks burning and turned her +heart to serpent, had forced her to it. So she honestly conceived, owing +to the circumstance of her honestly disliking the pomps of life and not +desiring to occupy any position of brilliancy. She thought assuredly of +her hoard of animosity toward the scandalmongers, and of the quiet glance +she would cast behind on them, and below. That thought came as a fruit, +not as a reflection. + +But if ever two offending young gentlemen, nephews of a long-suffering +uncle, were circumvented, undermined, and struck to earth, with one blow, +here was the instance. This was accomplished by Lord Romfrey's +resolution to make the lady he had learnt to esteem his countess: and +more, it fixed to him for life one whom he could not bear to think of +losing: and still more, it might be; but what more was unwritten on his +tablets. + +Rosamund failed to recollect that Everard Romfrey never took a step +without seeing a combination of objects to be gained by it. + + + + +CHAPTER XLIV + +THE NEPHEWS OF THE EARL, AND ANOTHER EXHIBITION OF THE TWO PASSIONS IN +BEAUCHAMP + +It was now the season when London is as a lighted tower to her provinces, +and, among other gentlemen hurried thither by attraction, Captain +Baskelett arrived. Although not a personage in the House of Commons, he +was a vote; and if he never committed himself to the perils of a speech, +he made himself heard. His was the part of chorus, which he performed +with a fairly close imitation of the original cries of periods before +parliaments were instituted, thus representing a stage in the human +development besides the borough of Bevisham. He arrived in the best of +moods for the emission of high-pitched vowel-sounds; otherwise in the +worst of tempers. His uncle had notified an addition of his income to +him at Romfrey, together with commands that he should quit the castle +instantly: and there did that woman, Mistress Culling, do the honours to +Nevil Beauchamp's French party. He assured Lord Palmet of his positive +knowledge of the fact, incredible as the sanction of such immoral +proceedings by the Earl of Romfrey must appear to that young nobleman. +Additions to income are of course acceptable, but in the form of a +palpable stipulation for silence, they neither awaken gratitude nor +effect their purpose. Quite the contrary; they prick the moral mind to +sit in judgement on the donor. It means, she fears me! Cecil +confidently thought and said of the intriguing woman who managed his +patron. + +The town-house was open to him. Lord Romfrey was at Steynham. Cecil +could not suppose that he was falling into a pit in entering it. He +happened to be the favourite of the old housekeeper, who liked him for +his haughtiness, which was to her thinking the sign of real English +nobility, and perhaps it is the popular sign, and a tonic to the people. +She raised lamentations over the shame of the locking of the door against +him that awful night, declaring she had almost mustered courage to go +down to him herself, in spite of Mrs. Calling's orders. The old woman +lowered her voice to tell him that her official superior had permitted +the French gentleman and ladies to call her countess. This she knew for +a certainty, though she knew nothing of French; but the French lady who +came second brought a maid who knew English a little, and she said the +very words--the countess, and said also that her party took Mrs. Culling +for the Countess of Romfrey. What was more, my lord's coachman caught it +up, and he called her countess, and he had a quarrel about it with the +footman Kendall; and the day after a dreadful affair between them in the +mews, home drives madam, and Kendall is to go up to her, and down the +poor man comes, and not a word to be got out of him, but as if he had +seen a ghost. 'She have such power,' Cecil's admirer concluded. + +'I wager I match her,' Cecil said to himself, pulling at his wristbands +and letting his lower teeth shine out. The means of matching her were +not so palpable as the resolution. First he took men into his +confidence. Then he touched lightly on the story to ladies, with the +question, 'What ought I to do?' In consideration for the Earl of Romfrey +he ought not to pass it over, he suggested. The ladies of the family +urged him to go to Steynham and boldly confront the woman. He was not +prepared for that. Better, it seemed to him, to blow the rumour, and +make it the topic of the season, until Lord Romfrey should hear of it. +Cecil had the ear of the town for a month. He was in the act of slicing +the air with his right hand in his accustomed style, one evening at Lady +Elsea's, to protest how vast was the dishonour done to the family by +Mistress Culling, when Stukely Culbrett stopped him, saying, 'The lady +you speak of is the Countess of Romfrey. I was present at the marriage.' + +Cecil received the shock in the attitude of those martial figures we see +wielding two wooden swords in provincial gardens to tell the disposition +of the wind: abruptly abandoned by it, they stand transfixed, one sword +aloft, the other at their heels. The resemblance extended to his +astonished countenance. His big chest heaved. Like many another wounded +giant before him, he experienced the insufficiency of interjections to +solace pain. For them, however, the rocks were handy to fling, the trees +to uproot; heaven's concave resounded companionably to their bellowings. +Relief of so concrete a kind is not to be obtained in crowded London +assemblies. + +'You are jesting?--you are a jester,' he contrived to say. + +'It was a private marriage, and I was a witness,' replied Stukely. + +'Lord Romfrey has made an honest woman of her, has he?' + +'A peeress, you mean.' + +Cecil bowed. 'Exactly. I am corrected. I mean a peeress.' + +He got out of the room with as high an air as he could command, feeling +as if a bar of iron had flattened his head. + +Next day it was intimated to him by one of the Steynham servants that +apartments were ready for him at the residence of the late earl: Lord +Romfrey's house was about to be occupied by the Countess of Romfrey. +Cecil had to quit, and he chose to be enamoured of that dignity of +sulking so seductive to the wounded spirit of man. + +Rosamund, Countess of Romfrey, had worse to endure from Beauchamp. +He indeed came to the house, and he went through the formalities of +congratulation, but his opinion of her step was unconcealed, that she had +taken it for the title. He distressed her by reviving the case of Dr. +Shrapnel, as though it were a matter of yesterday, telling her she had +married a man with a stain on him; she should have exacted the Apology +as a nuptial present; ay, and she would have done it if she had cared +for the earl's honour or her own. So little did he understand men! so +tenacious was he of his ideas! She had almost forgotten the case of +Dr. Shrapnel, and to see it shooting up again in the new path of her +life was really irritating. + +Rosamund did not defend herself. + +'I am very glad you have come, Nevil,' she said; 'your uncle holds to the +ceremony. I may be of real use to you now; I wish to be.' + +'You have only to prove it,' said he. 'If you can turn his mind to +marriage, you can send him to Bevisham.' + +'My chief thought is to serve you.' + +'I know it is, I know it is,' he rejoined with some fervour. 'You have +served me, and made me miserable for life, and rightly. Never mind, +all's well while the hand's to the axe.' Beauchamp smoothed his forehead +roughly, trying hard to inspire himself with the tonic draughts of +sentiments cast in the form of proverbs. 'Lord Romfrey saw her, you +say?' + +'He did, Nevil, and admired her.' + +'Well, if I suffer, let me think of her! For courage and nobleness I +shall never find her equal. Have you changed your ideas of Frenchwomen +now? Not a word, you say, not a look, to show her disdain of me whenever +my name was mentioned!' + +'She could scarcely feel disdain. She was guilty of a sad error.' + +'Through trusting in me. Will nothing teach you where the fault lies? +You women have no mercy for women. She went through the parade to +Romfrey Castle and back, and she must have been perishing at heart. +That, you English call acting. In history you have a respect for such +acting up to the scaffold. Good-bye to her! There's a story ended. +One thing you must promise: you're a peeress, ma'am: the story's out, +everybody has heard of it; that babbler has done his worst: if you have +a becoming appreciation of your title, you will promise me honestly--no, +give me your word as a woman I can esteem--that you will not run about +excusing me. Whatever you hear said or suggested, say nothing yourself. +I insist on your keeping silence. Press my hand.' + +'Nevil, how foolish!' + +'It's my will.' + +'It is unreasonable. You give your enemies licence.' + +'I know what's in your head. Take my hand, and let me have your word for +it.' + +'But if persons you like very much, Nevil, should hear?' + +'Promise. You are a woman not to break your word.' + +'If I decline?' + +'Your hand! I'll kiss it.' + +'Oh! my darling.' Rosamund flung her arms round him and strained him an +instant to her bosom. 'What have I but you in the world? My comfort was +the hope that I might serve you.' + +'Yes! by slaying one woman as an offering to another. It would be +impossible for you to speak the truth. Don't you see, it would be a lie +against her, and making a figure of me that a man would rather drop to +the ground than have shown of him? I was to blame, and only I. Madame +de Rouaillout was as utterly deceived by me as ever a trusting woman by a +brute. I look at myself and hardly believe it 's the same man. I wrote +to her that I was unchanged--and I was entirely changed, another +creature, anything Lord Romfrey may please to call me.' + +'But, Nevil, I repeat, if Miss Halkett should hear . . . ?' + +'She knows by this time.' + +'At present she is ignorant of it.' + +'And what is Miss Halkett to me?' + +'More than you imagined in that struggle you underwent, I think, Nevil. +Oh! if only to save her from Captain Baskelett! He gained your uncle's +consent when they were at the Castle, to support him in proposing for +her. He is persistent. Women have been snared without loving. She is +a great heiress. Reflect on his use of her wealth. You respect her, +if you have no warmer feeling. Let me assure you that the husband of +Cecilia, if he is of Romfrey blood, has the fairest chance of the +estates. That man will employ every weapon. He will soon be here bowing +to me to turn me to his purposes.' + +'Cecilia can see through Baskelett,' said Beauchamp. + +'Single-mindedly selfish men may be seen through and through, and still +be dangerous, Nevil. The supposition is, that we know the worst of them. +He carries a story to poison her mind. She could resist it, if you and +she were in full confidence together. If she did not love you, she could +resist it. She does, and for some strange reason beyond my capacity to +fathom, you have not come to an understanding. Sanction my speaking to +her, just to put her on her guard, privately: not to injure that poor +lady, but to explain. Shall she not know the truth? I need say but very +little. Indeed, all I can say is, that finding the marquise in London +one evening, you telegraphed for me to attend on her, and I joined you. +You shake your head. But surely it is due to Miss Halkett. She should +be protected from what will certainly wound her deeply. Her father is +afraid of you, on the score of your theories. I foresee it: he will hear +the scandal: he will imagine you as bad in morals as in politics. And +you have lost your friend in Lord Romfrey--though he shall not be your +enemy. Colonel Halkett and Cecilia called on us at Steynham. She was +looking beautiful; a trifle melancholy. The talk was of your--that--I do +not like it, but you hold those opinions--the Republicanism. She had +read your published letters. She spoke to me of your sincerity. Colonel +Halkett of course was vexed. + +It is the same with all your friends. She, however, by her tone, led me +to think that she sees you as you are, more than in what you do. They +are now in Wales. They will be in town after Easter. Then you must +expect that her feeling for you will be tried, unless but you will! You +will let me speak to her, Nevil. My position allows me certain liberties +I was previously debarred from. You have not been so very tender to your +Cecilia that you can afford to give her fresh reasons for sorrowful +perplexity. And why should you stand to be blackened by scandalmongers +when a few words of mine will prove that instead of weak you have been +strong, instead of libertine blameless? I am not using fine phrases: I +would not. I would be as thoughtful of you as if you were present. And +for her sake, I repeat, the truth should be told to her. I have a lock +of her hair.' + +'Cecilia's? Where?' said Beauchamp. + +'It is at Steynham.' Rosamund primmed her lips at the success of her +probing touch; but she was unaware of the chief reason for his doting on +those fair locks, and how they coloured his imagination since the day of +the drive into Bevisham. + +'Now leave me, my dear Nevil,' she said. 'Lord Romfrey will soon be +here, and it is as well for the moment that you should not meet him, if +it can be avoided.' + +Beauchamp left her, like a man out-argued and overcome. He had no wish +to meet his uncle, whose behaviour in contracting a misalliance and +casting a shadow on the family, in a manner so perfectly objectless and +senseless, appeared to him to call for the reverse of compliments. +Cecilia's lock of hair lying at Steynham hung in his mind. He saw the +smooth flat curl lying secret like a smile. + +The graceful head it had fallen from was dimmer in his mental eye. He +went so far in this charmed meditation as to feel envy of the possessor +of the severed lock: passingly he wondered, with the wonder of reproach, +that the possessor should deem it enough to possess the lock, and resign +it to a drawer or a desk. And as when life rolls back on us after the +long ebb of illness, little whispers and diminutive images of the old +joys and prizes of life arrest and fill our hearts; or as, to men who +have been beaten down by storms, the opening of a daisy is dearer than +the blazing orient which bids it open; so the visionary lock of Cecilia's +hair became Cecilia's self to Beauchamp, yielding him as much of her as +he could bear to think of, for his heart was shattered. + +Why had she given it to his warmest friend? For the asking, probably. + +This question was the first ripple of the breeze from other emotions +beginning to flow fast. + +He walked out of London, to be alone, and to think and from the palings +of a road on a South-western run of high land, he gazed, at the great +city--a place conquerable yet, with the proper appliances for subjugating +it: the starting of his daily newspaper, THE DAWN, say, as a +commencement. It began to seem a possible enterprise. It soon seemed a +proximate one. If Cecilia! He left the exclamation a blank, but not an +empty dash in the brain; rather like the shroud of night on a vast and +gloriously imagined land. + +Nay, the prospect was partly visible, as the unknown country becomes by +degrees to the traveller's optics on the dark hill-tops. It is much, of +course, to be domestically well-mated: but to be fortified and armed by +one's wife with a weapon to fight the world, is rare good fortune; a +rapturous and an infinite satisfaction. He could now support of his own +resources a weekly paper. A paper published weekly, however, is a poor +thing, out of the tide, behind the date, mainly a literary periodical, no +foremost combatant in politics, no champion in the arena; hardly better +than a commentator on the events of the six past days; an echo, not a +voice. It sits on a Saturday bench and pretends to sum up. Who listens? +The verdict knocks dust out of a cushion. It has no steady continuous +pressure of influence. It is the organ of sleepers. Of all the bigger +instruments of money, it is the feeblest, Beauchamp thought. His +constant faith in the good effects of utterance naturally inclined him to +value six occasions per week above one; and in the fight he was for +waging, it was necessary that he should enter the ring and hit blow for +blow sans intermission. A statement that he could call false must be +challenged hot the next morning. The covert Toryism, the fits of +flunkeyism, the cowardice, of the relapsing middle-class, which is now +England before mankind, because it fills the sails of the Press, must be +exposed. It supports the Press in its own interests, affecting to speak +for the people. It belies the people. And this Press, declaring itself +independent, can hardly walk for fear of treading on an interest here, an +interest there. It cannot have a conscience. It is a bad guide, a false +guardian; its abject claim to be our national and popular interpreter- +even that is hollow and a mockery! It is powerful only while +subservient. An engine of money, appealing to the sensitiveness of +money, it has no connection with the mind of the nation. And that it is +not of, but apart from, the people, may be seen when great crises come. +Can it stop a war? The people would, and with thunder, had they the +medium. But in strong gales the power of the Press collapses; it wheezes +like a pricked pigskin of a piper. At its best Beauchamp regarded our +lordly Press as a curiously diapered curtain and delusive mask, behind +which the country struggles vainly to show an honest feature; and as a +trumpet that deafened and terrorized the people; a mere engine of +leaguers banded to keep a smooth face upon affairs, quite soullessly: +he meanwhile having to be dumb. + +But a Journal that should be actually independent of circulation and +advertisements: a popular journal in the true sense, very lungs to the +people, for them to breathe freely through at last, and be heard out of +it, with well-paid men of mark to head and aid them;--the establishment +of such a Journal seemed to him brave work of a life, though one should +die early. The money launching it would be coin washed pure of its +iniquity of selfish reproduction, by service to mankind. This DAWN of +his conception stood over him like a rosier Aurora for the country. He +beheld it in imagination as a new light rising above hugeous London. You +turn the sheets of THE DAWN, and it is the manhood of the land addressing +you, no longer that alternately puling and insolent cry of the coffers. +The health, wealth, comfort, contentment of the greater number are there +to be striven for, in contempt of compromise and 'unseasonable times.' + +Beauchamp's illuminated dream of the power of his DAWN to vitalize old +England, liberated him singularly from his wearing regrets and heart- +sickness. + +Surely Cecilia, who judged him sincere, might be bent to join hands with +him for so good a work! She would bring riches to her husband: +sufficient. He required the ablest men of the country to write for him, +and it was just that they should be largely paid. They at least in their +present public apathy would demand it. To fight the brewers, distillers, +publicans, the shopkeepers, the parsons, the landlords, the law limpets, +and also the indifferents, the logs, the cravens and the fools, high +talent was needed, and an ardour stimulated by rates of pay outdoing the +offers of the lucre-journals. A large annual outlay would therefore be +needed; possibly for as long as a quarter of a century. Cecilia and her +husband would have to live modestly. But her inheritance would be +immense. Colonel Halkett had never spent a tenth of his income. In time +he might be taught to perceive in THE DAWN the one greatly beneficent +enterprise of his day. He might through his daughter's eyes, and the +growing success of the Journal. Benevolent and gallant old man, +patriotic as he was, and kind at heart, he might learn to see in THE DAWN +a broader channel of philanthropy and chivalry than any we have yet had a +notion of in England!--a school of popular education into the bargain. + +Beauchamp reverted to the shining curl. It could not have been clearer +to vision if it had lain under his eyes. + +Ay, that first wild life of his was dead. He had slain it. Now for the +second and sober life! Who can say? The Countess of Romfrey suggested +it:--Cecilia may have prompted him in his unknown heart to the sacrifice +of a lawless love, though he took it for simply barren iron duty. +Brooding on her, he began to fancy the victory over himself less and less +a lame one: for it waxed less and less difficult in his contemplation of +it. He was looking forward instead of back. + +Who cut off the lock? Probably Cecilia herself; and thinking at the +moment that he would see it, perhaps beg for it. The lustrous little +ring of hair wound round his heart; smiled both on its emotions and its +aims; bound them in one. + +But proportionately as he grew tender to Cecilia, his consideration for +Renee increased; that became a law to him: pity nourished it, and +glimpses of self-contempt, and something like worship of her high- +heartedness. + +He wrote to the countess, forbidding her sharply and absolutely to +attempt a vindication of him by explanations to any persons whomsoever; +and stating that he would have no falsehoods told, he desired her to keep +to the original tale of the visit of the French family to her as guests +of the Countess of Romfrey. Contradictory indeed. Rosamund shook her +head over him. For a wilful character that is guilty of issuing +contradictory commands to friends who would be friends in spite of him, +appears to be expressly angling for the cynical spirit, so surely does it +rise and snap at such provocation. He was even more emphatic when they +next met. He would not listen to a remonstrance; and though, of course, +her love of him granted him the liberty to speak to her in what tone he +pleased, there were sensations proper to her new rank which his +intemperateness wounded and tempted to revolt when he vexed her with +unreason. She had a glimpse of the face he might wear to his enemies. + +He was quite as resolute, too, about that slight matter of the Jersey +bull. He had the bull in Bevisham, and would not give him up without the +sign manual of Lord Romfrey to an agreement to resign him over to the +American Quaker gentleman, after a certain term. Moreover, not once had +he, by exclamation or innuendo, during the period of his recent grief for +the loss of his first love, complained of his uncle Everard's refusal in +the old days to aid him in suing for Renee. Rosamund had expected that +he would. She thought it unloverlike in him not to stir the past, and to +bow to intolerable facts. This idea of him, coming in conjunction with +his present behaviour, convinced her that there existed a contradiction +in his nature: whence it ensued that she lost her warmth as an advocate +designing to intercede for him with Cecilia; and warmth being gone, the +power of the scandal seemed to her unassailable. How she could ever have +presumed to combat it, was an astonishment to her. Cecilia might be +indulgent, she might have faith in Nevil. Little else could be hoped +for. + +The occupations, duties, and ceremonies of her new position contributed +to the lassitude into which Rosamund sank. And she soon had a +communication to make to her lord, the nature of which was more startling +to herself, even tragic. The bondwoman is a free woman compared with the +wife. + +Lord Romfrey's friends noticed a glow of hearty health in the splendid +old man, and a prouder animation of eye and stature; and it was agreed +that matrimony suited him well. Luckily for Cecil he did not sulk very +long. A spectator of the earl's first introduction to the House of +Peers, he called on his uncle the following day, and Rosamund accepted +his homage in her husband's presence. He vowed that my lord was the +noblest figure in the whole assembly; that it had been to him the most +moving sight he had ever witnessed; that Nevil should have been there to +see it and experience what he had felt; it would have done old Nevil +incalculable good! and as far as his grief at the idea and some reticence +would let him venture, he sighed to think of the last Earl of Romfrey +having been seen by him taking the seat of his fathers. + +Lord Romfrey shouted 'Ha!' like a checked peal of laughter, and glanced +at his wife. + + + + +CHAPTER XLV + +A LITTLE PLOT AGAINST CECILIA + +Some days before Easter week Seymour Austin went to Mount Laurels for +rest, at an express invitation from Colonel Halkett. The working +barrister, who is also a working member of Parliament, is occasionally +reminded that this mortal machine cannot adapt itself in perpetuity to +the long hours of labour by night in the House of Commons as well as by +day in the Courts, which would seem to have been arranged by a compliant +country for the purpose of aiding his particular, and most honourable, +ambition to climb, while continuing to fill his purse. Mr. Austin +broke down early in the year. He attributed it to a cold. Other +representative gentlemen were on their backs, of whom he could admit that +the protracted nightwork had done them harm, with the reservation that +their constitutions were originally unsound. But the House cannot get on +without lawyers, and lawyers must practise their profession, and if they +manage both to practise all day and sit half the night, others should be +able to do the simple late sitting; and we English are an energetic +people, we must toil or be beaten: and besides, 'night brings counsel,' +men are cooler and wiser by night. Any amount of work can be performed +by careful feeders: it is the stomach that kills the Englishman. Brains +are never the worse for activity; they subsist on it. + +These arguments and citations, good and absurd, of a man more at home in +his harness than out of it, were addressed to the colonel to stop his +remonstrances and idle talk about burning the candle at both ends. To +that illustration Mr. Austin replied that he did not burn it in the +middle. + +'But you don't want money, Austin.' + +'No; but since I've had the habit of making it I have taken to like it.' + +'But you're not ambitious.' + +'Very little; but I should be sorry to be out of the tideway.' + +'I call it a system of slaughter,' said the colonel; and Mr. Austin said, +'The world goes in that way--love and slaughter.' + +'Not suicide though,' Colonel Halkett muttered. + +'No, that's only incidental.' + +The casual word 'love' led Colonel Halkett to speak to Cecilia of an old +love-affair of Seymour Austin's, in discussing the state of his health +with her. The lady was the daughter of a famous admiral, handsome, and +latterly of light fame. Mr. Austin had nothing to regret in her having +married a man richer than himself. + +'I wish he had married a good woman,' said the colonel. + +'He looks unwell, papa.' + +'He thinks you're looking unwell, my dear.' + +'He thinks that of me?' + +Cecilia prepared a radiant face for Mr. Austin. + +She forgot to keep it kindled, and he suspected her to be a victim of one +of the forms of youthful melancholy, and laid stress on the benefit to +health of a change of scene. + +'We have just returned from Wales,' she said. + +He remarked that it was hardly a change to be within shot of our +newspapers. + +The colour left her cheeks. She fancied her father had betrayed her to +the last man who should know her secret. Beauchamp and the newspapers +were rolled together in her mind by the fever of apprehension wasting her +ever since his declaration of Republicanism, and defence of it, and an +allusion to one must imply the other, she feared: feared, but far from +quailingly. She had come to think that she could read the man she loved, +and detect a reasonableness in his extravagance. Her father had +discovered the impolicy of attacking Beauchamp in her hearing. The fever +by which Cecilia was possessed on her lover's behalf, often overcame +discretion, set her judgement in a whirl, was like a delirium. How it +had happened she knew not. She knew only her wretched state; a frenzy +seized her whenever his name was uttered, to excuse, account for, all but +glorify him publicly. And the immodesty of her conduct was perceptible +to her while she thus made her heart bare. She exposed herself once of +late at Itchincope, and had tried to school her tongue before she went +there. She felt that she should inevitably be seen through by Seymour +Austin if he took the world's view of Beauchamp, and this to her was like +a descent on the rapids to an end one shuts eyes from. + +He noticed her perturbation, and spoke of it to her father. + +'Yes, I'm very miserable about her,' the colonel confessed. 'Girls don't +see . . . they can't guess . . . they have no idea of the right +kind of man for them. A man like Blackburn Tuckham, now, a man a father +could leave his girl to, with confidence! He works for me like a slave; +I can't guess why. He doesn't look as if he were attracted. There's a +man! but, no; harum-scarum fellows take their fancy.' + +'Is she that kind of young lady?' said Mr. Austin. + +'No one would have thought so. She pretends to have opinions upon +politics now. It's of no use to talk of it!' + +But Beauchamp was fully indicated. + +Mr. Austin proposed to Cecilia that they should spend Easter week in +Rome. + +Her face lighted and clouded. + +'I should like it,' she said, negatively. + +'What's the objection?' + +'None, except that Mount Laurels in Spring has grown dear to me; and we +have engagements in London. I am not quick, I suppose, at new projects. +I have ordered the yacht to be fitted out for a cruise in the +Mediterranean early in the Summer. There is an objection, I am sure-- +yes; papa has invited Mr. Tuckham here for Easter.' + +'We could carry him with us.' + +'Yes, but I should wish to be entirely under your tutelage in Rome.' + +'We would pair: your father and he; you and I.' + +'We might do that. But Mr. Tuckham is like you, devoted to work; and, +unlike you, careless of Antiquities and Art.' + +'He is a hard and serious worker, and therefore the best of companions +for a holiday. At present he is working for the colonel, who would +easily persuade him to give over, and come with us.' + +'He certainly does love papa,' said Cecilia. + +Mr. Austin dwelt on that subject. + +Cecilia perceived that she had praised Mr. Tuckham for his devotedness to +her father without recognizing the beauty of nature in the young man who +could voluntarily take service under the elder he esteemed, in simple +admiration of him. Mr. Austin scarcely said so much, or expected her to +see the half of it, but she wished to be extremely grateful, and could +only see at all by kindling altogether. + +'He does himself injustice in his manner,' said Cecilia. + +'That has become somewhat tempered,' Mr. Austin assured her, and he +acknowledged what it had been with a smile that she reciprocated. + +A rough man of rare quality civilizing under various influences, and half +ludicrous, a little irritating, wholly estimable, has frequently won the +benign approbation of the sex. In addition, this rough man over whom she +smiled was one of the few that never worried her concerning her hand. +There was not a whisper of it in him. He simply loved her father. + +Cecilia welcomed him to Mount Laurels with grateful gladness. The +colonel had hastened Mr. Tuckham's visit in view of the expedition to +Rome, and they discoursed of it at the luncheon table. Mr. Tuckham let +fall that he had just seen Beauchamp. + +'Did he thank you for his inheritance?' Colonel Halkett inquired. + +'Not he!' Tuckham replied jovially. + +Cecilia's eyes, quick to flash, were dropped. + +The colonel said: 'I suppose you told him nothing of what you had done +for him?' and said Tuckham: 'Oh no: what anybody else would have done'; +and proceeded to recount that he had called at Dr. Shrapnel's on the +chance of an interview with his friend Lydiard, who used generally to be +hanging about the cottage. 'But now he's free: his lunatic wife is dead, +and I'm happy to think I was mistaken as to Miss Denham. Men practising +literature should marry women with money. The poor girl changed colour +when I informed her he had been released for upwards of three months. +The old Radical's not the thing in health. He's anxious about leaving +her alone in the world; he said so to me. Beauchamp's for rigging out a +yacht to give him a sail. It seems that salt water did him some good +last year. They're both of them rather the worse for a row at one of +their meetings in the North in support of that public nuisance, the +democrat and atheist Roughleigh. The Radical doctor lost a hat, and +Beauchamp almost lost an eye. He would have been a Nelson of politics, +if he had been a monops, with an excuse for not seeing. It's a trifle to +them; part of their education. They call themselves students. Rome will +be capital, Miss Halkett. You're an Italian scholar, and I beg to be +accepted as a pupil.' + +'I fear we have postponed the expedition too long,' said Cecilia. She +could have sunk with languor. + +'Too long?' cried Colonel Halkett, mystified. + +'Until too late, I mean, papa. Do you not think, Mr. Austin, that a +fortnight in Rome is too short a time?' + +'Not if we make it a month, my dear Cecilia.' + +'Is not our salt air better for you? The yacht shall be fitted out.' + +'I'm a poor sailor!' + +'Besides, a hasty excursion to Italy brings one's anticipated regrets at +the farewell too close to the pleasure of beholding it, for the enjoyment +of that luxury of delight which I associate with the name of Italy.' + +'Why, my dear child,' said her father, 'you were all for going, the other +day.' + +'I do not remember it,' said she. 'One plans agreeable schemes. At +least we need not hurry from home so very soon after our return. We have +been travelling incessantly. The cottage in Wales is not home. It is +hardly fair to Mount Laurels to quit it without observing the changes of +the season in our flowers and birds here. And we have visitors coming. +Of course, papa, I would not chain you to England. If I am not well +enough to accompany you, I can go to Louise for a few weeks.' + +Was ever transparency so threadbare? Cecilia shrank from herself in +contemplating it when she was alone; and Colonel Halkett put the question +to Mr. Austin, saying to him privately, with no further reserve: 'It's +that fellow Beauchamp in the neighbourhood; I'm not so blind. He'll be +knocking at my door, and I can't lock him out. Austin, would you guess +it was my girl speaking? I never in my life had such an example of +intoxication before me. I 'm perfectly miserable at the sight. You. +know her; she was the proudest girl living. Her ideas were orderly and +sound; she had a good intellect. Now she more than half defends him-- +a naval officer! good Lord!--for getting up in a public room to announce +that he 's a Republican, and writing heaps of mad letters to justify +himself. He's ruined in his profession: hopeless! He can never get a +ship: his career's cut short, he's a rudderless boat. A gentleman +drifting to Bedlam, his uncle calls him. I call his treatment of Grancey +Lespel anything but gentlemanly. This is the sort of fellow my girl +worships! What can I do? I can't interdict the house to him: it would +only make matters worse. Thank God, the fellow hangs fire somehow, and +doesn't come to me. I expect it every day, either in a letter or the man +in person. And I declare to heaven I'd rather be threading a Khyber Pass +with my poor old friend who fell to a shot there.' + +'She certainly has another voice,' Mr. Austin assented gravely. + +He did not look on Beauchamp as the best of possible husbands for +Cecilia. + +'Let her see that you're anxious, Austin,' said the colonel. 'I'm her +old opponent in this affair. She loves me, but she's accustomed to think +me prejudiced: you she won't. You may have a good effect.' + +'Not by speaking.' + +'No, no; no assault: not a word, and not a word against him. Lay the +wind to catch a gossamer. I've had my experience of blowing cold, and +trying to run her down. He's at Shrapnel's. He'll be up here to-day, +and I have an engagement in the town. Don't quit her side. Let her +fancy you are interested in some discussion--Radicalism, if you like.' + +Mr. Austin readily undertook to mount guard over her while her father +rode into Bevisham on business. + +The enemy appeared. + +Cecilia saw him, and could not step to meet him for trouble of heart. +It was bliss to know that he lived and was near. + +A transient coldness following the fit of ecstasy enabled her to swin +through the terrible first minutes face to face with him. + +He folded her round like a mist; but it grew a problem to understand why +Mr. Austin should be perpetually at hand, in the garden, in the woods, in +the drawing-room, wheresoever she wakened up from one of her trances to +see things as they were. + +Yet Beauchamp, with a daring and cunning at which her soul exulted, and +her feminine nature trembled, as at the divinely terrible, had managed to +convey to her no less than if they had been alone together. + +His parting words were: 'I must have five minutes with your father to- +morrow.' + +How had she behaved? What could be Seymour Austin's idea of her? + +She saw the blind thing that she was, the senseless thing, the shameless; +and vulture-like in her scorn of herself, she alighted on that disgraced +Cecilia and picked her to pieces hungrily. It was clear: Beauchamp had +meant nothing beyond friendly civility: it was only her abject greediness +pecking at crumbs. No! he loved her. Could a woman's heart be mistaken? +She melted and wept, thanking him: she offered him her remnant of pride, +pitiful to behold. + +And still she asked herself between-whiles whether it could be true of an +English lady of our day, that she, the fairest stature under sun, was +ever knowingly twisted to this convulsion. She seemed to look forth from +a barred window on flower, and field, and hill. Quietness existed as a +vision. Was it impossible to embrace it? How pass into it? By +surrendering herself to the flames, like a soul unto death! For why, if +they were overpowering, attempt to resist them? It flattered her to +imagine that she had been resisting them in their present burning might +ever since her lover stepped on the Esperanza's deck at the mouth of +Otley River. How foolish, seeing that they are fatal! A thrill of +satisfaction swept her in reflecting that her ability to reason was thus +active. And she was instantly rewarded for surrendering; pain fled, to +prove her reasoning good; the flames devoured her gently they cared not +to torture so long as they had her to themselves. + +At night, candle in hand, on the corridor, her father told her he had +come across Grancey Lespel in Bevisham, and heard what he had not quite +relished of the Countess of Romfrey. The glittering of Cecilia's eyes +frightened him. Taking her for the moment to know almost as much as he, +the colonel doubted the weight his communication would have on her; he +talked obscurely of a scandalous affair at Lord Romfrey's house in town, +and Beauchamp and that Frenchwoman. 'But,' said he, 'Mrs. Grancey will +be here to-morrow.' + +'So will Nevil, papa,' said Cecilia. + +'Ah! he's coming, yes; well!' the colonel puffed. 'Well, I shall see +him, of course, but I . . . I can only say that if his oath 's worth +having, I . . . and I think you too, my dear, if you . . . but it's +no use anticipating. I shall stand out for your honour and happiness. +There, your cheeks are flushed. Go and sleep.' + +Some idle tale! Cecilia murmured to herself a dozen times, undisturbed +by the recurrence of it. Nevil was coming to speak to her father +tomorrow! Adieu to doubt and division! Happy to-morrow! and dear Mount +Laurels! The primroses were still fair in the woods: and soon the +cowslips would come, and the nightingale; she lay lapt in images of +everything innocently pleasing to Nevil. Soon the Esperanza would be +spreading wings. She revelled in a picture of the yacht on a tumbling +Mediterranean Sea, meditating on the two specks near the tiller,--who +were blissful human creatures, blest by heaven and in themselves--with +luxurious Olympian benevolence. + +For all that, she awoke, starting up in the first cold circle of +twilight, her heart in violent action. She had dreamed that the vessel +was wrecked. 'I did not think myself so cowardly,' she said aloud, +pressing her side and then, with the dream in her eyes, she gasped: 'It +would be together!' + +Strangely chilled, she tried to recover some fallen load. The birds of +the dawn twittered, chirped, dived aslant her window, fluttered back. +Instead of a fallen load, she fancied presently that it was an +expectation she was desiring to realize: but what? What could be +expected at that hour? She quitted her bed, and paced up and down the +room beneath a gold-starred ceiling. Her expectation, she resolved to +think, was of a splendid day of the young Spring at Mount Laurels--a day +to praise to Nevil. + +She raised her window-blind at a window letting in sweet air, to gather +indications of promising weather. Her lover stood on the grass-plot +among the flower-beds below, looking up, as though it had been his +expectation to see her which had drawn her to gaze out with an idea of +some expectation of her own. So visionary was his figure in the grey +solitariness of the moveless morning that she stared at the apparition, +scarce putting faith in him as man, until he kissed his hand to her, and +had softly called her name. + +Impulsively she waved a hand from her lips. + +Now there was no retreat for either of them! + +She awoke to this conviction after a flight of blushes that burnt her +thoughts to ashes as they sprang. Thoughts born blushing, all of the +crimson colour, a rose-garden, succeeded, and corresponding with their +speed her feet paced the room, both slender hands crossed at her throat +under an uplifted chin, and the curves of her dark eyelashes dropped as +in a swoon. + +'He loves me!' The attestation of it had been visible. 'No one but me!' +Was that so evident? + +Her father picked up silly stories of him--a man who made enemies +recklessly! + +Cecilia was petrified by a gentle tapping at her door. Her father called +to her, and she threw on her dressing-gown, and opened the door. + +The colonel was in his riding-suit. + +'I haven't slept a wink, and I find it's the same with you,' he said, +paining her with his distressed kind eyes. 'I ought not to have hinted +anything last night without proofs. Austin's as unhappy as I am.' + +'At what, my dear papa, at what?' cried Cecilia. + +'I ride over to Steynham this morning, and I shall bring you proofs, my +poor child, proofs. That foreign tangle of his . . .' + +'You speak of Nevil, papa?' + +'It's a common scandal over London. That Frenchwoman was found at Lord +Romfrey's house; Lady Romfrey cloaked it. I believe the woman would +swear black's white to make Nevil Beauchamp appear an angel; and he's a +desperately cunning hand with women. You doubt that.' + +She had shuddered slightly. + +'You won't doubt if I bring you proofs. Till I come back from Steynham, +I ask you not to see him alone: not to go out to him.' + +The colonel glanced at her windows. + +Cecilia submitted to the request, out of breath, consenting to feel like +a tutored girl, that she might conceal her guilty knowledge of what was +to be seen through the windows. + +'Now I'm off,' said he, and kissed her. + +'If you would accept Nevil's word!' she murmured. + +'Not where women are concerned!' + +He left her with this remark, which found no jealous response in her +heart, yet ranged over certain dispersed inflammable grains, like a match +applied to damp powder; again and again running in little leaps of +harmless firm keeping her alive to its existence, and surprising her +that it should not have been extinguished. + +Beauchamp presented himself rather late in the afternoon, when Mr. Austin +and Blackburn Tuckham were sipping tea in Cecilia's boudoir with that +lady, and a cousin of her sex, by whom she was led to notice a faint +discoloration over one of his eyes, that was, considering whence it came, +repulsive to compassion. A blow at a Radical meeting! He spoke of Dr. +Shrapnel to Tuckham, and assuredly could not complain that the latter was +unsympathetic in regard to the old man's health, though when he said, +'Poor old man! he fears he will die!' Tuckham rejoined: 'He had better +make his peace.' + +'He fears he will die, because of his leaving Miss Denham unprotected,' +said Beauchamp. + +'Well, she's a good-looking girl: he'll be able to leave her something, +and he might easily get her married, I should think,' said Tuckham. + +'He's not satisfied with handing her to any kind of man.' + +'If the choice is to be among Radicals and infidels, I don't wonder. He +has come to one of the tests.' + +Cecilia heard Beauchamp speaking of a newspaper. A great Radical +Journal, unmatched in sincerity, superior in ability, soon to be equal in +power, to the leader and exemplar of the lucre-Press, would some day see +the light. + +'You'll want money for that,' said Tuckham. + +'I know,' said Beauchamp. + +'Are you prepared to stand forty or fifty thousand a year?' + +'It need not be half so much., + +'Counting the libels, I rate the outlay rather low.' + +'Yes, lawyers, judges, and juries of tradesmen, dealing justice to a +Radical print!' + +Tuckham brushed his hand over his mouth and ahemed. 'It's to be a penny +journal?' + +'Yes, a penny. I'd make it a farthing--' + +'Pay to have it read?' + +'Willingly.' + +Tuckham did some mental arithmetic, quaintly, with rapidly blinking +eyelids and open mouth. 'You may count it at the cost of two paying +mines,' he said firmly. 'That is, if it's to be a consistently Radical +Journal, at law with everybody all round the year. And by the time it +has won a reputation, it will be undermined by a radicaller Radical +Journal. That's how we've lowered the country to this level. That's an +Inferno of Circles, down to the ultimate mire. And what on earth are you +contending for?' + +'Freedom of thought, for one thing.' + +'We have quite enough free-thinking.' + +'There's not enough if there's not perfect freedom.' + +'Dangerous!' quoth Mr. Austin. + +'But it's that danger which makes men, sir; and it's fear of the danger +that makes our modern Englishman.' + +'Oh! Oh!' cried Tuckham in the voice of a Parliamentary Opposition. +'Well, you start your paper, we'll assume it: what class of men will you +get to write?' + +'I shall get good men for the hire.' + +'You won't get the best men; you may catch a clever youngster or two, and +an old rogue of talent; you won't get men of weight. They're prejudiced, +I dare say. The Journals which are commercial speculations give us a +guarantee that they mean to be respectable; they must, if they wouldn't +collapse. That's why the best men consent to write for them.' + +'Money will do it,' said Beauchamp. + +Mr. Austin disagreed with that observation. + +'Some patriotic spirit, I may hope, sir.' + +Mr. Austin shook his head. 'We put different constructions upon +patriotism.' + +'Besides--fiddle! nonsense!' exclaimed Tuckham in the mildest +interjections he could summon for a vent in society to his offended +common sense; 'the better your men the worse your mark. You're not +dealing with an intelligent people.' + +'There's the old charge against the people.' + +'But they're not. You can madden, you can't elevate them by writing and +writing. Defend us from the uneducated English! The common English are +doltish; except in the North, where you won't do much with them. Compare +them with the Yankees for shrewdness, the Spaniards for sobriety, the +French for ingenuity, the Germans for enlightenment, the Italians in the +Arts; yes, the Russians for good-humour and obedience--where are they? +They're only worth something when they're led. They fight well; there's +good stuff in them.' + +'I've heard all that before,' returned Beauchamp, unruffled. 'You don't +know them. I mean to educate them by giving them an interest in their +country. At present they have next to none. Our governing class is +decidedly unintelligent, in my opinion brutish, for it's indifferent. My +paper shall render your traders justice for what they do, and justice for +what they don't do.' + +'My traders, as you call them, are the soundest foundation for a +civilized state that the world has yet seen.' + +'What is your paper to be called?' said Cecilia. + +'The DAWN,' Beauchamp answered. + +She blushed fiery red, and turned the leaves of a portfolio of drawings. + +'The DAWN!' ejaculated Tuckham. 'The grey-eyed, or the red? +Extraordinary name for a paper, upon my word!' + +'A paper that doesn't devote half its columns to the vices of the rich-- +to money-getting, spending and betting--will be an extraordinary paper.' + +'I have it before me now!--two doses of flattery to one of the whip. No, +no; you haven't hit the disease. We want union, not division. Turn your +mind to being a moralist, instead of a politician.' + +'The distinction shouldn't exist!' + +'Only it does!' + +Mrs. Grancey Lespel's entrance diverted their dialogue from a theme +wearisome to Cecilia, for Beauchamp shone but darkly in it, and Mr. +Austin did not join in it. Mrs. Grancey touched Beauchamp's fingers. +'Still political?' she said. 'You have been seen about London with a +French officer in uniform.' + +'It was M. le comte de Croisnel, a very old friend and comrade of mine,' +Beauchamp replied. + +'Why do those Frenchmen everlastingly wear their uniforms?--tell me! +Don't you think it detestable style?' + +'He came over in a hurry.' + +'Now, don't be huffed. I know you, for defending your friends, Captain +Beauchamp! Did he not come over with ladies?' + +'With relatives, yes.' + +'Relatives of course. But when British officers travel with ladies, +relatives or other, they prefer the simplicity of mufti, and so do I, as +a question of taste, I must say.' + +'It was quite by misadventure that M. de Croisnel chanced to come in his +uniform.' + +'Ah! I know you, for defending your friends, Captain Beauchamp. He was +in too great a hurry to change his uniform before he started, or en +route?' + +'So it happened.' + +Mrs. Grancey let a lingering eye dwell maliciously on Beauchamp, who +said, to shift the burden of it: 'The French are not so jealous of +military uniforms as we are. M. de Croisnel lost his portmanteau.' + +'Ah! lost it! Then of course he is excuseable, except to the naked eye. +Dear me! you have had a bruise on yours. Was Monsieur votre ami in the +Italian campaign?' + +'No, poor fellow, he was not. He is not an Imperialist; he had to remain +in garrison.' + +'He wore a multitude of medals, I have been told. A cup of tea, Cecilia. +And how long did he stay in England with his relatives?' + +'Two days.' + +'Only two days! A very short visit indeed--singularly short. Somebody +informed me of their having been seen at Romfrey Castle, which cannot +have been true.' + +She turned her eyes from Beauchamp silent to Cecilia's hand on the +teapot. 'Half a cup,' she said mildly, to spare the poor hand its +betrayal of nervousness, and relapsed from her air of mistress of the +situation to chatter to Mr. Austin. + +Beauchamp continued silent. He took up a book, and presently a pencil +from his pocket, then talked of the book to Cecilia's cousin; and leaving +a paper-cutter between the leaves, he looked at Cecilia and laid the book +down. + +She proceeded to conduct Mrs. Grancey Lespel to her room. + +'I do admire Captain Beauchamp's cleverness; he is as good as a French +romance!' Mrs. Grancey exclaimed on the stairs. 'He fibs charmingly. +I could not help drawing him out. Two days! Why, my dear, his French +party were a fortnight in the country. It was the marquise, you know-- +the old affair; and one may say he's a constant man.' + +'I have not heard Captain Beauchamp's cleverness much praised,' said +Cecilia. 'This is your room, Mrs. Grancey.' + +'Stay with me a moment. It is the room I like. Are we to have him at +dinner?' + +Cecilia did not suppose that Captain Beauchamp would remain to dine. +Feeling herself in the clutches of a gossip, she would fain have gone. + +'I am just one bit glad of it, though I can't dislike him personally,' +said Mrs. Grancey, detaining her and beginning to whisper. 'It was +really too bad. There was a French party at the end, but there was only +one at the commencement. The brother was got over for a curtain, before +the husband arrived in pursuit. They say the trick Captain Beauchamp +played his cousin Cecil, to get him out of the house when he had made a +discovery, was monstrous--fiendishly cunning. However, Lady Romfrey, as +that woman appears to be at last, covered it all. You know she has one +of those passions for Captain Beauchamp which completely blind women to +right and wrong. He is her saint, let him sin ever so! The story's in +everybody's mouth. By the way, Palmet saw her. He describes her pale as +marble, with dark long eyes, the most innocent look in the world, and a +walk, the absurd fellow says, like a statue set gliding. No doubt +Frenchwomen do walk well. He says her eyes are terrible traitors; I need +not quote Palmet. The sort of eyes that would look fondly on a stone, +you know. What her reputation is in France I have only indistinctly +heard. She has one in England by this time, I can assure you. She found +her match in Captain Beauchamp for boldness. Where any other couple +would have seen danger, they saw safety; and they contrived to accomplish +it, according to those horrid talebearers. You have plenty of time to +dress, my dear; I have an immense deal to talk about. There are half-a- +dozen scandals in London already, and you ought to know them, or you will +be behind the tittle-tattle when you go to town; and I remember, as a +girl, I knew nothing so excruciating as to hear blanks, dashes, initials, +and half words, without the key. Nothing makes a girl look so silly and +unpalatable. Naturally, the reason why Captain Beauchamp is more talked +about than the rest is the politics. Your grand reformer should be +careful. Doubly heterodox will not do! It makes him interesting to +women, if you like, but he won't soon hear the last of it, if he is for a +public career. Grancey literally crowed at the story. And the wonderful +part of it is, that Captain Beauchamp refused to be present at the earl's +first ceremonial dinner in honour of his countess. Now, that, we all +think, was particularly ungrateful: now, was it not?' + +'If the countess--if ingratitude had anything to do with it,' said +Cecilia. + +She escaped to her room and dressed impatiently. + +Her boudoir was empty: Beauchamp had departed. She recollected his look +at her, and turned over the leaves of the book he had been hastily +scanning, and had condescended to approve of. On the two pages where the +paper-cutter was fixed she perceived small pencil dots under certain +words. Read consecutively, with a participle termination struck out to +convey his meaning, they formed the pathetically ungrammatical line: + +'Hear: none: but: accused: false.' + +Treble dots were under the word 'to-morrow.' He had scored the margin of +the sentences containing his dotted words, as if in admiration of their +peculiar wisdom. + +She thought it piteous that he should be reduced to such means of +communication. The next instant Cecilia was shrinking from the adept +intriguer--French-taught! + +In the course of the evening her cousin remarked: + +'Captain Beauchamp must see merit in things undiscoverable by my poor +faculties. I will show you a book he has marked.' + +'Did you see it? I was curious to examine it,' interposed Cecilia; 'and +I am as much at a loss as you to understand what could have attracted +him. One sentence . . .' + +'About the sheikh in the stables, where he accused the pretended +physician? Yes, what was there in that?' + +'Where is the book?' said Mrs. Grancey. + +'Not here, I think.' Cecilia glanced at the drawing-room book-table, and +then at Mr. Austin, the victim of an unhappy love in his youth, and +unhappy about her, as her father had said. Seymour Austin was not one to +spread the contagion of intrigue! She felt herself caught by it, even +melting to feel enamoured of herself in consequence, though not loving +Beauchamp the more. + +'This newspaper, if it's not merely an airy project, will be ruination,' +said Tuckham. 'The fact is, Beauchamp has no bend in him. He can't meet +a man without trying a wrestle, and as long as he keeps his stiffness, he +believes he has won. I've heard an oculist say that the eye that doesn't +blink ends in blindness, and he who won't bend breaks. It's a pity, for +he's a fine fellow. A Radical daily Journal of Shrapnel's colour, to +educate the people by giving them an interest in the country! Goodness, +what a delusion! and what a waste of money! He'll not be able to carry +it on a couple of years. And there goes his eighty thousand!' + +Cecilia's heart beat fast. She had no defined cause for its excitement. + +Colonel Halkett returned to Mount Laurels close upon midnight, very +tired, coughing and complaining of the bitter blowing East. His guests +shook hands with him, and went to bed. + +'I think I'll follow their example,' he said to Cecilia, after drinking a +tumbler of mulled wine. + +'Have you nothing to tell me, dear papa?' said she, caressing him +timidly. + +'A confirmation of the whole story from Lord Romfrey in person--that's +all. He says Beauchamp's mad. I begin to believe it. You must use your +judgement. I suppose I must not expect you to consider me. You might +open your heart to Austin. As to my consent, knowing what I do, you will +have to tear it out of me. Here's a country perfectly contented, and +that fellow at work digging up grievances to persuade the people they're +oppressed by us. Why should I talk of it? He can't do much harm; unless +he has money--money! Romfrey says he means to start a furious paper. +He'll make a bonfire of himself. I can't stand by and see you in it too. +I may die; I may be spared the sight.' + +Cecilia flung her arms round his neck. 'Oh! papa.' + +'I don't want to make him out worse than he is, my dear. I own to his +gallantry--in the French sense as well as the English, it seems! It's +natural that Romfrey should excuse his wife. She's another of the women +who are crazy about Nevil Beauchamp. She spoke to me of the "pleasant +visit of her French friends," and would have enlarged on it, but Romfrey +stopped her. By the way, he proposes Captain Baskelett for you, and +we're to look for Baskelett's coming here, backed by his uncle. There's +no end to it; there never will be till you're married: and no peace for +me! I hope I shan't find myself with a cold to-morrow.' + +The colonel coughed, and perhaps exaggerated the premonitory symptoms of +a cold. + +'Italy, papa, would do you good,' said Cecilia. + +'It might,' said he. + +'If we go immediately, papa; to-morrow, early in the morning, before +there is a chance of any visitors coming to the house.' + +'From Bevisham?' + +'From Steynham. I cannot endure a second persecution.' + +'But you have a world of packing, my dear.' + +'An hour before breakfast will be sufficient for me.' + +'In that case, we might be off early, as you say, and have part of the +Easter week in Rome.' + +'Mr. Austin wishes it greatly, papa, though he has not mentioned it.' + +'Austin, my darling girl, is not one of your impatient men who burst with +everything they have in their heads or their hearts.' + +'Oh! but I know him so well,' said Cecilia, conjuring up that innocent +enthusiasm of hers for Mr. Austin as an antidote to her sharp suffering. +The next minute she looked on her father as the key of an enigma +concerning Seymour Austin, whom, she imagined, possibly she had not +hitherto known at all. Her curiosity to pierce it faded. She and her +maid were packing through the night. At dawn she requested her maid to +lift the window-blind and give her an opinion of the weather. 'Grey, +Miss,' the maid reported. It signified to Cecilia: no one roaming +outside. + +The step she was taking was a desperate attempt at a cure; and she +commenced it, though sorely wounded, with pity for Nevil's +disappointment, and a singularly clear-eyed perception of his aims and +motives.--'I am rich, and he wants riches; he likes me, and he reads my +weakness.'--Jealousy shook her by fits, but she had no right to be +jealous, nor any right to reproach him. Her task was to climb back to +those heavenly heights she sat on before he distracted her and drew her +down. + +Beauchamp came to a vacated house that day. + + + + +CHAPTER XLVI + +AS IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN FORESEEN + +It was in Italy that Cecilia's maiden dreams of life had opened. She +hoped to recover them in Italy, and the calm security of a mind +untainted. Italy was to be her reviving air. + +While this idea of a specific for her malady endured travelling at +speed to the ridges of the Italian frontier, across France--she simply +remembered Nevil: he was distant; he had no place in the storied +landscape, among the images of Art and the names of patient great men who +bear, as they bestow, an atmosphere other than earth's for those adoring +them. If at night, in her sleep, he was a memory that conducted her +through scenes which were lightnings, the cool swift morning of her +flight released her. France, too, her rival!--the land of France, +personified by her instinctively, though she had no vivid imaginative +gift, did not wound her with a poisoned dart.--'She knew him first: she +was his first love.' The Alps, and the sense of having Italy below them, +renewed Cecilia's lofty-perching youth. Then--I am in Italy! she sighed +with rapture. The wine of delight and oblivion was at her lips. + +But thirst is not enjoyment, and a satiated thirst that we insist on +over-satisfying to drown the recollection of past anguish, is baneful to +the soul. In Rome Cecilia's vision of her track to Rome was of a run of +fire over a heath. She could scarcely feel common pleasure in Rome. It +seemed burnt out. + +Flung back on herself, she was condemned to undergo the bitter torment +she had flown from: jealous love, and reproachful; and a shame in it +like nothing she had yet experienced. Previous pains were but Summer +lightnings, passing shadows. She could have believed in sorcery: +the man had eaten her heart! + +A disposition to mocking humour, foreign to her nature, gave her the +notion of being off her feet, in the claws of a fabulous bird. It served +to veil her dulness. An ultra-English family in Rome, composed, shocking +to relate, of a baronet banker and his wife, two faint-faced girls, and a +young gentleman of our country, once perhaps a light-limbed boy, chose to +be followed by their footman in the melancholy pomp of state livery. +Wherever she encountered them Cecilia talked Nevil Beauchamp. Even Mr. +Tuckham perceived it. She was extremely uncharitable: she extended her +ungenerous criticism to the institution of the footman: England, and the +English, were lashed. + +'These people are caricatures,' Tuckham said, in apology for poor England +burlesqued abroad. 'You must not generalize on them. Footmen are +footmen all the world over. The cardinals have a fine set of footmen.' + +'They are at home. Those English sow contempt of us all over Europe. +We cannot but be despised. One comes abroad foredoomed to share the +sentiment. This is your middle-class! What society can they move in, +that sanctions a vulgarity so perplexing? They have the air of ornaments +on a cottager's parlour mantelpiece.' + +Tuckham laughed. 'Something of that,' he said. + +'Evidently they seek distinction, and they have it, of that kind,' she +continued. 'It is not wonderful that we have so much satirical writing +in England, with such objects of satire. It may be as little wonderful +that the satire has no effect. Immense wealth and native obtuseness +combine to disfigure us with this aspect of overripeness, not to say +monstrosity. I fall in love with the poor, and think they have a cause +to be pleaded, when I look at those people. We scoff at the vanity of +the French, but it is a graceful vanity; pardonable compared with ours.' + +'I've read all that a hundred times,' quoth Tuckham bluntly. + +'So have I. I speak of it because I see it. We scoff at the simplicity +of the Germans.' + +'The Germans live in simple fashion, because they're poor. French +vanity's pretty and amusing. I don't know whether it's deep in them, for +I doubt their depth; but I know it's in their joints. The first spring +of a Frenchman comes of vanity. That you can't say of the English. +Peace to all! but I abhor cosmopolitanism. No man has a firm foothold +who pretends to it. None despises the English in reality. Don't be +misled, Miss Halkett. We're solid: that is the main point. The world +feels our power, and has confidence in our good faith. I ask for no +more.' + +'With Germans we are supercilious Celts; with Frenchmen we are sneering +Teutons:--Can we be loved, Mr. Tuckham?' + +'That's a quotation from my friend Lydiard. Loved? No nation ever was +loved while it lived. As Lydiard says, it may be a good beast or a bad, +but a beast it is. A nation's much too big for refined feelings and +affections. It must be powerful or out of the way, or down it goes. +When a nation's dead you may love it; but I don't see the use of dying to +be loved. My aim for my country is to have the land respected. For that +purpose we must have power; for power wealth; for wealth industry; for +industry internal peace: therefore no agitation, no artificial divisions. +All's plain in history and fact, so long as we do not obtrude +sentimentalism. Nothing mixes well with that stuff--except poetical +ideas!' + +Contrary to her anticipation, Cecilia was thrown more into companionship +with Mr. Tuckham than with Mr. Austin; and though it often vexed her, she +acknowledged that she derived a benefit from his robust antagonism of +opinion. And Italy had grown tasteless to her. She could hardly +simulate sufficient curiosity to serve for a vacant echo to Mr. Austin's +historic ardour. Pliny the Younger might indeed be the model of a +gentleman of old Rome; there might be a scholarly pleasure in +calculating, as Mr. Austin did, the length of time it took Pliny to +journey from the city to his paternal farm, or villa overlooking the +lake, or villa overlooking the bay, and some abstruse fun in the tender +ridicule of his readings of his poems to friends; for Mr. Austin smiled +effusively in alluding to the illustrious Roman pleader's foible of +verse: but Pliny bore no resemblance to that island barbarian Nevil +Beauchamp: she could not realize the friend of Trajan, orator, lawyer, +student, statesman, benefactor of his kind, and model of her own modern +English gentleman, though he was. 'Yes!' she would reply encouragingly +to Seymour Austin's fond brooding hum about his hero; and 'Yes!' +conclusively: like an incarnation of stupidity dealing in monosyllables. +She was unworthy of the society of a scholar. Nor could she kneel at the +feet of her especial heroes: Dante, Raphael, Buonarotti: she was unworthy +of them. She longed to be at Mount Laurels. Mr. Tuckham's conversation +was the nearest approach to it--as it were round by Greenland; but it was +homeward. + +She was really grieved to lose him. Business called him to England. + +'What business can it be, papa?' she inquired: and the colonel replied +briefly: 'Ours.' + +Mr. Austin now devoted much of his time to the instruction of her in the +ancient life of the Eternal City. He had certain volumes of Livy, +Niebuhr, and Gibbon, from which he read her extracts at night, shunning +the scepticism and the irony of the moderns, so that there should be no +jar on the awakening interest of his fair pupil and patient. A gentle +cross-hauling ensued between them, that they grew conscious of and +laughed over during their peregrinations in and out of Rome: she pulled +for the Republic of the Scipios; his predilections were toward the Rome +of the wise and clement emperors. To Cecilia's mind Rome rocked at a +period so closely neighbouring her decay: to him, with an imagination +brooding on the fuller knowledge of it, the city breathed securely, the +sky was clear; jurisprudence, rhetoric, statesmanship, then flourished +supreme, and men eminent for culture: the finest flowers of our race, he +thought them: and he thought their Age the manhood of Rome. + +Struck suddenly by a feminine subtle comparison that she could not have +framed in speech, Cecilia bowed to his views of the happiness and +elevation proper to the sway of a sagacious and magnanimous Imperialism +of the Roman pattern:--he rejected the French. She mused on dim old +thoughts of the gracious dignity of a woman's life under high +governorship. Turbulent young men imperilled it at every step. The +trained, the grave, the partly grey, were fitting lords and mates for +women aspiring to moral beauty and distinction. Beside such they should +be planted, if they would climb! Her walks and conversations with +Seymour Austin charmed her as the haze of a summer evening charms the +sight. + +Upon the conclusion of her term of exile Cecilia would gladly have +remained in Italy another month. An appointment of her father's with Mr. +Tuckham at Mount Laurels on a particular day she considered as of no +consequence whatever, and she said so, in response to a meaningless nod. +But Mr. Austin was obliged to return to work. She set her face homeward +with his immediately, and he looked pleased: he did not try to dissuade +her from accompanying him by affecting to think it a sacrifice: clearly +he knew that to be near him was her greatest delight. + +Thus do we round the perilous headland called love by wooing a good man +for his friendship, and requiting him with faithful esteem for the grief +of an ill-fortuned passion of his youth! + +Cecilia would not suffer her fancy to go very far in pursuit of the +secret of Mr. Austin's present feelings. Until she reached Mount Laurels +she barely examined her own. The sight of the house warned her instantly +that she must have a defence: and then, in desperation but with perfect +distinctness, she entertained the hope of hearing him speak the +protecting words which could not be broken through when wedded to her +consent. + +If Mr. Austin had no intentions, it was at least strange that he did not +part from her in London. + +He whose coming she dreaded had been made aware of the hour of her +return, as his card, with the pencilled line, 'Will call on the 17th,' +informed her. The 17th was the morrow. + +After breakfast on the morning of the 17th Seymour Austin looked her in +the eyes longer than it is customary for ladies to have to submit to keen +inspection. + +'Will you come into the library?' he said. + +She went with him into the library. + +Was it to speak of his anxiousness as to the state of her father's health +that he had led her there, and that he held her hand? He alarmed her, +and he pacified her alarm, yet bade her reflect on the matter, saying +that her father, like other fathers, would be more at peace upon the +establishment of his daughter. Mr. Austin remarked that the colonel was +troubled. + +'Does he wish for my pledge never to marry without his approval? I will +give it,' said Cecilia. + +'He would like you to undertake to marry the man of his choice.' +Cecilia's features hung on an expression equivalent to:--I could almost +do that.' + +At the same time she felt it was not Seymour Austin's manner of speaking. +He seemed to be praising an unknown person--some gentleman who was rough, +but of solid promise and singular strength of character. + +The house-bell rang. Believing that Beauchamp had now come, she showed a +painful ridging of the brows, and Mr. Austin considerately mentioned the +name of the person he had in his mind. + +She readily agreed with him regarding Mr. Tuckham's excellent qualities +--if that was indeed the name; and she hastened to recollect how little +she had forgotten Mr. Tuckham's generosity to Beauchamp, and confessed to +herself it might as well have been forgotten utterly for the thanks he +had received. While revolving these ideas she was listening to Mr. +Austin; gradually she was beginning to understand that she was parting +company with her original conjectures, but going at so swift a pace in so +supple and sure a grasp, that, like the speeding train slipped on new +lines of rails by the pointsman, her hurrying sensibility was not +shocked, or the shock was imperceptible, when she heard him proposing Mr. +Tuckham to her for a husband, by her father's authority, and with his own +warm seconding. He had not dropped her hand: he was very eloquent, a +masterly advocate: he pleaded her father's cause; it was not put to her +as Mr. Tuckham's: her father had set his heart on this union he was +awaiting her decision. + +'Is it so urgent?' she asked. + +'It is urgent. It saves him from an annoyance. He requires a son-in-law +whom he can confidently rely on to manage the estates, which you are +woman of the world enough to know should be in strong hands. He gives +you to a man of settled principles. It is urgent, because he may wish to +be armed with your answer at any instant.' + +Her father entered the library. He embraced her, and 'Well?' he said. + +'I must think, papa, I must think.' + +She pressed her hand across her eyes. Disillusioned by Seymour Austin, +she was utterly defenceless before Beauchamp: and possibly Beauchamp was +in the house. She fancied he was, by the impatient brevity of her +father's voice. + +Seymour Austin and Colonel Halkett left the room, and Blackburn Tuckham +walked in, not the most entirely self-possessed of suitors, puffing +softly under his breath, and blinking eyes as rapidly as a skylark claps +wings on the ascent. + +Half an hour later Beauchamp appeared. He asked to see the colonel, +delivered himself of his pretensions and wishes to the colonel, and was +referred to Cecilia; but Colonel Halkett declined to send for her. +Beauchamp declined to postpone his proposal until the following day. +He went outside the house and walked up and down the grass-plot. + +Cecilia came to him at last. + +'I hear, Nevil, that you are waiting to speak to me.' + +'I've been waiting some weeks. Shall I speak here?' + +'Yes, here, quickly.' + +'Before the house? I have come to ask you for your hand.' + +'Mine? I cannot . . .' + +'Step into the park with me. I ask you to marry me.' + +'It is too late.' + + + + +CHAPTER XLVII + +THE REFUSAL OF HIM + +Passing from one scene of excitement to another, Cecilia was perfectly +steeled for her bitter task; and having done that which separated her a +sphere's distance from Beauchamp, she was cold, inaccessible to the face +of him who had swayed her on flood and ebb so long, incapable of tender +pity, even for herself. All she could feel was a harsh joy to have +struck off her tyrant's fetters, with a determination to cherish it +passionately lest she should presently be hating herself: for the shadow +of such a possibility fell within the narrow circle of her strung +sensations. But for the moment her delusion reached to the idea that she +had escaped from him into freedom, when she said, 'It is too late.' +Those words were the sum and voice of her long term of endurance. She +said them hurriedly, almost in a whisper, in the manner of one changeing +a theme of conversation for subjects happier and livelier, though none +followed. + +The silence bore back on her a suspicion of a faint reproachfulness in +the words; and perhaps they carried a poetical tone, still more +distasteful. + +'You have been listening to tales of me,' said Beauchamp. + +'Nevil, we can always be friends, the best of friends.' + +'Were you astonished at my asking you for your hand? You said "mine?" +as if you wondered. You have known my feelings for you. Can you deny +that? I have reckoned on yours--too long?--But not falsely? No, hear me +out. The truth is, I cannot lose you. And don't look so resolute. +Overlook little wounds: I was never indifferent to you. How could I be-- +with eyes in my head? The colonel is opposed to me of course: he will +learn to understand me better: but you and I! we cannot be mere friends. +It's like daylight blotted out--or the eyes gone blind:--Too late? Can +you repeat it? I tried to warn you before you left England: I should +have written a letter to put you on your guard against my enemies:-- +I find I have some: but a letter is sure to stumble; I should have been +obliged to tell you that I do not stand on my defence; and I thought I +should see you the next day. You went: and not a word for me! You gave +me no chance. If you have no confidence in me I must bear it. I may say +the story is false. With your hand in mine I would swear it.' + +'Let it be forgotten,' said Cecilia, surprised and shaken to think that +her situation required further explanations; fascinated and unnerved by +simply hearing him. 'We are now--we are walking away from the house.' + +'Do you object to a walk with me?' + +They had crossed the garden plot and were at the gate of the park leading +to the Western wood. Beauchamp swung the gate open. He cast a look at +the clouds coming up from the South-west in folds of grey and silver. + +'Like the day of our drive into Bevisham!--without the storm behind,' he +said, and doated on her soft shut lips, and the mild sun-rays of her hair +in sunless light. 'There are flowers that grow only in certain valleys, +and your home is Mount Laurels, whatever your fancy may be for Italy. +You colour the whole region for me. When you were absent, you were here. +I called here six times, and walked and talked with you.' + +Cecilia set her face to the garden. Her heart had entered on a course of +heavy thumping, like a sapper in the mine. + +Pain was not unwelcome to her, but this threatened weakness. + +What plain words could she use? If Mr. Tuckham had been away from the +house, she would have found it easier to speak of her engagement; she +knew not why. Or if the imperative communication could have been +delivered in Italian or French, she was as little able to say why it +should have slipped from her tongue without a critic shudder to arrest +it. She was cold enough to revolve the words: betrothed, affianced, +plighted: and reject them, pretty words as they are. Between the +vulgarity of romantic language, and the baldness of commonplace, it +seemed to her that our English gives us no choice; that we cannot be +dignified in simplicity. And for some reason, feminine and remote, she +now detested her 'hand' so much as to be unable to bring herself to the +metonymic mention of it. The lady's difficulty was peculiar to sweet +natures that have no great warmth of passion; it can only be indicated. +Like others of the kind, it is traceable to the most delicate of +sentiments, and to the flattest:--for Mr. Blackburn's Tuckham's figure +was (she thought of it with no personal objection) not of the graceful +order, neither cavalierly nor kingly: and imagining himself to say, 'I am +engaged,' and he suddenly appearing on the field, Cecilia's whole mind +was shocked in so marked a way did he contrast with Beauchamp. + +This was the effect of Beauchamp's latest words on her. He had disarmed +her anger. + +'We must have a walk to-day,' he said commandingly, but it had stolen +into him that he and she were not walking on the same bank of the river, +though they were side by side: a chill water ran between them. As in +other days, there hung her hand: but not to be taken. Incredible as it +was, the icy sense of his having lost her benumbed him. Her beautiful +face and beautiful tall figure, so familiar to him that they were like a +possession, protested in his favour while they snatched her from him all +the distance of the words 'too late.' + +'Will you not give me one half-hour?' + +'I am engaged,' Cecilia plunged and extricated herself, 'I am engaged to +walk with Mr. Austin and papa.' + +Beauchamp tossed his head. Something induced him to speak of Mr. +Tuckham. 'The colonel has discovered his Tory young man! It's an object +as incomprehensible to me as a Tory working-man. I suppose I must take +it that they exist. As for Blackburn Tuckham, I have nothing against +him. He's an honourable fellow enough, and would govern Great Britain as +men of that rich middle-class rule their wives--with a strict regard for +ostensible humanity and what the law allows them. His manners have +improved. Your cousin Mary seems to like him: it struck me when I saw +them together. Cecilia! one half-hour! You refuse me: you have not +heard me. You will not say too late.' + +'Nevil, I have said it finally. I have no longer the right to conceive +it unsaid.' + +'So we speak! It's the language of indolence, temper, faint hearts. +"Too late" has no meaning. Turn back with me to the park. I offer you +my whole heart; I love you. There's no woman living who could be to me +the wife you would be. I'm like your male nightingale that you told me +of: I must have my mate to sing to--that is, work for and live for; and +she must not delay too long. Did I? Pardon me if you think I did. You +have known I love you. I have been distracted by things that kept me +from thinking of myself and my wishes: and love's a selfish business +while . . . while one has work in hand. It's clear I can't do two +things at a time--make love and carry on my taskwork. I have been idle +for weeks. I believed you were mine and wanted no lovemaking. There's +no folly in that, if you understand me at all. As for vanity about +women, I 've outlived it. In comparison with you I'm poor, I know:--you +look distressed, but one has to allude to it:--I admit that wealth would +help me. To see wealth supporting the cause of the people for once +would--but you say, too late! Well, I don't renounce you till I see you +giving your hand to a man who's not myself. You have been offended: +groundlessly, on my honour! You are the woman of all women in the world +to hold me fast in faith and pride in you. It's useless to look icy: you +feel what I say.' + +'Nevil, I feel grief, and beg you to cease. I am----It is-----' + +"'Too late' has not a rag of meaning, Cecilia! I love your name. I love +this too: this is mine, and no one can rob me of it.' + +He drew forth a golden locket and showed her a curl of her hair. + +Crimsoning, she said instantly: 'Language of the kind I used is open to +misconstruction, I fear. I have not even the right to listen to you. I +am . . . You ask me for what I have it no longer in my power to give. +I am engaged.' + +The shot rang through him and partly stunned him; but incredulity made a +mocking effort to sustain him. The greater wounds do not immediately +convince us of our fate, though we may be conscious that we have been +hit. + +'Engaged in earnest?' said he. + +'Yes.' + +'Of your free will?' + +'Yes.' + +Her father stepped out on the terrace, from one of the open windows, +trailing a newspaper like a pocket-handkerchief. Cecilia threaded the +flower-beds to meet him. + +'Here's an accident to one of our ironclads,' he called to Beauchamp. + +'Lives lost, sir?' + +'No, thank heaven! but, upon my word, it's a warning. Read the +telegram; it's the Hastings. If these are our defences, at a cost of +half a million of money, each of them, the sooner we look to our land +forces the better.' + +'The Shop will not be considered safe!' said Beauchamp, taking in the +telegram at a glance. 'Peppel's a first-rate officer too: she couldn't +have had a better captain. Ship seriously damaged!' + +He handed back the paper to the colonel. + +Cecilia expected him to say that he had foreseen such an event. + +He said nothing; and with a singular contraction of the heart she +recollected how he had denounced our system of preparing mainly for the +defensive in war, on a day when they stood together in the park, watching +the slow passage of that very ship, the Hastings, along the broad water, +distant below them. The 'swarms of swift vessels of attack,' she +recollected particularly, and 'small wasps and rams under mighty steam- +power,' that he used to harp on when declaring that England must be known +for the assailant in war: she was to 'ray out' her worrying fleets. 'The +defensive is perilous policy in war': he had said it. She recollected +also her childish ridicule of his excess of emphasis: he certainly had +foresight.' + +Mr. Austin and Mr. Tuckham came strolling in conversation round the house +to the terrace. Beauchamp bowed to the former, nodded to the latter, +scrutinizing him after he had done so, as if the flash of a thought were +in his mind. Tuckham's radiant aspect possibly excited it: 'Congratulate +me!' was the honest outcry of his face and frame. He was as over- +flowingly rosy as a victorious candidate at the hustings commencing a +speech. Cecilia laid her hand on an urn, in dread of the next words from +either of the persons present. Her father put an arm in hers, and leaned +on her. She gazed at her chamber window above, wishing to be wafted +thither to her seclusion within. The trembling limbs of physical +irresoluteness was a new experience to her. + +'Anything else in the paper, colonel? I've not seen it to-day,' said +Beauchamp, for the sake of speaking. + +'No, I don't think there's anything,' Colonel Halkett replied. 'Our +diplomatists haven't been shining much: that 's not our forte.' + +'No: it's our field for younger sons.' + +'Is it? Ah! There's an expedition against the hilltribes in India, and +we're such a peaceful nation, eh? We look as if we were in for a +complication with China.' + +'Well, sir, we must sell our opium.' + +'Of course we must. There's a man writing about surrendering Gibraltar!' + +'I'm afraid we can't do that.' + +'But where do you draw the line?' quoth Tuckham, very susceptible to a +sneer at the colonel, and entirely ignorant of the circumstances +attending Beauchamp's position before him. 'You defend the Chinaman; and +it's questionable if his case is as good as the Spaniard's.' + +'The Chinaman has a case against our traders. Gibraltar concerns our +imperial policy.' + +'As to the case against the English merchants, the Chinaman is for +shutting up his millions of acres of productive land, and the action of +commerce is merely a declaration of a universal public right, to which +all States must submit.' + +'Immorality brings its punishment, be sure of that. Some day we shall +have enough of China. As to the Rock, I know the argument; I may be +wrong. I've had the habit of regarding it as necessary to our naval +supremacy.' + +'Come! there we agree.' + +'I'm not so certain.' + +'The counter-argument, I call treason.' + +'Well,' said Beauchamp, 'there's a broad policy, and a narrow. There's +the Spanish view of the matter--if you are for peace and harmony and +disarmament.' + +'I'm not.' + +'Then strengthen your forces.' + +'Not a bit of it!' + +'Then bully the feeble and truckle to the strong; consent to be hated +till you have to stand your ground.' + +'Talk!' + +'It seems to me logical.' + +'That's the French notion--c'est lodgique!' + +Tuckham's pronunciation caused Cecilia to level her eyes at him +passingly. + +'By the way,' said Colonel Halkett, 'there are lots of horrors in the +paper to-day; wife kickings, and starvations--oh, dear me! and the +murder of a woman: two columns to that.' + +'That, the Tory reaction is responsible for!' said Tuckham, rather by +way of a joke than a challenge. + +Beauchamp accepted it as a challenge. Much to the benevolent amusement +of Mr. Austin and Colonel Halkett, he charged the responsibility of every +crime committed in the country, and every condition of misery, upon the +party which declined to move in advance, and which therefore apologized +for the perpetuation of knavery, villany, brutality, injustice, and foul +dealing. + +'Stick to your laws and systems and institutions, and so long as you +won't stir to amend them, I hold you accountable for that long newspaper +list daily.' + +He said this with a visible fire of conviction. + +Tuckham stood bursting at the monstrousness of such a statement. + +He condensed his indignant rejoinder to: 'Madness can't go farther!' + +'There's an idea in it,' said Mr. Austin. + +'It's an idea foaming at the mouth, then.' + +'Perhaps it has no worse fault than that of not marching parallel with +the truth,' said Mr. Austin, smiling. 'The party accusing in those terms +. . . what do you say, Captain Beauchamp?--supposing us to be pleading +before a tribunal?' + +Beauchamp admitted as much as that he had made the case gigantic, though +he stuck to his charge against the Tory party. And moreover: the Tories- +and the old Whigs, now Liberals, ranked under the heading of Tories-- +those Tories possessing and representing the wealth of the country, yet +had not started one respectable journal that a lady could read through +without offence to her, or a gentleman without disgust! If there was not +one English newspaper in existence independent of circulation and +advertisements, and of the tricks to win them, the Tories were answerable +for the vacancy. They, being the rich who, if they chose, could set an +example to our Press by subscribing to maintain a Journal superior to the +flattering of vile appetites--'all that nauseous matter,' Beauchamp +stretched his fingers at the sheets Colonel Halkett was holding, and +which he had not read--'those Tories,' he bowed to the colonel, 'I'm +afraid I must say you, sir, are answerable for it.' + +'I am very well satisfied with my paper,' said the colonel. + +Beauchamp sighed to himself. 'We choose to be satisfied,' he said. +His pure and mighty DAWN was in his thoughts: the unborn light of a day +denied to earth! + +One of the doctors of Bevisham, visiting a sick maid of the house, +trotted up the terrace to make his report to her master of the state of +her health. He hoped to pull her through with the aid of high feeding. +He alluded cursorily to a young girl living on the outskirts of the town, +whom he had been called in to see at the eleventh hour, and had lost, +owing to the lowering of his patient from a prescription of a vegetable +diet by a certain Dr. Shrapnel. + +That ever-explosive name precipitated Beauchamp to the front rank of the +defence. + +'I happen to be staying with Dr. Shrapnel,' he observed. 'I don't eat +meat there because he doesn't, and I am certain I take no harm by +avoiding it. I think vegetarianism a humaner system, and hope it may be +wise. I should like to set the poor practising it, for their own sakes; +and I have half an opinion that it would be good for the rich--if we are +to condemn gluttony.' + +'Ah? Captain Beauchamp!' the doctor bowed to him. 'But my case was one +of poor blood requiring to be strengthened. The girl was allowed to sink +so low that stimulants were ineffective when I stepped in. There's the +point. It 's all very well while you are in health. You may do without +meat till your system demands the stimulant, or else--as with this poor +girl! And, indeed, Captain Beauchamp, if I may venture the remark--I had +the pleasure of seeing you during the last Election in our town--and if I +may be so bold, I should venture to hint that the avoidance of animal +food--to judge by appearances--has not been quite wholesome for you.' + +Eyes were turned on Beauchamp. + + + + +CHAPTER XLVIII + +OF THE TRIAL AWAITING THE EARL OF ROMFREY + +Cecilia softly dropped her father's arm, and went into the house. The +exceeding pallor of Beauchamp's face haunted her in her room. She heard +the controversy proceeding below, and an exclamation of Blackburn +Tuckham's: 'Immorality of meat-eating? What nonsense are they up to +now?' + +Beauchamp was inaudible, save in a word or two. As usual, he was the +solitary minority. + +But how mournfully changed he was! She had not noticed it, agitated +by her own emotions as she had been, and at one time three parts frozen. +He was the ghost of the Nevil Beauchamp who had sprung on the deck of the +Esperanza out of Lieutenant Wilmore's boat, that sunny breezy day which +was the bright first chapter of her new life--of her late life, as it +seemed to her now, for she was dead to it, and another creature, the +coldest of the women of earth. She felt sensibly cold, coveted warmth, +flung a shawl on her shoulders, and sat in a corner of her room, hidden +and shivering beside the open window, till long after the gentlemen had +ceased to speak. + +How much he must have suffered of late! The room she had looked to as a +refuge from Nevil was now her stronghold against the man whom she had +incredibly accepted. She remained there, the victim of a heart malady, +under the term of headache. Feeling entrapped, she considered that she +must have been encircled and betrayed. She looked back on herself as a +giddy figure falling into a pit: and in the pit she lay. + +And how vile to have suspected of unfaithfulness and sordidness the +generous and stedfast man of earth! He never abandoned a common +friendship. His love of his country was love still, whatever the form it +had taken. His childlike reliance on effort and outspeaking, for which +men laughed at him, was beautiful. + +Where am I? she cried amid her melting images of him, all dominated by +his wan features. She was bound fast, imprisoned and a slave. Even Mr. +Austin had conspired against him: for only she read Nevil justly. His +defence of Dr. Shrapnel filled her with an envy that no longer maligned +the object of it, but was humble, and like the desire of the sick to +creep into sunshine. + +The only worthy thing she could think of doing was (it must be mentioned +for a revelation of her fallen state, and, moreover, she was not lusty of +health at the moment) to abjure meat. The body loathed it, and +consequently the mind of the invalided lady shrank away in horror of the +bleeding joints, and the increasingly fierce scramble of Christian souls +for the dismembered animals: she saw the innocent pasturing beasts, she +saw the act of slaughter. She had actually sweeping before her sight a +spectacle of the ludicrous-terrific, in the shape of an entire community +pursuing countless herds of poor scampering animal life for blood: she, +meanwhile, with Nevil and Dr. Shrapnel, stood apart contemning. For +whoso would not partake of flesh in this kingdom of roast beef must be of +the sparse number of Nevil's execrated minority in politics. + +The example will show that she touched the borders of delirium. +Physically, the doctor pronounces her bilious. She was in earnest so far +as to send down to the library for medical books, and books upon diet. +These, however, did not plead for the beasts. They treated the subject +without question of man's taking that which he has conquered. Poets and +philosophers did the same. Again she beheld Nevil Beauchamp solitary in +the adverse rank to the world;--to his countrymen especially. But that +it was no material cause which had wasted his cheeks and lined his +forehead, she was sure: and to starve with him, to embark with him in his +little boat on the seas he whipped to frenzy, would have been a dream of +bliss, had she dared to contemplate herself in a dream as his companion. + +It was not to be thought of. + +No: but this was, and to be thought of seriously: Cecilia had said to +herself for consolation that Beauchamp was no spiritual guide; he had her +heart within her to plead for him, and the reflection came to her, like a +bubble up from the heart, that most of our spiritual guides neglect the +root to trim the flower: and thence, turning sharply on herself, she +obtained a sudden view of her allurement and her sin in worshipping +herself, and recognized that the aim at an ideal life closely approaches, +or easily inclines, to self-worship; to which the lady was woman and +artist enough to have had no objection, but that therein visibly she +discerned the retributive vain longings, in the guise of high individual +superiority and distinction, that had thwarted her with Nevil Beauchamp, +never permitting her to love single-mindedly or whole-heartedly, but +always in reclaiming her rights and sighing for the loss of her ideal; +adoring her own image, in fact, when she pretended to cherish, and regret +that she could not sufficiently cherish, the finer elements of nature. +What was this ideal she had complained of losing? It was a broken +mirror: she could think of it in no other form. + +Dr. Shrapnel's 'Ego-Ego' yelped and gave chase to her through the pure +beatitudes of her earlier days down to her present regrets. It hunted +all the saints in the calendar till their haloes top-sided on their +heads-her favourite St. Francis of Assisi excepted. + +The doctor was called up from Bevisham next day, and pronounced her +bilious. He was humorous over Captain Beauchamp, who had gone to the +parents of the dead girl, and gathered the information that they were a +consumptive family, to vindicate Dr. Shrapnel. 'The very family to +require strong nourishment,' said the doctor. + +Cecilia did not rest in her sick-room before, hunting through one book +and another, she had found arguments on the contrary side; a waste of +labour that heaped oppression on her chest, as with the world's weight. +Apparently one had only to be in Beauchamp's track to experience that. +She horrified her father by asking questions about consumption. +Homoeopathy, hydropathy,--the revolutionaries of medicine attracted her. +Blackburn Tuckham, a model for an elected lover who is not beloved, +promised to procure all sorts of treatises for her: no man could have +been so deferential to a diseased mind. Beyond calling her by her +Christian name, he did nothing to distress her with the broad aspect of +their new relations together. He and Mr. Austin departed from Mount +Laurels, leaving her to sink into an agreeable stupor, like one deposited +on a mudbank after buffeting the waves. She learnt that her father had +seen Captain Baskelett, and remembered, marvelling, how her personal +dread of an interview, that threatened to compromise her ideal of her +feminine and peculiar dignity, had assisted to precipitate her where she +now lay helpless, almost inanimate. + +She was unaware of the passage of time save when her father spoke of a +marriage-day. It told her that she lived and was moving. The fear of +death is not stronger in us, nor the desire to put it off, than Cecilia's +shunning of such a day. The naming of it numbed her blood like a +snakebite. Yet she openly acknowledged her engagement; and, happily for +Tuckham, his visits, both in London and at Mount Laurels, were few and +short, and he inflicted no foretaste of her coming subjection to him to +alarm her. + +Under her air of calm abstraction she watched him rigorously for some +sign of his ownership that should tempt her to revolt from her pledge, +or at least dream of breaking loose: the dream would have sufficed. +He was never intrusive, never pressing. He did not vex, because he +absolutely trusted to the noble loyalty which made her admit to herself +that she belonged irrevocably to him, while her thoughts were upon +Beauchamp. With a respectful gravity he submitted to her perusal a +collection of treatises on diet, classed pro and con., and paged and +pencil-marked to simplify her study of the question. They sketched in +company; she played music to him, he read poetry to her, and read it +well. He seemed to feel the beauty of it sensitively, as she did +critically. In other days the positions had been reversed. He +invariably talked of Beauchamp with kindness, deploring only that he +should be squandering his money on workmen's halls and other hazy +projects down in Bevisham. + +'Lydiard tells me he has a very sound idea of the value of money, and has +actually made money by cattle breeding; but he has flung ten thousand +pounds on a single building outside the town, and he'll have to endow it +to support it--a Club to educate Radicals. The fact is, he wants to jam +the business of two or three centuries into a life-time. These men of +their so-called progress are like the majority of religious minds: they +can't believe without seeing and touching. That is to say, they don't +believe in the abstract at all, but they go to work blindly by agitating, +and proselytizing, and persecuting to get together a mass they can +believe in. You see it in their way of arguing; it's half done with the +fist. Lydiard tells me he left him last in a horrible despondency about +progress. Ha! ha! Beauchamp's no Radical. He hasn't forgiven the +Countess of Romfrey for marrying above her rank. He may be a bit of a +Republican: but really in this country Republicans are fighting with the +shadow of an old hat and a cockhorse. I beg to state that I have a +reverence for constituted authority: I speak of what those fellows are +contending with.' + +'Right,' said Colonel Halkett. 'But "the shadow of an old hat and a +cockhorse": what does that mean?' + +'That's what our Republicans are hitting at, sir.' + +'Ah! so; yes,' quoth the colonel. 'And I say this to Nevil Beauchamp, +that what we've grown up well with, powerfully with, it's base +ingratitude and dangerous folly to throw over.' + +He blamed Beauchamp for ingratitude to the countess, who had, he affirmed +of his own knowledge, married Lord Romfrey to protect Beauchamp's +interests. + +A curious comment on this allegation was furnished by the announcement of +the earl's expectations of a son and heir. The earl wrote to Colonel +Halkett from Romfrey Castle inviting him to come and spend some time +there. + +'Now, that's brave news!' the colonel exclaimed. + +He proposed a cruise round by the Cornish coast to the Severn, and so to +Romfrey Castle, to squeeze the old lord's hand and congratulate him with +all his heart. Cecilia was glad to acquiesce, for an expedition of any +description was a lull in the storm that hummed about her ears in the +peace of home, where her father would perpetually speak of the day to be +fixed. Sailing the sea on a cruise was like the gazing at wonderful +colours of a Western sky: an oblivion of earthly dates and obligations. +What mattered it that there were gales in August? She loved the sea, +and the stinging salt spray, and circling gull and plunging gannet, +the sun on the waves, and the torn cloud. The revelling libertine open +sea wedded her to Beauchamp in that veiled cold spiritual manner she +could muse on as a circumstance out of her life. + +Fair companies of racing yachts were left behind. The gales of August +mattered frightfully to poor Blackburn Tuckham, who was to be dropped at +a town in South Wales, and descended greenish to his cabin as soon as +they had crashed on the first wall-waves of the chalk-race, a throw +beyond the peaked cliffs edged with cormorants, and were really tasting +sea. Cecilia reclined on deck, wrapped in shawl and waterproof. As the +Alpine climber claims the upper air, she had the wild sea to herself +through her love of it; quite to herself. It was delicious to look round +and ahead, and the perturbation was just enough to preserve her from +thoughts too deep inward in a scene where the ghost of Nevil was abroad. + +The hard dry gale increased. Her father, stretched beside her, drew her +attention to a small cutter under double-reefed main-sail and small jib +on the Esperanza's weather bow--a gallant boat carefully handled. She +watched it with some anxiety, but the Esperanza was bound for a Devon +bay, and bore away from the black Dorsetshire headland, leaving the +little cutter to run into haven if she pleased. The passing her was no +event.--In a representation of the common events befalling us in these +times, upon an appreciation of which this history depends, one turns at +whiles a languishing glance toward the vast potential mood, pluperfect +tense. For Nevil Beauchamp was on board the cutter, steering her, with +Dr. Shrapnel and Lydiard in the well, and if an accident had happened to +cutter or schooner, what else might not have happened? Cecilia gathered +it from Mrs. Wardour-Devereux, whom, to her surprise and pleasure, she +found at Romfrey Castle. Her friend Louise received a letter from Mr. +Lydiard, containing a literary amateur seaman's log of a cruise of a +fifteen-ton cutter in a gale, and a pure literary sketch of Beauchamp +standing drenched at the helm from five in the morning up to nine at +night, munching a biscuit for nourishment. The beautiful widow prepared +the way for what was very soon to be publicly known concerning herself by +reading out this passage of her correspondent's letter in the breakfast +room. + +'Yes, the fellow's a sailor!' said Lord Romfrey. + +The countess rose from her chair and walked out. + +'Now, was that abuse of the fellow?' the old lord asked Colonel Halkett. +'I said he was a sailor, I said nothing else. He is a sailor, and he's +fit for nothing else, and no ship will he get unless he bends his neck +never 's nearer it.' + +He hesitated a moment, and went after his wife. + +Cecilia sat with the countess, in the afternoon, at a window overlooking +the swelling woods of Romfrey. She praised the loveliness of the view. + +'It is fire to me,' said Rosamund. + +Cecilia looked at her, startled. Rosamund said no more. + +She was an excellent hostess, nevertheless, unpretending and simple in +company; and only when it chanced that Beauchamp's name was mentioned did +she cast that quick supplicating nervous glance at the earl, with a +shadow of an elevation of her shoulders, as if in apprehension of mordant +pain. + +We will make no mystery about it. I would I could. Those happy tales of +mystery are as much my envy as the popular narratives of the deeds of +bread and cheese people, for they both create a tide-way in the attentive +mind; the mysterious pricking our credulous flesh to creep, the familiar +urging our obese imagination to constitutional exercise. And oh, the +refreshment there is in dealing with characters either contemptibly +beneath us or supernaturally above! My way is like a Rhone island in the +summer drought, stony, unattractive and difficult between the two +forceful streams of the unreal and the over-real, which delight mankind-- +honour to the conjurors! My people conquer nothing, win none; they are +actual, yet uncommon. It is the clock-work of the brain that they are +directed to set in motion, and--poor troop of actors to vacant benches!-- +the conscience residing in thoughtfulness which they would appeal to; and +if you are there impervious to them, we are lost: back I go to my +wilderness, where, as you perceive, I have contracted the habit of +listening to my own voice more than is good: The burden of a child in her +bosom had come upon Rosamund with the visage of the Angel of Death +fronting her in her path. She believed that she would die; but like much +that we call belief, there was a kernel of doubt in it, which was lively +when her frame was enlivened, and she then thought of the giving birth to +this unloved child, which was to disinherit the man she loved, in whose +interest solely (so she could presume to think, because it had been her +motive reason) she had married the earl. She had no wish to be a mother; +but that prospect, and the dread attaching to it at her time of life, she +could have submitted to for Lord Romfrey's sake. It struck her like a +scoffer's blow that she, the one woman on earth loving Nevil, should have +become the instrument for dispossessing him. The revulsion of her +feelings enlightened her so far as to suggest, without enabling her to +fathom him, that instead of having cleverly swayed Lord Romfrey, she had +been his dupe, or a blind accomplice; and though she was too humane a +woman to think of punishing him, she had so much to forgive that the +trifles daily and at any instant added to the load, flushed her +resentment, like fresh lights showing new features and gigantic outlines. +Nevil's loss of Cecilia she had anticipated; she had heard of it when she +was lying in physical and mental apathy at Steynham. Lord Romfrey had +repeated to her the nature of his replies to the searching parental +questions of Colonel Halkett, and having foreseen it all, and what was +more, foretold it, she was not aroused from her torpor. Latterly, with +the return of her natural strength, she had shown herself incapable of +hearing her husband speak of Nevil; nor was the earl tardy in taking the +hint to spare the mother of his child allusions that vexed her. Now and +then they occurred perforce. The presence of Cecilia exasperated +Rosamund's peculiar sensitiveness. It required Louise Wardour-Devereux's +apologies and interpretations to account for what appeared to Cecilia +strangely ill-conditioned, if not insane, in Lady Romfrey's behaviour. +The most astonishing thing to hear was, that Lady Romfrey had paid Mrs. +Devereux a visit at her Surrey house unexpectedly one Sunday in the +London season, for the purpose, as it became evident, of meeting Mr. +Blackburn Tuckham: and how she could have known that Mr. Tuckham would be +there, Mrs. Devereux could not tell, for it was, Louise assured Cecilia, +purely by chance that he and Mr. Lydiard were present: but the countess +obtained an interview with him alone, and Mr. Tuckham came from it +declaring it to have been more terrible than any he had ever been called +upon to endure. The object of the countess was to persuade him to +renounce his bride. + +Louise replied to the natural inquiry--'Upon what plea?' with a +significant evasiveness. She put her arms round Cecilia's neck: 'I trust +you are not unhappy. You will get no release from him.' + +'I am not unhappy,' said Cecilia, musically clear to convince her friend. + +She was indeed glad to feel the stout chains of her anchor restraining +her when Lady Romfrey talked of Nevil; they were like the safety of +marriage without the dreaded ceremony, and with solitude to let her weep. +Bound thus to a weaker man than Blackburn Tuckham, though he had been +more warmly esteemed, her fancy would have drifted away over the deeps, +perhaps her cherished loyalty would have drowned in her tears--for Lady +Romfrey tasked it very severely: but he from whom she could hope for no +release, gave her some of the firmness which her nature craved in this +trial. + +From saying quietly to her: 'I thought once you loved him,' when alluding +to Nevil, Lady Romfrey passed to mournful exclamations, and by degrees on +to direct entreaties. She related the whole story of Renee in England, +and appeared distressed with a desperate wonderment at Cecilia's mildness +after hearing it. Her hearer would have imagined that she had no moral +sense, if it had not been so perceptible that the poor lady's mind was +distempered on the one subject of Nevil Beauchamp. Cecilia's high +conception of duty, wherein she was a peerless flower of our English +civilization, was incommunicable: she could practise, not explain it. +She bowed to Lady Romfrey's praises of Nevil, suffered her hands to be +wrung, her heart to be touched, all but an avowal of her love of him to +be wrested from her, and not the less did she retain her cold resolution +to marry to please her father and fulfil her pledge. In truth, it was +too late to speak of Renee to her now. It did not beseem Cecilia to +remember that she had ever been a victim of jealousy; and while +confessing to many errors, because she felt them, and gained a necessary +strength from them--in the comfort of the consciousness of pain, for +example, which she sorely needed, that the pain in her own breast might +deaden her to Nevil's jealousy, the meanest of the errors of a lofty +soul, yielded no extract beyond the bare humiliation proper to an +acknowledgement that it had existed: so she discarded the recollection of +the passion which had wrought the mischief. Since we cannot have a +peerless flower of civilization without artificial aid, it may be +understood how it was that Cecilia could extinguish some lights in her +mind and kindle others, and wherefore what it was not natural for her to +do, she did. She had, briefly, a certain control of herself. + +Our common readings in the fictitious romances which mark out a plot and +measure their characters to fit into it, had made Rosamund hopeful of the +effect of that story of Renee. A wooden young woman, or a galvanized +(sweet to the writer, either of them, as to the reader--so moveable they +are!) would have seen her business at this point, and have glided melting +to reconciliation and the chamber where romantic fiction ends joyously. +Rosamund had counted on it. + +She looked intently at Cecilia. 'He is ruined, wasted, ill, unloved; he +has lost you--I am the cause!' she cried in a convulsion of grief. + +'Dear Lady Romfrey!' Cecilia would have consoled her. 'There is nothing +to lead us to suppose that Nevil is unwell, and you are not to blame for +anything: how can you be?' + +'I spoke falsely of Dr. Shrapnel; I am the cause. It lies on me! it +pursues me. Let me give to the poor as I may, and feel for the poor, as +I do, to get nearer to Nevil--I cannot have peace! His heart has turned +from me. He despises me. If I had spoken to Lord Romfrey at Steynham, +as he commanded me, you and he--Oh! cowardice: he is right, cowardice is +the chief evil in the world. He is ill; he is desperately ill; he will +die.' + +'Have you heard he is very ill, Lady Romfrey?' + +'No! no!' Rosamund exclaimed; 'it is by not hearing that I know it!' + +With the assistance of Louise Devereux, Cecilia gradually awakened to +what was going on in the house. There had been a correspondence between +Miss Denham and the countess. Letters from Bevisham had suddenly ceased. +Presumably the earl had stopped them: and if so it must have been for a +tragic reason. + +Cecilia hinted some blame of Lord Romfrey to her father. + +He pressed her hand and said: 'You don't know what that man suffers. +Romfrey is fond of Nevil too, but he must guard his wife; and the fact is +Nevil is down with fever. It 's in the papers now; he may be able to +conceal it, and I hope he will. There'll be a crisis, and then he can +tell her good news--a little illness and all right now! Of course,' the +colonel continued buoyantly, 'Nevil will recover; he's a tough wiry young +fellow, but poor Romfrey's fears are natural enough about the countess. +Her mind seems to be haunted by the doctor there--Shrapnel, I mean; and +she's exciteable to a degree that threatens the worst--in case of any +accident in Bevisham.' + +'Is it not a kind of cowardice to conceal it?' Cecilia suggested. + +'It saves her from fretting,' said the colonel. + +'But she is fretting! If Lord Romfrey would confide in her and trust to +her courage, papa, it would be best.' + +Colonel Halkett thought that Lord Romfrey was the judge. + +Cecilia wished to leave a place where this visible torture of a human +soul was proceeding, and to no purpose. She pointed out to her father, +by a variety of signs, that Lady Romfrey either knew or suspected the +state of affairs in Bevisham, and repeated her remarks upon Nevil's +illness. But Colonel Halkett was restrained from departing by the earl's +constant request to him to stay. Old friendship demanded it of him. +He began to share his daughter's feelings at the sight of Lady Romfrey. +She was outwardly patient and submissive; by nature she was a strong +healthy woman; and she attended to all her husband's prescriptions for +the regulating of her habits, walked with him, lay down for the +afternoon's rest, appeared amused when he laboured to that effect, and +did her utmost to subdue the worm devouring her heart but the hours of +the delivery of the letter-post were fatal to her. Her woeful: 'No +letter for me!' was piteous. When that was heard no longer, her silence +and famished gaze chilled Cecilia. At night Rosamund eyed her husband +expressionlessly, with her head leaning back in her chair, to the sorrow +of the ladies beholding her. Ultimately the contagion of her settled +misery took hold of Cecilia. Colonel Halkett was induced by his daughter +and Mrs. Devereux to endeavour to combat a system that threatened +consequences worse than those it was planned to avert. He by this time +was aware of the serious character of the malady which had prostrated +Nevil. Lord Romfrey had directed his own medical man to go down to +Bevisham, and Dr. Gannet's report of Nevil was grave. The colonel made +light of it to his daughter, after the fashion he condemned in Lord +Romfrey, to whom however he spoke earnestly of the necessity for +partially taking his wife into his confidence to the extent of letting +her know that a slight fever was running its course with Nevil. + +'There will be no slight fever in my wife's blood,' said the earl. 'I +stand to weather the cape or run to wreck, and it won't do to be taking +in reefs on a lee-shore. You don't see what frets her, colonel. For +years she has been bent on Nevil's marriage. It's off: but if you catch +Cecilia by the hand and bring her to us--I swear she loves the fellow!-- +that's the medicine for my wife. Say: will you do it? Tell Lady Romfrey +it shall be done. We shall stand upright again!' + +'I'm afraid that's impossible, Romfrey,' said the colonel. + +'Play at it, then! Let her think it. You're helping me treat an +invalid. Colonel! my old friend! You save my house and name if you do +that. It's a hand round a candle in a burst of wind. There's Nevil +dragged by a woman into one of their reeking hovels--so that Miss Denham +at Shrapnel's writes to Lady Romfrey--because the woman's drunken husband +voted for him at the Election, and was kicked out of employment, and fell +upon the gin-bottle, and the brats of the den died starving, and the man +sickened of a fever; and Nevil goes in and sits with him! Out of that +tangle of folly is my house to be struck down? It looks as if the fellow +with his infernal "humanity," were the bad genius of an old nurse's tale. +He's a good fellow, colonel, he means well. This fever will cure him, +they say it sobers like bloodletting. He's a gallant fellow; you know +that. He fought to the skeleton in our last big war. On my soul, I +believe he's good for a husband. Frenchwoman or not, that affair's over. +He shall have Steynham and Holdesbury. Can I say more? Now, colonel, +you go in to the countess. Grasp my hand. Give me that help, and God +bless you! You light up my old days. She's a noble woman: I would not +change her against the best in the land. She has this craze about Nevil. +I suppose she'll never get over it. But there it is: and we must feed +her with the spoon.' + +Colonel Halkett argued stutteringly with the powerful man: 'It's the +truth she ought to hear, Romfrey; indeed it is, if you 'll believe me. +It 's his life she is fearing for. She knows half.' + +'She knows positively nothing, colonel. Miss Denham's first letter spoke +of the fellow's having headaches, and staggering. He was out on a +cruise, and saw your schooner pass, and put into some port, and began +falling right and left, and they got him back to Shrapnel's: and here it +is--that if you go to him you'll save him, and if you go to my wife +you'll save her: and there you have it: and I ask my old friend, I beg +him to go to them both.' + +'But you can't surely expect me to force my daughter's inclinations, my +dear Romfrey?' + +'Cecilia loves the fellow!' + +'She is engaged to Mr. Tuckham.' + +'I'll see the man Tuckham.' + +'Really, my dear lord!' + +'Play at it, Halkett, play at it! Tide us over this! Talk to her: hint +it and nod it. We have to round November. I could strangle the world +till that month's past. You'll own,' he added mildly after his thunder, +'I'm not much of the despot Nevil calls me. She has not a wish I don't +supply. I'm at her beck, and everything that's mine. She's a brave good +woman. I don't complain. I run my chance. But if we lose the child-- +good night! Boy or girl!--boy!' + +Lord Romfrey flung an arm up. The child of his old age lived for him +already: he gave it all the life he had. This miracle, this young son +springing up on an earth decaying and dark, absorbed him. This reviver +of his ancient line must not be lost. Perish every consideration to +avert it! He was ready to fear, love, or hate terribly, according to the +prospects of his child. + +Colonel Halkett was obliged to enter into a consultation, of a shadowy +sort, with his daughter, whose only advice was that they should leave the +castle. The penetrable gloom there, and the growing apprehension +concerning the countess and Nevil, tore her to pieces. Even if she could +have conspired with the earl to hoodwink his wife, her strong sense told +her it would be fruitless, besides base. Father and daughter had to make +the stand against Lord Romfrey. He saw their departure from the castle +gates, and kissed his hand to Cecilia, courteously, without a smile. + +'He may well praise the countess, papa,' said Cecilia, while they were +looking back at the castle and the moveless flag that hung in folds by +the mast above it. 'She has given me her promise to avoid questioning +him and to accept his view of her duty. She said to me that if Nevil +should die she . . .' + +Cecilia herself broke down, and gave way to sobs in her father's arms. + + + + +CHAPTER XLIX + +A FABRIC OF BARONIAL DESPOTISM CRUMBLE + +The earl's precautions did duty night and day in all the avenues leading +to the castle and his wife's apartments; and he could believe that he had +undertaken as good a defence as the mountain guarding the fertile vale +from storms: but him the elements pelted heavily. Letters from +acquaintances of Nevil, from old shipmates and from queer political +admirers and opponents, hailed on him; things not to be frigidly read +were related of the fellow. + +Lord Romfrey's faith in the power of constitution to beat disease battled +sturdily with the daily reports of his physician and friends, whom he had +directed to visit the cottage on the common outside Bevisham, and with +Miss Denham's intercepted letters to the countess. Still he had to +calculate on the various injuries Nevil had done to his constitution, +which had made of him another sort of man for a struggle of life and +death than when he stood like a riddled flag through the war. That +latest freak of the fellow's, the abandonment of our natural and +wholesome sustenance in animal food, was to be taken in the reckoning. +Dr. Gannet did not allude to it; the Bevisham doctor did; and the earl +meditated with a fury of wrath on the dismal chance that such a folly as +this of one old vegetable idiot influencing a younger noodle, might +strike his House to the dust. + +His watch over his wife had grown mechanical: he failed to observe that +her voice was missing. She rarely spoke. He lost the art of observing +himself: the wrinkling up and dropping of his brows became his habitual +language. So long as he had not to meet inquiries or face tears, he +enjoyed the sense of security. He never quitted his wife save to walk to +the Southern park lodge, where letters and telegrams were piled awaiting +him; and she was forbidden to take the air on the castle terrace without +his being beside her, lest a whisper, some accident of the kind that +donkeys who nod over their drowsy nose-length-ahead precautions call +fatality, should rouse her to suspect, and in a turn of the hand undo his +labour: for the race was getting terrible: Death had not yet stepped out +of that evil chamber in Dr. Shrapnel's cottage to aim his javelin at the +bosom containing the prized young life to come, but, like the smoke of +waxing fire, he shadowed forth his presence in wreaths blacker and +thicker day by day: and Everard Romfrey knew that the hideous beast of +darkness had only to spring up and pass his guard to deal a blow to his +House the direr from all he supposed himself to have gained by masking it +hitherto. The young life he looked to for renewal swallowed him: he +partly lost human feeling for his wife in the tremendous watch and strain +to hurry her as a vessel round the dangerous headland. He was oblivious +that his eyebrows talked, that his head was bent low, that his mouth was +shut, and that where a doubt had been sown, silence and such signs are +like revelations in black night to the spirit of a woman who loves. + +One morning after breakfast Rosamund hung on his arm, eyeing him neither +questioningly nor invitingly, but long. He kissed her forehead. She +clung to him and closed her eyes, showing him a face of slumber, like a +mask of the dead. + +Mrs. Devereux was present. Cecilia had entreated her to stay with Lady +Romfrey. She stole away, for the time had come which any close observer +of the countess must have expected. + +The earl lifted his wife, and carried her to her sitting-room. A sunless +weltering September day whipped the window-panes and brought the roar of +the beaten woods to her ears. He was booted and gaitered for his +customary walk to the park lodge, and as he bent a knee beside her, she +murmured: 'Don't wait; return soon.' + +He placed a cord attached to the bellrope within her reach. This utter +love of Nevil Beauchamp was beyond his comprehension, but there it was, +and he had to submit to it and manoeuvre. His letters and telegrams told +the daily tale. 'He's better,' said the earl, preparing himself to +answer what his wife's look had warned him would come. + +She was an image of peace, in the same posture on the couch where he had +left her, when he returned. She did not open her eyes, but felt about +for his hand, and touching it, she seemed to weigh the fingers. + +At last she said: 'The fever should be at its height.' + +'Why, my dear brave girl, what ails you?' said he. + +'Ignorance.' + +She raised her eyelids. His head was bent down over her, like a raven's +watching, a picture of gravest vigilance. + +Her bosom rose and sank. 'What has Miss Denham written to-day?' + +'To-day?' he asked her gently. + +'I shall bear it,' she answered. 'You were my master before you were my +husband. I bear anything you think is good for my government. Only, my +ignorance is fever; I share Nevil's.' + +'Have you been to my desk at all?' + +'No. I read your eyes and your hands: I have been living on them. To- +day I find that I have not gained by it, as I hoped I should. Ignorance +kills me. I really have courage to bear to hear just at this moment I +have.' + +'There's no bad news, my love,' said the earl. + +'High fever, is it?' + +'The usual fever. Gannet's with him. I sent for Gannet to go there, to +satisfy you.' + +'Nevil is not dead?' + +'Lord! ma'am, my dear soul!' + +'He is alive?' + +'Quite: certainly alive; as much alive as I am; only going a little +faster, as fellows do in the jumps of a fever. The best doctor in +England is by his bed. He 's doing fairly. You should have let me know +you were fretting, my Rosamund.' + +'I did not wish to tempt you to lie, my dear lord.' + +'Well, there are times when a woman . . . as you are: but you're a +brave woman, a strong heart, and my wife. You want some one to sit with +you, don't you? Louise Devereux is a pleasant person, but you want a man +to amuse you. I'd have sent to Stukely, but you want a serious man, I +fancy.' + +So much had the earl been thrown out of his plan for protecting his wife, +that he felt helpless, and hinted at the aids and comforts of religion. +He had not rejected the official Church, and regarding it now as in +alliance with great Houses, he considered that its ministers might also +be useful to the troubled women of noble families. He offered, if she +pleased, to call in the rector to sit with her--the bishop of the +diocese, if she liked. + +'But just as you like, my love,' he added. 'You know you have to avoid +fretting. I've heard my sisters talk of the parson doing them good off +and on about the time of their being brought to bed. He elevated their +minds, they said. I'm sure I've no objection. If he can doctor the +minds of women he's got a profession worth something.' + +Rosamund smothered an outcry. 'You mean that Nevil is past hope!' + +'Not if he's got a fair half of our blood in him. And Richard Beauchamp +gave the fellow good stock. He has about the best blood in England. +That's not saying much when they've taken to breed as they build--stuff +to keep the plasterers at work; devil a thought of posterity!' + +'There I see you and Nevil one, my dear lord,' said Rosamund. 'You think +of those that are to follow us. Talk to me of him. Do not say, "the +fellow." Say "Nevil." No, no; call him "the fellow." He was alive and +well when you used to say it. But smile kindly, as if he made you love +him down in your heart, in spite of you. We have both known that love, +and that opposition to him; not liking his ideas, yet liking him so: we +were obliged to laugh--I have seen you! as love does laugh! If I am not +crying over his grave, Everard? Oh!' + +The earl smoothed her forehead. All her suspicions were rekindled. +'Truth! truth! give me truth. Let me know what world I am in.' + +'My dear, a ship's not lost because she's caught in a squall; nor a man +buffeting the waves for an hour. He's all right: he keeps up.' + +'He is delirious? I ask you--I have fancied I heard him.' + +Lord Romfrey puffed from his nostrils: but in affecting to blow to the +winds her foolish woman's wildness of fancy, his mind rested on Nevil, +and he said: 'Poor boy! It seems he's chattering hundreds to the +minute.' + +His wife's looks alarmed him after he had said it, and he was for toning +it and modifying it, when she gasped to him to help her to her feet; and +standing up, she exclaimed: 'O heaven! now I hear you; now I know he +lives. See how much better it is for me to know the real truth. It +takes me to his bedside. Ignorance and suspense have been poison. I +have been washed about like a dead body. Let me read all my letters now. +Nothing will harm me now. You will do your best for me, my husband, will +you not?' She tore at her dress at her throat for coolness, panting and +smiling. 'For me--us--yours--ours! Give me my letters, lunch with me, +and start for Bevisham. Now you see how good it is for me to hear the +very truth, you will give me your own report, and I shall absolutely +trust in it, and go down with it if it's false! But you see I am +perfectly strong for the truth. It must be you or I to go. I burn to +go; but your going will satisfy me. If you look on him, I look. I feel +as if I had been nailed down in a coffin, and have got fresh air. I +pledge you my word, sir, my honour, my dear husband, that I will think +first of my duty. I know it would be Nevil's wish. He has not quite +forgiven me--he thought me ambitious--ah! stop: he said that the birth +of our child would give him greater happiness than he had known for +years: he begged me to persuade you to call a boy Nevil Beauchamp, and a +girl Renee. He has never believed in his own long living.' + +Rosamund refreshed her lord's heart by smiling archly as she said: 'The +boy to be educated to take the side of the people, of course! The girl +is to learn a profession.' + +'Ha! bless the fellow!' Lord Romfrey interjected. 'Well, I might go +there for an hour. Promise me, no fretting! You have hollows in your +cheeks, and your underlip hangs: I don't like it. I haven't seen that +before.' + +'We do not see clearly when we are trying to deceive,' said Rosamund. +'My letters! my letters!' + +Lord Romfrey went to fetch them. They were intact in his desk. His +wife, then, had actually been reading the facts through a wall! For he +was convinced of Mrs. Devereux's fidelity, as well as of the colonel's +and Cecilia's. He was not a man to be disobeyed: nor was his wife the +woman to court or to acquiesce in trifling acts of disobedience to him. +He received the impression, consequently, that this matter of the visit +to Nevil was one in which the poor loving soul might be allowed to guide +him, singular as the intensity of her love of Nevil Beauchamp was, +considering that they were not of kindred blood. + +He endeavoured to tone her mind for the sadder items in Miss Denham's +letters. + +'Oh!' said Rosamund, 'what if I shed the "screaming eyedrops," as you +call them? They will not hurt me, but relieve. I was sure I should +someday envy that girl! If he dies she will have nursed him and had the +last of him.' + +'He's not going to die!' said Everard powerfully. + +'We must be prepared. These letters will do that for me. I have written +out the hours of your trains. Stanton will attend on you. I have +directed him to telegraph to the Dolphin in Bevisham for rooms for the +night: that is to-morrow night. To-night you sleep at your hotel in +London, which will be ready to receive you, and is more comfortable than +the empty house. Stanton takes wine, madeira and claret, and other small +necessaries. If Nevil should be very unwell, you will not leave him +immediately. I shall look to the supplies. You will telegraph to me +twice a day, and write once. We lunch at half-past twelve, so that you +may hit the twenty-minutes-to-two o'clock train. And now I go to see +that the packing is done.' + +She carried off her letters to her bedroom, where she fell upon the bed, +shutting her eyelids hard before she could suffer her eyes to be the +intermediaries of that fever-chamber in Bevisham and her bursting heart. +But she had not positively deceived her husband in the reassurance she +had given him by her collectedness and by the precise directions she had +issued for his comforts, indicating a mind so much more at ease. She was +firmer to meet the peril of her beloved: and being indeed, when thrown on +her internal resources, one among the brave women of earth, though also +one who required a lift from circumstances to take her stand calmly +fronting a menace to her heart, she saw the evidence of her influence +with Lord Romfrey: the level she could feel that they were on together so +long as she was courageous, inspirited her sovereignly. + +He departed at the hour settled for him. Rosamund sat at her boudoir +window, watching the carriage that was conducting him to the railway +station. Neither of them had touched on the necessity of his presenting +himself at the door of Dr. Shrapnel's house. That, and the disgust +belonging to it, was a secondary consideration with Lord Romfrey, after +he had once resolved on it as the right thing to do: and his wife admired +and respected him for so supreme a loftiness. And fervently she prayed +that it might not be her evil fate to disappoint his hopes. Never had +she experienced so strong a sense of devotedness to him as when she saw +the carriage winding past the middle oak-wood of the park, under a wet +sky brightened from the West, and on out of sight. + + + + +ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + +A tear would have overcome him--She had not wept +Art of speaking on politics tersely +Death within which welcomed a death without +Dignity of sulking so seductive to the wounded spirit of man +Grief of an ill-fortuned passion of his youth +He lost the art of observing himself +Immense wealth and native obtuseness combine to disfigure us +Infallibility of our august mother +Inflicted no foretaste of her coming subjection to him +Love's a selfish business one has work in hand +No man has a firm foothold who pretends to it +Silence and such signs are like revelations in black night +The defensive is perilous policy in war +The greater wounds do not immediately convince us of our fate +The rider's too heavy for the horse in England +The weighty and the trivial contended +Their hearts are eaten up by property +Unanimous verdicts from a jury of temporary impressions +We do not see clearly when we are trying to deceive +Well, sir, we must sell our opium +Won't do to be taking in reefs on a lee-shore +Wooing a good man for his friendship + + + + +End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Beauchamp's Career, v6 +by George Meredith + + + + + + +BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER + +By GEORGE MEREDITH + +1897 + + + +BOOK 7. + +L. AT THE COTTAGE ON THE COMMON +LI. IN THE NIGHT +LII. QUESTION OF A PILGRIMAGE AND AN ACT OF PENANCE +LIII. THE APOLOGY TO DR. SHRAPNEL +LIV. THE FRUITS OF THE APOLOGY +LV. WITHOUT LOVE +LVI. THE LAST OF NEVIL BEAUCHAMP + + + +CHAPTER L + +AT THE COTTAGE ON THE COMMON + +Rain went with Lord Romfrey in a pursuing cloud all the way to Bevisham, +and across the common to the long garden and plain little green- +shuttered, neat white cottage of Dr. Shrapnel. Carriages were driving +from the door; idle men with hands deep in their pockets hung near it, +some women pointing their shoulders under wet shawls, and boys. The earl +was on foot. With no sign of discomposure, he stood at the half-open +door and sent in his card, bearing the request for permission to visit +his nephew. The reply failing to come to him immediately, he began +striding to and fro. That garden gate where he had flourished the +righteous whip was wide. Foot-farers over the sodden common were +attracted to the gateway, and lingered in it, looking at the long, +green-extended windows, apparently listening, before they broke away to +exchange undertone speech here and there. Boys had pushed up through the +garden to the kitchen area. From time to time a woman in a dripping +bonnet whimpered aloud. + +An air of a country churchyard on a Sunday morning when the curate has +commenced the service prevailed. The boys were subdued by the moisture, +as they are when they sit in the church aisle or organ-loft, before their +members have been much cramped. + +The whole scene, and especially the behaviour of the boys, betokened to +Lord Romfrey that an event had come to pass. + +In the chronicle of a sickness the event is death. + +He bethought him of various means of stopping the telegraph and +smothering the tale, if matters should have touched the worst here. +He calculated abstrusely the practicable shortness of the two routes from +Bevisham to Romfrey, by post-horses on the straightest line of road, or +by express train on the triangle of railway, in case of an extreme need +requiring him to hasten back to his wife and renew his paternal-despotic +system with her. She had but persuaded him of the policy of a liberal +openness and confidence for the moment's occasion: she could not turn his +nature, which ran to strokes of craft and blunt decision whenever the +emergency smote him and he felt himself hailed to show generalship. + +While thus occupied in thoughtfulness he became aware of the monotony +of a tuneless chant, as if, it struck him, an insane young chorister or +canon were galloping straight on end hippomaniacally through the Psalms. +There was a creak at intervals, leading him to think it a machine that +might have run away with the winder's arm. + +The earl's humour proposed the notion to him that this perhaps was one +of the forms of Radical lamentation, ululation, possibly practised by a +veteran impietist like Dr. Shrapnel for the loss of his youngster, his +political cub--poor lad! + +Deriding any such paganry, and aught that could be set howling, Lord +Romfrey was presently moved to ask of the small crowd at the gate what +that sound was. + +'It's the poor commander, sir,' said a wet-shawled woman, shivering. + +'He's been at it twenty hours already, sir,' said one of the boys. + +'Twenty-foor hour he 've been at it,' said another. + +A short dispute grew over the exact number of hours. One boy declared +that thirty hours had been reached. 'Father heerd'n yesterday morning as +he was aff to 's work in the town afore six: that brings 't nigh thirty +and he ha'n't stopped yet.' + +The earl was invited to step inside the gate, a little way up to the +house, and under the commander's window, that he might obtain a better +hearing. + +He swung round, walked away, walked back, and listened. + +If it was indeed a voice, the voice, he would have said, was travelling +high in air along the sky. + +Yesterday he had described to his wife Nevil's chattering of hundreds to +the minute. He had not realized the description, which had been only his +manner of painting delirium: there had been no warrant for it. He heard +the wild scudding voice imperfectly: it reminded him of a string of +winter geese changeing waters. Shower gusts, and the wail and hiss of +the rows of fir-trees bordering the garden, came between, and allowed him +a moment's incredulity as to its being a human voice. Such a cry will +often haunt the moors and wolds from above at nightfall. The voice hied +on, sank, seemed swallowed; it rose, as if above water, in a hush of wind +and trees. The trees bowed their heads rageing, the voice drowned; once +more to rise, chattering thrice rapidly, in a high-pitched key, thin, +shrill, weird, interminable, like winds through a crazy chamber-door at +midnight. + +The voice of a broomstick-witch in the clouds could not be thinner and +stranger: Lord Romfrey had some such thought. + +Dr. Gannet was the bearer of Miss Denham's excuses to Lord Romfrey for +the delay in begging him to enter the house: in the confusion of the +household his lordship's card had been laid on the table below, and she +was in the sick-room. + +'Is my nephew a dead man?' said the earl. + +The doctor weighed his reply. 'He lives. Whether he will, after the +exhaustion of this prolonged fit of raving, I don't dare to predict. In +the course of my experience I have never known anything like it. He +lives: there's the miracle, but he lives.' + +'On brandy?' + +'That would soon have sped him.' + +'Ha. You have everything here that you want?' + +'Everything.' + +'He's in your hands, Gannet.' + +The earl was conducted to a sitting-room, where Dr. Gannet left him for a +while. + +Mindful that he was under the roof of his enemy, he remained standing, +observing nothing. + +The voice overheard was off at a prodigious rate, like the far sound of a +yell ringing on and on. + +The earl unconsciously sought a refuge from it by turning the leaves of a +book upon the table, which was a complete edition of Harry Denham's +Poems, with a preface by a man named Lydiard; and really, to read the +preface one would suppose that these poets were the princes of the earth. +Lord Romfrey closed the volume. It was exquisitely bound, and presented +to Miss Denham by the Mr. Lydiard. 'The works of your illustrious +father,' was written on the title-page. These writers deal queerly with +their words of praise of one another. There is no law to restrain them. +Perhaps it is the consolation they take for the poor devil's life they +lead! + +A lady addressing him familiarly, invited him to go upstairs. + +He thanked her. At the foot of the stairs he turned; he had recognized +Cecilia Halkett. + +Seeing her there was more strange to him than being there himself; but he +bowed to facts. + +'What do you think?' he said. + +She did not answer intelligibly. + +He walked up. + +The crazed gabbling tongue had entire possession of the house, and rang +through it at an amazing pitch to sustain for a single minute. + +A reflection to the effect that dogs die more decently than we men, +saddened the earl. But, then, it is true, we shorten their pangs by +shooting them. + +A dismal figure loomed above him at the head of the stairs. + +He distinguished it in the vast lean length he had once whipped and flung +to earth. + +Dr. Shrapnel was planted against the wall outside that raving chamber, at +the salient angle of a common prop or buttress. The edge of a shoulder +and a heel were the supports to him sideways in his distorted attitude. +His wall arm hung dead beside his pendent frock-coat; the hair of his +head had gone to wildness, like a field of barley whipped by tempest. +One hand pressed his eyeballs: his unshaven jaw dropped. + +Lord Romfrey passed him by. + +The dumb consent of all present affirmed the creature lying on the bed to +be Nevil Beauchamp. + +Face, voice, lank arms, chicken neck: what a sepulchral sketch of him! + +It was the revelry of a corpse. + +Shudders of alarm for his wife seized Lord Romfrey at the sight. He +thought the poor thing on the bed must be going, resolving to a cry, +unwinding itself violently in its hurricane of speech, that was not +speech nor exclamation, rather the tongue let loose to run to the death. +It seemed to be out in mid-sea, up wave and down wave. + +A nurse was at the pillow smoothing it. Miss Denham stood at the foot of +the bed. + +'Is that pain?' Lord Romfrey said low to Dr. Gannet. + +'Unconscious,' was the reply. + +Miss Denham glided about the room and disappeared. + +Her business was to remove Dr. Shrapnel, that he might be out of the way +when Lord Romfrey should pass him again: but Dr. Shrapnel heard one voice +only, and moaned, 'My Beauchamp!' She could not get him to stir. + +Miss Denham saw him start slightly as the earl stepped forth and, bowing +to him, said: 'I thank you, sir, for permitting me to visit my nephew.' + +Dr. Shrapnel made a motion of the hand, to signify freedom of access to +his house. He would have spoken the effort fetched a burst of terrible +chuckles. He covered his face. + +Lord Romfrey descended. The silly old wretch had disturbed his +equanimity as a composer of fiction for the comfort and sustainment of +his wife: and no sooner had he the front door in view than the +calculation of the three strides requisite to carry him out of the house +plucked at his legs, much as young people are affected by a dancing +measure; for he had, without deigning to think of matters disagreeable to +him in doing so, performed the duty imposed upon him by his wife, and now +it behoved him to ward off the coming blow from that double life at +Romfrey Castle. + +He was arrested in his hasty passage by Cecilia Halkett. + +She handed him a telegraphic message: Rosamund requested him to stay two +days in Bevisham. She said additionally: 'Perfectly well. Shall fear to +see you returning yet. Have sent to Tourdestelle. All his friends. Ni +espoir, ni crainte, mais point de deceptions. Lumiere. Ce sont les +tenebres qui tuent.' + +Her nimble wits had spied him on the road he was choosing, and outrun +him. + +He resigned himself to wait a couple of days at Bevisham. Cecilia begged +him to accept a bed at Mount Laurels. He declined, and asked her: 'How +is it you are here?' + +'I called here,' said she, compressing her eyelids in anguish at a wilder +cry of the voice overhead, and forgetting to state why she had called at +the house and what services she had undertaken. A heap of letters in her +handwriting explained the nature of her task. + +Lord Romfrey asked her where the colonel was. + +'He drives me down in the morning and back at night, but they will give +me a bed or a sofa here to-night--I can't . . .' Cecilia stretched her +hand out, blinded, to the earl. + +He squeezed her hand. + +'These letters take away my strength: crying is quite useless, I know +that,' said she, glancing at a pile of letters that she had partly +replied to. 'Some are from people who can hardly write. There were +people who distrusted him! Some are from people who abused him and +maltreated him. See those poor creatures out in the rain!' + +Lord Romfrey looked through the venetian blinds of the parlour window. + +'It's as good as a play to them,' he remarked. + +Cecilia lit a candle and applied a stick of black wax to the flame, +saying: 'Envelopes have fallen short. These letters will frighten the +receivers. I cannot help it.' + +'I will bring letter paper and envelopes in the afternoon,' said Lord +Romfrey. 'Don't use black wax, my dear.' + +'I can find no other: I do not like to trouble Miss Denham. Letter paper +has to be sealed. These letters must go by the afternoon post: I do not +like to rob the poor anxious people of a little hope while he lives. Let +me have note paper and envelopes quickly: not black-edged.' + +'Plain; that's right,' said Lord Romfrey. + +Black appeared to him like the torch of death flying over the country. + +'There may be hope,' he added. + +She sighed: 'Oh! yes.' + +'Gannet will do everything that man can do to save him.' + +'He will, I am sure.' + +'You don't keep watch in the room, my dear, do you?' + +'Miss Denham allows me an hour there in the day: it is the only rest she +takes. She gives me her bedroom.' + +'Ha: well: women!' ejaculated the earl, and paused. 'That sounded like +him!' + +'At times,' murmured Cecilia. 'All yesterday! all through the night! +and to-day!' + +'He'll be missed.' + +Any sudden light of happier expectation that might have animated him was +extinguished by the flight of chatter following the cry which had sounded +like Beauchamp. + +He went out into the rain, thinking that Beauchamp would be missed. The +fellow had bothered the world, but the world without him would be heavy +matter. + +The hour was mid-day, workmen's meal-time. A congregation of shipyard +workmen and a multitude of children crowded near the door. In passing +through them, Lord Romfrey was besought for the doctor's report of +Commander Beauchamp, variously named Beesham, Bosham, Bitcham, Bewsham. +The earl heard his own name pronounced as he particularly disliked to +hear it--Rumfree. Two or three men scowled at him. + +It had not occurred to him ever before in his meditations to separate his +blood and race from the common English; and he was not of a character to +dwell on fantastical and purposeless distinctions, but the +mispronunciation of his name and his nephew's at an instant when he was +thinking of Nevil's laying down his life for such men as these gross +excessive breeders, of ill shape and wooden countenance, pushed him to +reflections on the madness of Nevil in endeavouring to lift them up and +brush them up; and a curious tenderness for Nevil's madness worked in his +breast as he contrasted this much-abused nephew of his with our general +English--the so-called nobles, who were sunk in the mud of the traders: +the traders, who were sinking in the mud of the workmen: the workmen, who +were like harbour-flats at ebb tide round a stuck-fast fleet of vessels +big and little. + +Decidedly a fellow like Nevil would be missed by him! + +These English, huddling more and more in flocks, turning to lumps, +getting to be cut in a pattern and marked by a label--how they bark and +snap to rend an obnoxious original! One may chafe at the botheration +everlastingly raised by the fellow; but if our England is to keep her +place she must have him, and many of him. Have him? He's gone! + +Lord Romfrey reasoned himself into pathetic sentiment by degrees. + +He purchased the note paper and envelopes in the town for Cecilia. +Late in the afternoon he deposited them on the parlour table at Dr. +Shrapnel's. Miss Denham received him. She was about to lie down for her +hour of rest on the sofa. Cecilia was upstairs. He inquired if there +was any change in his nephew's condition. + +'Not any,' said Miss Denham. + +The voice was abroad for proof of that. + +He stood with a swelling heart. + +Jenny flung out a rug to its length beside the sofa, and; holding it by +one end, said: 'I must have my rest, to be of service, my lord.' + +He bowed. He was mute and surprised. + +The young lady was like no person of her age and sex that he remembered +ever to have met. + +'I will close the door,' he said, retiring softly. + +'Do not, my lord.' + +The rug was over her, up to her throat, and her eyes were shut. He +looked back through the doorway in going out. She was asleep. + +'Some delirium. Gannet of good hope. All in the usual course'; he +transmitted intelligence to his wife. + +A strong desire for wine at his dinner-table warned him of something +wrong with his iron nerves. + + + + +CHAPTER LI + +IN THE NIGHT + +The delirious voice haunted him. It came no longer accompanied by images +and likenesses to this and that of animate nature, which were relieving +and distracting; it came to him in its mortal nakedness--an afflicting +incessant ringing peal, bare as death's ribs in telling of death. When +would it stop? And when it stopped, what would succeed? What ghastly +silence! + +He walked to within view of the lights of Dr. Shrapnel's at night: then +home to his hotel. + +Miss Denham's power of commanding sleep, as he could not, though contrary +to custom he tried it on the right side and the left, set him thinking of +her. He owned she was pretty. But that, he contended, was not the word; +and the word was undiscoverable. Not Cecilia Halkett herself had so +high-bred an air, for Cecilia had not her fineness of feature and full +quick eyes, of which the thin eyelids were part of the expression. And +Cecilia sobbed, snifed, was patched about the face, reddish, bluish. +This girl was pliable only to service, not to grief: she did her work for +three-and-twenty hours, and fell to her sleep of one hour like a soldier. +Lord Romfrey could not recollect anything in a young woman that had taken +him so much as the girl's tossing out of the rug and covering herself, +lying down and going to sleep under his nose, absolutely independent of +his presence. + +She had not betrayed any woman's petulance with him for his conduct to +her uncle or guardian. Nor had she hypocritically affected the reverse, +as ductile women do, when they feel wanting in force to do the other. +She was not unlike Nevil's marquise in face, he thought: less foreign of +course; looking thrice as firm. Both were delicately featured. + +He had a dream. + +It was of an interminable procession of that odd lot called the People. +All of them were quarrelling under a deluge. One party was for +umbrellas, one was against them: and sounding the dispute with a question +or two, Everard held it logical that there should be protection from the +wet: just as logical on the other hand that so frail a shelter should be +discarded, considering the tremendous downpour. But as he himself was +dry, save for two or three drops, he deemed them all lunatics. He +requested them to gag their empty chatter-boxes, and put the mother upon +that child's cry. + +He was now a simple unit of the procession. Asking naturally whither +they were going, he saw them point. 'St. Paul's,' he heard. In his own +bosom it was, and striking like the cathedral big bell. + +Several ladies addressed him sorrowfully. He stood alone. It had become +notorious that he was to do battle, and no one thought well of his +chances. Devil an enemy to be seen! he muttered. Yet they said the +enemy was close upon him. His right arm was paralyzed. There was the +enemy hard in front, mailed, vizored, gauntleted. He tried to lift his +right hand, and found it grasping an iron ring at the bottom of the deep +Steynham well, sunk one hundred feet through the chalk. But the +unexampled cunning of his left arm was his little secret; and, acting +upon this knowledge, he telegraphed to his first wife at Steynham that +Dr. Gannet was of good hope, and thereupon he re-entered the ranks of the +voluminous procession, already winding spirally round the dome of St. +Paul's. And there, said he, is the tomb of Beauchamp. Everything +occurred according to his predictions, and he was entirely devoid of +astonishment. Yet he would fain have known the titles of the slain +admiral's naval battles. He protested he had a right to know, for he was +the hero's uncle, and loved him. He assured the stupid scowling people +that he loved Nevil Beauchamp, always loved the boy, and was the +staunchest friend the fellow had. And saying that, he certainly felt +himself leaning up against the cathedral rails in the attitude of Dr. +Shrapnel, and crying, 'Beauchamp! Beauchamp!' And then he walked firmly +out of Romfrey oakwoods, and, at a mile's distance from her, related to +his countess Rosamund that the burial was over without much silly +ceremony, and that she needed to know nothing of it whatever. + +Rosamund's face awoke him. It was the face of a chalk-quarry, +featureless, hollowed, appalling. + +The hour was no later than three in the morning. He quitted the +detestable bed where a dream--one of some half-dozen in the course of his +life-had befallen him. For the maxim of the healthy man is: up, and have +it out in exercise when sleep is for foisting base coin of dreams upon +you! And as the healthy only are fit to live, their maxims should be +law. He dressed and directed his leisurely steps to the common, under a +black sky, and stars of lively brilliancy. The lights of a carriage +gleamed on Dr. Shrapnel's door. A footman informed Lord Romfrey that +Colonel Halkett was in the house, and soon afterward the colonel +appeared. + +'Is it over? I don't hear him,' said Lord Romfrey. + +Colonel Halkett grasped his hand. 'Not yet,' he said. 'Cissy can't be +got away. It's killing her. No, he's alive. You may hear him now.' + +Lord Romfrey bent his ear. + +'It's weaker,' the colonel resumed. 'By the way, Romfrey, step out with +me. My dear friend, the circumstances will excuse me: you know I'm not a +man to take liberties. I'm bound to tell you what your wife writes to +me. She says she has it on her conscience, and can't rest for it. You +know women. She wants you to speak to the man here--Shrapnel. She wants +Nevil to hear that you and he were friendly before he dies; thinks it +would console the poor dear fellow. That's only an idea; but it concerns +her, you see. I'm shocked to have to talk to you about it.' + +'My dear colonel, I have no feeling against the man,' Lord Romfrey +replied. 'I spoke to him when I saw him yesterday. I bear no grudges. +Where is he? You can send to her to say I have spoken to him twice.' + +'Yes, yes,' the colonel assented. + +He could not imagine that Lady Romfrey required more of her husband. +'Well, I must be off. I leave Blackburn Tuckham here, with a friend of +his; a man who seems to be very sweet with Mrs. Wardour-Devereux.' + +'Ha! Fetch him to me, colonel; I beg you to do that,' said Lord Romfrey. + +The colonel brought out Lydiard to the earl. + +'You have been at my nephew's bedside, Mr. Lydiard?' + +'Within ten minutes, my lord.' + +'What is your opinion of the case?' + +'My opinion is, the chances are in his favour.' + +'Lay me under obligation by communicating that to Romfrey Castle at the +first opening of the telegraph office to-morrow morning.' + +Lydiard promised. + +'The raving has ended?' + +'Hardly, sir, but the exhaustion is less than we feared it would be.' + +'Gannet is there?' + +'He is in an arm-chair in the room.' + +'And Dr. Shrapnel?' + +'He does not bear speaking to; he is quiet.' + +'He is attached to my nephew?' + +'As much as to life itself.' + +Lord Romfrey thanked Lydiard courteously. 'Let us hope, sir, that some +day I shall have the pleasure of entertaining you, as well as another +friend of yours.' + +'You are very kind, my lord.' + +The earl stood at the door to see Colonel Halkett drive off: he declined +to accompany him to Mount Laurels. + +In the place of the carriage stood a man, who growled 'Where's your +horsewhip, butcher?' + +He dogged the earl some steps across the common. Everard returned to his +hotel and slept soundly during the remainder of the dark hours. + + + + +CHAPTER LII + +QUESTION OF A PILGRIMAGE AND AN ACT OF PENANCE + +Then came a glorious morning for sportsmen. One sniffed the dews, and +could fancy fresh smells of stubble earth and dank woodland grass in the +very streets of dirty Bevisham. Sound sleep, like hearty dining, endows +men with a sense of rectitude, and sunlight following the former, as a +pleasant spell of conversational ease or sweet music the latter, smiles +a celestial approval of the performance: Lord Romfrey dismissed his +anxieties. His lady slightly ruffled him at breakfast in a letter +saying that she wished to join him. He was annoyed at noon by a message, +wherein the wish was put as a request. And later arrived another +message, bearing the character of an urgent petition. True, it might be +laid to the account of telegraphic brevity. + +He saw Dr. Shrapnel, and spoke to him, as before, to thank him for the +permission to visit his nephew. Nevil he contemplated for the space of +five minutes. He cordially saluted Miss Denham. He kissed Cecilia's +hand. + +'All here is going on so well that I am with you for a day or two to- +morrow,' he despatched the message to his wife. + +Her case was now the gravest. He could not understand why she desired to +be in Bevisham. She must have had execrable dreams!--rank poison to +mothers. + +However, her constitutional strength was great, and his pride in the +restoration of his House by her agency flourished anew, what with fair +weather and a favourable report from Dr. Gannet: The weather was most +propitious to the hopes of any soul bent on dispersing the shadows of +death, and to sportsmen. From the windows of his railway carriage he +beheld the happy sportsmen stalking afield. The birds whirred and +dropped just where he counted on their dropping. The smoke of the guns +threaded to dazzling silver in the sunshine. Say what poor old Nevil +will, or did say, previous to the sobering of his blood, where is there a +land like England? Everard rejoiced in his country temperately. Having +Nevil as well,--of which fact the report he was framing in his mind to +deliver to his wife assured him--he was rich. And you that put +yourselves forward for republicans and democrats, do you deny the +aristocracy of an oaklike man who is young upon the verge of eighty? + +These were poetic flights, but he knew them not by name, and had not to +be ashamed of them. + +Rosamund met him in the hall of the castle. 'You have not deceived me, +my dear lord,' she said, embracing him. 'You have done what you could +for me. The rest is for me to do.' + +He reciprocated her embrace warmly, in commendation of her fresher good +looks. + +She asked him, 'You have spoken to Dr. Shrapnel?' + +He answered her, 'Twice.' + +The word seemed quaint. She recollected that he was quaint. + +He repeated, 'I spoke to him the first day I saw him, and the second.' + +'We are so much indebted to him,' said Rosamund. 'His love of Nevil +surpasses ours. Poor man! poor man! At least we may now hope the blow +will be spared him which would have carried off his life with Nevil's. +I have later news of Nevil than you.' + +'Good, of course?' + +'Ah me! the pleasure of the absence of pain. He is not gone.' + +Lord Romfrey liked her calm resignation. + +'There's a Mr. Lydiard,' he said, 'a friend of Nevil's, and a friend of +Louise Devereux's.' + +'Yes; we hear from him every four hours,' Rosamund rejoined. 'Mention +him to her before me.' + +'That's exactly what I was going to tell you to do before me,' said her +husband, smiling. + +'Because, Everard, is it not so?--widows . . . and she loves this +gentleman!' + +'Certainly, my dear; I think with you about widows. The world asks them +to practise its own hypocrisy. Louise Devereux was married to a pipe; +she's the widow of tobacco ash. We'll make daylight round her.' + +'How good, how kind you are, my lord! I did not think so shrewd! But +benevolence is almost all-seeing: You said you spoke to Dr. Shrapnel +twice. Was he . . . polite?' + +'Thoroughly upset, you know.' + +'What did he say?' + +'What was it? "Beauchamp! Beauchamp!" the first time; and the second +time he said he thought it had left off raining.' + +'Ah!' Rosamund drooped her head. + +She looked up. 'Here is Louise. My lord has had a long conversation +with Mr. Lydiard.' + +'I trust he will come here before you leave us,' added the earl. + +Rosamund took her hand. 'My lord has been more acute than I, or else +your friend is less guarded than you.' + +'What have you seen?' said the blushing lady. + +'Stay. I have an idea you are one of the women I promised to Cecil +Baskelett,' said the earl. 'Now may I tell him there's no chance?' + +'Oh! do.' + +They spent so very pleasant an evening that the earl settled down into a +comfortable expectation of the renewal of his old habits in the September +and October season. Nevil's frightful cry played on his ear-drum at +whiles, but not too affectingly. He conducted Rosamund to her room, +kissed her, hoped she would sleep well, and retired to his good hard +bachelor's bed, where he confidently supposed he would sleep. The sleep +of a dyspeptic, with a wilder than the monstrous Bevisham dream, befell +him, causing him to rise at three in the morning and proceed to his +lady's chamber, to assure himself that at least she slept well. She was +awake. + +'I thought you might come,' she said. + +He reproached her gently for indulging foolish nervous fears. + +She replied, 'No, I do not; I am easier about Nevil. I begin to think he +will live. I have something at my heart that prevents me from sleeping. +It concerns me. Whether he is to live or die, I should like him to know +he has not striven in vain--not in everything: not where my conscience +tells me he was right, and we, I, wrong--utterly wrong, wickedly wrong.' + +'My dear girl, you are exciting yourself.' + +'No; feel my pulse. The dead of night brings out Nevil to me like the +Writing on the Wall. It shall not be said he failed in everything. +Shame to us if it could be said! He tried to make me see what my duty +was, and my honour.' + +'He was at every man Jack of us.' + +'I speak of one thing. I thought I might not have to go. Now I feel I +must. I remember him at Steynham, when Colonel Halkett and Cecilia were +there. But for me, Cecilia would now be his wife. Of that there is no +doubt; that is not the point; regrets are fruitless. I see how the +struggle it cost him to break with his old love--that endearing Madame de +Rouaillout, his Renee--broke his heart; and then his loss of Cecilia +Halkett. But I do believe, true as that I am lying here, and you hold my +hand, my dear husband, those losses were not so fatal to him as his +sufferings he went through on account of his friend Dr. Shrapnel. I will +not keep you here. + +Go and have some rest. What I shall beg of you tomorrow will not injure +my health in the slightest: the reverse: it will raise me from a bitter +depression. It shall not be said that those who loved him were unmoved +by him. Before he comes back to life, or is carried to his grave, he +shall know that I was not false to my love of him.' + +'My dear, your pulse is at ninety,' said the earl. + +'Look lenient, be kind, be just, my husband. Oh! let us cleanse our +hearts. This great wrong was my doing. I am not only quite strong +enough to travel to Bevisham, I shall be happy in going: and when I have +done it--said: "The wrong was all mine," I shall rejoice like the pure in +spirit. Forgiveness does not matter, though I now believe that poor +loving old man who waits outside his door weeping, is wrong-headed only +in his political views. We women can read men by their power to love. +Where love exists there is goodness. But it is not for the sake of the +poor old man himself that I would go: it is for Nevil's; it is for ours, +chiefly for me, for my child's, if ever . . . !' Rosamund turned her +head on her pillow. + +The earl patted her cheek. 'We 'll talk it over in the morning,' he +said. 'Now go to sleep.' + +He could not say more, for he did not dare to attempt cajolery with her. +Shading his lamp he stepped softly away to wrestle with a worse nightmare +than sleep's. Her meaning was clear: and she was a woman to insist on +doing it. She was nevertheless a woman not impervious to reason, if only +he could shape her understanding to perceive that the state of her +nerves, incident to her delicate situation and the shock of that fellow +Nevil's illness--poor lad!--was acting on her mind, rendering her a +victim of exaggerated ideas of duty, and so forth. + +Naturally, apart from allowing her to undertake the journey by rail, he +could not sanction his lady's humbling of herself so egregiously and +unnecessarily. Shrapnel had behaved unbecomingly, and had been punished +for it. He had spoken to Shrapnel, and the affair was virtually at an +end. With his assistance she would see that, when less excited. Her +eternal brooding over Nevil was the cause of these mental vagaries. + +Lord Romfrey was for postponing the appointed discussion in the morning +after breakfast. He pleaded business engagements. + +'None so urgent as this of mine,' said Rosamund. + +'But we have excellent news of Nevil: you have Gannet's word for it,' he +argued. 'There's really nothing to distress you.' + +'My heart: I must be worthy of good news, to know happiness,' she +answered. 'I will say, let me go to Bevisham two, three, four days +hence, if you like, but there is peace for me, and nowhere else.' + +'My precious Rosamund! have you set your two eyes on it? What you are +asking, is for permission to make an apology to Shrapnel!' + +'That is the word.' + +'That's Nevil's word.' + +'It is a prescription to me.' + +'An apology?' + +The earl's gorge rose. Why, such an act was comparable to the circular +mission of the dog! + +'If I do not make the apology, the mother of your child is a coward,' +said Rosamund. + +'She's not.' + +'I trust not.' + +'You are a reasonable woman, my dear. Now listen the man insulted you. +It's past: done with. He insulted you . . .' + +'He did not.' + +'What?' + +'He was courteous to me, hospitable to me, kind to me. He did not insult +me. I belied him.' + +'My dear saint, you're dreaming. He spoke insultingly of you to Cecil.' + +'Is my lord that man's dupe? I would stand against him before the throne +of God, with what little I know of his interview with Dr. Shrapnel, to +confront him and expose his lie. Do not speak of him. He stirs my evil +passions, and makes me feel myself the creature I was when I returned to +Steynham from my first visit to Bevisham, enraged with jealousy of Dr. +Shrapnel's influence over Nevil, spiteful, malicious: Oh! such a nest of +vileness as I pray to heaven I am not now, if it is granted me to give +life to another. Nevil's misfortunes date from that,' she continued, in +reply to the earl's efforts to soothe her. 'Not the loss of the +Election: that was no misfortune, but a lesson. He would not have shone +in Parliament: he runs too much from first principles to extremes. You +see I am perfectly reasonable, Everard: 'I can form an exact estimate of +character and things.' She smiled in his face. 'And I know my husband +too: what he will grant; what he would not, and justly would not. I know +to a certainty that vexatious as I must be to you now, you are conscious +of my having reason for being so.' + +'You carry it so far--fifty miles beyond the mark,' said he. 'The man +roughed you, and I taught him manners.' + +'No!' she half screamed her interposition. 'I repeat, he was in no way +discourteous or disobliging to me. He offered me a seat at his table, +and, heaven forgive me! I believe a bed in his house, that I might wait +and be sure of seeing Nevil, because I was very anxious to see him.' + +'All the same, you can't go to the man.' + +'I should have said so too, before my destiny touched me.' + +'A certain dignity of position, my dear, demands a corresponding dignity +of conduct: you can't go.' + +'If I am walking in the very eye of heaven, and feeling it shining on me +where I go, there is no question for me of human dignity.' + +Such flighty talk offended Lord Romfrey. + +'It comes to this: you're in want of a parson.' + +Rosamund was too careful to hint that she would have expected succour and +seconding from one or other of the better order of clergymen. + +She shook her head. 'To this, my dear lord: I have a troubled mind; and +it is not to listen nor to talk, that I am in need of, but to act.' + +'Yes, my dear girl, but not to act insanely. I do love soundness of +head. You have it, only just now you're a little astray. We'll leave +this matter for another time.' + +Rosamund held him by the arm. 'Not too long!' + +Both of them applied privately to Mrs. Wardour-Devereux for her opinion +and counsel on the subject of the proposal to apologize to Dr. Shrapnel. +She was against it with the earl, and became Rosamund's echo when with +her. When alone, she was divided into two almost equal halves: deeming +that the countess should not insist, and the earl should not refuse: him +she condemned for lack of sufficient spiritual insight to perceive the +merits of his wife's request: her she accused of some vestige of +something underbred in her nature, for putting such fervid stress upon +the supplication: i.e. making too much of it--a trick of the vulgar: and +not known to the languid. + +She wrote to Lydiard for advice. + +He condensed a paragraph into a line: + +'It should be the earl. She is driving him to it, intentionally or not.' + +Mrs. Devereux doubted that the countess could have so false an idea of +her husband's character as to think it possible he would ever be bent to +humble himself to the man he had castigated. She was right. It was by +honestly presenting to his mind something more loathsome still, the +humbling of herself, that Rosamund succeeded in awakening some remote +thoughts of a compromise, in case of necessity. Better I than she! + +But the necessity was inconceivable. + +He had really done everything required of him, if anything was really +required, by speaking to Shrapnel civilly. He had spoken to Shrapnel +twice. + +Besides, the castle was being gladdened by happier tidings of Beauchamp. +Gannet now pledged his word to the poor fellow's recovery, and the earl's +particular friends arrived, and the countess entertained them. October +passed smoothly. + +She said once: 'Ancestresses of yours, my lord, have undertaken +pilgrimages as acts of penance for sin, to obtain heaven's intercession +in their extremity.' + +'I dare say they did,' he replied. 'The monks got round them.' + +'It is not to be laughed at, if it eased their hearts.' + +Timidly she renewed her request for permission to perform the pilgrimage +to Bevisham. + +'Wait,' said he, 'till Nevil is on his legs.' + +'Have you considered where I may then be, Everard?' + +'My love, you sleep well, don't you?' + +'You see me every night.' + +'I see you sound asleep.' + +'I see you watching me.' + +'Let's reason,' said the earl; and again they went through the argument +upon the apology to Dr. Shrapnel. + +He was willing to indulge her in any amount of it: and she perceived why. +Fox! she thought. Grand fox, but fox downright. For her time was +shortening to days that would leave her no free-will. + +On the other hand, the exercise of her free-will in a fast resolve, was +growing all the more a privilege that he was bound to respect. As she +became sacreder and doubly precious to him, the less would he venture to +thwart her, though he should think her mad. There would be an analogy +between his manner of regarding her and the way that superstitious +villagers look on their crazy innocents, she thought sadly. And she bled +for him too: she grieved to hurt his pride. But she had come to imagine +that there was no avoidance of this deed of personal humiliation. + +Nevil had scrawled a note to her. She had it in her hand one forenoon in +mid November, when she said to her husband: 'I have ordered the carriage +for two o'clock to meet the quarter to three train to London, and I have +sent Stanton on to get the house ready for us tonight.' + +Lord Romfrey levelled a marksman's eye at her. + +'Why London? You know my wish that it should be here at the castle.' + +'I have decided to go to Bevisham. I have little time left.' + +'None, to my thinking.' + +'Oh I yes; my heart will be light. I shall gain. You come with me to +London?' + +'You can't go.' + +'Don't attempt to reason with me, please, please!' + +'I command, madam.' + +'My lord, it is past the hour of commanding.' + +He nodded his head, with the eyes up amid the puckered brows, and blowing +one of his long nasal expirations, cried, 'Here we are, in for another +bout of argument.' + +'No; I can bear the journey, rejoice in confessing my fault, but more +argument I cannot bear. I will reason with you when I can: submit to me +in this.' + +'Feminine reasoning!' he interjected. + +'I have nothing better to offer. It will be prudent to attend to me. +Take my conduct for the portion I bring you. Before I put myself in +God's care I must be clean. I am unclean. Language like that offends +you. I have no better. My reasoning has not touched you; I am helpless, +except in this determination that my contrition shall be expressed to Dr. +Shrapnel. If I am to have life, to be worthy of living and being a +mother, it must be done. Now, my dear lord, see that, and submit. +You're but one voice: I am two.' + +He jumped off his chair, frowning up his forehead, and staring awfully at +the insulting prospect. 'An apology to the man? By you? Away with it.' + +'Make allowances for me if you can, my dear lord that is what I am going +to do.' + +'My wife going there?' He strode along furiously. 'No!' + +'You will not stop her.' + +'There's a palsy in my arm if I don't.' + +She plucked at her watch. + +'Why, ma'am, I don't know you,' he said, coming close to her. 'Let 's +reason. Perhaps you overshot it; you were disgusted with Shrapnel. +Perhaps I was hasty; I get fired by an insult to a woman. There was a +rascal kissed a girl once against her will, and I heard her cry out; I +laid him on his back for six months; just to tell you; I'd do the same to +lord or beggar. Very well, my dear heart, we'll own I might have looked +into the case when that dog Cecil . . . what's the matter?' + +'Speak on, my dear husband,' said Rosamund, panting. + +'But your making the journey to Bevisham is a foolish notion.' + +'Yes? well?' + +'Well, we'll wait.' + +'Oh! have we to travel over it all again?' she exclaimed in despair at +the dashing out of a light she had fancied. 'You see the wrong. You +know the fever it is in my blood, and you bid me wait.' + +'Drop a line to Nevil.' + +'To trick my conscience! I might have done that, and done well, once. +Do you think I dislike the task I propose to myself? It is for your sake +that I would shun it. As for me, the thought of going there is an +ecstasy. I shall be with Nevil, and be able to look in his face. And +how can I be actually abasing you when I am so certain that I am worthier +of you in what I do?' + +Her exaltation swept her on. 'Hurry there, my lord, if you will. If you +think it prudent that you should go in my place, go: you deprive me of a +great joy, but I will not put myself in your way, and I consent. The +chief sin was mine; remember that. I rank it viler than Cecil +Baskelett's. And listen: when--can you reckon?--when will he confess his +wickedness? We separate ourselves from a wretch like that.' + +'Pooh,' quoth the earl. + +'But you will go?' She fastened her arms round the arm nearest: 'You or +I! Does it matter which? We are one. You speak for me; I should have +been forced to speak for you. You spare me the journey. I do not in +truth suppose it would have injured me; but I would not run one +unnecessary risk.' + +Lord Romfrey sighed profoundly. He could not shake her off. How could +he refuse her? + +How on earth had it come about that suddenly he was expected to be the +person to go? + +She would not let him elude her; and her stained cheeks and her trembling +on his arm pleaded most pressingly and masteringly. It might be that she +spoke with a knowledge of her case. Positive it undoubtedly was that she +meant to go if he did not. Perhaps the hopes of his House hung on it. +Having admitted that a wrong had been done, he was not the man to leave +it unamended; only he would have chosen his time, and the manner. Since +Nevil's illness, too, he had once or twice been clouded with a little bit +of regret at the recollection of poor innocent old Shrapnel posted like a +figure of total inebriation beside the doorway of the dreadful sickroom. + +There had been women of the earl's illustrious House who would have given +their hands to the axe rather than conceal a stain and have to dread a +scandal. His Rosamund, after all, was of their pattern; even though she +blew that conscience she prattled of into trifles, and swelled them, as +women of high birth in this country, out of the clutches of the priests, +do not do. + +She clung to him for his promise to go. + +He said: 'Well, well.' + +'That means, you will,' said she. + +His not denying it passed for the affirmative. + +Then indeed she bloomed with love of him. + +'Yet do say yes,' she begged. + +'I'll go, ma'am,' shouted the earl. 'I'll go, my love,' he said softly. + + + + +CHAPTER LIII + +THE APOLOGY TO DR. SHRAPNEL + +'You and Nevil are so alike,' Lady Romfrey said to her lord, at some +secret resemblance she detected and dwelt on fondly, when the earl was on +the point of starting a second time for Bevisham to perform what she had +prompted him to conceive his honourable duty, without a single intimation +that he loathed the task, neither shrug nor grimace. + +'Two ends of a stick are pretty much alike: they're all that length +apart,' said he, very little in the humour for compliments, however well +braced for his work. + +His wife's admiring love was pleasant enough. He preferred to have it +unspoken. Few of us care to be eulogized in the act of taking a nauseous +medical mixture. + +For him the thing was as good as done, on his deciding to think it both +adviseable and right: so he shouldered his load and marched off with it. +He could have postponed the right proceeding, even after the partial +recognition of his error:--one drops a word or two by hazard, one +expresses an anxiety to afford reparation, one sends a message, and so +forth, for the satisfaction of one's conventionally gentlemanly feeling: +but the adviseable proceeding under stress of peculiar circumstances, +his clearly-awakened recognition of that, impelled him unhesitatingly. +His wife had said it was the portion she brought him. Tears would not +have persuaded him so powerfully, that he might prove to her he was glad +of her whatever the portion she brought. She was a good wife, a brave +woman, likely to be an incomparable mother. At present her very virtues +excited her to fancifulness nevertheless she was in his charge, and he +was bound to break the neck of his will, to give her perfect peace of +wind. The child suffers from the mother's mental agitation. It might be +a question of a nervous or an idiot future Earl of Romfrey. Better death +to the House than such a mockery of his line! These reflections reminded +him of the heartiness of his whipping of that poor old tumbled signpost +Shrapnel, in the name of outraged womankind. If there was no outrage? + +Assuredly if there was no outrage, consideration for the state of his +wife would urge him to speak the apology in the most natural manner +possible. She vowed there was none. + +He never thought of blaming her for formerly deceiving him, nor of +blaming her for now expediting him. + +In the presence of Colonel Halkett, Mr. Tuckham, and Mr. Lydiard, on a +fine November afternoon, standing bareheaded in the fir-bordered garden +of the cottage on the common, Lord Romfrey delivered his apology to Dr. +Shrapnel, and he said: + +'I call you to witness, gentlemen, I offer Dr. Shrapnel the fullest +reparation he may think fit to demand of me for an unprovoked assault on +him, that I find was quite unjustified, and for which I am here to ask +his forgiveness.' + +Speech of man could not have been more nobly uttered. + +Dr. Shrapnel replied: + +'To the half of that, sir--'tis over! What remains is done with the +hand.' + +He stretched his hand out. + +Lord Romfrey closed his own on it. + +The antagonists, between whom was no pretence of their being other after +the performance of a creditable ceremony, bowed and exchanged civil +remarks: and then Lord Romfrey was invited to go into the house and see +Beauchamp, who happened to be sitting with Cecilia Halkett and Jenny +Denham. Beauchamp was thin, pale, and quiet; but the sight of him +standing and conversing after that scene of the skinny creature +struggling with bareribbed obstruction on the bed, was an example of +constitutional vigour and a compliment to the family very gratifying to +Lord Romfrey. Excepting by Cecilia, the earl was coldly received. He +had to leave early by special express for London to catch the last train +to Romfrey. Beauchamp declined to fix a day for his visit to the castle +with Lydiard, but proposed that Lydiard should accompany the earl on his +return. Lydiard was called in, and at once accepted the earl's +invitation, and quitted the room to pack his portmanteau. + +A faint sign of firm-shutting shadowed the corners of Jenny's lips. + +'You have brought my nephew to life,' Lord Romfrey said to her. + +'My share in it was very small, my lord.' + +'Gannet says that your share in it was very great.' + +'And I say so, with the authority of a witness,' added Cecilia. + +'And I, from my experience,' came from Beauchamp. + +His voice had a hollow sound, unlike his natural voice. + +The earl looked at him remembering the bright laughing lad he had once +been, and said: 'Why not try a month of Madeira? You have only to step +on board the boat.' + +'I don't want to lose a month of my friend,' said Beauchamp. + +'Take your friend with you. After these fevers our Winters are bad.' + +'I've been idle too long.' + +'But, Captain Beauchamp,' said Jenny, 'you proposed to do nothing but +read for a couple of years.' + +'Ay, there's the voyage!' sighed he, with a sailor-invalid's vision of +sunny seas dancing in the far sky. + +'You must persuade Dr. Shrapnel to come; and he will not come unless you +come too, and you won't go anywhere but to the Alps!' She bent her eyes +on the floor. Beauchamp remembered what had brought her home from the +Alps. He cast a cold look on his uncle talking with Cecilia: granite, as +he thought. And the reflux of that slight feeling of despair seemed to +tear down with it in wreckage every effort he had made in life, and cry +failure on him. Yet he was hoping that he had not been created for +failure. + +He touched his uncle's hand indifferently: 'My love to the countess: let +me hear of her, sir, if you please.' + +'You shall,' said the earl. 'But, off to Madeira, and up Teneriffe: sail +the Azores. I'll hire you a good-sized schooner.' + +'There is the Esperanza,' said Cecilia. 'And the vessel is lying idle, +Nevil! Can you allow it?' + +He consented to laugh at himself, and fell to coughing. + +Jenny Denham saw a real human expression of anxiety cross the features of +the earl at the sound of the cough. + +Lord Romfrey said 'Adieu,' to her. + +He offered her his hand, which she contrived to avoid taking by dropping +a formal half-reverence. + +'Think of the Esperanza; she will be coasting her nominal native land! +and adieu for to-day,' Cecilia said to Beauchamp. + +Jenny Denham and he stood at the window to watch the leave-taking in +the garden, for a distraction. They interchanged no remark of surprise +at seeing the earl and Dr. Shrapnel hand-locked: but Jenny's heart +reproached her uncle for being actually servile, and Beauchamp +accused the earl of aristocratic impudence. + +Both were overcome with remorse when Colonel Halkett, putting his head +into the room to say good-bye to Beauchamp and place the Esperanza at his +disposal for a Winter cruise, chanced to mention in two or three half +words the purpose of the earl's visit, and what had occurred. He took +it for known already. + +To Miss Denham he remarked: 'Lord Romfrey is very much concerned about +your health; he fears you have overdone it in nursing Captain Beauchamp! + +'I must be off after him,' said Beauchamp, and began trembling so that he +could not stir. + +The colonel knew the pain and shame of that condition of weakness to a +man who has been strong and swift, and said: 'Seven-league boots are not +to be caught. You'll see him soon. Why, I thought some letter of yours +had fetched him here! I gave you all the credit of it.' + +'No, he deserves it all himself--all,' said Beauchamp and with a dubious +eye on Jenny Denham: 'You see, we were unfair.' + +The 'we' meant 'you' to her sensitiveness; and probably he did mean it +for 'you': for as he would have felt, so he supposed that his uncle must +have felt, Jenny's coldness was much the crueller. Her features, which +in animation were summer light playing upon smooth water, could be +exceedingly cold in repose: the icier to those who knew her, because they +never expressed disdain. No expression of the baser sort belonged to +them. Beauchamp was intimate with these delicately-cut features; he +would have shuddered had they chilled on him. He had fallen in love with +his uncle; he fancied she ought to have done so too; and from his excess +of sympathy he found her deficient in it. + +He sat himself down to write a hearty letter to his 'dear old uncle +Everard.' + +Jenny left him, to go to her chamber and cry. + + + + +CHAPTER LIV + +THE FRUITS OF THE APOLOGY + +This clear heart had cause for tears. Her just indignation with Lord +Romfrey had sustained her artificially hitherto now that it was erased, +she sank down to weep. Her sentiments toward Lydiard had been very like +Cecilia Halkett's in favour of Mr. Austin; with something more to warm +them on the part of the gentleman. He first had led her mind in the +direction of balanced thought, when, despite her affection for Dr. +Shrapnel, her timorous maiden wits, unable to contend with the copious +exclamatory old politician, opposed him silently. Lydiard had helped her +tongue to speak, as well as her mind to rational views; and there had +been a bond of union in common for them in his admiration of her father's +writings. She had known that he was miserably yoked, and had respected +him when he seemed inclined for compassion without wooing her for +tenderness. He had not trifled with her, hardly flattered; he had done +no more than kindle a young girl's imaginative liking. The pale flower +of imagination, fed by dews, not by sunshine, was born drooping, and hung +secret in her bosom, shy as a bell of the frail wood-sorrel. Yet there +was pain for her in the perishing of a thing so poor and lowly. She had +not observed the change in Lydiard after Beauchamp came on the scene: and +that may tell us how passionlessly pure the little maidenly sentiment +was. For do but look on the dewy wood-sorrel flower; it is not violet or +rose inviting hands to pluck it: still it is there, happy in the woods. +And Jenny's feeling was that a foot had crushed it. + +She wept, thinking confusedly of Lord Romfrey; trying to think he had +made his amends tardily, and that Beauchamp prized him too highly for the +act. She had no longer anything to resent: she was obliged to weep. In +truth, as the earl had noticed, she was physically depressed by the +strain of her protracted watch over Beauchamp, as well as rather +heartsick. + +But she had been of aid and use in saving him! She was not quite a +valueless person; sweet, too, was the thought that he consulted her, +listened to her, weighed her ideas. He had evidently taken to study her, +as if dispersing some wonderment that one of her sex should have ideas. +He had repeated certain of her own which had been forgotten by her. His +eyes were often on her with this that she thought humorous intentness. +She smiled. She had assisted in raising him from his bed of sickness, +whereof the memory affrighted her and melted her. The difficulty now was +to keep him indoors, and why he would not go even temporarily to a large +house like Mount Laurels, whither Colonel Halkett was daily requesting +him to go, she was unable to comprehend. His love of Dr. Shrapnel might +account for it. + +'Own, Jenny,' said Beauchamp, springing up to meet her as she entered the +room where he and Dr. Shrapnel sat discussing Lord Romfrey's bearing at +his visit, 'own that my uncle Everard is a true nobleman. He has to make +the round to the right mark, but he comes to it. I could not move him-- +and I like him the better for that. He worked round to it himself. I +ought to have been sure he would. You're right: I break my head with +impatience.' + +'No; you sowed seed,' said Dr. Shrapnel. 'Heed not that girl, my +Beauchamp. The old woman's in the Tory, and the Tory leads the young +maid. Here's a fable I draw from a Naturalist's book, and we'll set it +against the dicta of Jenny Do-nothing, Jenny Discretion, Jenny Wait-for- +the-Gods: Once upon a time in a tropical island a man lay sick; so ill +that he could not rise to trouble his neighbours for help; so weak that +it was lifting a mountain to get up from his bed; so hopeless of succour +that the last spark of distraught wisdom perching on his brains advised +him to lie where he was and trouble not himself, since peace at least he +could command, before he passed upon the black highroad men call our +kingdom of peace: ay, he lay there. Now it chanced that this man had a +mess to cook for his nourishment. And life said, Do it, and death said, +To what end? He wrestled with the stark limbs of death, and cooked the +mess; and that done he had no strength remaining to him to consume it, +but crept to his bed like the toad into winter. Now, meanwhile a steam +arose from the mess, and he lay stretched. So it befel that the birds of +prey of the region scented the mess, and they descended and thronged at +that man's windows. And the man's neighbours looked up at them, for it +was the sign of one who is fit for the beaks of birds, lying unburied. +Fail to spread the pall one hour where suns are decisive, and the pall +comes down out of heaven! They said, The man is dead within. And they +went to his room, and saw him and succoured him. They lifted him out of +death by the last uncut thread. + +'Now, my Jenny Weigh-words, Jenny Halt-there! was it they who saved the +man, or he that saved himself? The man taxed his expiring breath to sow +seed of life. Lydiard shall put it into verse for a fable in song for +our people. I say it is a good fable, and sung spiritedly may serve for +nourishment, and faith in work, to many of our poor fainting fellows! +Now you?' + +Jenny said: 'I think it is a good fable of self-help. Does it quite +illustrate the case? I mean, the virtue of impatience. But I like the +fable and the moral; and I think it would do good if it were made +popular, though it would be hard to condense it to a song.' + +'It would be hard! ay, then we do it forthwith. And you shall compose +the music. As for the "case of impatience," my dear, you tether the +soaring universal to your pet-lamb's post, the special. I spoke of seed +sown. I spoke of the fruits of energy and resolution. Cared I for an +apology? I took the blows as I take hail from the clouds--which +apologize to you the moment you are in shelter, if you laugh at them. +So, good night to that matter! Are we to have rain this evening? I must +away into Bevisham to the Workmen's Hall, and pay the men.' + +'There will not be rain; there will be frost, and you must be well +wrapped if you must go,' said Jenny. 'And tell them not to think of +deputations to Captain Beauchamp yet.' + +'No, no deputations; let them send Killick, if they want to say +anything,' said Beauchamp. + +'Wrong!' the doctor cried; 'wrong! wrong! Six men won't hurt you more +than one. And why check them when their feelings are up? They burn to +be speaking some words to you. Trust me, Beauchamp, if we shun to +encounter the good warm soul of numbers, our hearts are narrowed to them. +The business of our modern world is to open heart and stretch out arms to +numbers. In numbers we have our sinews; they are our iron and gold. +Scatter them not; teach them the secret of cohesion. Practically, since +they gave you not their entire confidence once, you should not rebuff +them to suspicions of you as aristocrat, when they rise on the effort to +believe a man of, as 'tis called, birth their undivided friend. Meet +them!' + +'Send them,' said Beauchamp. + +Jenny Denham fastened a vast cloak and a comforter on the doctor's +heedless shoulders and throat, enjoining on him to return in good time +for dinner. + +He put his finger to her cheek in reproof of such supererogatory counsel +to a man famous for his punctuality. + +The day had darkened. + +Beauchamp begged Jenny to play to him on the piano. + +'Do you indeed care to have music?' said she. 'I did not wish you to +meet a deputation, because your strength is not yet equal to it. +Dr. Shrapnel dwells on principles, forgetful of minor considerations.' + +'I wish thousands did!' cried Beauchamp. 'When you play I seem to hear +ideas. Your music makes me think.' + +Jenny lit a pair of candles and set them on the piano. 'Waltzes?' she +asked. + +'Call in a puppet-show at once!' + +She smiled, turned over some leaves, and struck the opening notes of the +Ninth Symphony of Beethoven, and made her selections. + +At the finish he said: 'Now read me your father's poem, "The Hunt of the +Fates."' + +She read it to him. + +'Now read, "The Ascent from the Inferno."' + +That she read: and also 'Soul and Brute,' another of his favourites. + +He wanted more, and told her to read 'First Love--Last Love.' + +'I fear I have not the tone of voice for love-poems,' Jenny said, +returning the book to him. + +'I'll read it,' said he. + +He read with more impressiveness than effect. Lydiard's reading thrilled +her: Beauchamp's insisted too much on particular lines. But it was worth +while observing him. She saw him always as in a picture, remote from +herself. His loftier social station and strange character precluded any +of those keen suspicions by which women learn that a fire is beginning to +glow near them. + +'How I should like to have known your father!' he said. 'I don't wonder +at Dr. Shrapnel's love of him. Yes, he was one of the great men of his +day! and it's a higher honour to be of his blood than any that rank can +give. You were ten years old when you lost him. Describe him to me.' + +'He used to play with me like a boy,' said Jenny. She described her +father from a child's recollection of him. + +'Dr. Shrapnel declares he would have been one of the first surgeons in +Europe: and he was one of the first of poets,' Beauchamp pursued with +enthusiasm. 'So he was doubly great. I hold a good surgeon to be in the +front rank of public benefactors--where they put rich brewers, bankers, +and speculative manufacturers now. Well! the world is young. We shall +alter that in time. Whom did your father marry?' + +Jenny answered, 'My mother was the daughter of a London lawyer. She +married without her father's approval of the match, and he left her +nothing.' + +Beauchamp interjected: 'Lawyer's money!' + +'It would have been useful to my mother's household when I was an +infant,' said Jenny. + +'Poor soul! I suppose so. Yes; well,' Beauchamp sighed. 'Money! never +mind how it comes. We're in such a primitive condition that we catch at +anything to keep us out of the cold; dogs with a bone!--instead of +living, as Dr. Shrapnel prophecies, for and, with one another. It's war +now, and money's the weapon of war. And we're the worst nation in Europe +for that. But if we fairly recognize it, we shall be the first to alter +our ways. There's the point. Well, Jenny, I can look you in the face +to-night. Thanks to my uncle Everard at last!' + +'Captain Beauchamp, you have never been blamed.' + +'I am Captain Beauchamp by courtesy, in public. My friends call me +Nevil. I think I have heard the name on your lips?' + +'When you were very ill.' + +He stood closer to her, very close. + +'Which was the arm that bled for me? May I look at it? There was a +bruise.' + +'Have you not forgotten that trifle? There is the faintest possible mark +of it left.' + +'I wish to see.' + +She gently defended the arm, but he made it so much a matter of earnest +to see the bruise of the old Election missile on her fair arm, that, with +a pardonable soft blush, to avoid making much of it herself, she turned +her sleeve a little above the wrist. He took her hand. + +'It was for me!' + +'It was quite an accident: no harm was intended.' + +'But it was in my cause--for me!' + +'Indeed, Captain Beauchamp . . .' + +'Nevil, we say indoors.' + +'Nevil--but is it not wiser to say what comes naturally to us?' + +'Who told you to-day that you had brought me to life? I am here to prove +it true. If I had paid attention to your advice, I should not have gone +into the cottage of those poor creatures and taken away the fever. I did +no good there. But the man's wife said her husband had been ruined by +voting for me: and it was a point of honour to go in and sit with him. +You are not to have your hand back: it is mine. Don't you remember, +Jenny, how you gave me your arm on the road when I staggered; two days +before the fever knocked me over? Shall I tell you what I thought then? +I thought that he who could have you for a mate would have the bravest +and helpfullest wife in all England. And not a mere beauty, for you have +good looks: but you have the qualities I have been in search of. Why do +your eyes look so mournfully at me? I am full of hope. We'll sail the +Esperanza for the Winter: you and I, and our best friend with us. And +you shall have a voice in the council, be sure.' + +'If you are two to one?' Jenny said quickly, to keep from faltering. + +Beauchamp pressed his mouth to the mark of the bruise on her arm. He +held her fast. + +'I mean it, if you will join me, that you and I should rejoice the heart +of the dear old man--will you? He has been brooding over your loneliness +here if you are unmarried, ever since his recovery. I owe my life to +you, and every debt of gratitude to him. Now, Jenny!' + +'Oh! Captain Beauchamp--Nevil, if you will . . . if I may have my +hand. You exaggerate common kindness. He loves you. We both esteem +you.' + +'But you don't love me?' + +'Indeed I have no fear that I shall be unable to support myself, if I am +left alone.' + +'But I want your help. I wake from illness with my eyes open. I must +have your arm to lean on now and then.' + +Jenny dropped a shivering sigh. + +'Uncle is long absent!' she said. + +Her hand was released. Beauchamp inspected his watch. + +'He may have fallen! He may be lying on the common!' + +'Oh!' cried Jenny, 'why did I let him go out without me?' + +'Let me have his lantern; I'll go and search over the common.' + +'You must not go out,' said she. + +'I must. The old man may be perishing.' + +'It will be death to you . . . Nevil!' + +'That 's foolish. I can stand the air for a few minutes.' + +'I 'll go,' said Jenny. + +'Unprotected? No.' + +'Cook shall come with me.' + +'Two women!' + +'Nevil, if you care a little for me, be good, be kind, submit.' + +'He is half an hour behind dinner-time, and he's never late. Something +must have happened to him. Way for me, my dear girl.' + +She stood firm between him and the door. It came to pass that she +stretched her hands to arrest him, and he seized the hands. + +'Rather than you should go out in this cold weather, anything!' she +said, in the desperation of physical inability to hold him back. + +'Ah!' Beauchamp crossed his arms round her. 'I'll wait for five +minutes.' + +One went by, with Jenny folded, broken and sobbing, senseless, against +his breast. + +They had not heard Dr. Shrapnel quietly opening the hall door and hanging +up his hat. He looked in. + +'Beauchamp!' he exclaimed. + +'Come, doctor,' said Beauchamp, and loosened his clasp of Jenny +considerately. + +She disengaged herself. + +'Beauchamp! now I die a glad man.' + +'Witness, doctor, she 's mine by her own confession.' + +'Uncle!' Jenny gasped. 'Oh! Captain Beauchamp, what an error! what +delusion! . . . Forget it. I will. Here are more misunderstandings! +You shall be excused. But be . . .' + +'Be you the blessedest woman alive on this earth, my Jenny!' shouted Dr. +Shrapnel. 'You have the choice man on all the earth for husband, +sweetheart! Ay, of all the earth! I go with a message for my old friend +Harry Denham, to quicken him in the grave; for the husband of his girl is +Nevil Beauchamp! The one thing I dared not dream of thousands is +established. Sunlight, my Jenny!' + +Beauchamp kissed her hand. + +She slipped away to her chamber, grovelling to find her diminished self +somewhere in the mid-thunder of her amazement, as though it were to +discover a pin on the floor by the flash of lightning. Where was she! + +This ensued from the apology of Lord Romfrey to Dr. Shrapnel. + + + + +CHAPTER LV + +WITHOUT LOVE + +At the end of November, Jenny Denham wrote these lines to Mr. Lydiard, in +reply to his request that she should furnish the latest particulars of +Nevil Beauchamp, for the satisfaction of the Countess of Romfrey: + +'There is everything to reassure Lady Romfrey in the state of Captain +Beauchamp's health, and I have never seen him so placidly happy as he has +been since the arrival, yesterday morning, of a lady from France, Madame +la Marquise de Rouaillout, with her brother, M. le Comte de Croisnel. +Her husband, I hear from M. de Croisnel, dreads our climate and coffee +too much to attempt the voyage. I understand that she writes to Lady +Romfrey to-day. Lady Romfrey's letter to her, informing her of Captain +Beauchamp's alarming illness, went the round from Normandy to Touraine +and Dauphiny, otherwise she would have come over earlier. + +'Her first inquiry of me was, "Il est mort?" You would have supposed her +disappointed by my answer. A light went out in her eyes, like that of a +veilleuse in the dawn. She looked at me without speaking, while her +beautiful eyes regained their natural expression. She shut them and +sighed. "Tell him that M. de Croisnel and his sister are here." + +'This morning her wish to see Miss Halkett was gratified. You know my +taste was formed in France; I agree with Captain Beauchamp in his more +than admiration of Frenchwomen; ours, though more accomplished, are +colder and less plastic. But Miss Halkett is surpassingly beautiful, +very amiable, very generous, a perfect friend. She is our country at its +best. Probably she is shy of speaking French; she frequently puts the +Italian accent. Madame de Rouaillout begged to speak with her alone: +I do not know what passed. Miss Halkett did not return to us. + +'Dr. Shrapnel and Captain Beauchamp have recently been speculating on our +becoming a nation of artists, and authorities in science and philosophy, +by the time our coalfields and material wealth are exhausted. That, and +the cataclysm, are their themes. + +'They say, will things end utterly?--all our gains be lost? The question +seems to me to come of that love of earth which is recognition of God: +for if they cannot reconcile themselves to believe in extinction, to what +must they be looking? It is a confirmation of your saying, that love +leads to God, through art or in acts. + +'You will regret to hear that the project of Captain Beauchamp's voyage +is in danger of being abandoned. A committee of a vacant Radical borough +has offered to nominate him. My influence is weak; madame would have him +go back with her and her brother to Normandy. My influence is weak, I +suppose, because he finds me constantly leaning to expediency--I am your +pupil. It may be quite correct that powder is intended for explosion +we do not therefore apply a spark to the barrel. I ventured on that. +He pitied me in the snares of simile and metaphor. He is the same, you +perceive. How often have we not discussed what would have become of him, +with that "rocket brain" of his, in less quiet times! Yet, when he was +addressing a deputation of workmen the other day, he recommended patience +to them as one of the virtues that count under wisdom. He is curiously +impatient for knowledge. One of his reasons for not accepting Colonel +Halkett's offer of his yacht is, that he will not be able to have books +enough on board. Definite instead of vast and hazy duties are to be +desired for him, I think. Most fervently I pray that he will obtain a +ship and serve some years. At the risk of your accusing me of +"sententious posing," I would say, that men who do not live in the +present chiefly, but hamper themselves with giant tasks in excess of +alarm for the future, however devoted and noble they may be--and he is an +example of one that is--reduce themselves to the dimensions of pigmies; +they have the cry of infants. You reply, Foresight is an element of love +of country and mankind. But how often is not the foresight guess-work? +'He has not spoken of the DAWN project. To-day he is repeating one of +uncle's novelties--"Sultry Tories." The sultry Tory sits in the sun and +prophecies woefully of storm, it appears. Your accusation that I am one +at heart amuses me; I am not quite able to deny it. "Sultriness" I am +not conscious of. But it would appear to be an epithet for the +Conservatives of wealth. So that England, being very wealthy, we are to +call it a sultry country? You are much wanted, for where there is no +"middleman Liberal" to hold the scales for them, these two have it all +their own way, which is not good for them. + +Captain Beauchamp quotes you too. It seems that you once talked to him +of a machine for measuring the force of blows delivered with the fist, +and compared his efforts to those of one perpetually practising at it: +and this you are said to have called "The case of the Constitutional +Realm and the extreme Radical." Elsewhere the Radical smites at iron or +rotten wood; in England it is a cushion on springs. Did you say it? He +quotes it as yours, half acquiescingly, and ruefully. + +'For visitors, we have had Captain Baskelett for two minutes, and Lord +Palmet, who stayed longer, and seems to intend to come daily. He +attempts French with Madame de R., and amuses her a little: a silver foot +and a ball of worsted. Mr. and Mrs. Grancey Lespel have called, and Lord +and Lady Croyston. Colonel Halkett, Miss Halkett, and Mr. Tuckham come +frequently. Captain Beauchamp spoke to her yesterday of her marriage. +'Madame de R. leaves us to-morrow. Her brother is a delightful, gay- +tempered, very handsome boyish Frenchman--not her equal, to my mind, for +I do not think Frenchmen comparable to the women of France; but she is +exceedingly grave, with hardly a smile, and his high spirits excite +Nevil's, so it is pleasant to see them together.' + +The letter was handed to Lady Romfrey. She read through it thoughtfully +till she came to the name of Nevil, when she frowned. On the morrow she +pronounced it a disingenuous letter. Renee had sent her these lines: + +'I should come to you if my time were not restricted; my brother's leave +of absence is short. I have done here what lay in my power, to show you +I have learnt something in the school of self-immolation. I have seen +Mlle. Halkett. She is a beautiful young woman, deficient only in words, +doubtless. My labour, except that it may satisfy you, was the vainest of +tasks. She marries a ruddy monsieur of a name that I forget, and of the +bearing of a member of the gardes du corps, without the stature. Enfin, +madame, I have done my duty, and do not regret it, since I may hope that +it will win for me some approbation and a portion of the esteem of a lady +to whom I am indebted for that which is now the best of life to me: and I +do not undervalue it in saying I would gladly have it stamped on brass +and deposited beside my father's. I have my faith. I would it were +Nevil's too--and yours, should you be in need of it. + +'He will marry Mlle. Denham. If I may foretell events, she will steady +him. She is a young person who will not feel astray in society of his +rank; she possesses the natural grace we do not expect to see out of our +country--from sheer ignorance of what is beyond it. For the moment she +affects to consider herself unworthy; and it is excuseable that she +should be slightly alarmed at her prospect. But Nevil must have a wife. +I presume to think that he could not have chosen better. Above all, make +him leave England for the Winter. Adieu, dear countess. Nevil promises +me a visit after his marriage. I shall not set foot on England again: +but you, should you ever come to our land of France, will find my heart +open to you at the gates of undying grateful recollection. I am not +skilled in writing. You have looked into me once; look now; I am the +same. Only I have succeeded in bringing myself to a greater likeness to +the dead, as it becomes a creature to be who is coupled with one of their +body. Meanwhile I shall have news of you. I trust that soon I may be +warranted in forwarding congratulations to Lord Romfrey.' + +Rosamund handed the letters to her husband. Not only did she think +Miss Denham disingenuous, she saw that the girl was not in love with +Beauchamp: and the idea of a loveless marriage for him threw the +mournfullest of Hecate's beams along the course of a career that the +passionate love of a bride, though she were not well-born and not +wealthy, would have rosily coloured. + +'Without love!' she exclaimed to herself. She asked the earl's opinion +of the startling intelligence, and of the character of that Miss Denham, +who could pen such a letter, after engaging to give her hand to Nevil. + +Lord Romfrey laughed in his dumb way. 'If Nevil must have a wife--and +the marquise tells you so, and she ought to know--he may as well marry a +girl who won't go all the way down hill with him at his pace. He'll be +cogged.' + +'You do not object to such an alliance?' + +'I 'm past objection. There's no law against a man's marrying his +nurse.' + +'But she is not even in love with him!' + +'I dare say not. He wants a wife: she accepts a husband. The two women +who were in love with him he wouldn't have.' + +Lady Romfrey sighed deeply: 'He has lost Cecilia! She might still have +been his: but he has taken to that girl. And Madame de Rouaillout +praises the girl because--oh! I see it--she has less to be jealous of +in Miss Denham: of whose birth and blood we know nothing. Let that pass! +If only she loved him! I cannot endure the thought of his marrying a +girl who is not in love with him.' + +'Just as you like, my dear.' + +'I used to suspect Mr. Lydiard.' + +'Perhaps he's the man.' + +'Oh, what an end of so brilliant a beginning!' + +'It strikes me, my dear,' said the earl, 'it's the proper common sense +beginning that may have a fairish end.' + +'No, but what I feel is that he--our Nevil!--has accomplished hardly +anything, if anything!' + +'He hasn't marched on London with a couple of hundred thousand men: no, +he hasn't done that,' the earl said, glancing back in his mind through +Beauchamp's career. 'And he escapes what Stukely calls his nation's +scourge, in the shape of a statue turned out by an English chisel. No: +we haven't had much public excitement out of him. But one thing he did +do: he got me down on my knees!' + +Lord Romfrey pronounced these words with a sober emphasis that struck the +humour of it sharply into Rosamund's heart, through some contrast it +presented between Nevil's aim at the world and hit of a man: the immense +deal thought of it by the earl, and the very little that Nevil would +think of it--the great domestic achievement to be boasted of by an +enthusiastic devotee of politics! + +She embraced her husband with peals of loving laughter: the last laughter +heard in Romfrey Castle for many a day. + + + + +CHAPTER LVI + +THE LAST OF NEVIL BEAUCHAMP + +Not before Beauchamp was flying with the Winter gales to warmer climes +could Rosamund reflect on his career unshadowed by her feminine +mortification at the thought that he was unloved by the girl he had +decided to marry. But when he was away and winds blew, the clouds which +obscured an embracing imagination of him--such as, to be true and full +and sufficient, should stretch like the dome of heaven over the humblest +of lives under contemplation--broke, and revealed him to her as one who +had other than failed: rather as one in mid career, in mid forest, who, +by force of character, advancing in self-conquest, strikes his impress +right and left around him, because of his aim at stars. He had faults, +and she gloried to think he had; for the woman's heart rejoiced in his +portion of our common humanity while she named their prince to men: but +where was he to be matched in devotedness and in gallantry? and what +man of blood fiery as Nevil's ever fought so to subject it? Rosamund +followed him like a migratory bird, hovered over his vessel, perched on +deck beside the helm, where her sailor was sure to be stationed, entered +his breast, communed with him, and wound him round and round with her +love. He has mine! she cried. Her craving that he should be blest +in the reward, or flower-crown, of his wife's love of him lessened in +proportion as her brooding spirit vividly realized his deeds. In fact +it had been but an example of our very general craving for a climax, +palpable and scenic. She was completely satisfied by her conviction that +his wife would respect and must be subordinate to him. So it had been +with her. As for love, let him come to his Rosamund for love, and +appreciation, adoration! + +Rosamund drew nigh to her hour of peril with this torch of her love of +Beauchamp to illuminate her. + +There had been a difficulty in getting him to go. One day Cecilia walked +down to Dr. Shrapnel's with Mr. Tuckham, to communicate that the +Esperanza awaited Captain Beauchamp, manned and provisioned, off the +pier. Now, he would not go without Dr. Shrapnel, nor the doctor without +Jenny; and Jenny could not hold back, seeing that the wish of her heart +was for Nevil to be at sea, untroubled by political questions and +prowling Radical deputies. So her consent was the seal of the voyage. +What she would not consent to, was the proposal to have her finger ringed +previous to the voyage, altogether in the manner of a sailor's bride. +She seemed to stipulate for a term of courtship. Nevil frankly told the +doctor that he was not equal to it; anything that was kind he was quite +ready to say; and anything that was pretty: but nothing particularly kind +and pretty occurred to him: he was exactly like a juvenile correspondent +facing a blank sheet of letter paper:--he really did not know what to +say, further than the uncomplicated exposition of his case, that he +wanted a wife and had found the very woman. How, then, fathom Jenny's +mood for delaying? Dr. Shrapnel's exhortations were so worded as to +induce her to comport herself like a Scriptural woman, humbly wakeful to +the surpassing splendour of the high fortune which had befallen her in +being so selected, and obedient at a sign. But she was, it appeared that +she was, a maid of scaly vision, not perceptive of the blessedness of her +lot. She could have been very little perceptive, for she did not +understand his casual allusion to Beauchamp's readiness to overcome +'a natural repugnance,' for the purpose of making her his wife. + +Up to the last moment, before Cecilia Halkett left the deck of the +Esperanza to step on the pier, Jenny remained in vague but excited +expectation of something intervening to bring Cecilia and Beauchamp +together. It was not a hope; it was with pure suspense that she awaited +the issue. Cecilia was pale. Beauchamp shook Mr. Tuckham by the hand, +and said: 'I shall not hear the bells, but send me word of it, will you?' +and he wished them both all happiness. + +The sails of the schooner filled. On a fair frosty day, with a light +wind ruffling from the North-west, she swept away, out of sight of +Bevisham, and the island, into the Channel, to within view of the coast +of France. England once below the water-line, alone with Beauchamp and +Dr. Shrapnel, Jenny Denham knew her fate. + +As soon as that grew distinctly visible in shape and colour, she ceased +to be reluctant. All about her, in air and sea and unknown coast, was +fresh and prompting. And if she looked on Beauchamp, the thought--my +husband! palpitated, and destroyed and re-made her. Rapidly she +underwent her transformation from doubtfully-minded woman to woman +awakening clear-eyed, and with new sweet shivers in her temperate blood, +like the tremulous light seen running to the morn upon a quiet sea. She +fell under the charm of Beauchamp at sea. + +In view of the island of Madeira, Jenny noticed that some trouble had +come upon Dr. Shrapnel and Beauchamp, both of whom had been hilarious +during the gales; but sailing into Summer they began to wear that look +which indicated one of their serious deliberations. She was not taken +into their confidence, and after awhile they recovered partially. + +The truth was, they had been forced back upon old English ground by a +recognition of the absolute necessity, for her sake, of handing +themselves over to a parson. In England, possibly, a civil marriage +might have been proposed to the poor girl. In a foreign island, they +would be driven not simply to accept the services of a parson, but to +seek him and solicit him: otherwise the knot, faster than any sailor's +in binding, could not be tied. Decidedly it could not; and how submit? +Neither Dr. Shrapnel nor Beauchamp were of a temper to deceive the +clerical gentleman; only they had to think of Jenny's feelings. Alas for +us!--this our awful baggage in the rear of humanity, these women who have +not moved on their own feet one step since the primal mother taught them +to suckle, are perpetually pulling us backward on the march. Slaves of +custom, forms, shows and superstitions, they are slaves of the priests. +'They are so in gratitude perchance, as the matter works,' Dr. Shrapnel +admitted. For at one period the priests did cherish and protect the weak +from animal man. But we have entered a broader daylight now, when the +sun of high heaven has crowned our structure with the flower of brain, +like him to scatter mists, and penetrate darkness, and shoot from end to +end of earth; and must we still be grinning subserviently to ancient +usages and stale forms, because of a baggage that it is, woe to us! too +true, we cannot cut ourselves loose from? Lydiard might say we are +compelling the priests to fight, and that they are compact foemen, not +always passive. Battle, then!--The cry was valiant. Nevertheless, Jenny +would certainly insist upon the presence of a parson, in spite of her +bridegroom's 'natural repugnance.' Dr. Shrapnel offered to argue it with +her, being of opinion that a British consul could satisfactorily perform +the ceremony. Beauchamp knew her too well. Moreover, though tongue-tied +as to love-making, he was in a hurry to be married. Jenny's eyes were +lovely, her smiles were soft; the fair promise of her was in bloom on her +face and figure. He could not wait; he must off to the parson. + +Then came the question as to whether honesty and honour did not impose +it on them to deal openly with that gentle, and on such occasions +unobtrusive official, by means of a candid statement to him overnight, +to the effect that they were the avowed antagonists of his Church, +which would put him on his defence, and lead to an argument that would +accomplish his overthrow. You parsons, whose cause is good, marshal out +the poor of the land, that we may see the sort of army your stewardship +has gained for you. What! no army? only women and hoary men? And in the +rear rank, to support you as an institution, none but fanatics, cowards, +white-eyeballed dogmatists, timeservers, money-changers, mockers in their +sleeves? What is this? + +But the prospect of so completely confounding the unfortunate parson +warned Beauchamp that he might have a shot in his locker: the parson +heavily trodden on will turn. 'I suppose we must be hypocrites,' he said +in dejection. Dr. Shrapnel was even more melancholy. He again offered +to try his persuasiveness upon Jenny. Beauchamp declined to let her be +disturbed. + +She did not yield so very lightly to the invitation to go before a +parson. She had to be wooed after all; a Harry Hotspur's wooing. Three +clergymen of the Established Church were on the island: 'And where won't +they be, where there's fine scenery and comforts abound?' Beauchamp said +to the doctor ungratefully. + +'Whether a celibate clergy ruins the Faith faster than a non-celibate, I +won't dispute,' replied the doctor; 'but a non-celibate interwinds with +us, and is likely to keep up a one-storied edifice longer.' + +Jenny hesitated. She was a faltering unit against an ardent and +imperative two in the council. And Beauchamp had shown her a letter of +Lady Romfrey's very clearly signifying that she and her lord anticipated +tidings of the union. Marrying Beauchamp was no simple adventure. She +feared in her bosom, and resigned herself. + +She had a taste of what it was to be, at the conclusion of the service. +Beauchamp thanked the good-natured clergyman, and spoke approvingly of +him to his bride, as an agreeable well-bred gentlemanly person. Then, +fronting her and taking both her hands: 'Now, my darling,' he said: 'you +must pledge me your word to this: I have stooped my head to the parson, +and I am content to have done that to win you, though I don't think much +of myself for doing it. I can't look so happy as I am. And this idle +ceremony--however, I thank God I have you, and I thank you for taking me. +But you won't expect me to give in to the parson again.' + +'But, Nevil,' she said, fearing what was to come: 'they are gentlemen, +good men.' + +'Yes, yes.' + +'They are educated men, Nevil.' + +'Jenny! Jenny Beauchamp, they're not men, they're Churchmen. My +experience of the priest in our country is, that he has abandoned-- +he 's dead against the only cause that can justify and keep up a Church: +the cause of the poor--the people. He is a creature of the moneyed +class. I look on him as a pretender. I go through his forms, to save +my wife from annoyance, but there 's the end of it: and if ever I'm +helpless, unable to resist him, I rely on your word not to let him +intrude; he's to have nothing to do with the burial of me. He's against +the cause of the people. Very well: I make my protest to the death +against him. When he's a Christian instead of a Churchman, then may my +example not be followed. It 's little use looking for that.' + +Jenny dropped some tears on her bridal day. She sighed her submission. +'So long as you do not change,' said she. + +'Change!' cried Nevil. 'That's for the parson. Now it's over: we start +fair. My darling! I have you. I don't mean to bother you. I'm sure +you'll see that the enemies of Reason are the enemies of the human race; +you will see that. I can wait.' + +'If we can be sure that we ourselves are using reason rightly, Nevil!-- +not prejudice.' + +'Of course. But don't you see, my Jenny, we have no interest in opposing +reason?' + +'But have we not all grown up together? And is it just or wise to direct +our efforts to overthrow a solid structure that is a part . . . ?' + +He put his legal right in force to shut her mouth, telling her presently +she might Lydiardize as much as she liked. While practising this +mastery, he assured her he would always listen to her: yes, whether she +Lydiardized, or what Dr. Shrapnel called Jenny-prated. + +'That is to say, dear Nevil, that you have quite made up your mind to a +toddling chattering little nursery wife?' + +Very much the contrary to anything of the sort, he declared; and he +proved his honesty by announcing an immediate reflection that had come to +him: 'How oddly things are settled! Cecilia Halkett and Tuckham; you and +I! Now, I know for certain that I have brought Cecilia Halkett out of +her woman's Toryism, and given her at least liberal views, and she goes +and marries an arrant Tory; while you, a bit of a Tory at heart, more +than anything else, have married an ultra.' + +'Perhaps we may hope that the conflict will be seasonable on both sides? +--if you give me fair play, Nevil!' + +As fair play as a woman's lord could give her, she was to have; with +which, adieu to argumentation and controversy, and all the thanks in life +to the parson! On a lovely island, free from the seductions of care, +possessing a wife who, instead of starting out of romance and poetry with +him to the supreme honeymoon, led him back to those forsaken valleys of +his youth, and taught him the joys of colour and sweet companionship, +simple delights, a sister mind, with a loveliness of person and nature +unimagined by him, Beauchamp drank of a happiness that neither Renee nor +Cecilia had promised. His wooing of Jenny Beauchamp was a flattery +richer than any the maiden Jenny Denham could have deemed her due; and if +his wonder in experiencing such strange gladness was quaintly ingenuous, +it was delicious to her to see and know full surely that he who was at +little pains to court, or please, independently of the agency of the +truth in him, had come to be her lover through being her husband. + +Here I would stop. It is Beauchamp's career that carries me on to its +close, where the lanterns throw their beams off the mudbanks by the black +riverside; when some few English men and women differed from the world in +thinking that it had suffered a loss. + +They sorrowed for the earl when tidings came to them of the loss of his +child, alive one hour in his arms. Rosamund caused them to be deceived +as to her condition. She survived; she wrote to Jenny, bidding her keep +her husband cruising. Lord Romfrey added a brief word: he told Nevil +that he would see no one for the present; hoped he would be absent a +year, not a day less. To render it the more easily practicable, in the +next packet of letters Colonel Halkett and Cecilia begged them not to +bring the Esperanza home for the yachting season: the colonel said his +daughter was to be married in April, and that bridegroom and bride had +consented to take an old man off with them to Italy; perhaps in the +autumn all might meet in Venice. + +'And you've never seen Venice,' Beauchamp said to Jenny. + +'Everything is new to me,' said she, penetrating and gladly joining the +conspiracy to have him out of England. + +Dr. Shrapnel was not so compliant as the young husband. Where he could +land and botanize, as at Madeira, he let time fly and drum his wings on +air, but the cities of priests along the coast of Portugal and Spain +roused him to a burning sense of that flight of time and the vacuity it +told of in his labours. Greatly to his astonishment, he found that it +was no longer he and Beauchamp against Jenny, but Jenny and Beauchamp +against him. + +'What!' he cried, 'to draw breath day by day, and not to pay for it by +striking daily at the rock Iniquity? Are you for that, Beauchamp? And +in a land where these priests walk with hats curled like the water-lily's +leaf without the flower? How far will you push indolent unreason to gain +the delusion of happiness? There is no such thing: but there's trance. +That talk of happiness is a carrion clamour of the creatures of prey. +Take it--and you're helping tear some poor wretch to pieces, whom you +might be constructing, saving perchance: some one? some thousands! You, +Beauchamp, when I met you first, you were for England, England! for a +breadth of the palm of my hand comparatively--the round of a copper +penny, no wider! And from that you jumped at a bound to the round of +this earth: you were for humanity. Ay, we sailed our planet among the +icy spheres, and were at blood-heat for its destiny, you and I! And now +you hover for a wind to catch you. So it is for a soul rejecting prayer. +This wind and that has it: the well-springs within are shut down fast! +I pardon my Jenny, my Harry Denham's girl. She is a woman, and has a +brain like a bell that rings all round to the tongue. It is her kingdom, +of the interdicted untraversed frontiers. But what cares she, or any +woman, that this Age of ours should lie like a carcase against the Sun? +What cares any woman to help to hold up Life to him? He breeds divinely +upon life, filthy upon stagnation. Sail you away, if you will, in your +trance. I go. I go home by land alone, and I await you. Here in this +land of moles upright, I do naught but execrate; I am a pulpit of curses. +Counter-anathema, you might call me.' + +'Oh! I feel the comparison so, for England shining spiritually bright,' +said Jenny, and cut her husband adrift with the exclamation, and saw him +float away to Dr. Shrapnel. + +'Spiritually bright!' + +'By comparison, Nevil.' + +'There's neither spiritual nor political brightness in England, but a +common resolution to eat of good things and stick to them,' said the +doctor: 'and we two out of England, there's barely a voice to cry scare +to the feeders. I'm back! I'm home!' + +They lost him once in Cadiz, and discovered him on the quay, looking +about for a vessel. In getting him to return to the Esperanza, they +nearly all three fell into the hands of the police. Beauchamp gave him a +great deal of his time, reading and discussing with him on deck and in +the cabin, and projecting future enterprises, to pacify his restlessness. +A translation of Plato had become Beauchamp's intellectual world. This +philosopher singularly anticipated his ideas. Concerning himself he was +beginning to think that he had many years ahead of him for work. He was +with Dr. Shrapnel, as to the battle, and with Jenny as to the delay in +recommencing it. Both the men laughed at the constant employment she +gave them among the Greek islands in furnishing her severely accurate +accounts of sea-fights and land-fights: and the scenes being before them +they could neither of them protest that their task-work was an idle +labour. Dr. Shrapnel assisted in fighting Marathon and Salamis over +again cordially--to shield Great Britain from the rule of a satrapy. + +Beauchamp often tried to conjure words to paint his wife. On grave +subjects she had the manner of speaking of a shy scholar, and between +grave and playful, between smiling and serious, her clear head, her nobly +poised character, seemed to him to have never had a prototype and to +elude the art of picturing it in expression, until he heard Lydiard +call her whimsically, 'Portia disrobing' + +Portia half in her doctor's gown, half out of it. They met Lydiard and +his wife Louise, and Mr. and Mrs. Tuckham, in Venice, where, upon the +first day of October, Jenny Beauchamp gave birth to a son. The thrilling +mother did not perceive on this occasion the gloom she cast over the +father of the child and Dr. Shrapnel. The youngster would insist on his +right to be sprinkled by the parson, to get a legal name and please his +mother. At all turns in the history of our healthy relations with women +we are confronted by the parson! 'And, upon my word, I believe,' +Beauchamp said to Lydiard, 'those parsons--not bad creatures in private +life: there was one in Madeira I took a personal liking to--but they're +utterly ignorant of what men feel to them--more ignorant than women!' +Mr. Tuckham and Mrs. Lydiard would not listen to his foolish objections; +nor were they ever mentioned to Jenny. Apparently the commission of the +act of marriage was to force Beauchamp from all his positions one by one. + +'The education of that child?' Mrs. Lydiard said to her husband. + +He considered that the mother would prevail. + +Cecilia feared she would not. + +'Depend upon it, he'll make himself miserable if he can,' said Tuckham. + +That gentleman, however, was perpetually coming fuming from arguments +with Beauchamp, and his opinion was a controversialist's. His common +sense was much afflicted. 'I thought marriage would have stopped all +those absurdities,' he said, glaring angrily, laughing, and then +frowning. 'I 've warned him I'll go out of my way to come across him if +he carries on his headlong folly. A man should accept his country for +what it is when he's born into it. Don't tell me he's a good fellow. +I know he is, but there 's an ass mounted on the good fellow. Talks of +the parsons! Why, they're men of education.' + +'They couldn't steer a ship in a gale, though.' + +'Oh! he's a good sailor. And let him go to sea,' said Tuckham. 'His +wife's a prize. He's hardly worthy of her. If she manages him she'll +deserve a monument for doing a public service.' + +How fortunate it is for us that here and there we do not succeed in +wresting our temporary treasure from the grasp of the Fates! + +This good old commonplace reflection came to Beauchamp while clasping his +wife's hand on the deck of the Esperanza, and looking up at the mountains +over the Gulf of Venice. The impression of that marvellous dawn when he +and Renee looked up hand-in-hand was ineffaceable, and pity for the +tender hand lost to him wrought in his blood, but Jenny was a peerless +wife; and though not in the music of her tongue, or in subtlety of +delicate meaning did she excel Renee, as a sober adviser she did, and +as a firm speaker; and she had homelier deep eyes, thoughtfuller brows. +The father could speculate with good hope of Jenny's child. Cecilia's +wealth, too, had gone over to the Tory party, with her incomprehensible +espousal of Tuckham. Let it go; let all go for dowerless Jenny! + +It was (she dared to recollect it in her anguish) Jenny's choice to go +home in the yacht that decided her husband not to make the journey by +land in company with the Lydiards. + +The voyage was favourable. Beauchamp had a passing wish to land on the +Norman coast, and take Jenny for a day to Tourdestelle. He deferred to +her desire to land baby speedily, now they were so near home. They ran +past Otley river, having sight of Mount Laurels, and on to Bevisham, with +swelling sails. There they parted. Beauchamp made it one of his 'points +of honour' to deliver the vessel where he had taken her, at her moorings +in the Otley. One of the piermen stood before Beauchamp, and saluting +him, said he had been directed to inform him that the Earl of Romfrey was +with Colonel Halkett, expecting him at Mount Laurels. Beauchamp wanted +his wife to return in the yacht. She turned her eyes to Dr. Shrapnel. +It was out of the question that the doctor should think of going. +Husband and wife parted. She saw him no more. + +This is no time to tell of weeping. The dry chronicle is fittest. +Hard on nine o'clock in the December darkness, the night being still and +clear, Jenny's babe was at her breast, and her ears were awake for the +return of her husband. A man rang at the door of the house, and asked +to see Dr. Shrapnel. This man was Killick, the Radical Sam of politics. +He said to the doctor: 'I 'm going to hit you sharp, sir; I've had it +myself: please put on your hat and come out with me; and close the door. +They mustn't hear inside. And here's a fly. I knew you'd be off for the +finding of the body. Commander Beauchamp's drowned.' + +Dr. Shrapnel drove round by the shore of the broad water past a great +hospital and ruined abbey to Otley village. Killick had lifted him into +the conveyance, and he lifted him out. Dr. Shrapnel had not spoken a +word. Lights were flaring on the river, illuminating the small craft +sombrely. Men, women, and children crowded the hard and landing-places, +the marshy banks and the decks of colliers and trawlers. Neither Killick +nor Dr. Shrapnel questioned them. The lights were torches and lanterns; +the occupation of the boats moving in couples was the dragging for the +dead. + +'O God, let's find his body,' a woman called out. + +'Just a word; is it Commander Beauchamp?' Killick said to her. + +She was scarcely aware of a question. 'Here, this one,' she said, and +plucked a little boy of eight by the hand close against her side, and +shook him roughly and kissed him. + +An old man volunteered information. 'That's the boy. That boy was in +his father's boat out there, with two of his brothers, larking; and he +and another older than him fell overboard; and just then Commander +Beauchamp was rowing by, and I saw him from off here, where I stood, jump +up and dive, and he swam to his boat with one of them, and got him in +safe: that boy: and he dived again after the other, and was down a long +time. Either he burst a vessel or he got cramp, for he'd been rowing +himself from the schooner grounded down at the river-mouth, and must have +been hot when he jumped in: either way, he fetched the second up, and +sank with him. Down he went.' + +A fisherman said to Killick: 'Do you hear that voice thundering? That's +the great Lord Romfrey. He's been directing the dragging since five o' +the evening, and will till he drops or drowns, or up comes the body.' + +'O God, let's find the body!' the woman with the little boy called out. + +A torch lit up Lord Romfrey's face as he stepped ashore. 'The flood has +played us a trick,' he said. 'We want more drags, or with the next ebb +the body may be lost for days in this infernal water.' + +The mother of the rescued boy sobbed, 'Oh, my lord, my lord!' + +The earl caught sight of Dr. Shrapnel, and went to him. + +'My wife has gone down to Mrs. Beauchamp,' he said. 'She will bring her +and the baby to Mount Laurels. The child will have to be hand-fed. I +take you with me. You must not be alone.' + +He put his arm within the arm of the heavily-breathing man whom he had +once flung to the ground, to support him. + +'My lord! my lord!' sobbed the woman, and dropped on her knees. + +'What 's this?' the earl said, drawing his hand away from the woman's +clutch at it. + +'She's the mother, my lord,' several explained to him. + +'Mother of what?' + +'My boy,' the woman cried, and dragged the urchin to Lord Romfrey's feet, +cleaning her boy's face with her apron. + +'It's the boy Commander Beauchamp drowned to save,' said a man. + +All the lights of the ring were turned on the head of the boy. Dr. +Shrapnel's eyes and Lord Romfrey's fell on the abashed little creature. +The boy struck out both arms to get his fists against his eyelids. + +This is what we have in exchange for Beauchamp! + +It was not uttered, but it was visible in the blank stare at one +another of the two men who loved Beauchamp, after they had examined the +insignificant bit of mudbank life remaining in this world in the place of +him. + + + + +ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + +And life said, Do it, and death said, To what end? +As fair play as a woman's lord could give her +Beauchamp's career +Dogs die more decently than we men +Dreads our climate and coffee too much to attempt the voyage +Had come to be her lover through being her husband +He bowed to facts +He condensed a paragraph into a line +He runs too much from first principles to extremes +I do not think Frenchmen comparable to the women of France +It would be hard! ay, then we do it forthwith +Making too much of it--a trick of the vulgar +More argument I cannot bear +None but fanatics, cowards, white-eyeballed dogmatists +Push indolent unreason to gain the delusion of happiness +Reproof of such supererogatory counsel +She had no longer anything to resent: she was obliged to weep +Slaves of the priests +The healthy only are fit to live +The world without him would be heavy matter +This girl was pliable only to service, not to grief +Virtue of impatience +We women can read men by their power to love +When he's a Christian instead of a Churchman +Where love exists there is goodness +Without a single intimation that he loathed the task +Wonderment that one of her sex should have ideas + + + + +End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Beauchamp's Career, v7 +by George Meredith + + + + + + +ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS, BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER, COMPLETE: + +A cloud of millinery shoots me off a mile from a woman +A kind of anchorage in case of indiscretion +A night that had shivered repose +A tear would have overcome him--She had not wept +A wound of the same kind that we are inflicting +A string of pearls: a woman who goes beyond that's in danger +A dash of conventionalism makes the whole civilized world kin +A bone in a boy's mind for him to gnaw and worry +Admires a girl when there's no married woman or widow in sight +Affectedly gentle and unusually roundabout opening +After forty, men have married their habits +Aimlessness of a woman's curiosity +Alike believe that Providence is for them +All concessions to the people have been won from fear +Am I thy master, or thou mine? +An instinct labouring to supply the deficiencies of stupidity +An old spoiler of women is worse than one spoiled by them! +And life said, Do it, and death said, To what end? +And never did a stroke of work in my life +And now came war, the purifier and the pestilence +And one gets the worst of it (in any bargain) +Anticipate opposition by initiating measures +Appealed to reason in them; he would not hear of convictions +Appetite to flourish at the cost of the weaker +Are we practical?' penetrates the bosom of an English audience +Art of speaking on politics tersely +As fair play as a woman's lord could give her +As to wit, the sneer is the cloak of clumsiness +As for titles, the way to defend them is to be worthy of them +Automatic creature is subject to the laws of its construction +Beauchamp's career +Beautiful servicelessness +Better for men of extremely opposite opinions not to meet +Boys are unjust +Braggadocioing in deeds is only next bad to mouthing it +Calm fanaticism of the passion of love +Canvassing means intimidation or corruption +Carry a scene through in virtue's name and vice's mask +Comfortable have to pay in occasional panics for the serenity +Compassionate sentiments veered round to irate amazement +Consult the family means--waste your time +Contemptuous exclusiveness could not go farther +Convict it by instinct without the ceremony of a jury +Convictions are generally first impressions +Cordiality of an extreme relief in leaving +Country can go on very well without so much speech-making +Cowardice is even worse for nations than for individual men +Crazy zigzag of policy in almost every stroke (of history) +Dark-eyed Renee was not beauty but attraction +Death within which welcomed a death without +Decline to practise hypocrisy +Despises the pomades and curling-irons of modern romance +Dialectical stiffness +Dignity of sulking so seductive to the wounded spirit of man +Discover the writers in a day when all are writing! +Disqualification of constantly offending prejudices +Dogs die more decently than we men +Dreads our climate and coffee too much to attempt the voyage +Effort to be reticent concerning Nevil, and communicative +Efforts to weary him out of his project were unsuccessful +Empty magnanimity which his uncle presented to him +Energy to something, that was not to be had in a market +Feigned utter condemnation to make partial comfort acceptable +Feminine pity, which is nearer to contempt than to tenderness +Fine eye for celestially directed consequences is ever haunted +Fit of Republicanism in the nursery +Forewarn readers of this history that there is no plot in it +Fretted by his relatives he cannot be much of a giant +Frozen vanity called pride, which does not seek to be revenged +Give our courage as hostage for the fulfilment of what we hope +Give our consciences to the keeping of the parsons +Given up his brains for a lodging to a single idea +Good maxim for the wrathful--speak not at all +Grief of an ill-fortuned passion of his youth +Had come to be her lover through being her husband +Half-truth that we may put on the mask of the whole +Hates a compromise +Haunted many pillows +He was too much on fire to know the taste of absurdity +He condensed a paragraph into a line +He runs too much from first principles to extremes +He bowed to facts +He lost the art of observing himself +He had expected romance, and had met merchandize +He smoked, Lord Avonley said of the second departure +He never calculated on the happening of mortal accidents +Heights of humour beyond laughter +Holding to his work after the strain's over--That tells the man +Hopes of a coming disillusion that would restore him +How angry I should be with you if you were not so beautiful! +Humour preserved her from excesses of sentiment +I can confess my sight to be imperfect: but will you ever do so? +I do not think Frenchmen comparable to the women of France +I cannot say less, and will say no more +If there's no doubt about it, how is it I have a doubt about it? +Immense wealth and native obtuseness combine to disfigure us +Impossible for him to think that women thought +Impudent boy's fling at superiority over the superior +In India they sacrifice the widows, in France the virgins +Incessantly speaking of the necessity we granted it unknowingly +Infallibility of our august mother +Inflicted no foretaste of her coming subjection to him +Irony provoked his laughter more than fun +Irritability at the intrusion of past disputes +It would be hard! ay, then we do it forthwith +It is not high flying, which usually ends in heavy falling +Leader accustomed to count ahead upon vapourish abstractions +Led him to impress his unchangeableness upon her +Let none of us be so exalted above the wit of daily life +Levelling a finger at the taxpayer +Love, that has risen above emotion, quite independent of craving +Love's a selfish business one has work in hand +Made of his creed a strait-jacket for humanity +Making too much of it--a trick of the vulgar +Man owes a duty to his class +Mankind is offended by heterodoxy in mean attire +Mark of a fool to take everybody for a bigger fool than himself +Martyrs of love or religion are madmen +May not one love, not craving to be beloved? +Men had not pleased him of late +Mental and moral neuters +Money's a chain-cable for holding men to their senses +More argument I cannot bear +Never was a word fitter for a quack's mouth than "humanity" +Never pretend to know a girl by her face +No heart to dare is no heart to love! +No case is hopeless till a man consents to think it is +No stopping the Press while the people have an appetite for it +No man has a firm foothold who pretends to it +None but fanatics, cowards, white-eyeballed dogmatists +Oggler's genial piety made him shrink with nausea +On which does the eye linger longest--which draws the heart? +Once called her beautiful; his praise had given her beauty +Oratory will not work against the stream, or on languid tides +Parliament, is the best of occupations for idle men +Passion is not invariably love +Past fairness, vaguely like a snow landscape in the thaw +Peace-party which opposed was the actual cause of the war +Peculiar subdued form of laughter through the nose +People with whom a mute conformity is as good as worship +People is one of your Radical big words that burst at a query +Planting the past in the present like a perceptible ghost +Play the great game of blunders +Please to be pathetic on that subject after I am wrinkled +Pleasure-giving laws that make the curves we recognize as beauty +Politics as well as the other diseases +Practical or not, the good people affectingly wish to be +Prayer for an object is the cajolery of an idol +Press, which had kindled, proceeded to extinguished +Presumptuous belief +Protestant clergy the social police of the English middle-class +Push indolent unreason to gain the delusion of happiness +Ready is the ardent mind to take footing on the last thing done +Rebellion against society and advocacy of humanity run counter +Reproof of such supererogatory counsel +Scotchman's metaphysics; you know nothing clear +She was not, happily, one of the women who betray strong feeling +She had no longer anything to resent: she was obliged to weep +Shun comparisons +Shuns the statuesque pathetic, or any kind of posturing +Silence and such signs are like revelations in black night +Slaves of the priests +Small things producing great consequences +So the frog telleth tadpoles +Socially and politically mean one thing in the end +Story that she believed indeed, but had not quite sensibly felt +Straining for common talk, and showing the strain +Style resembling either early architecture or utter dilapidation +That a mask is a concealment +The girl could not know her own mind, for she suited him exactly +The critic that sneers +The religion of this vast English middle-class--Comfort +The slavery of the love of a woman chained +The turn will come to us as to others--and go +The language of party is eloquent +The defensive is perilous policy in war +The healthy only are fit to live +The system is cursed by nature, and that means by heaven +The world without him would be heavy matter +The weighty and the trivial contended +The rider's too heavy for the horse in England +The greater wounds do not immediately convince us of our fate +The people always wait for the winner +The defensive is perilous policy in war +The family view is everlastingly the shopkeeper's +The infant candidate delights in his honesty +The tragedy of the mirror is one for a woman to write +Their hearts are eaten up by property +Their not caring to think at all +There is no step backward in life +There may be women who think as well as feel; I don't know them +There is no first claim +There's nothing like a metaphor for an evasion +They may know how to make themselves happy in their climate +They have their thinking done for them +They're always having to retire and always hissing +Thirst for the haranguing of crowds +This girl was pliable only to service, not to grief +Those whose humour consists of a readiness to laugh +Those happy men who enjoy perceptions without opinions +Threatened powerful drugs for weak stomachs +Times when an example is needed by brave men +To beg the vote and wink the bribe +Tongue flew, thought followed +Too many time-servers rot the State +Trust no man Still, this man may be better than that man +Unanimous verdicts from a jury of temporary impressions +Use your religion like a drug +Virtue of impatience +We do not see clearly when we are trying to deceive +We women can read men by their power to love +We could row and ride and fish and shoot, and breed largely +We dare not be weak if we would +We were unarmed, and the spectacle was distressing +We can't hope to have what should be +We have a system, not planned but grown +We are chiefly led by hope +We're treated like old-fashioned ornaments! +Welcomed and lured on an adversary to wild outhitting +Well, sir, we must sell our opium +What ninnies call Nature in books +When he's a Christian instead of a Churchman +Where love exists there is goodness +Who cannot talk!--but who can? +Without a single intimation that he loathed the task +Wives are only an item in the list, and not the most important +Women don't care uncommonly for the men who love them +Women must not be judging things out of their sphere +Won't do to be taking in reefs on a lee-shore +Wonderment that one of her sex should have ideas +Wooing a good man for his friendship +World cannot pardon a breach of continuity +You are not married, you are simply chained +You're talking to me, not to a gallery + + + + +End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Beauchamp's Career, complete +by George Meredith + diff --git a/old/gm66v10.zip b/old/gm66v10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..ebdaa75 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/gm66v10.zip |