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diff --git a/4460-h/4460-h.htm b/4460-h/4460-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a8db8d7 --- /dev/null +++ b/4460-h/4460-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,30204 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg EBook of Beauchamp's Career, Complete, by George Meredith</title> + +<style type="text/css"> + +body { margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; + text-align: justify; } + +h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: +normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;} + +h1 {font-size: 300%; + margin-top: 0.6em; + margin-bottom: 0.6em; + letter-spacing: 0.12em; + word-spacing: 0.2em; + text-indent: 0em;} +h2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} +h3 {font-size: 130%; margin-top: 1em;} +h4 {font-size: 120%;} +h5 {font-size: 110%;} + +.no-break {page-break-before: avoid;} /* for epubs */ + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;} + +hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} + +p {text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; } + +p.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-size: 90%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.letter {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.noindent {text-indent: 0% } + +p.right {text-align: right; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:hover {color:red} + +</style> + +</head> + +<body> + +<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold;'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Beauchamp's Career, Complete, by George Meredith</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world 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 <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Beauchamp's Career, Complete</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: George Meredith</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Release Date: February 6, 2002 [eBook #4460]<br /> +[Most recently updated: January 6, 2021]</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: David Widger</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em;margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER, COMPLETE ***</div> + +<h1>Beauchamp’s Career</h1> + +<h2 class="no-break">by George Meredith</h2> + +<hr /> + +<h2>Contents</h2> + +<table summary="" style=""> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap01">CHAPTER I. THE CHAMPION OF HIS COUNTRY</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap02">CHAPTER II. UNCLE, NEPHEW, AND ANOTHER</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap03">CHAPTER III. CONTAINS BARONIAL VIEWS OF THE PRESENT TIME</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap04">CHAPTER IV. A GLIMPSE OF NEVIL IN ACTION</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap05">CHAPTER V. RENÉE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap06">CHAPTER VI. LOVE IN VENICE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap07">CHAPTER VII. AN AWAKENING FOR BOTH</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap08">CHAPTER VIII. A NIGHT ON THE ADRIATIC</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap09">CHAPTER IX. MORNING AT SEA UNDER THE ALPS</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap10">CHAPTER X. A SINGULAR COUNCIL</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap11">CHAPTER XI. CAPTAIN BASKELETT</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap12">CHAPTER XII. AN INTERVIEW WITH THE INFAMOUS DR. SHRAPNEL</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap13">CHAPTER XIII. A SUPERFINE CONSCIENCE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap14">CHAPTER XIV. THE LEADING ARTICLE AND MR. TIMOTHY TURBOT</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap15">CHAPTER XV. CECILIA HALKETT</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap16">CHAPTER XVI. A PARTIAL DISPLAY OF BEAUCHAMP IN HIS COLOURS</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap17">CHAPTER XVII. HIS FRIEND AND FOE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap18">CHAPTER XVIII. CONCERNING THE ACT OF CANVASSING</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap19">CHAPTER XIX. LORD PALMET, AND CERTAIN ELECTORS OF BEVISHAM</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap20">CHAPTER XX. A DAY AT ITCHINCOPE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap21">CHAPTER XXI. THE QUESTION AS TO THE EXAMINATION OF THE WHIGS, AND THE FINE BLOW STRUCK BY MR. EVERARD ROMFREY</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap22">CHAPTER XXII. THE DRIVE INTO BEVISHAM</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap23">CHAPTER XXIII. TOURDESTELLE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap24">CHAPTER XXIV. HIS HOLIDAY</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap25">CHAPTER XXV. THE ADVENTURE OF THE BOAT</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap26">CHAPTER XXVI. MR. BLACKBURN TUCKHAM</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap27">CHAPTER XXVII. A SHORT SIDELOOK AT THE ELECTION</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap28">CHAPTER XXVIII. TOUCHING A YOUNG LADY’S HEART AND HER INTELLECT</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap29">CHAPTER XXIX. THE EPISTLE OF DR. SHRAPNEL TO COMMANDER BEAUCHAMP</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap30">CHAPTER XXX. THE BAITING OF DR. SHRAPNEL</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap31">CHAPTER XXXI. SHOWING A CHIVALROUS GENTLEMAN SET IN MOTION</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap32">CHAPTER XXXII. AN EFFORT TO CONQUER CECILIA IN BEAUCHAMP’S FASHION</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap33">CHAPTER XXXIII. THE FIRST ENCOUNTER AT STEYNHAM</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap34">CHAPTER XXXIV. THE FACE OF RENÉE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap35">CHAPTER XXXV. THE RIDE IN THE WRONG DIRECTION</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap36">CHAPTER XXXVI. PURSUIT OF THE APOLOGY OF MR. ROMFREY TO DR. SHRAPNEL</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap37">CHAPTER XXXVII. CECILIA CONQUERED</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap38">CHAPTER XXXVIII. LORD AVONLEY</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap39">CHAPTER XXXIX. BETWEEN BEAUCHAMP AND CECILIA</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap40">CHAPTER XL. A TRIAL OF HIM</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap41">CHAPTER XLI. A LAME VICTORY</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap42">CHAPTER XLII. THE TWO PASSIONS </a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap43">CHAPTER XLIII. THE EARL OF ROMFREY AND THE COUNTESS</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap44">CHAPTER XLIV. THE NEPHEWS OF THE EARL, AND ANOTHER EXHIBITION OF THE TWO PASSIONS IN BEAUCHAMP</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap45">CHAPTER XLV. A LITTLE PLOT AGAINST CECILIA</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap46">CHAPTER XLVI. AS IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN FORESEEN</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap47">CHAPTER XLVII. THE REFUSAL OF HIM</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap48">CHAPTER XLVIII. OF THE TRIAL AWAITING THE EARL OF ROMFREY</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap49">CHAPTER XLIX. A FABRIC OF BARONIAL DESPOTISM CRUMBLES</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap50">CHAPTER L. AT THE COTTAGE ON THE COMMON</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap51">CHAPTER LI. IN THE NIGHT</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap52">CHAPTER LII. QUESTION OF A PILGRIMAGE AND AN ACT OF PENANCE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap53">CHAPTER LIII. THE APOLOGY TO DR. SHRAPNEL</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap54">CHAPTER LIV. THE FRUITS OF THE APOLOGY</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap55">CHAPTER LV. WITHOUT LOVE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap56">CHAPTER LVI. THE LAST OF NEVIL BEAUCHAMP</a></td> +</tr> + +</table> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap01"></a>CHAPTER I.<br /> +THE CHAMPION OF HIS COUNTRY</h2> + +<p> +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 +<i>gallifers</i>, brandishing their fowls and their banners in a manner to +frighten the decorum of the universe. Where were our men? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +We were in fact as naked to the Imperial foe as the merely painted Britons. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +And thus we obtained a moderate reinforcement of our arms. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 Molière; 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 Française,” 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. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +“G<small>ENTLEMEN OF THE</small> F<small>RENCH</small> +G<small>UARD</small>,<br /> + “I take up the glove you have tossed us. I am an Englishman. That +will do for a reason.” +</p> + +<p> +This might possibly pass with the gentlemen of the English Guard. But read: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +“M<small>ESSIEURS DE LA</small> G<small>ARDE</small> +F<small>RANÇAISE</small>,<br /> + “J’accepte votre gant. Je suis Anglais. La raison est +suffisante.” +</p> + +<p> +And imagine French Guardsmen reading it! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You are composing a love-letter, Nevil!” The accusation sounded +like irony. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said he, puffing; “I wish I were.” +</p> + +<p> +“What can it be, then?” +</p> + +<p> +He thrust pen and paper a hand’s length on the table, and gazed at her. +</p> + +<p> +“My dear Nevil, is it really anything serious?” said she. +</p> + +<p> +“I am writing French, ma’am.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then I may help you. It must be very absorbing, for you did not hear my +knock at your door.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Culling promised him demurely that she would listen, objecting nothing to +his plan, only to his French. +</p> + +<p> +“Messieurs de la Garde Française!” he commenced. +</p> + +<p> +Her criticism followed swiftly. +</p> + +<p> +“I think you are writing to the Garde Impériale.” +</p> + +<p> +He admitted his error, and thanked her warmly. +</p> + +<p> +“Messieurs de la Garde Impériale!” +</p> + +<p> +“Does not that,” she said, “include the non-commissioned +officers, the privates, and the cooks, of all the regiments?” +</p> + +<p> +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 Impériale.” 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. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Culling’s adroit efforts to weary him out of his project were +unsuccessful. He was too much on fire to know the taste of absurdity. +</p> + +<p> +Nevil repeated what he had written in French, and next the English of what he +intended to say. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I do not <i>want</i>, ma’am,” said Nevil. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Culling gravely said she hoped that bloodshed would be avoided, and Mr. +Beauchamp nodded. +</p> + +<p> +She left him hard at work. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 sûr +que vous comprendrez mes sentiments, et m’accorderez l’honneur que +je réclame au nom de ma patrie outragée.” The word “patrie” +was broadcast over the letter, and “honneur” appeared four times, +and a more delicate word to harp on than the others! +</p> + +<p> +“Not to Frenchmen,” said his friend Rosamund. “I would put +‘Je suis convaincu’: it is not so familiar.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I have written out the fair copy, ma’am, and that alteration +seems a trifle.” +</p> + +<p> +“I would copy it again and again, Nevil, to get it right.” +</p> + +<p> +“No: I’d rather see it off than have it right,” said Nevil, +and he folded the letter. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +This proved persuasive, and as the hour was late Nevil had to act on her advice +in a hurry. +</p> + +<p> +His uncle Everard enjoyed a perusal of the manuscript in his absence. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap02"></a>CHAPTER II.<br /> +UNCLE, NEPHEW, AND ANOTHER</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>which</i> 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 <i>tricorne</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>Ich dien</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Everard was led to say that Nevil’s cousins were bedevilled with +womanfolk. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +She spoke to Stukely Culbrett, her dead husband’s friend, to whose +recommendation she was indebted for her place in Everard Romfrey’s +household. +</p> + +<p> +“Nevil behaved like a knight, I hear.” +</p> + +<p> +“Your beauty was disputed,” said he, “and Nevil knocked the +blind man down for not being able to see.” +</p> + +<p> +She thought, “Not my beauty! Nevil struck his cousin on behalf of the +only fair thing I have left to me!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap03"></a>CHAPTER III.<br /> +CONTAINS BARONIAL VIEWS OF THE PRESENT TIME</h2> + +<p> +Upon the word of honour of Rosamund, the letter to the officers of the French +Guard was posted. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He was rallied about it when he next sat at his uncle’s table, and had to +pardon Rosamund for telling. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +Everard shook his head to signify, “not <i>half</i>.” 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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t they,” Nevil asked, “belong to the Liberal +party?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll tell you,” Everard replied, “they belong to any +party that upsets the party above them. They belong to the +G<small>EORGE</small> F<small>OXE</small> 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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +The faithful Whig veteran spoke with jolly admiration of the speech of a famous +Tory chief. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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, +<small>LEADING</small> them, insisting on their following, not standing aloof +and shrugging. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Deuce you don’t,” said his uncle. +</p> + +<p> +“I mean our names, our histories; I mean our duties. As for titles, the +way to defend them is to be worthy of them.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Please propose something to be done,” said Nevil, depressed by the +recommendation of that attitude. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“There’s the people,” sighed Nevil, entangled in his +uncle’s haziness. +</p> + +<p> +“What people?” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose the people of Great Britain count, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course they do; when the battle’s done, the fight lost and +won.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you expect the people to look on, sir?” +</p> + +<p> +“The people always wait for the winner, boy Nevil.” +</p> + +<p> +The young fellow exclaimed despondingly, “If it were a race!” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s like a race, and we’re confoundedly out of +training,” said Everard. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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>I</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.” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Nevil despatched the following: “I thank you, but I shall not cash the +cheque. The Steynham tale is this: +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +And now came war, the purifier and the pestilence. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +The cry for war was absolutely unanimous, and a supremely national cry, Everard +Romfrey said, for it excluded the cotton-spinners. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Now,” said Everard, “we shall see what staff there is in +that fellow Nevil.” +</p> + +<p> +He expected, as you may imagine, a true young Beauchamp-Romfrey to be straining +his collar like a leash-hound. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap04"></a>CHAPTER IV.<br /> +A GLIMPSE OF NEVIL IN ACTION</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“The rascal’s liver’s out of order,” Everard said. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +Everard apostrophized his absent nephew: “You jackass!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>soldiers</i> and <i>sailors</i>, we +don’t want <i>suicides</i>.” 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 <i>Rodney</i>, 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.” +</p> + +<p> +Everard replied: +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“I see with shame (admiration of <i>them</i>) 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: +</p> + +<p> +“I like him for holding to his work <i>after</i> the strain’s over. +That tells the man.” +</p> + +<p> +He observed at his table, in reply to commendations of his nephew: +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly, to his disgust, came rumours of peace between the mighty +belligerents. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 naïveté 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund Culling was the only witness of his remarkable betrayal of grief. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap05"></a>CHAPTER V.<br /> +RENÉE</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>mon fils! mon cher neveu! Dieu!</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Her name was Renée. 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. +</p> + +<p> +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.] +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +The study of the books to school Renée 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. Renée 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. Renée thought +she began to comprehend the spirit of Venice, and chided her rebelliousness. +</p> + +<p> +“But our Venice was the Venice of the decadence, then!” she said, +complaining. Nevil read on, distrustful of the perspicuity of his own ideas. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, but,” said she, “when these Venetians were rough men, +chanting like our Huguenots, how cold it must have been here!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Renée 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 <i>shall</i> share the blame.” +</p> + +<p> +Nevil plunged into his volume. +</p> + +<p> +He called on Roland for an opinion. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Renée 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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap06"></a>CHAPTER VI.<br /> +LOVE IN VENICE</h2> + +<p> +The air flashed like heaven descending for Nevil alone with Renée. 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. +</p> + +<p> +“I throw the book down,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She objected. “No; continue: I like it.” +</p> + +<p> +Both of them divined that the book was there to do duty for Roland. +</p> + +<p> +He closed it, keeping a finger among the leaves; a kind of anchorage in case of +indiscretion. +</p> + +<p> +“Permit me to tell you, M. Nevil, you are inclined to play truant +to-day.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“But we have plenty of time to read. We miss the scenes.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s the charm. I wish I could look on you and think the same. +You, as you are, for ever.” +</p> + +<p> +“Would you not let me live my life?” +</p> + +<p> +“I would not have you alter.” +</p> + +<p> +“Please to be pathetic on that subject after I am wrinkled, +monsieur.” +</p> + +<p> +“You want commanding, mademoiselle.” +</p> + +<p> +Renée nestled her chin, and gazed forward through her eyelashes. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Provided that my papa is not crossing when we go under.” +</p> + +<p> +“Would he not trust you to me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“He would? And you?” +</p> + +<p> +“I do believe they are improvizing an operetta on the second +bridge.” +</p> + +<p> +“You trust yourself willingly?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Where would the naturalness have been then?” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps, M. Nevil, I do want commanding. I am wilful. Half my days will +be spent in fits of remorse, I begin to think.” +</p> + +<p> +“Come to me to be forgiven.” +</p> + +<p> +“Shall I? I should be forgiven too readily.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am not so sure of that.” +</p> + +<p> +“Can you be harsh? No, not even with enemies. Least of all with... with +us.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“How strange a power of looking these people have,” said Renée, +whose vivacity was fascinated to a steady sparkle by the girl. “Tell me, +is she glancing round at us?” +</p> + +<p> +Nevil turned and reported that she was not. She had exhausted them while they +were in transit; she had no minor curiosity. +</p> + +<p> +“Let us fancy she is looking for her lover,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +Renée added: “Let us hope she will not escape being seen.” +</p> + +<p> +“I give her my benediction,” said Nevil. +</p> + +<p> +“And I,” said Renée; “and adieu to her, if you please. Look +for Roland.” +</p> + +<p> +“You remind me; I have but a few instants.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“How glad you are to have him to relieve guard!” +</p> + +<p> +Renée bent on Nevil one of her singular looks of raillery. She had hitherto +been fencing at a serious disadvantage. +</p> + +<p> +“Not so very glad,” she said, “if that deprived me of the +presence of his friend.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Would you have me with you always?” +</p> + +<p> +“Assuredly,” said she, feeling the hawk in him, and trying to +baffle him by fluttering. +</p> + +<p> +“Always? forever? and—listen—give me a title?” +</p> + +<p> +Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Ma sè, ma sè,<br /> +Cotanto bevè,<br /> +Mi nò, mi nò,<br /> +No ve sposerò.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Roland’s wry face at the mention of Nostrani brought out the chief +gondolier, who delivered himself: +</p> + +<p> +“Signore, there be hereditary qualifications. One must be born Italian to +appreciate the merits of Nostrani!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap07"></a>CHAPTER VII.<br /> +AN AWAKENING FOR BOTH</h2> + +<p> +Renée 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. +Renée nodded. Involuntarily she looked at Nevil. He caught the look, with a +lover’s quick sense of misfortune in it. +</p> + +<p> +She heard her brother reply to him: “Who? the Marquis de Rouaillout? It +is a jolly gaillard of fifty who spoils no fun.” +</p> + +<p> +“You mistake his age, Roland,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Forty-nine, then, my sister.” +</p> + +<p> +“He is not that.” +</p> + +<p> +“He looks it.” +</p> + +<p> +“You have been absent.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“What’s that?” exclaimed the Comte de Croisnel. “You +talk nonsense, Roland. M. le marquis is hardly past forty. He is in his +prime.” +</p> + +<p> +“Without question, mon pere. For me, I was merely offering proof that he +can preserve his prime unlimitedly.” +</p> + +<p> +“He is not a subject for mockery, Roland.” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite the contrary; for reverence!” +</p> + +<p> +“Another than you, my boy, and he would march you out.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am to imagine, then, that his hand continues firm?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Roland bowed and drummed on his knee. +</p> + +<p> +The conversation had been originated by Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +Roland explained the situation to Nevil. +</p> + +<p> +“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 Renée 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. Renée will have a +fine hôtel 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 Renée passes obediently from the latter +to the former. In India they sacrifice the widows, in France the +virgins.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Nevil escaped, and walked in the direction of the Frari down calle and +campiello. Only to see her—to compare her with the Renée of the past +hour! But <i>that</i> Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Midway on this unadorned Zattere, with its young trees and spots of shade, he +was met by Renée 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? +Renée complains that she loses the vulgar art of walking in her complaisant +attention to the fine Arts. I weary my poor child.” +</p> + +<p> +Renée protested in a rapid chatter. +</p> + +<p> +“Must I avow it?” said the count; “she damps my enthusiasm a +little.” +</p> + +<p> +Nevil mutely accepted the office. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“This is a nice walk,” said Renée; “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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Renée, 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!” +</p> + +<p> +She murmured, “You should not have listened to Roland.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Renée 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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Because it is not English?” +</p> + +<p> +“O Renée, 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!” +</p> + +<p> +Renée looked across the water. +</p> + +<p> +“Friend, if my father knew you were asking me!” +</p> + +<p> +“I will speak to him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Useless.” +</p> + +<p> +“He is generous, he loves you.” +</p> + +<p> +“He cannot break an engagement binding his honour.” +</p> + +<p> +“Would you, Renée, 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?” +</p> + +<p> +His failing breath softened the bluntness. +</p> + +<p> +She replied, “I would not have him ever break an engagement binding his +honour.” +</p> + +<p> +“You stretch the point of honour.” +</p> + +<p> +“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...?” +</p> + +<p> +“I have displeased you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do not suppose that. But, I mean, a mother would not have left +me.” +</p> + +<p> +“You wished to avoid it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do not blame me. I had some instinct; you were very pale.” +</p> + +<p> +“You knew I loved you.” +</p> + +<p> +“No.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; for this morning...” +</p> + +<p> +“This morning it seemed to me, and I regretted my fancy, that you were +inclined to trifle, as, they say, young men do.” +</p> + +<p> +“With Renée?” +</p> + +<p> +“With your friend Renée. And those are the hills of Petrarch’s +tomb? They are mountains.” +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée in one wild flight over the chasm gaping +for her. He had no language for thoughts of such a kind, only tumultuous +feeling. +</p> + +<p> +She was immoveable, in perfect armour. +</p> + +<p> +He said despairingly, “Can you have realized what you are consenting +to?” +</p> + +<p> +She answered, “It is my duty.” +</p> + +<p> +“Your duty! it’s like taking up a dice-box, and flinging once, to +certain ruin!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Duty to country, duty to oaths and obligations; but with us the heart is +free to choose.” +</p> + +<p> +“Free to choose, and when it is most ignorant?” +</p> + +<p> +“The heart? ask it. Nothing is surer.” +</p> + +<p> +“That is not what we are taught. We are taught that the heart deceives +itself. The heart throws your dicebox; not prudent parents.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Then you are lost to me,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +They saw the gondola returning. +</p> + +<p> +“How swiftly it comes home; it loitered when it went,” said Renée. +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Nevil had her hand in his, to place her in the gondola. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, if they’re republican as well as utterly decayed,” said +Roland, “I give them up; let them die virtuous.” +</p> + +<p> +Nevil told Roland that he had spoken to Renée. 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 Renée to be disposed of in marriage early. +Why rob her of her young springtime! +</p> + +<p> +“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 Renée?” +</p> + +<p> +“She obeys.” +</p> + +<p> +“Exactly. You see! Our girls are chess-pieces until they’re +married. Then they have life and character sometimes too much.” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not by one single sign,” said Nevil. +</p> + +<p> +“You see, my friend!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“We have now,” said Roland, “struck the current of duplicity. +You are really in love, my poor fellow.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Renée 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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap08"></a>CHAPTER VIII.<br /> +A NIGHT ON THE ADRIATIC</h2> + +<p> +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 Renée 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 Renée confirmed it. The suspicion of an advocacy on Nevil’s behalf +steeled her. His tentative observations were checked at the outset. +</p> + +<p> +“Can such things be spoken of to me, Roland? I am plighted. You know +it.” +</p> + +<p> +He shrugged, said a word of pity for Nevil, and went forth to let his friend +know that it was as he had predicted: Renée 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.” +</p> + +<p> +Roland could not avoid asking the use of it, considering that Renée, however +much she admired and liked, was not in love with him. +</p> + +<p> +Nevil resigned himself to admit that she was not: and therefore, said he, +“you won’t object to my remaining.” +</p> + +<p> +Renée greeted Nevil with as clear a conventional air as a woman could assume. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I will not go,” said Nevil. +</p> + +<p> +“But I do not wish to number you among them,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Then,” said Nevil, “I will go, for it cannot be barbarous to +try to be with you.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, that is wickedness,” said Renée. +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée 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. Renée 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: +</p> + +<p> +“Have you the sense of honour acute in your country?” Nevil +inquired for the apropos. +</p> + +<p> +“None,” said she. +</p> + +<p> +Such pointed insolence disposed Rosamund to an irritable antagonism, without +reminding her that she had given some cause for it. +</p> + +<p> +Renée said to her presently: “He saved my brother’s life”; +the àpropos being as little perceptible as before. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +The look was turned upon her, not upon her hero, and Rosamund thought, +“Does she want to entangle me as well?” +</p> + +<p> +It was, in truth, a look of entreaty from woman to woman, signifying need of +womanly help. Renée 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 Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“A serpent in the egg is none the less a serpent, Nevil. Forgive me; but +when she tells you the case is hopeless!” +</p> + +<p> +“No case is hopeless till a man consents to think it is; and I shall +stay.” +</p> + +<p> +“But then again, Nevil, you have not consulted your uncle.” +</p> + +<p> +“Let him see her! let him only see her!” +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée almost with +detestation, as a species of sorceress that had dug a trench in her +hero’s road, and unhorsed and fast fettered him. +</p> + +<p> +The marquis was expected immediately. Renée 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.... Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +“If you can bear sea-pitching and tossing for the sake of the loveliest +sight in the whole world,” said Renée. +</p> + +<p> +“I know it well,” Rosamund replied. +</p> + +<p> +Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +“Madame, if you know it too well...” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“No; it is always worth seeing,” said Rosamund, “and I think, +mademoiselle, with your permission, I should accompany you.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is only a whim of mine, madame. I can stay on shore.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not when it is unnecessary to forego a pleasure.” +</p> + +<p> +“Say, my last day of freedom.” +</p> + +<p> +Renée kissed her hand. +</p> + +<p> +She is terribly winning, Rosamund avowed. Renée was in debate whether the woman +devoted to Nevil would hear her and help. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Without dubitation,” cried Roland. “And now my little Renée +has no more shore-qualms; she is smoothly chaperoned, and madame will present +us tea on board. All the etcæteras of life are there, and a mariner’s eye +in me spies a breeze at sunset to waft us out of Malamocco.” +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. Renée +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“We have started; we are on the open sea. How can we put back?” +said Renée. +</p> + +<p> +“You hear, François; we are on the open sea,” Roland addressed the +valet. +</p> + +<p> +“Monsieur has cut loose his communications with land,” François +responded, and bowed from the landing. +</p> + +<p> +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, Renée 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 Renée, 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. +</p> + +<p> +Renée stood up to bend her head. It was in reply to a salute from the Marquis +de Rouaillout, and Nevil beheld his rival. +</p> + +<p> +“M. le Marquis, seeing it is out of the question that we can come to you, +will you come to us?” cried Roland. +</p> + +<p> +The marquis gesticulated “With alacrity” in every limb. +</p> + +<p> +“We will bring you back on to-morrow midnight’s tide, safe, we +promise you.” +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée, an +English lady was with her. +</p> + +<p> +“The English lady must be as mad as the rest,” said the marquis. +</p> + +<p> +“The English are mad,” said the count; “but their women are +strict upon the proprieties.” +</p> + +<p> +“Possibly, my dear count; but what room is there for the proprieties on +board a fishing-boat?” +</p> + +<p> +“It is even as you say, my dear marquis.” +</p> + +<p> +“You allow it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Can I help myself? Look at them. They tell me they have given the boat +the fittings of a yacht.” +</p> + +<p> +“And the young man?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I hope so,” said the marquis, and roused a doleful laugh. +“It would seem that one does not arrive by hastening!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée. 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. +</p> + +<p> +As he stood declining to participate in the lunatic voyage, and bidding them +perforce good speed off the tips of his fingers, Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Renée looked up at the sails, and back for the submerged city. +</p> + +<p> +“It is gone!” she said, as though a marvel had been worked; and +swiftly: “we have one night!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +They set their eyes toward the dark gulf ahead. The night was growing starry. +The softly ruffled Adriatic tossed no foam. +</p> + +<p> +“One night?” said Nevil; “one? Why only one?” +</p> + +<p> +Renée shuddered. “Oh! do not speak.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then, give me your hand.” +</p> + +<p> +“There, my friend.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée’s life-blood ran with his, began to +heave under him like a swelling sea. For Nevil the starred black night was +Renée. 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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap09"></a>CHAPTER IX.<br /> +MORNING AT SEA UNDER THE ALPS</h2> + +<p> +The breeze blew steadily, enough to swell the sails and sweep the vessel on +smoothly. The night air dropped no moisture on deck. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Nevil’s personal rapture craved for Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +She asked his permission to rouse her brother and madame, so that they should +not miss the scene. +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée, +had been separated from her husband last on these waters. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah! to be unhappy here,” sighed Renée. “I fancied it when I +begged her to join us. It was in her voice.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +He let that pass. +</p> + +<p> +“Last night you said ‘one night,’” he whispered. +“We will have another sail before we leave Venice.” +</p> + +<p> +“One night, and in a little time one hour! and next one minute! and +there’s the end,” said Renée. +</p> + +<p> +Her tone alarmed him. “Have you forgotten that you gave me your +hand?” +</p> + +<p> +“I gave my hand to my friend.” +</p> + +<p> +“You gave it to me for good.” +</p> + +<p> +“No; I dared not; it is not mine.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is mine,” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +Renée pointed to the dots and severed lines and isolated columns of the rising +city, black over bright sea. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Renée, you cannot break the pledge of the hand you gave me last +night.” +</p> + +<p> +“You tell me how weak a creature I am.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are me, myself; more, better than me. And say, would you not rather +coast here and keep the city under water?” +</p> + +<p> +She could not refrain from confessing that she would be glad never to land +there. +</p> + +<p> +“So, when you land, go straight to your father,” said Beauchamp, to +whose conception it was a simple act resulting from the avowal. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, while it’s not too late,” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You condescend to notice us, Signor Beauchamp,” said Roland. +“The vessel is up to some manœuvre?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. Renée is in misery. +She must not go back.” +</p> + +<p> +Roland sprang to his feet, stared, and walked over to Renée. +</p> + +<p> +“Nevil,” said Rosamund Culling, “do you know what you are +doing?” +</p> + +<p> +“Perfectly,” said he. “Come to her. She is a girl, and I must +think and act for her.” +</p> + +<p> +Roland met them. +</p> + +<p> +“My dear Nevil, are you in a state of delusion? Renée denies...” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Chosen! my friend. But allow me to remind you that you have others to +consult. And Renée herself...” +</p> + +<p> +“She is a girl. She loves me, and I speak for her.” +</p> + +<p> +“She has said it?” +</p> + +<p> +“She has more than said it.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp simply replied: +</p> + +<p> +“Come to her.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap10"></a>CHAPTER X.<br /> +A SINGULAR COUNCIL</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 +Renée—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 Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +Roland appealed to her. “You! my sister! it is you that consent to this +wild freak, enough to break your father’s heart?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +She shook her head; she had not consented. +</p> + +<p> +“The man she loves is her voice and her will,” said Beauchamp. +“She gives me her hand and I lead her.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Renée!” said Roland. +</p> + +<p> +“Brother!” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +“You see that I cannot suffer you to be borne away.” +</p> + +<p> +“No; do not!” +</p> + +<p> +But the boat was flying fast from Venice, and she could have fallen at his feet +and kissed them for not countermanding it. +</p> + +<p> +“You are in my charge, my sister.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“And now, Nevil, between us two,” said Roland. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“We leave Renée at Trieste, under the care of madame,” said +Beauchamp, “and we return to Venice, and I go to your father. This method +protects Renée from annoyance.” +</p> + +<p> +“It strikes me that if she arrives at any determination she must take the +consequences.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is my sister such a coward?” said Roland. +</p> + +<p> +Renée could only call out his name. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“If she goes back she is lost,” said Beauchamp, and he attacked +Roland on the side of his love for Renée, and for him. +</p> + +<p> +Roland was inflexible. Seeing which, Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +“We were in sight of the city just now!” cried Roland, staring and +frowning. “What’s this?” +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp answered him calmly, “The boat’s under my orders.” +</p> + +<p> +“Talk madness, but don’t act it,” said Roland. “Round +with the boat at once. Hundred devils! you haven’t your wits.” +</p> + +<p> +To his amazement, Beauchamp refused to alter the boat’s present course. +</p> + +<p> +“You heard my sister?” said Roland. +</p> + +<p> +“You frighten her,” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +“You heard her wish to return to Venice, I say.” +</p> + +<p> +“She has no wish that is not mine.” +</p> + +<p> +It came to Roland’s shouting his command to the men, while Beauchamp +pointed the course on for them. +</p> + +<p> +“You will make this a ghastly pleasantry,” said Roland. +</p> + +<p> +“I do what I know to be right,” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +“You want an altercation before these fellows?” +</p> + +<p> +“There won’t be one; they obey me.” +</p> + +<p> +Roland blinked rapidly in wrath and doubt of mind. +</p> + +<p> +“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...” +</p> + +<p> +“There you are wrong, Roland,” said Beauchamp; “she can +neither speak nor think for herself: you lead her blindfolded.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +The poor lady’s heart beat dismally. She was constrained to answer, and +said, “His uncle is one who must be consulted.” +</p> + +<p> +“You hear that, Nevil,” said Roland. +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée’s love, the world of men +subservient to his wishes. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +They were all silent. Beauchamp stared at the lines of the deck-planks. +</p> + +<p> +His scheme to rescue Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +Soon after this the boat was set for Venice again. +</p> + +<p> +When he rejoined his companions he kissed Rosamund’s hand, and Renée, +despite a confused feeling of humiliation and anger, loved him for it. +</p> + +<p> +Glittering Venice was now in sight; the dome of Sta. Maria Salute shining like +a globe of salt. +</p> + +<p> +Roland flung his arm round his friend’s neck, and said, “Forgive +me.” +</p> + +<p> +“You do what you think right,” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +“You are a perfect man of honour, my friend, and a woman would adore you. +Girls are straws. It’s part of Renée’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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Run to England, get your uncle’s consent, and then try.” +</p> + +<p> +“No; I shall go to her father.” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear Nevil, and supposing you have Renée to back you—supposing +it, I say—won’t you be falling on exactly the same +bayonet-point?” +</p> + +<p> +“If I leave her!” Beauchamp interjected. He perceived the quality +of Renée’s unformed character which he could not express. +</p> + +<p> +“But we are to suppose that she loves you?” +</p> + +<p> +“She is a girl.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée in Paris. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, my dear child, it has all been very wonderful and +uncomfortable?” said the count. +</p> + +<p> +“Wonderful, papa; splendid.” +</p> + +<p> +“No qualms of any kind?” +</p> + +<p> +“None, I assure you.” +</p> + +<p> +“And madame?” +</p> + +<p> +“Madame will confirm it, if you find a seat for her.” +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund Culling was received in the count’s gondola, cordially thanked, +and placed beside the marquis. +</p> + +<p> +“I stay on board and pay these fellows,” said Roland. +</p> + +<p> +Renée was told by her father to follow madame. He had jumped into the spare +gondola and offered a seat to Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” cried Renée, arresting Beauchamp, “it is I who mean to +sit with papa.” +</p> + +<p> +Up sprang the marquis with an entreating, “Mademoiselle!” +</p> + +<p> +“M. Beauchamp will entertain you, M. le Marquis.” +</p> + +<p> +“I want him here,” said the count; and Beauchamp showed that his +wish was to enter the count’s gondola, but Renée had recovered her +aplomb, and decisively said “No,” and Beauchamp had to yield. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Renée took his hand to be assisted in the step down to her father’s arms, +murmuring: +</p> + +<p> +“Do nothing—nothing! until you hear from me.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap11"></a>CHAPTER XI.<br /> +CAPTAIN BASKELETT</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>Diomed</i>, 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 <i>well taken care of</i>, 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. +</p> + +<p> +“I can take very good care of myself,” Rosamund protested. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund asked, “Will you let me see where Nevil says that, sir?” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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 +Renée’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: Renée 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 Renée. 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“And one morning last week mademoiselle was running away with him, and +the next morning she was married to her marquis!” +</p> + +<p> +Cecil was able to tell her that. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“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, etcætera.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée—the +Frenchwoman, she termed her, <i>i.e.</i> generically false, needless to name; +and one question quivered on her tongue’s tip: “How, when she had +promised to fly with you, <i>how could she</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He had been cruising in the Mediterranean, commanding the <i>Ariadne</i>, 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. +</p> + +<p> +Cecil forwarded the Address to Everard Romfrey without comment. +</p> + +<p> +Next day the following letter, dated from Itchincope, the house of Mr. Grancey +Lespel, on the borders of Bevisham, arrived at Steynham: +</p> + +<p> +“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 £20, 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.’ +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>gratis</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps the best course would be to telegraph for the marquise!” +</p> + +<p> +This was from Cecil Baskelett. He added a postscript: +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap12"></a>CHAPTER XII.<br /> +AN INTERVIEW WITH THE INFAMOUS DR. SHRAPNEL</h2> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very pretty?” +</p> + +<p> +“I think very pretty,” said the General. +</p> + +<p> +“Captivatingly?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I have never heard her name before to-day,” said Rosamund. +</p> + +<p> +“Exactly,” said the General, crowing at the aimlessness of a +woman’s curiosity. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund said, “I am an old friend of his.” +</p> + +<p> +“He is here now, in this town.” +</p> + +<p> +“I wish to see him very much.” +</p> + +<p> +General Sherwin interposed: “We won’t talk about political +characters just for the present.” +</p> + +<p> +“I wish you knew him, papa, and would advise him,” his daughter +said. +</p> + +<p> +The General nodded hastily. “By-and-by, by-and-by.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You honour me, madam, by speaking to me so frankly,” Miss Denham +answered. +</p> + +<p> +“He is quite bent upon this Election?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, madam. I am not, as you can suppose, in his confidence, but I hear +of him from Dr. Shrapnel.” +</p> + +<p> +“Your uncle?” +</p> + +<p> +“I call him uncle: he is my guardian, madam.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You are not relatives, then?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“No, unless love can make us so.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not blood-relatives?” +</p> + +<p> +“No.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is he not very... extreme?” +</p> + +<p> +“He is very sincere.” +</p> + +<p> +“I presume you are a politician?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +She said, “I really am of opinion that our sex might abstain from +politics.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Captain Beauchamp gives himself no rest,” Miss Denham said. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! I know him, when once his mind is set on anything,” said +Rosamund. +</p> + +<p> +“Is it not too early to begin to—canvass, I think, is the +word?” +</p> + +<p> +“He is studying whatever the town can teach him of its wants; that is, +how he may serve it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed! But if the town will not have him to serve it?” +</p> + +<p> +“He imagines that he cannot do better, until that has been decided, than +to fit himself for the post.” +</p> + +<p> +“Acting upon your advice? I mean, of course, your uncle’s; that is, +Dr. Shrapnel’s.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“It sounds almost as if Captain Beauchamp had submitted to be Dr. +Shrapnel’s pupil.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is natural, madam, that Dr. Shrapnel should know more of political +ways at present than Captain Beauchamp.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, madam, they are not. They had never met before Captain Beauchamp +landed, the other day.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Denham was silent, and then said: +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Can he obtain a hearing?” Rosamund asked. +</p> + +<p> +“He has not so very large a crowd to address, madam, and he is much +beloved by those that come.” +</p> + +<p> +“He speaks to them of politics on those occasions?” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Adouci à leur intention</i>. 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And women too?” +</p> + +<p> +“And women, yes. Indeed, madam, we notice that the women listen very +creditably.” +</p> + +<p> +“They can put on the air.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund’s meditation was exclamatory: What can be the age of this +pretentious girl? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund checked her lips from uttering: To be a puppet of Dr. +Shrapnel’s! +</p> + +<p> +She remarked, “He is very eloquent—Dr. Shrapnel?” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Denham held some debate with herself upon the term. +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps it is not eloquence; he often... no, he is not an orator.” +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund suggested that he was persuasive, possibly. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“That is not Captain Beauchamp’s figure,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“No, it is not he,” said Miss Denham. +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund saw that her companion was pale. She warmed to her at once; by no +means on account of the pallor in itself. +</p> + +<p> +“I have walked too fast for you, I fear.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no; I am accused of being a fast walker.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Then he will arrive here after nightfall,” said the doctor. +“A bed is at your service, ma’am.” +</p> + +<p> +The offer was declined. “I should like to have seen him to-day; but he +will be home shortly.” +</p> + +<p> +“He will not quit Bevisham till this Election’s decided unless to +hunt a stray borough vote, ma’am.” +</p> + +<p> +“He goes to Mount Laurels.” +</p> + +<p> +“For that purpose.” +</p> + +<p> +“I do not think he will persuade Colonel Halkett to vote in the Radical +interest.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Why should he?” asked the impending doctor. +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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? <i>Out</i>, 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!” +</p> + +<p> +“It is matter of opinion,” said Rosamund, very tightly compressed; +scarcely knowing what she said. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +What champion was she to look to? To whom but to Mr. Everard Romfrey? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Meantime she had passed from Dr. Shrapnel to Miss Denham, and carried on a +conversation becomingly. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund pleaded that she had not heard them with any distinctness. +</p> + +<p> +“Are they written by the gentleman at his side?” +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Lydiard? No. He writes, but the verses are not his.” +</p> + +<p> +“Does he know—has he met Captain Beauchamp?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, once. Captain Beauchamp has taken a great liking to his +works.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“You surely do not object to the organ?—I fear I cannot wait, +though,” said Rosamund. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Lydiard added, “I have an appointment with him here for this +evening.” +</p> + +<p> +“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! <i>Then</i> you have music, harmony, the +highest, fullest, finest! Educate your men to form a band, you shame dexterous +trickery and imitation sounds. <i>Then</i> for the difference of real +instruments from clever shams! Oh, ay, <i>one</i> 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. “<i>One</i> 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!” +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund rose abruptly as soon as the terminating notes of the Mass had been +struck. +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Shrapnel seemed to be concluding his devotions before he followed her +example. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>this</i> 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 <i>then</i> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +The comicality of her having such remarks addressed to her provoked a smile on +Rosamund’s lips. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +She said in an undertone, “I am very anxious you should see Captain +Beauchamp, madam.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Evidently <i>she</i> has no desire he should run the risk of angering a +rich uncle.” +</p> + +<p> +This shameful suspicion was unavoidable: there was no other opiate for +Rosamund’s blame of herself after letting her instincts gain the +ascendancy. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap13"></a>CHAPTER XIII.<br /> +A SUPERFINE CONSCIENCE</h2> + +<p> +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 +<i>additional epaulette;</i> and he corrected the infallible gentleman’s +error (which had of course been reported to him when he was dreaming of Renée, +by Mrs. Culling) concerning a lieutenant’s shoulder decorations, most +gravely; informing him of the anchor on the lieutenant’s <i>pair</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>Ariadne</i> 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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Nevil understands that I am not going to pay a farthing of his expenses +in Bevisham?” he said to Mrs. Culling. +</p> + +<p> +She replied blandly and with innocence, “I have not seen him, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +He nodded. At the next mention of Nevil between them, he asked, “Where is +it he’s lying perdu, ma’am?” +</p> + +<p> +“I fancy in that town, in Bevisham.” +</p> + +<p> +“At the Liberal, Radical, hotel?” +</p> + +<p> +“I dare say; some place; I am not certain....” +</p> + +<p> +“The rascal doctor’s house there? Shrapnel’s?” +</p> + +<p> +“Really... I have not seen him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Have you heard from him?” +</p> + +<p> +“I have had a letter; a short one.” +</p> + +<p> +“Where did he date his letter from?” +</p> + +<p> +“From Bevisham.” +</p> + +<p> +“From what house?” +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund glanced about for a way of escaping the question. There was none but +the door. She replied, “From Dr. Shrapnel’s.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s the Anti-Game-Law agitator.” +</p> + +<p> +“You do not imagine, sir, that Nevil subscribes to every thing the horrid +man agitates for?” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t like the man, ma’am?” +</p> + +<p> +“I detest him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ha! So you have seen Shrapnel?” +</p> + +<p> +“Only for a moment; a moment or two. I cannot endure him. I am sure I +have reason.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“What reason?” said Mr. Romfrey, freshening at her display of +colour. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Did he insult you, ma’am?” Mr. Romfrey inquired. +</p> + +<p> +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...” +</p> + +<p> +“Did he fail to treat you as a lady, ma’am?” +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund was getting frightened by the significant pertinacity of her lord. +</p> + +<p> +“I am sure, sir, he meant no harm.” +</p> + +<p> +“Was the man uncivil to you, ma’am?” came the emphatic +interrogation. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Romfrey ejaculated, “Ha! humph!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>me;</i> 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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap14"></a>CHAPTER XIV.<br /> +THE LEADING ARTICLE AND MR. TIMOTHY TURBOT</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund exclaimed angrily, “Oh! if I had been there he would not have +dared.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why not be there?” said Stukely. “You have had your choice +for a number of years.” +</p> + +<p> +She shook her head, reddening. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.’” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +And Captain Baskelett! thought Rosamund; her jealousy whispering that the +mention of his name close upon Cecilia Halkett’s might have a nuptial +signification. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>Bevisham Gazette</i>, 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>Leviathan</i>, +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 “<i>This +England</i>...” and Byronic—“<i>The inviolate +Island</i>...” 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Timothy’s article had plucked Beauchamp out of bed; Beauchamp’s +card in return did the same for him. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>Gazette</i>, 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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I am sorry to have disturbed you so early,” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +“Not a bit, Commander Beauchamp, not a bit, sir. Early or late, and ay +ready—with the Napiers; I’ll wash, I’ll wash.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly, certainly,” Timothy acquiesced. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, and that’s true,” said Timothy. +</p> + +<p> +His appreciative and sympathetic agreement with these sharp strictures on the +article brought Beauchamp to a stop. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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>I</i> feel +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“All would, sir,” said Timothy. +</p> + +<p> +“Then why the deuce did you do it?” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well,” said Beauchamp. “Now understand; you are not in +future to employ the weapons, as you call them, that I have objected to.” +</p> + +<p> +Timothy gaped slightly. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>Gazette?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“No more—than the bite of a mad dog,” Timothy replied, before +he had considered upon the monstrous nature of the proposal. +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp humphed, and tossed his head. The simile of the dog struck him with +intense effect. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>he</i> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Every line of it was mine,” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“If they are only to be got by abandoning principles, and by anything but +honesty in stating them, they may go,” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +“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...” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“At a quarter to eight this evening, then,” said Nevil. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll be there at the stroke of the clock, sure as the date of a +bill,” said Timothy. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap15"></a>CHAPTER XV.<br /> +CECILIA HALKETT</h2> + +<p> +Beauchamp walked down to the pier, where he took a boat for H.M.S. <i>Isis</i>, +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>Esperanza</i>, 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. +</p> + +<p> +Wilmore sang out, “Give way, men!” +</p> + +<p> +The sailors bent to their oars, and presently the schooner’s head was put +to the wind. +</p> + +<p> +“She sees we’re giving chase,” Wilmore said. “She +can’t be expecting <i>me</i>, 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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +She said once, “Captain Beauchamp.” He retorted with a solemn +formality. They smiled, and immediately took footing on their previous +intimacy. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m staying at a Bevisham hotel,” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +“You have not been to Steynham yet? Papa comes home from Steynham +to-night.” +</p> + +<p> +“Does he? Well, the <i>Ariadne</i> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Naval business?” she remarked. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said he. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed!” +</p> + +<p> +“And I want the colonel to give me his vote.” +</p> + +<p> +The young lady breathed a melodious “Oh!” not condemnatory or +reproachful—a sound to fill a pause. But she was beginning to reflect. +</p> + +<p> +“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 sends 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?” +</p> + +<p> +His Christian name was pleasant to hear from her lips. She held out a bunch to +him. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“In my growth?” said Cecilia, smiling. “I have grown out of +my Circassian dress, Nevil.” +</p> + +<p> +“You received it, then?” +</p> + +<p> +“I wrote you a letter of thanks—and abuse, for your not coming to +Steynham. You may recognize these pearls.” +</p> + +<p> +The pearls were round her right wrist. He looked at the blue veins. +</p> + +<p> +“They’re not pearls of price,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“—Not altogether.” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +The exclamation was contemptuous. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s the highest we can aim at,” Beauchamp observed meekly. +</p> + +<p> +“I think I recollect you used to talk politics when you were a +midshipman,” she said. “You headed the aristocracy, did you +not?” +</p> + +<p> +“The aristocracy wants a head,” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +“Parliament, in my opinion, is the best of occupations for idle +men,” said she. +</p> + +<p> +“It shows that it is a little too full of them.” +</p> + +<p> +“Surely the country can go on very well without so much +speech-making?” +</p> + +<p> +“It can go on very well for the rich.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Halkett tapped with her foot. +</p> + +<p> +“I should expect a Radical to talk in that way, Nevil.” +</p> + +<p> +“Take me for one.” +</p> + +<p> +“I would not even imagine it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Say Liberal, then.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“I have taken my side, Cecilia; but we, on our side, don’t talk of +an enemy.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +Such was the Tory way of thinking, Nevil Beauchamp said: the Tories upheld +their Toryism in the place of patriotism. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>submission</i> 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. <i>Non fu mai gloria senza invidia</i>. 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.” +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp bowed. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Just the same. You will have to pardon me; I am a terrible foe.” +</p> + +<p> +“I declare to you, Cecilia, I would prefer having you against me to +having you indifferent.” +</p> + +<p> +“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...” +</p> + +<p> +“Dreadful antagonist?” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Possibly he might be the victim of the latter and more pardonable state, and so +thinking she gave him her hand. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-bye, Nevil. I may tell papa to expect you tomorrow?” +</p> + +<p> +“Do, and tell him to prepare for a field-day.” +</p> + +<p> +She smiled. “A sham fight that will not win you a vote! I hope you will +find your guests this evening agreeable companions.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He was dropped by the <i>Esperanza’s</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.... +</p> + +<p> +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 +<i>questioning</i> 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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap16"></a>CHAPTER XVI.<br /> +A PARTIAL DISPLAY OF BEAUCHAMP IN HIS COLOURS</h2> + +<p> +Beauchamp presented himself at Mount Laurels next day, and formally asked +Colonel Halkett for his vote, in the presence of Cecilia. +</p> + +<p> +She took it for a playful glance at his new profession of politician: he spoke +half-playfully. Was it possible to speak in earnest? +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Leaders who cut down expenditure, to create a panic that doubles the +outlay! I know them.” +</p> + +<p> +“A <i>panic</i>, Nevil.” Cecilia threw stress on the memorable +word. +</p> + +<p> +He would hear no reminder in it. The internal condition of the country was now +the point for seriously-minded Englishmen. +</p> + +<p> +“My dear boy, what <i>have</i> you seen of the country?” Colonel +Halkett inquired. +</p> + +<p> +“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....” +</p> + +<p> +“The papers!” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, they’re the mirror of the country.” +</p> + +<p> +“Does one see everything in a mirror, Nevil?” said Cecilia: +“even in the smoothest?” +</p> + +<p> +He retorted softly: “I should be glad to see what you see,” and +felled her with a blush. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Where lay <i>his</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“I would prescribe a course of it, Cecilia; yes,” he turned to her. +</p> + +<p> +“The Dr. Dulcamara of a single drug?” +</p> + +<p> +“Now you have a name for me! Tory arguments always come to +epithets.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“So you call me quack?” +</p> + +<p> +“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...” +</p> + +<p> +“There’s nothing like a metaphor for an evasion,” said Nevil, +blinking over it. +</p> + +<p> +She drew him another analogy, longer than was at all necessary; so tedious that +her father struck through it with the remark: +</p> + +<p> +“Concerning that quack—that’s one in the background, +though!” +</p> + +<p> +“I know of none,” said Beauchamp, well-advised enough to forbear +mention of the name of Shrapnel. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am,” said he, bowing. +</p> + +<p> +She asked: “Is not that equivalent to the doctrine of election by +Grace?” +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp interjected: “Grace! election?” +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia was tender to his inability to follow her allusion. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“We stick to men, and good men,” the colonel flourished. “Old +English for me!” +</p> + +<p> +“You might as well say, old timber vessels, when Iron’s afloat, +colonel.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“I shall not own I’m worsted until I surrender my vote,” the +colonel rejoined. +</p> + +<p> +“I won’t despair of it,” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>we know</i> you can’t win. According to my +judgement a man owes a duty to his class.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +After his departure she talked of him with her father, to be charitably +satirical over him, it seemed. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>apathy</i> of the country, papa; the +<i>apathy</i> of the rich; a state of universal <i>apathy</i>. Will you inform +me, papa, what the Tories are <i>doing?</i> Do we really give our consciences +to the keeping of the parsons once a week, and let them <i>dogmatize</i> for us +to save us from exertion? We must attach ourselves to <i>principles; +nothing</i> is <i>permanent</i> but <i>principles</i>. 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>tra le tre +ore a le quattro:</i> electioneering should be a lesson. From my recollection +of Blackburn Tuckham, he was a boisterous boy.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“They are not so interesting to study, and not half so amusing,” +said Cecilia. +</p> + +<p> +Colonel Halkett muttered his objections to the sort of amusement furnished by +firebrands. +</p> + +<p> +“Firebrand is too strong a word for poor Nevil,” she remonstrated. +</p> + +<p> +In that estimate of the character of Nevil Beauchamp, Cecilia soon had to +confess that she had been deceived, though not by him. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap17"></a>CHAPTER XVII.<br /> +HIS FRIEND AND FOE</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He said he was delighted, and appeared so, but dashed the sweetness. “You +know I can’t canvass on Sundays!” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose not,” she replied. “Have you walked up from +Bevisham? You must be tired.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing tires me,” said he. +</p> + +<p> +With that they stepped on together. +</p> + +<p> +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 +<i>Esperanza</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s the finest yachting-station in England,” said +Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?’” +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia quitted her bower and traversed the wood silently. +</p> + +<p> +“So you would blow up my poor Mount Laurels for a peace-offering to the +lower classes?” +</p> + +<p> +“I should hope to put it on a stronger foundation, Cecilia.” +</p> + +<p> +“By means of some convulsion?” +</p> + +<p> +“By forestalling one.” +</p> + +<p> +“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——?” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s, I think, the <i>Hastings:</i> 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. <i>Half a +million!</i> Do you know how many poor taxpayers it takes to make up that sum, +Cecilia?” +</p> + +<p> +“A great many,” she slurred over them; “but we must have big +ships, and the best that are to be had.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He nodded and spoke coolly. “An army <i>to preserve order?</i> So, then, +an army to threaten civil war!” +</p> + +<p> +“To crush revolutionists.” +</p> + +<p> +“Agitators, you mean. My dear good old colonel—I have always loved +him—must not have more troops at his command.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you object to the drilling of the whole of the people?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Does Dr. Shrapnel hate the middle-class?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“But what horrible notions of your country have you, Nevil! It is +dreadful to hear. Oh! do let us avoid politics for ever. Fear!” +</p> + +<p> +“All concessions to the people have been won from fear.” +</p> + +<p> +“I have not heard so.” +</p> + +<p> +“I will read it to you in the History of England.” +</p> + +<p> +“You paint us in a condition of Revolution.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Dr. Shrapnel?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I <i>have</i> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“He has a bad reputation.” +</p> + +<p> +“Only with the class that will not meet him and answer him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Must we invite him to our houses?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Before mobs?” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Not</i> before mobs. I punish you by answering you seriously.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am sensible of the flattery.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed, Nevil, I have not an idea. I only wish your patriotism were +large enough to embrace them.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well, Nevil, I am a goose upon a common.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>They</i> will, papa,” murmured Cecilia. “Will Mr. Austin +be there?” +</p> + +<p> +“I particularly wish to meet Mr. Austin,” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +“Listen to him, if you do meet him,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +His look was rather grave. +</p> + +<p> +“Lespel’s a Whig,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +The colonel answered. “Lespel <i>was</i> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You will hear a long sermon,” she warned him. +</p> + +<p> +“Forty minutes.” Colonel Halkett smothered a yawn that was both +retro and prospective. +</p> + +<p> +“It has been fifty, papa.” +</p> + +<p> +“It has been an hour, my dear.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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! +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And I,” said Beauchamp. Some shadow of a frown crossed him; but +Stukely Culbrett’s humour seemed to be a refuge. “Protestant +<i>parson</i>—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: <i>discipline</i>, 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.” +</p> + +<p> +Colonel Halkett shrugged with disgust at the mention of Dissenters. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia perceived that her father was beginning to be fretted. +</p> + +<p> +She said, with a tact that effected its object: “I am one who hear Mr. +Culbrett without admiring his wit.” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp was heard to utter, “Humanity.” +</p> + +<p> +The colonel left the room with Cecilia, muttering the Steynham tail to that +word: “tomtity,” for the solace of an aside repartee. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Can</i> he expect his adversaries to be tender with him?” +Cecilia simulated vehemence in an underbreath. She glanced down the page: +</p> + +<p> +“F<small>RENCH</small> M<small>ARQUEES</small>” caught her eye. +</p> + +<p> +It was a page of verse. And, oh! could it have issued from a Tory Committee? +</p> + +<p> +“The Liberals are as bad, and worse,” her father said. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Seymour Austin would not sanction it.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, but Nevil might hold him responsible for it.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“And after all Nevil Beauchamp is very young, papa!—of course I can +keep a secret.” +</p> + +<p> +The colonel exacted no word of honour, feeling quite sure of her. +</p> + +<p> +He whispered the secret in six words, and her cheeks glowed vermilion. +</p> + +<p> +“But they will meet on Wednesday after <i>this</i>,” she said, and +her sight went dancing down the column of verse, of which the following +trotting couplet is a specimen:— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“O did you ever, hot in love, a little British middy see,<br /> +Like Orpheus asking what the deuce to do without Eurydice?” +</p> + +<p> +The middy is jilted by his F<small>RENCH</small> M<small>ARQUEES</small>, 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: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Up, up, my pretty middy; take a draught of foaming Sillery;<br /> +Go in and win the uriddy with your Radical artillery.” +</p> + +<p> +And if Sillery will not do, he is advised, he being for superlatives, to try +the sparkling <i>Silliery</i> of the Radical vintage, selected grapes. +</p> + +<p> +This was but impudent nonsense. But the reiterated apostrophe to +“M<small>Y</small> F<small>RENCH</small> M<small>ARQUEES</small>” +was considered by Cecilia to be a brutal offence. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I cannot congratulate you on your choice of a second candidate, +papa,” she said scornfully. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t much congratulate myself,” said the colonel. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“But Nevil will be accusing Mr. Austin.” +</p> + +<p> +“Austin won’t be at Lespel’s. And he must bear it, for the +sake of peace.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is Nevil ruined with his uncle, papa?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not a bit, I should imagine. It’s Romfrey’s fun.” +</p> + +<p> +“And this disgraceful squib is a part of the fun?” +</p> + +<p> +“That I know nothing about, my dear. I’m sorry, but there’s +pitch and tar in politics as well as on shipboard.” +</p> + +<p> +“I do not see that there should be,” said Cecilia resolutely. +</p> + +<p> +“We can’t hope to have what should be.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why not? I would have it: I would do my utmost to have it,” she +flamed out. +</p> + +<p> +“Your <i>utmost?</i>” 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.” +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +But the intemperate feeling subsided while she was doing duty before her +mirror, and the visionary gulf closed immediately. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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—<i>his</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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!... +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +When he rose to take his leave, Cecilia said, “<i>Must</i> you go to +Itchincope on Wednesday, Nevil?” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I have particular reasons for going to Lespel’s; I hear he wavers +toward a Tory conspiracy of some sort,” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +The colonel held his tongue. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Colonel Halkett broke into exclamations of pity for so good a young fellow so +misguided. +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“He dresses just as he used to dress,” she observed. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +“He may look a little worn,” she acquiesced. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap18"></a>CHAPTER XVIII.<br /> +CONCERNING THE ACT OF CANVASSING</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Now we shall see the passions worked,” Mr. Austin said, deploring +the extension of the franchise. +</p> + +<p> +He asked whether Beauchamp spoke well. +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia left it to her father to reply; but the colonel appealed to her, +saying, “Inclined to dragoon one, isn’t he?” +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Not a borough like Bevisham?” +</p> + +<p> +He shook his head. “A fluid borough, I’m afraid.” +</p> + +<p> +Colonel Halkettt interposed: “But Ferbrass is quite sure of his +district.” +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia wished to know who the man was, of the mediaevally sounding name. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Are not a great many lawyers Liberals, papa?” +</p> + +<p> +“A great many <i>barristers</i> are, my dear.” +</p> + +<p> +Thereat the colonel and Mr. Austin smiled together. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Many young men are, before they have written out a fair copy of their +meaning,” said Mr. Austin. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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...?” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Austin replied: “It’s disagreeable, but it’s the +practice. I would gladly be bound by a common undertaking to abstain.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a very good opportunity for making him acquainted with +<i>them;</i> and I hope he may profit by it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah! pah! ‘To beg the vote and wink the bribe,’” +Colonel Halkett subjoined abhorrently: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +‘“It well becomes the Whiggish tribe<br /> +To beg the vote and wink the bribe.’ +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +Canvassing means intimidation or corruption.” +</p> + +<p> +“Or the mixture of the two, called cajolery,” said Mr. Austin; +“and that was the principal art of the Whigs.” +</p> + +<p> +Thus did these gentlemen converse upon canvassing. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“This is your duty, which I most abjectly entreat you to do,” is +pretty nearly the form of the supplication. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap19"></a>CHAPTER XIX.<br /> +LORD PALMET, AND CERTAIN ELECTORS OF BEVISHAM</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +The melancholy position of the senior and junior Liberals was known abroad and +matter of derision. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>say</i>, 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.” +</p> + +<p> +Lord Palmet concluded by asking Beauchamp what he was doing and whither going. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp had not noticed them. +</p> + +<p> +Palmet observed that he should not have noticed anything else. +</p> + +<p> +“But you are qualifying for the <i>Upper</i> House,” Beauchamp said +in the tone of an encomium. +</p> + +<p> +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.’” +</p> + +<p> +“Her name?” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>Paris</i>. For French taste, +if you like.” +</p> + +<p> +Countess Rastaglione was a lady enamelled on the scroll of Fame. “Did you +see them together?” said Beauchamp. “They weren’t +together?” +</p> + +<p> +Palmet looked at him and laughed. “You’re yourself again, are you? +Go to Paris in January, and cut out the Frenchmen.” +</p> + +<p> +“Answer me, Palmet: they weren’t in couples?” +</p> + +<p> +“I fancy not. It was luck to meet them, so they couldn’t have +been.” +</p> + +<p> +“Did you dance with either of them?” +</p> + +<p> +Unable to state accurately that he had, Palmet cried, “Oh! for dancing, +the Frenchwoman beat the Italian.” +</p> + +<p> +“Did you see her often—more than once?” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear fellow, I went everywhere to see her: balls, theatres, +promenades, rides, churches.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you say she dressed up to the Italian, to challenge her, rival +her?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Her husband’s Legitimist; he wouldn’t be at the +Tuileries?” Beauchamp spoke half to himself. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Here’s one of the houses I stop at,” said Beauchamp, +“and drop that subject.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“A true distinction from some Liberals I know,” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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: +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Just the sort of place wanted in every provincial town,” Palmet +remarked by way of a parting compliment. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Tomlinson bowed a civil acknowledgement of his having again spoken. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You may be right, Captain Beauchamp. Good day, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +Palmet strode after Beauchamp into the street. +</p> + +<p> +“Why did you set me bowing to that old boy?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Why did you talk about women?” was the rejoinder. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>is</i> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +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 +Renée. 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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Palmet was guilty of staring at her, and of lingering behind the others for a +last look at her. +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +“She has a head,” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“She can take care of herself,” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp held him firmly to the task of canvassing. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“Dramatic, certainly. And I ran away with the bride next morning?” +</p> + +<p> +“No!” roared Palmet; “you didn’t. There’s the +cruelty of the whole affair.” +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Trap-bat and ball, cricket, dancing, military bands, puppet-shows, +theatres, merry-go-rounds, bosky dells—anything to make them +happy,” said Palmet. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, dear! then I’m afraid we cannot ask you to speak to this Mr. +Carpendike.” Oggler shook his head. +</p> + +<p> +“Does the fellow want the people to be miserable?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m afraid, my lord, he would rather see them miserable.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp flew at this young monster of unreason: “But the people are +<i>not</i> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Devilish cold in this shop,” muttered Palmet. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>must</i> 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 <i>not</i> to know happiness.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then you don’t know God,” said Carpendike, like a voice from +a cave. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +But Lord Palmet paid Mr. Oggler a memorable compliment, by assuring him that he +was altogether of his way of thinking about happiness. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>your</i> own, +and use your religion like a drug. So it appears to me. That Sunday tyranny of +yours has to be defended. +</p> + +<p> +Remember that; for I for one shall combat it and expose it. Good day.” +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp continued, in the street: “Tyrannies like this fellow’s +have made the English the dullest and wretchedest people in Europe.” +</p> + +<p> +Palmet animadverted on Carpendike: “The dog looks like a deadly fungus +that has poisoned the woman.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’d trust him with a post of danger, though,” said +Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Such treatment of a favourable voter seemed odd to Palmet. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, a vote given for reasons of sentiment!” Beauchamp interjected. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You have discovered my likeness to women,” said Beauchamp, eyeing +him critically, and then thinking, with a sudden warmth, that he had seen +Renée: “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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You might make a speech for me, Palmet.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 F<small>RENCH</small> M<small>ARQUEES</small>? and second: Who was +E<small>URYDICEY</small>? +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp referred him to the Tory camp, whence the placard alluding to those +ladies had issued. +</p> + +<p> +“Both of them’s ladies! I guessed it,” said the elector. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you guess that one of them is a mythological lady?” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“No: you may not ask; you take a liberty.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You pay attention to a stupid Tory squib?” +</p> + +<p> +“Where there’s smoke there’s fire, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp glanced at his note-book for the name of this man, who was a ragman +and dustman. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re quite welcome to examine my character for yourself, only I +don’t consent to be catechized. Understand that.” +</p> + +<p> +“You quite understand that, Mr. Tripehallow,” said Oggler, bolder +in taking up the strange name than Beauchamp had been. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Au revoir—would have been kinder,” said Palmet. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Tripehallow smiled roguishly, to betoken comprehension. +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp asked Mr. Oggler whether that fellow was to be taken for a humourist +or a five-pound-note man. +</p> + +<p> +“It may be both, sir. I know he’s called Morality Joseph.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Not one farthing!” said Beauchamp, having been warned beforehand +of the signification of the phrase by his canvassing lieutenant. +</p> + +<p> +“Then you’re nowhere,” the honest fellow replied in the +mystic tongue of prophecy. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +Palmet mimicked the manner of Cougham. +</p> + +<p> +“They cry for Turbot naturally; they want a relief,” Beauchamp +groaned. +</p> + +<p> +Palmet gave an imitation of Timothy Turbot. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +But a grave matter troubled Palmet’s head. +</p> + +<p> +“Who was that fellow who walked off with Miss Denham?” +</p> + +<p> +“A married man,” said Beauchamp: “badly married; more’s +the pity; he has a wife in the madhouse. His name is Lydiard.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not her brother! Where’s her uncle?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Please to say yours too.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve no class. I say that the education for women is to teach them +to rely on themselves.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah! well, I don’t object, if I’m the man.” +</p> + +<p> +“Because you and your set are absolutely uncivilized in your views of +women.” +</p> + +<p> +“Common sense, Beauchamp!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp asked Lord Palmet how old he was. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +It seemed a farcical state of things. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap20"></a>CHAPTER XX.<br /> +A DAY AT ITCHINCOPE</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Apply we now the knocker to the door of venerable Quotation, and call the aged +creature forth, that he, half choked by his eheu—! +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“A sound between a sigh and bray,” +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +may pronounce the familiar but respectable words, the burial-service of a time +so happy! +</p> + +<p> +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 +manœuvre, 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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +The allusion to Beauchamp occurred a few hours after Cecilia’s arrival at +Itchincope. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>you</i> make a sacrifice?” she asked Cecilia +playfully. +</p> + +<p> +“Nevil Beauchamp and I are old friends, but we have agreed that we are +deadly political enemies,” Miss Halkett replied. +</p> + +<p> +“It is not so bad for a beginning,” said Mrs. Lespel. +</p> + +<p> +“If one were disposed to martyrdom.” +</p> + +<p> +The older woman nodded. “Without that.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“The smoking-room at night?” Cecilia suggested, remembering her +father’s words about Itchincope’s tobacco-hall. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 F<small>RENCH</small> M<small>ARQUEES</small>. 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 <i>Shrapnel</i>, 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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“The fact is I’ve been canvassing hard. With Beauchamp!” +</p> + +<p> +Astonishment and laughter surrounded him, and Palmet looked from face to face, +equally astonished, and desirous to laugh too. +</p> + +<p> +“Ernest! how could you do that?” said Mrs. Lespel; and her husband +cried in stupefaction, “With Beauchamp?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! it’s because of the Radicalism,” Palmet murmured to +himself. “I didn’t mind that.” +</p> + +<p> +“What sort of a day did you have?” Mr. Culbrett asked him; and +several gentlemen fell upon him for an account of the day. +</p> + +<p> +Palmet grimaced over a mouthful of his pie. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“That he is. They flock to him in the street.” +</p> + +<p> +“He stands there, then, and jingles a money-bag.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“That repartee wouldn’t have done with a Dutchman or a Torbay +trawler,” said Stukely Culbrett. “But let us hear more.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is it fair?” Miss Halkett murmured anxiously to Mrs. Lespel, who +returned a flitting shrug. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Lydiard is in Bevisham?” Mrs. Wardour-Devereux remarked. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Hymns?” inquired Mr. Culbrett. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, it’s Mr. Lydiard; I’m sure of the man’s +name,” Palmet replied to Mrs. Wardour-Devereux. +</p> + +<p> +“We met him in Spain the year before last,” she observed to +Cecilia. +</p> + +<p> +The “we” reminded Palmet that her husband was present. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Old Bask’s the captain of us? Very well, but where do we drive the +teams? How many are we? What’s in hand?” +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia threw a hurried glance at her hostess. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“What are you going to do?” he said to Mr. Devereux, thinking him +the likeliest one to grow confidential in private. +</p> + +<p> +“Smoke,” resounded from the depths of that gentleman. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +She and Miss Halkett were walking in the garden. +</p> + +<p> +Miss Halkett said to him: “How wrong of you to betray the secrets of your +friend! Is he really making way?” +</p> + +<p> +“Beauchamp will head the poll to a certainty,” Palmet replied. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Everywhere. I assure you, Miss Halkett, there’s a feeling for +Beauchamp—they’re in love with him!” +</p> + +<p> +“He promises them everything, I suppose?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Austin may be right, then!” Cecilia reflected aloud. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you speak of Mr. Lydiard as Captain Beauchamp’s friend?” +Mrs. Devereux inquired of him. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“You will bring Captain Beauchamp to me the moment he comes?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll bring him. Bring him? Nevil Beauchamp won’t want +bringing.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Devereux smiled with some pleasure. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then, sir,” observed Ferbrass, “if they are men to be +persuaded, they had better not see me.” +</p> + +<p> +“True; they’re my old supporters, and mightn’t like your Tory +face,” Mr. Lespel assented. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Ferbrass congratulated him on the heartiness of his espousal of the Tory +cause. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Lespel winced a little, and told him not to put his trust in that. +</p> + +<p> +“Turned Tory?” said Palmet. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Lespel declined to answer. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then let it be in Captain Beauchamp’s manner,” said she +softly. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Who has been putting that nonsense into your head?” Mr. Lespel +retorted. “Go shooting, go shooting!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Devereux answered: “Excitement? I am not sure that I know what it +is. An Election does not excite me.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia said, “No.” +</p> + +<p> +“Now I see a third fellow,” said Palmet. “It’s the +other fellow, the Denham-Shrapnel-Radical meeting... Lydiard’s his name: +writes books!” +</p> + +<p> +“We may as well ride on,” Mrs. Devereux remarked, and her horse +fretted singularly. +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp perceived them, and lifted his hat. Palmet made demonstrations for +the ladies. Still neither party moved nearer. +</p> + +<p> +After some waiting, Cecilia proposed to turn back. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I say, Beauchamp, Mrs. Devereux wants to hear who that man is,” +Palmet said, drawing up. +</p> + +<p> +“That man is Dr. Shrapnel,” said Beauchamp, convinced that Cecilia +had checked her horse at the sight of the doctor. +</p> + +<p> +“Dr. Shrapnel,” Palmet informed Mrs. Devereux. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“He writes books,” observed Palmet, to jog a slow intelligence. +</p> + +<p> +“Pamphlets, you mean.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think he is not a pamphleteer”, Mrs. Devereux said. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“I thought it might be Dr. Shrapnel”, she was candid enough to +reply. “I could not well recognize him, not knowing him.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are evidently in a state of confusion, Lord Palmet,” said +Cecilia. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap21"></a>CHAPTER XXI.<br /> +THE QUESTION AS TO THE EXAMINATION OF THE WHIGS, AND THE FINE BLOW STRUCK BY +MR. EVERARD ROMFREY </h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“We three will sit in the library, anywhere,” said Cecilia. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“It will do all the good in the world to Grancey,” said Mrs. +Lespel. +</p> + +<p> +She sat in her little blue-room, with gentlemen congregating at the open +window. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“But if there’s no doubt about it, how is it I have a doubt about +it?” +</p> + +<p> +“You know you’re a Tory. You tried to get that man Dollikins from +me in the Tory interest.” +</p> + +<p> +“I mean to keep him out of Radical clutches. Now that’s the +truth.” +</p> + +<p> +They came up to the group by the open window, still conversing hotly, +indifferent to listeners. +</p> + +<p> +“You won’t keep him from me; I have him,” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +“You delude yourself; I have his promise, his pledged word,” said +Grancey Lespel. +</p> + +<p> +“The man himself told you his opinion of renegade Whigs.” +</p> + +<p> +“Renegade!” +</p> + +<p> +“Renegade Whig is an actionable phrase,” Mr. Culbrett observed. +</p> + +<p> +He was unnoticed. +</p> + +<p> +“If you don’t like ‘renegade,’ take +‘dead,’” said Beauchamp. “Dead Whig resurgent in the +Tory. You are dead.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s the stupid conceit of your party thinks that.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Dead</i>, 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“But,” Grancey Lespel repeated, “if there’s no doubt +about it, how is it I have a doubt about it?” +</p> + +<p> +“The Whigs preached finality in Reform. It was their own funeral +sermon.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nonsensical talk!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Aha! Beauchamp; the man’s mine. Come, you’ll own he swore he +wouldn’t vote for a Shrapnelite.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you remember?—that’s how the Tories used to +fight <i>you;</i> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Shrapnel? There! I’ve had enough.” Grancey Lespel bounced +away with both hands outspread on the level of his ears. +</p> + +<p> +“Dead!” Beauchamp sent the ghastly accusation after him. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Promise me, Captain Beauchamp,” she answered, “promise you +will give us no more politics to-day.” +</p> + +<p> +“If none provoke me.” +</p> + +<p> +“None shall.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Clever,” rejoined Beauchamp; “but I am under +government”; and he swept a bow to Mrs. Lespel. +</p> + +<p> +As they were breaking up the group, Captain Baskelett appeared. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t,” said Nevil. +</p> + +<p> +“Not? The canvass goes on swimmingly?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ask Palmet.” +</p> + +<p> +“Palmet gives you two-thirds of the borough. The poor old Tory tortoise +is nowhere. They’ve been writing about you, Nevil.” +</p> + +<p> +“They have. And if there’s a man of honour in the party I shall +hold him responsible for it.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll talk to you about it by-and-by,” said Nevil. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You feel sure he will be beaten?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“But as a naval officer?” +</p> + +<p> +“Excellent.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, certainly,” said Nevil. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you take a whip down there?” +</p> + +<p> +“If you’re all insured.” +</p> + +<p> +“On my honour, old Nevil, driving a four-in-hand is easier than governing +the country.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll accept your authority for what you know best,” said +Nevil. +</p> + +<p> +The toast of the Drive into Bevisham was drunk. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“They are not going to bed to-night,” said Mrs. Devereux. +</p> + +<p> +“They are mystifying Captain Beauchamp,” said Cecilia. +</p> + +<p> +“My husband tells me they are going to drive him into the town +to-morrow.” +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia flushed: she could scarcely get her breath. +</p> + +<p> +“Is that their plot?” she murmured. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You must not go,” she said bluntly. +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t break an appointment,” said he—“for the +sake of my own pleasure,” was implied. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you not listen to me, Nevil, when I say you cannot go?” +</p> + +<p> +A coachman’s trumpet blew. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“But can’t you even imagine a purpose for their driving into +Bevisham so pompously?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, men with drags haven’t commonly much purpose,” he +said. +</p> + +<p> +“But on this occasion! At an Election time! Surely, Nevil, you can guess +at a reason.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia said, “Well, Nevil, then you shall hear it.” +</p> + +<p> +Hereupon Captain Baskelett’s groom informed Captain Beauchamp that he was +off. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” Nevil said to Cecilia, “tell me on board the +yacht.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nevil, you will be driving into the town with the second Tory candidate +of the borough.” +</p> + +<p> +“Which? who?” Nevil asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Your cousin Cecil.” +</p> + +<p> +“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...” +</p> + +<p> +Now sounded Captain Baskelett’s trumpet. +</p> + +<p> +Angry though he was, Beauchamp laughed. “Isn’t it exactly like the +baron to spring a mine of this kind?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +At eleven, Cecilia sat in her pony-carriage giving final directions to Mrs. +Devereux where to look out for the <i>Esperanza</i> and the schooner’s +boat. “Then I drive down alone,” Mrs. Devereux said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp opened it and read: +</p> + +<p class="right"> +Château Tourdestelle<br /> +“(Eure). +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +“Come. I give you three days—no more. +</p> + +<p class="right"> +“R<small>ENÉE</small>.” +</p> + +<p> +The brevity was horrible. Did it spring from childish imperiousness or tragic +peril? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I fear I must cross over to France this evening,” he said to +Cecilia. +</p> + +<p> +She replied, “It is likely to be stormy to-night. The steamboat may not +run.” +</p> + +<p> +“If there’s a doubt of it, I shall find a French lugger. You are +tired, from not sleeping last night.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she answered, and nodded to Mrs. Devereux, beside whom Mr. +Lydiard stood: “You will not drive down alone, you see.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap22"></a>CHAPTER XXII.<br /> +THE DRIVE INTO BEVISHAM</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I shall compliment the baron when I meet him tonight,” he said. +“What can we compare him to?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“No: Everard Romfrey’s a Northerner from the feet up,” said +Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +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 +Baskelett.” +</p> + +<p> +“Promise me, Nevil, 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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia smiled gratefully. +</p> + +<p> +The sweetness of a love-speech would not have been sweeter to her than this +proof of civilized chivalry in Nevil. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He looked ahead at the low dead-blue cloud swinging from across channel. What +could be the riddle of Renée’s letter! It chained him completely. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“It may not be so much as we think,” said she. +</p> + +<p> +“But if we do!” +</p> + +<p> +“Then, Nevil, there is a difference between us.” +</p> + +<p> +“But if we keep our lips closed?” +</p> + +<p> +“We should have to shut our eyes as well!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? ‘<i>Noi veggiam come quei, che ha mala +luce.</i>’... I can confess my sight to be imperfect: but will you ever +do so?” +</p> + +<p> +Her musical voice in Italian charmed his hearing. +</p> + +<p> +“What poet was that you quoted?” +</p> + +<p> +“The wisest: Dante.” +</p> + +<p> +“Dr. Shrapnel’s favourite! I must try to read him.” +</p> + +<p> +“He reads Dante?” Cecilia threw a stress on the august name; and it +was manifest that she cared not for the answer. +</p> + +<p> +Contemptuous exclusiveness could not go farther. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +Here was opposition sounding again. Cecilia mentally reproached Dr. Shrapnel +for it. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t know him, Cecilia.” +</p> + +<p> +“I saw him yesterday.” +</p> + +<p> +“You thought him too tall?” +</p> + +<p> +“I thought of his character.” +</p> + +<p> +“How angry I should be with you if you were not so beautiful!” +</p> + +<p> +“I am immensely indebted to my unconscious advocate.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I fancy you must be convinced because you cannot imagine women to have +any share of public spirit, Nevil.” +</p> + +<p> +A grain of truth in that remark set Nevil reflecting. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Papa told you it would be money sunk in mud.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I have often thought that of Bevisham, Nevil.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Was he not perhaps to be pitied in his bondage to the Frenchwoman, who could +have no ideas in common with him? +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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, <i>might</i> 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! +</p> + +<p> +She dropped a sigh at the prodigious amount, but inquired, “Who has +calculated it?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +Possibly not, as Governments go, Beauchamp said. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Are they doing it still?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +However, now let Cecilia understand that we English, calling ourselves free, +are under morally lawless rule. <i>Government</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +She listened, like Rosamund Culling overborne by Dr. Shrapnel, inwardly praying +that she might discover a man to reply to him. +</p> + +<p> +“A Despotism, Nevil?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nevil,” said Cecilia, “I am out of my depth.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll support you; I can swim for two,” said he. +</p> + +<p> +“You are very self-confident, but I find I am not fit for battle; at +least not in the front ranks.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nerve me, then: will you? Try to comprehend once for all what the battle +is.” +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>Esperanza</i> shall take you to France to-morrow morning, and +can wait to bring you back.” +</p> + +<p> +As she spoke she perceived a flush mounting over Nevil’s face. Soon it +was communicated to hers. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Taking leave of Cecilia, he talked of his return “home” within +three or four days as a certainty. +</p> + +<p> +She said: “Canvassing should not be neglected now.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap23"></a>CHAPTER XXIII.<br /> +TOURDESTELLE</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée 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 Renée, 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? +</p> + +<p> +Renée’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. +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée; 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 Renée, 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 Renée was eternally his. +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée’s France. +</p> + +<p> +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 Château 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 Château 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 château 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Moonlight is friendless to eyes that would make sure of a face long unseen. It +was Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +Her tongue sounded to him as if it were loosened without a voice. “You +have come. That storm! You are safe!” +</p> + +<p> +So phantom-like a sound of speech alarmed him. “I lost no time. But +you?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am well.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing hangs over you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why give me just three days?” +</p> + +<p> +“Pure impatience. Have you forgotten me?” +</p> + +<p> +Their horses walked on with them. They unlocked their hands. +</p> + +<p> +“You knew it was I?” said he. +</p> + +<p> +“Who else could it be? I heard Venice,” she replied. +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée: +“What one picks from the earth one may wear, I presume, especially when +we can protest it is our property.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Renée pronounced his name: “M. le Comte Henri d’Henriel.” +</p> + +<p> +He bowed to Beauchamp with an extreme sweep of the hat. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You wear your trophy,” said Renée, and her horse reared and darted +ahead. +</p> + +<p> +The gentleman on each side of her struck into a trot. Beauchamp glanced at M. +d’Henriel’s breast-decoration. Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +The strangeness of being beside her, not having yet scanned her face, +marvelling at her voice—that was like and unlike the Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +Renée 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?” +</p> + +<p> +His answer was inaudible to Beauchamp; he did not quit them. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +Renée 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And it was really only the wish to see me?” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +“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 +Renée.” +</p> + +<p> +“You relieve me!” +</p> + +<p> +“Evidently you have forgotten my character, Nevil.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not a feature of it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah!” she breathed involuntarily. +</p> + +<p> +“Would you have me forget it?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +The moon launched her fairy silver fleets on a double sweep of the little river +round an island of reeds and two tall poplars. +</p> + +<p> +“I have wondered whether I should ever see you looking at that +scene,” said Renée. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +Renée answered: “He has the misfortune to be considered the handsomest +young man in France.” +</p> + +<p> +“He has an Italian look.” +</p> + +<p> +“His mother was Provençale.” +</p> + +<p> +She put her horse in motion, saying: “I agree with you that handsome men +are rarities. And, by the way, they do not set <i>our</i> world on fire quite +as much as beautiful women do yours, my friend. Acknowledge so much in our +favour.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Your husband is travelling?” +</p> + +<p> +“It is his pleasure.” +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +“Now look on Tourdestelle,” said Renée. “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 château, 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, Agnès 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.” +</p> + +<p> +They came within the rays of the lamp hanging above the unpretending entrance +to the château. Renée’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. +</p> + +<p> +“He wears a glove at his breast,” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +“You speak of M. d’Henriel. He wears a glove at his breast; yes, it +is mine,” said Renée. +</p> + +<p> +She slipped from her horse and stood against his shoulder, as if waiting to be +questioned before she rang the bell of the château. +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp alighted, burning with his unutterable questions concerning that +glove. +</p> + +<p> +“Lift your hat, let me beg you; let me see you,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>comme une folle!</i>” +</p> + +<p> +She swept to the bell. +</p> + +<p> +Standing in the arch of the entrance, she stretched her whip out to a black +mass of prostrate timber, saying: +</p> + +<p> +“It fell in the storm at two o’clock after midnight, and you on the +sea!” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap24"></a>CHAPTER XXIV.<br /> +HIS HOLIDAY</h2> + +<p> +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 Renée, 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 Renée, 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? +</p> + +<p> +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 château; 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 Renée; 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 Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +Owing to their arrival late at the château, 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 +<i>Ariadne</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp asked if she read English now. +</p> + +<p> +“A little; but the paper was dispatched to me by M. Vivian Ducie, of your +embassy in Paris. He is in the valley.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp tried to compare her with the Renée 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 Renée, the cast of her mouth and throat, misty as a shape in a +dream. +</p> + +<p> +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! Renée’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. +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée 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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +If Renée 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 Renée 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 Renée with a pleasant state of indolence, that her lightest +smile disturbed. Shun comparisons. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 château, 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 château 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. +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp heard himself addressed:—“You are looking for my +sister-in-law, M. Beauchamp?” +</p> + +<p> +The speaker was Madame d’Auffray, to whom he had been introduced +overnight—a lady of the aquiline French outline, not ungentle. +</p> + +<p> +Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +“She is a tireless person,” Madame d’Auffray remarked. +“You will not miss her long. We all meet at twelve, as you know.” +</p> + +<p> +“I grudge an hour, for I go to-morrow,” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +The notification of so early a departure, or else his bluntness, astonished +her. She fell to praising Renée’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? +</p> + +<p> +“Has she, do you think, increased in beauty?” Madame +d’Auffray inquired: an insidious question, to which he replied: +</p> + +<p> +“Once I thought it would be impossible.” +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +They skirted the château, 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 Renée, 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. +</p> + +<p> +“There is a necessity for your leaving us to-morrow; M. Beauchamp?” +</p> + +<p> +“I regret to say, it is imperative, madame.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp begged her to convey the proper expressions of his regret to M. le +Marquis. +</p> + +<p> +“And M. de Croisnel? And Roland, your old comrade and brother-in-arms? +What will be their disappointment!” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“I intend to stop for an hour at Rouen on my way back,” said +Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +She asked if her belle-soeur was aware of the short limitation of his visit. +</p> + +<p> +He had not mentioned it to Madame la Marquise. +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps you may be moved by the grief of a friend: Renée may persuade +you to stay.” +</p> + +<p> +“I came imagining I could be of some use to Madame la Marquise. She +writes as if she were telegraphing.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“He is particularly handsome.” +</p> + +<p> +“We women think so. Did you take him to be... eccentric?” +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp gave a French jerk of the shoulders. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +This lady of sharp intelligence was the guardian of Renée during the foolish +husband’s flights about Paris and over Europe, and, for a proof of her +consummate astuteness, Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +Near upon the breakfast-hour Renée was perceived by them going toward the +château 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Are you aware,” said Madame d’Auffray, “that M. +Beauchamp leaves us to-morrow?” +</p> + +<p> +“So soon?” It was uttered hardly with a tone of disappointment. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“To-morrow? That is very soon; but M. Beauchamp is engaged in an +Election, and what have we to induce him to stay?” +</p> + +<p> +“Would it not be better to tell M. Beauchamp why he was invited to +come?” rejoined Madame d’Auffray. +</p> + +<p> +The sombre light in Renée’s eyes quickened through shadowy spheres of +surprise and pain to resolution. She cried, “You have my full +consent,” and left them. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He understood that Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée’s errand of the morning, +by which he had lost hours of her, pertained to the glove, he said quiveringly, +“Madame la Marquise objects?” +</p> + +<p> +“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 Renée’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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“I may stay another day or two,” he said, “if I can be of any +earthly service.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap25"></a>CHAPTER XXV.<br /> +THE ADVENTURE OF THE BOAT</h2> + +<p> +Madame d’Auffray passed Renée, whispering on her way to take her seat at +the breakfast-table. +</p> + +<p> +Renée did not condescend to whisper. “Roland will be glad,” she +said aloud. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Are we not to have M. d’Henriel to-day? he amuses me,” the +baronne d’Orbec remarked. +</p> + +<p> +“If he would learn that he was fashioned for that purpose!” +exclaimed little M. Livret. +</p> + +<p> +“Do not ask young men for too much head, my friend; he would cease to be +amusing.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Or a duelling-sword,” said Renée. “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.” +</p> + +<p> +She was requested to explain, and, with the fair ingenuousness which outshines +innocence, she touched on the story of the glove. +</p> + +<p> +Ah! what a delicate, what an exciting, how subtle a question! +</p> + +<p> +Had M. d’Henriel the right to possess it? and, having that, had he the +right to wear it at his breast? +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp was dragged into the discussion of the case. +</p> + +<p> +Renée waited curiously for his judgement. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Matters of taste, monsieur, are not, I think, decided by weapons in your +country?” said M. d’Orbec. +</p> + +<p> +“We have no duelling,” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“But you surrendered the glove, marquise!” The baronne +d’Orbec spoke judicially. +</p> + +<p> +“I flung it to the ground: that made it neutral,” said Renée. +</p> + +<p> +“Hum. He wears it with the dust on it, certainly.” +</p> + +<p> +“And for how long a time,” M. Livret wished to know, “does +this amusing young man proclaim his intention of wearing the glove?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +The admirable candour of Renée 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 it; 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 Renée was in danger with the handsome Count +Henri, the practice of such a kind of honesty on her part appeared alarming. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Renée 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 Renée, 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? +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée 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 château. They were to make excursions when her +brother came, she said. Roland de Croisnel’s colonel, Coïn 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 Château 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 Renée cried out, “Spare us the esprit Gaulois, M. +Livret!” There was much to make him angry with this Englishman. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“It seems, then, that there are two ways of being objectionable,” +said Renée. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah! Madame la Marquise, your wit is French,” he breathed low; +“keep your heart so!” +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée, 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. +</p> + +<p> +“Who hurries them round to the legitimate king again!” said Madame +d’Auffray. +</p> + +<p> +Renée cast her chin up. “How, my dear?” +</p> + +<p> +“Your husband.” +</p> + +<p> +“What of him?” +</p> + +<p> +“He is returning.” +</p> + +<p> +“What brings him?” +</p> + +<p> +“You should ask who, my Renée! I was sure he would not hear of M. +Beauchamp’s being here, without an effort to return and do the honours of +the château.” +</p> + +<p> +Renée 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“More; I made use of them to inform him that M. Beauchamp was +expected.” +</p> + +<p> +“And that was enough to bring him! He pays M. Beauchamp a wonderful +compliment.” +</p> + +<p> +“Such as he would pay to no other man, my Renée. 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“My friend is... yes, I have no reason to think otherwise,” Renée +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 Agnès,” 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Am I so very guilty?” said Madame d’Auffray. +</p> + +<p> +“If that mad boy, half idiot, half panther, were by chance to insult M. +Beauchamp, you would feel so.” +</p> + +<p> +“You have taken precautions to prevent their meeting; and besides, M. +Beauchamp does not fight.” +</p> + +<p> +Renée flushed crimson. +</p> + +<p> +Madame d’Auffray added, “I do not say that he is other than a +perfectly brave and chivalrous gentleman.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh!” cried Renée, “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, Agnès, +will manage these men. Do you know, Agnès, 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Take M. Beauchamp by boat,” said Madame d’Auffray. +</p> + +<p> +“The river winds to within a five minutes’ walk of Dianet; we could +go by boat,” Renée 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, Agnès!” +</p> + +<p> +“Was it my fault?” +</p> + +<p> +“Mine. Tell me: the legitimate king returns when?” +</p> + +<p> +“In two days or three.” +</p> + +<p> +“And his rebel subjects are to address him—how?” +</p> + +<p> +Madame d’Auffray smote the point of a finger softly on her cheek. +</p> + +<p> +“Will they be pardoned?” said Renée. +</p> + +<p> +“It is for <i>him</i> to kneel, my dearest.” +</p> + +<p> +“Legitimacy kneeling for forgiveness is a painful picture, Agnès. +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.” +</p> + +<p> +Madame d’Auffray embraced her, without an idea that she assisted in +performing the farewell of their confidential intimacy. +</p> + +<p> +When Renée trifled with Count Henri, it was playing with fire, and she knew it; +and once or twice she bemoaned to Agnès 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 +Agnès 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 Agnès 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. +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp had the pleasure of rowing Madame la Marquise to the short shaded +walk separating the river from Château 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, voilà 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. +</p> + +<p> +M. d’Orbec remained outside the château 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. +</p> + +<p> +“When did you see him?” said she. +</p> + +<p> +He was confused. “It is not long since, madame.” +</p> + +<p> +“On the road?” +</p> + +<p> +“Coming along the road.” +</p> + +<p> +“And our glove?” +</p> + +<p> +“Madame la Marquise, if I may trust my memory, M. d’Henriel was not +in official costume.” +</p> + +<p> +Renée allowed herself to be reassured. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He raised his voice to denounce them. +</p> + +<p> +It was Roland de Croisnel that answered: “The Revolution was our +grandmother, monsieur, and I cannot hear her abused.” +</p> + +<p> +Renée caught her brother by the hand. He stepped out of the chapel with +Beauchamp to embrace him; then kissed Renée, 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 Renée, and she looked at Agnès d’Auffray to ask her +whether “this Englishman” was not one of them in his frankness and +freshness. +</p> + +<p> +Roland stopped to turn to Renée. “I met d’Henriel on my ride +here,” he said with a sharp inquisitive expression of eye that passed +immediately. +</p> + +<p> +“You rode here from Tourdestelle, then,” said Renée. +</p> + +<p> +“Has he been one of the company, marquise?” +</p> + +<p> +“Did he ride by you without speaking, Roland?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +They were separated with difficulty. +</p> + +<p> +Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +He mounted and called, “Au revoir, M. le Capitaine.” +</p> + +<p> +“Au revoir, M. le Commandant,” cried Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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 +Renée petting Roland’s horse. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée’s attractions warned more than they beckoned. She +was magnetic to him as no other woman was. Then whither his course but +homeward? +</p> + +<p> +After they had taken leave of their host and hostess of Château 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Wantonly won is deservedly lost,” said Renée. “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!” +</p> + +<p> +“The glove? I shall beg for the fellow to it before I depart, +marquise.” +</p> + +<p> +“You perceived my disposition to light-headedness, monsieur, when I was a +girl.” +</p> + +<p> +“I said that I—But the past is dust. Shall I ever see you in +England?” +</p> + +<p> +“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 +Brézé did: why did you call Diane so to M. Livret?” +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him smiling as they came out of the shadow of the clipped trees. +He was glancing about for the boat. +</p> + +<p> +“The boat is across the river,” Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +He looked round. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +Renée 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?” +</p> + +<p> +Neither of them showed a sign of surprise or of impatience. +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +“You happen to be in my boat, M. le Comte,” said Renée. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp caught fast hold of the bows while Renée laid a finger on Count +Henri’s shoulder to steady herself. +</p> + +<p> +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 manœuvre 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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +Then he waded to the bank, scrambled to his feet, and drew out his moustachios +to their curving ends. Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +With these words he retreated. +</p> + +<p> +“Row quickly, I beg of you,” Renée 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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp gave up rowing. As he rested on the sculls, his head was bent and +turned toward the bank. Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +She tapped her foot. “Are you tired of rowing, monsieur?” +</p> + +<p> +“It was exactly here,” said he, “that you told me you +expected your husband’s return.” +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +She would not have said that, if she had known the thoughts at work within him. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +She began to have a vague idea that he was indulging grotesque fancies. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Face to face as they sat, she had no defence for her scarlet cheeks; her eyes +wavered. +</p> + +<p> +“We will land here; the cottagers shall row the boat up,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +Renée’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. +</p> + +<p> +She yearned to be on her feet, to feel the possibility of an escape from him. +</p> + +<p> +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, Renée! 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 +<i>true</i> 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 Renée 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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap26"></a>CHAPTER XXVI.<br /> +MR. BLACKBURN TUCKHAM</h2> + +<p> +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 F<small>RENCH</small> M<small>ARQUEES</small>, 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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“They speak,” said Miss Halkett, “of educating the people to +fit them—” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>I</i> think so,” Colonel Halkett interposed, and he spoke as a +man of property. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Like geese upon a common, I have heard it said,” Miss Halkett +assisted him to Dr. Shrapnel’s comparison. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Tuckham laughed, and half yawned and sighed, “Dear me!” +</p> + +<p> +His laughter was catching, and somehow more persuasive of the soundness of the +man’s heart and head than his remarks. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“It seems to me, papa,—that you are contrasting the idealist and +the realist,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, well, we don’t want the idealist in politics,” muttered +the colonel. +</p> + +<p> +Latterly he also had taken to shaking his head over Nevil: Cecilia dared not +ask him why. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>all</i> 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! +</p> + +<p> +“Ah!” sighed the colonel, as at a case clearly demonstrated against +them. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>his</i> +place in it I can’t explain—there was a beau jeune homme, and +it’s quite possible that <i>he</i> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I hope it is not true,” said Cecilia. +</p> + +<p> +“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 breach 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 château 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“That there may be two victims?” Cecilia said it smiling. +</p> + +<p> +She was young in suffering, and thought, as the unseasoned and inexperienced +do, that a mask is a concealment. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Do I laugh?” said Cecilia. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“He is a barrister, and some cousin of Captain Beauchamp.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap27"></a>CHAPTER XXVII.<br /> +A SHORT SIDELOOK AT THE ELECTION</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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! <i>We</i> 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 <i>Tory</i> 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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +<i>They</i> 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: +</p> + +<p> +“It’s only a skirmish lost, and that counts for nothing in a battle +without end: it must be incessant.” +</p> + +<p> +“But does incessant battling keep the intellect clear?” was her +memorable answer. +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap28"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII.<br /> +TOUCHING A YOUNG LADY’S HEART AND HER INTELLECT</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Some one described Dr. Shrapnel’s appearance under the flour storm. +</p> + +<p> +“He deserves anything,” said the colonel, consulting his +mantelpiece clock. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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, <i>uncle</i>.’ He didn’t know where he was; all abroad, +poor boy. Uncle!—to me!” +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>other</i> 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 <i>that</i> 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 <i>us</i> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You spoke of party sins,” Miss Halkett said incredulously. +</p> + +<p> +“I shall think we are the redoubtable party when we admit the +charge.” +</p> + +<p> +“Are you alluding to the landowners?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“If you care to read it to me. Did a single hieroglyphic figure stand for +so much?” +</p> + +<p> +“I have never deciphered one.” +</p> + +<p> +“You have been speaking to me too long in earnest, Mr. Austin!” +</p> + +<p> +“I accept the admonition, though it is wider than the truth. Have you +ever consented to listen to politics before?” +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia reddened faintly, thinking of him who had taught her to listen, and of +her previous contempt of the subject. +</p> + +<p> +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, <i>in council</i>, 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. +</p> + +<p> +“Are there points of likeness between Radicals and Tories?” she +inquired. +</p> + +<p> +“I suspect a cousinship in extremes,” he answered. +</p> + +<p> +“If one might be present at an argument,” said she. +</p> + +<p> +“We have only to meet to fly apart as wide as the Poles,” Mr. +Austin rejoined. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Captain Baskelett requested the favour of five minutes of conversation with +Miss Halkett before he followed Mr. Austin, on his way to Steynham. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +“He is a very dangerous dog,” said Colonel Halkett. +</p> + +<p> +“The best of it is—and I take this for the strongest possible proof +that Beauchamp is mad—Shrapnel stands for an <i>advocate of morality</i> +against him. I’ll speak of it....” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Tuckham nodded to the colonel, who said: “Speak out. My daughter has +been educated for a woman of the world.” +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>on that altar</i>. If he could burlesque himself it would be +in coming out as a cleric—the old Pagan!” +</p> + +<p> +“Did he convince Captain Beauchamp?” the colonel asked, manifestly +for his daughter to hear the reply; which was: “Oh dear, no!” +</p> + +<p> +“Were you able to gather from Captain Beauchamp’s remarks whether +he is much disappointed by the result of the election?” said Cecilia. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Hum!” Colonel Halkett grunted significantly. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you think,” said Cecilia, “that Captain Beauchamp is now +satisfied with his experience of politics?” +</p> + +<p> +“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>I must have money!</i>’ 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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not for his present plan of campaign.” Colonel Halkett enunciated +the military word sarcastically. “Let’s hope he won’t get +money.” +</p> + +<p> +“He says he must have it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Who is to stand and deliver, then?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Money!” Colonel Halkett ejaculated. +</p> + +<p> +That word too was in the heart of the heiress. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +Her brush trembled on the illumination of a scarlet maple. “In this +country we were not originally made free and equal by decree, Nevil.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said he, “and I cast no blame on our farthest +ancestors.” +</p> + +<p> +It struck her that this might be an outline of a reply to Mr. Austin. +</p> + +<p> +“So you have been thinking over it?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“But you seem angry with Nevil, papa,” said she. +</p> + +<p> +“I do hate a turbulent, restless fellow, my dear,” the colonel +burst out. +</p> + +<p> +“Papa, he has really been unfairly reported.” +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia laid three privately-printed full reports of Commander +Beauchamp’s speeches (very carefully corrected by him) before her father. +</p> + +<p> +He suffered his eye to run down a page. “Is it possible you read +this?—this trash!—dangerous folly, I call it.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Does he write to you, too?” said the colonel. +</p> + +<p> +She answered: “Oh, no; I am not a politician.” +</p> + +<p> +“He seems to have expected you to read those tracts of his, +though.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I think he would convert me if he could,” said Cecilia. +</p> + +<p> +“Though you’re not a politician.” +</p> + +<p> +“He relies on the views he delivers in public, rather than on writing to +persuade; that was my meaning, papa.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well,” said the colonel, not caring to show his anxiety. +</p> + +<p> +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. <i>That</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +The colonel entertained Mrs. Beauchamp, while Mr. Tuckham led Miss Halkett over +the garden. Cecilia considered that his remarks upon Nevil were insolent. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia’s combative spirit precipitated her to say, “I hear the mob +in it shouting Captain Beauchamp down.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ay,” said Mr. Tuckham, “it would be setting the mob to shout +wisely at last.” +</p> + +<p> +“The mob is a wild beast.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then we should hear wisdom coming out of the mouth of the wild +beast.” +</p> + +<p> +“Men have the phrase, ‘fair play.’” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know Mr. Seymour Austin?” Miss Halkett asked him. +</p> + +<p> +“I met him once at your father’s table. Why?” +</p> + +<p> +“I think you would like to listen to him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, my fault is not listening enough,” said Mr. Tuckham. +</p> + +<p> +He was capable of receiving correction. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 cætera,”—an +et cætera that rolled a series of tremendous reverberations down the list of +all things held precious by freeborn Englishmen. +</p> + +<p> +She would have prevented the reading. But the colonel would have it. +</p> + +<p> +“Read on,” said he. “Mr. Romfrey saw no harm.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap29"></a>CHAPTER XXIX.<br /> +THE EPISTLE OF DR. SHRAPNEL TO COMMANDER BEAUCHAMP</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Colonel Halkett glanced at the detestable penmanship. Lord Palmet did the same, +and cried, “Why, it’s worse than mine!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>him!</i> 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:— +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +“‘M<small>Y BRAVE</small> B<small>EAUCHAMP</small>,—On with +your mission, and never a summing of results in hand, nor thirst for +<i>prospects</i>, 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.’” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“‘The soul,’ et cætera. 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!’ —<i>At</i> 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. <i>That means +life!</i>’—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.’ +</p> + +<p> +“I ask you, did you ever hear? The flaccid frog! But on we go.” +</p> + +<p> +“‘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, <i>darkness radiates</i>.’ +</p> + +<p> +“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! +</p> + +<p> +“‘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 +<i>where</i> 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.’ +</p> + +<p> +“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.’” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve had enough!” Colonel Halkett ejaculated. +</p> + +<p> +“‘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...’” +</p> + +<p> +“I say I cannot sit and hear any more of it!” exclaimed the +colonel, chafing out of patience. +</p> + +<p> +Lord Palmet said to Miss Halkett: “Isn’t it like what we used to +remember of a sermon?” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“‘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 +cætera: ‘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. <i>As we have them in their present +stage</i>,’—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...’ +</p> + +<p> +“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.’” +</p> + +<p> +“The man deserves hanging!” said Colonel Halkett. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>that their love is the only love +worth having</i>, 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. +<i>Deadmanship</i>, 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!’” +</p> + +<p> +Colonel Halkett threw his arms aloft. +</p> + +<p> +“‘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 <i>our</i> 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:—‘<i>belly-class!</i>’ Ask, +too, whether the comfort they wish for is not approaching divine compared with +the stagnant fleshliness of that fat shopkeeper’s Comfort. +</p> + +<p> +“‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +“Now for you, colonel. +</p> + +<p> +“‘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.’ +</p> + +<p> +“That is,” Captain Baskelett explained, “by-and-by Shrapnel +will have old Nevil fast enough.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is there more of it?” said Colonel Halkett, flapping his forehead +for coolness. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>fleshpottery</i>.’ 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.” +</p> + +<p> +The colonel perused it with an unsavoury expression of his features, and jumped +up. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>to be ruled</i>. 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; <i>panting alternations of the quickened heart +of humanity:</i>’ marked by our friend Nevil in notes of +admiration.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mad as the writer,” groaned Colonel Halkett. “Never in my +life have I heard such stuff.” +</p> + +<p> +“Stay, colonel; here’s Shrapnel defending Morality and +Society,” said Captain Baskelett. +</p> + +<p> +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, <i>what can one?</i> 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—!’ +</p> + +<p> +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.’” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps, colonel, <i>Jenny</i> 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?” +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia was thinking that he tempted her to be the apologist of even such a +letter. +</p> + +<p> +“One likes to know the worst, and what’s possible,” said the +colonel. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Then you defend that letter?” he cried. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“We shall see,” said her father, sighing rather heavily. “I +must have a talk with Mr. Romfrey about that letter.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap30"></a>CHAPTER XXX.<br /> +THE BAITING OF DR. SHRAPNEL</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Only Dr. Shrapnel’s letter,” Rosamund affirmed. “The +letter from Normandy was untouched by him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Untouched by anybody?” +</p> + +<p> +“Unopened, Nevil. You look incredulous.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not if I have your word, ma’am.” +</p> + +<p> +He glanced somewhat contemptuously at his uncle Everard’s anachronistic +notions of what was fair in war. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“She has refused the highest matches.” +</p> + +<p> +“I hold her in every way incomparable.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” Beauchamp nodded; yes. Well, more’s the pity for +me!” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah! Nevil, that fatal Renée!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Fly, clipped wing!” murmured Rosamund, and purposely sent a buzz +into her ears to shut out his extravagant talk of Renée’s friendly +wishes. +</p> + +<p> +“How is it you women will not believe in the sincerity of a woman!” +he exclaimed. +</p> + +<p> +“Nevil, I am not alluding to the damage done to your election.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“To me personally, no,” said Beauchamp. “But Mr. Romfrey has +not told me that I am to meet them.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +A vision of Cecilia swam before him, gracious in stateliness. +</p> + +<p> +Two weeks back Renée’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 Renée 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: “<i>Rebellion against society and +advocacy of humanity run counter.</i>” 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 +Renée, 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 Renée without the surprising thrill of his enchantment +with her, and tender pity that drew her closer to him by darkening her +brightness. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Her last words when stepping into the railway carriage were to Beauchamp: +“<i>Will</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +The idea struck him: “Ten to one old Nevil’s with Shrapnel,” +and no idea could be more natural. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Ahem, Dr. Shrapnel!” He was accosted twice, the second time +imperiously. +</p> + +<p> +He saw two gentlemen outside the garden-hedge. +</p> + +<p> +“I spoke, sir,” said Captain Baskelett. +</p> + +<p> +“I hear you now, sir,” said the doctor, walking in a parallel line +with them. +</p> + +<p> +“I desired to know, sir, if you are Dr. Shrapnel?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am.” +</p> + +<p> +They arrived at the garden-gate. +</p> + +<p> +“You have a charming garden, Dr. Shrapnel,” said Lord Palmet, very +affably and loudly, with a steady observation of the cottage windows. +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Shrapnel flung the gate open. +</p> + +<p> +Lord Palmet raised his hat and entered, crying loudly, “A very charming +garden, upon my word!” +</p> + +<p> +Captain Baskelett followed him, bowing stiffly. +</p> + +<p> +“I am,” he said, “Captain Beauchamp’s cousin. I am +Captain Baskelett, one of the Members for the borough.” +</p> + +<p> +The doctor said, “Ah.” +</p> + +<p> +“I wish to see Captain Beauchamp, sir. He is absent?” +</p> + +<p> +“I shall have him here shortly, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, you will have him!” Cecil paused. +</p> + +<p> +“Admirable roses!” exclaimed Lord Palmet. +</p> + +<p> +“You <i>have</i> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +<i>You have him</i>, 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“What is your immediate object, sir?” said Dr. Shrapnel, chagrined +by the mystification within him, and a fear that his patience was going. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Shrapnel consulted his memory. “I think I have a recollection of some +lady calling.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! you think you have a recollection of some lady calling.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mean a lady connected with Captain Beauchamp?” +</p> + +<p> +“A lady connected with Captain Beauchamp. You are not aware of the +situation of the lady?” +</p> + +<p> +“If I remember, she was a kind of confidential housekeeper, some one +said, to Captain Beauchamp’s uncle.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you mention your business concisely, if you Please?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am competent,” said the doctor. +</p> + +<p> +“But in justice to you,” urged Cecil considerately. +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Shrapnel smoothed his chin hastily. “Have you done?” +</p> + +<p> +“Believe me, the instant I have an answer to my question, I have +done.” +</p> + +<p> +“Name your question.” +</p> + +<p> +“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 ...” +</p> + +<p> +“On all those points,” interposed Dr. Shrapnel, after dashing a +hand to straighten his forelock; but Cecil vehemently entreated him to control +his temper. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t,” cried the doctor, descending from his height and +swinging about forlornly. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“This garden is redolent of a lady’s hand,” sighed Palmet, +poetical in his dejection. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you taken too much wine, gentlemen?” said Dr. Shrapnel. +</p> + +<p> +Cecil put this impertinence aside with a graceful sweep of his fingers. +“You attempt to elude me, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not I! You mention some lady.” +</p> + +<p> +“Exactly. A young lady.” +</p> + +<p> +“What is the name of the lady?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! You ask the name of the lady. And I too. What is it? I have heard +two or three names.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then you have heard villanies.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“I stake my reputation I have heard her called Shrapnel—Miss +Shrapnel,” said Cecil. +</p> + +<p> +The doctor glanced hastily from one to the other of his visitors. “The +young lady is my ward; I am her guardian,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +Cecil pursed his mouth. “I have heard her called your niece.” +</p> + +<p> +“Niece—ward; she is a lady by birth and education, in manners, +accomplishments, and character; and she is under my protection,” cried +Dr. Shrapnel. +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +“You will not see Miss Denham with my sanction ever,” said Dr. +Shrapnel. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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—” +</p> + +<p> +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 +<i>do</i> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Cecil rounded one of his perplexingly empty sentences and turned on his heel. +</p> + +<p> +“War, then!” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“As you like,” retorted the doctor. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +His companion pooh-poohed and said: “Foh! I’m afraid I permitted +myself to lose my self-command for a moment.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“The dinner was enthusiastic. I sat three hours among my Commons, they on +me for that length of time—fatiguing, but a duty.” +</p> + +<p> +Cecil subscribed his name with the warmest affection toward his uncle. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He posted the letter next morning. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap31"></a>CHAPTER XXXI.<br /> +SHOWING A CHIVALROUS GENTLEMAN SET IN MOTION</h2> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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: +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Shrapnel spoke the words before Lord Palmet?” said Mr. Romfrey +austerely. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Romfrey cleared his throat. +</p> + +<p> +“Or knew she had <i>no</i> character,” Cecil pursued in a fit of +gratified spleen, in scorn of the woman. “Don’t you recollect his +accent in pronouncing <i>housekeeper?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +The menacing thunder sounded from Mr. Romfrey. He was patient in appearance, +and waited for Cecil’s witness to corroborate the evidence. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And handsome housekeepers were doubtful characters,” Captain +Baskelett prompted him. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +Answering the direct look of his eyes, she said, “Oh, I shall not speak +of it.” +</p> + +<p> +In his younger days, if the rumour was correct, he had done the same on her +account. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Lady Menai inquired of Captain Baskelett whether he knew the nature of his +uncle’s business in Bevisham, the town he despised. +</p> + +<p> +What could Cecil say but no? His uncle had not imparted it to him. +</p> + +<p> +She was flattered in being the sole confidante, and said no more. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap32"></a>CHAPTER XXXII.<br /> +AN EFFORT TO CONQUER CECILIA IN BEAUCHAMP’S FASHION</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +That feeling of hers changed when he was on board. The stirring cordial day had +put new breath in him. +</p> + +<p> +“Should not the flag be dipped?” he said, looking up at the peak, +where the white flag streamed. +</p> + +<p> +“Can you really mistake compassion for defeat?” said she, with a +smile. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! before the wind of course I hadn’t a chance.” +</p> + +<p> +“How could you be so presumptuous as to give chase? And who has lent you +that little cutter?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +She cited a well-known instance of degradation in verse. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +She said a good word for the smartness of his little yacht. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia gazed abstractedly at a passing schooner. +</p> + +<p> +“He works too hard,” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +“Who does?” +</p> + +<p> +“Dr. Shrapnel.” +</p> + +<p> +Some one else whom we have heard of works too hard, and it would be happy for +mankind if he did not. +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia named the schooner; an American that had beaten our crack yachts. +Beauchamp sprang up to spy at the American. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s the <i>Corinne</i>, is she!” +</p> + +<p> +Yankee craftiness on salt water always excited his respectful attention as a +spectator. +</p> + +<p> +“And what is the name of your boat, Nevil?” +</p> + +<p> +“The fool of an owner calls her the <i>Petrel</i>. 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 <i>Curlew</i>. Carrying Dr. Shrapnel and me, <i>Petrel</i> would be +thought the proper title for her—isn’t that your idea?” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is it a talisman that you have, Nevil?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, it’s a letter.” +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia’s cheeks took fire. +</p> + +<p> +“I should so much like to read it to you,” said he. +</p> + +<p> +“Do not, please,” she replied with a dash of supplication in her +voice. +</p> + +<p> +“Not the whole of it—an extract here and there? I want you so much +to understand him.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am sure I should not.” +</p> + +<p> +“Let me try you!” +</p> + +<p> +“Pray do not.” +</p> + +<p> +“Merely to show you...” +</p> + +<p> +“But, Nevil, I do not wish to understand him.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, what do you know of it?” he exclaimed. +</p> + +<p> +“I know the kind of writing it would be.” +</p> + +<p> +“How do you know it?” +</p> + +<p> +“I have heard of some of Dr. Shrapnel’s opinions.” +</p> + +<p> +“You imagine him to be subversive, intolerant, immoral, and the rest! all +that comes under your word revolutionary.” +</p> + +<p> +“Possibly; but I must defend myself from hearing what I know will be +certain to annoy me.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia trembled: she was touched to the quick. Yet it was not pleasant to her +to be wooed obliquely, through Dr. Shrapnel. +</p> + +<p> +She recognized the very letter, crowned with many stamps, thick with many +pages, in Beauchamp’s hands. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I recognize your chivalry, Nevil.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia turned her face to him. “I listen to you with pleasure, Nevil; +but please do not read the letter.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; a paragraph or two I must read.” +</p> + +<p> +She rose. +</p> + +<p> +He was promptly by her side. “If I say I ask you for one sign that you +care for me in some degree?” +</p> + +<p> +“I have not for a moment ceased to be your friend, Nevil, since I was a +child.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Feminine, and obstinate,” said Cecilia. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +He was reading a sentence of the letter. +</p> + +<p> +“I hear nothing but the breeze, Nevil,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +The breeze fluttered the letter-sheets: they threatened to fly. Cecilia stepped +two paces away. +</p> + +<p> +“Hark; there is a military band playing on the pier,” said she. +“I am so fond of hearing music a little off shore.” +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp consigned the letter to his pocket. +</p> + +<p> +“You are not offended, Nevil?” +</p> + +<p> +“Dear me, no. You haven’t a mind for tonics, that’s +all.” +</p> + +<p> +“Healthy persons rarely have,” she remarked, and asked him, smiling +softly, whether he had a mind for music. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp was thinking: She can listen to that brass band, and she shuts her +ears to this letter! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a soporific,” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +“You would not rather have had them rise to be slaughtered?” +</p> + +<p> +“Would you have them waltzed into perpetual servility?” +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia hummed, and suggested: “If one can have them happy in any +way?” +</p> + +<p> +“Then the day of destruction may almost be dated.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nevil, your terrible view of life must be false.” +</p> + +<p> +“I make it out worse to you than to any one else, because I want our +minds to be united.” +</p> + +<p> +“Give me a respite now and then.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked at her and saw tears on her under-lids. +</p> + +<p> +“My dearest Cecilia!” +</p> + +<p> +“Music makes me childish,” said she. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée holiday France. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Colonel Halkett stared at Beauchamp as if he had risen from the deep. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you been in that town this morning?” was one of his first +questions to him when he stood on board. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +Her father was eyeing Beauchamp narrowly, and appeared troubled. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +At last Beauchamp quitted the vessel. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, Papa?” +</p> + +<p> +“Now come and see the fittings below,” the colonel addressed Lord +Lockrace, and murmured to his daughter: +</p> + +<p> +“And soundly horsewhipped him!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“It was a private letter,” said Cecilia. +</p> + +<p> +“Public or private, Miss Halkett.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose we are but half civilized,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“If that,” said the earl. +</p> + +<p> +Colonel Halkett protested that he never could quite make out what Radicals were +driving at. +</p> + +<p> +“The rents,” Lord Lockrace observed in the conclusive tone of +brevity. He did not stay very long. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>Lady Violet</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“He’ll have plenty,” said Lord Croyston, levelling his +telescope to sight the racing cutters. +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia fancied she descried Nevil’s <i>Petrel</i>, dubbed <i>Curlew</i>, +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +“I wish we were not going to Steynham,” said Cecilia. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap33"></a>CHAPTER XXXIII.<br /> +THE FIRST ENCOUNTER AT STEYNHAM</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Nevil is not here?” the colonel asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, yes, I’ve heard,” said Colonel Halkett hastily. +</p> + +<p> +He would have liked to be informed of Dr. Shrapnel’s particular offence: +he mentioned the execrable letter. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Romfrey complacently interjected: “Drug-vomit!” and after an +interval: “Gallows!” +</p> + +<p> +“That man has done Nevil Beauchamp a world of mischief, Romfrey.” +</p> + +<p> +“We’ll hope for a cure, colonel.” +</p> + +<p> +“Did the man come across you?” +</p> + +<p> +“He did.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Romfrey was mute on the subject. Colonel Halkett abstained from pushing his +inquiries. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Romfrey had good cause,” the colonel said, emphatically. +</p> + +<p> +He repeated it next day, without being a bit wiser of the cause. +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia’s happiness or hope was too sensitive to allow of a beloved +father’s deceiving her in his opposition to it. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“She is in Switzerland,” said Cecilia. +</p> + +<p> +“She is better there,” said Mrs. Devereux. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“He behaved badly when you saw him, did he?” said Stukely. +</p> + +<p> +“Badly, is no word. He is detestable,” Rosamund replied. +</p> + +<p> +“You think he ought to be whipped?” +</p> + +<p> +She feigned an extremity of vindictiveness, and twisted her brows in comic +apology for the unfeminine sentiment, as she said: “I really do.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +It became evident that Nevil was putting a series of questions to his uncle. +Mechanical nods were given him in reply. +</p> + +<p> +Presently Mr. Romfrey rose, thundering out a word or two, without a gesture. +</p> + +<p> +Colonel Halkett rose. +</p> + +<p> +Nevil flung his hand out straight to the house. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Romfrey seemed to consent; the colonel shook his head: Nevil insisted. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +She met him on the first landing, and heard that Mr. Romfrey requested her to +step out on the lawn. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Look at me when you speak, ma’am,” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund looked at him. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Did he insult you at all, ma’am?” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Romfrey reminded him that he was not a cross-examining criminal barrister. +</p> + +<p> +They waited for her to speak. +</p> + +<p> +She hesitated, coloured, betrayed confusion; her senses telling her of a +catastrophe, her conscience accusing her as the origin of it. +</p> + +<p> +“Did Dr. Shrapnel, to your belief, intentionally hurt your feelings or +your dignity?” said Beauchamp, and made the answer easier: +</p> + +<p> +“Not intentionally, surely: not... I certainly do not accuse him.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp’s voice choked. Rosamund saw tears leap out of the stern face +of her dearest now in wrath with her. +</p> + +<p> +“Is he ill?” she faltered. +</p> + +<p> +“He is. You own to a strong dislike of him, do you not?” +</p> + +<p> +“But not to desire any harm to him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not a whipping,” Mr. Culbrett murmured. +</p> + +<p> +Everard Romfrey overheard it. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“That will do, ma’am,” he dismissed her. +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp would not let her depart. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Sir, will you learn manners!” Mr. Romfrey said to him, with a +rattle of the throat. +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp turned his face from her. +</p> + +<p> +Colonel Halkett offered her his arm to lead her away. +</p> + +<p> +“What is it? Oh, what is it?” she whispered, scarcely able to walk, +but declining the colonel’s arm. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Dr. Shrapnel—Mr. Romfrey!” said Rosamund half audibly under +the oppression of the more she saw than what she said. +</p> + +<p> +The colonel talked of her renown in landscape-gardening. He added casually: +“They met the other day.” +</p> + +<p> +“By accident?” +</p> + +<p> +“By chance, I suppose. Shrapnel defends one of your Steynham poaching +vermin.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Romfrey struck him?—for that? Oh, never!” Rosamund +exclaimed. +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose he had a long account to settle.” +</p> + +<p> +She fetched her breath painfully. “I shall never be forgiven.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You have read that shocking one, Colonel Halkett?” +</p> + +<p> +“Captain Baskelett read it out to us.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +She could not bear to think of her part in the mischief. +</p> + +<p> +She was not bound to think of it, knowing actually nothing of the occurrence. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +And this was a generous distinction. It was generous; and, having recognized +the generosity, she was unable to go beyond it. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +You know, Miss Halkett, I would willingly, gladly have saved him from anything +like punishment.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are too gentle to have thought of it,” said Cecilia. +</p> + +<p> +“But I shall never be forgiven by Captain Beauchamp. I see in his eyes +that he accuses me and despises me.” +</p> + +<p> +“He will not be so unjust, Mrs. Culling.” +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund begged that she might hear what Nevil had first said on his arrival. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“His worship of that Dr. Shrapnel is extraordinary,” quoth +Rosamund. “And how did Mr. Romfrey behave to him?” +</p> + +<p> +“My father thinks, very forbearingly.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“He stood up and said you had been personally insulted by Dr. +Shrapnel.” +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund meditated in a distressing doubt of her conscientious truthfulness. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap34"></a>CHAPTER XXXIV.<br /> +THE FACE OF RENÉE</h2> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund saw her name written in a French hand on the back of the card. +</p> + +<p> +“You stay with us, Nevil?” +</p> + +<p> +“To-night and to-morrow, perhaps. The danger seems to be over.” +</p> + +<p> +“Has Dr. Shrapnel been in danger?” +</p> + +<p> +“He has. If it’s quite over now!” +</p> + +<p> +“I declare to you, Nevil...” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nevil, do you not guess at some one else?” +</p> + +<p> +“He! yes, he! But Cecil Baskelett led no blind man to Dr. +Shrapnel’s gate.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nevil, as I live, I knew nothing of it!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“What? Nevil!” exclaimed Rosamund, gaping. +</p> + +<p> +“It seems little enough, ma’am. But he must go. I will have the +apology spoken, and man to man.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you would never tell your uncle that?” +</p> + +<p> +He laughed in his uncle’s manner. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>only</i> 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!” +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp obtained the information that his cousin Cecil had read out the +letter of Dr. Shrapnel at Mount Laurels. +</p> + +<p> +The bell rang. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! Nevil, do you not see Captain Baskelett at work here?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund groaned: “An apology to Dr. Shrapnel from Mr. Romfrey! It is an +impossibility, Nevil! utter!” +</p> + +<p> +“So you say to sit idle: but do as I tell you.” +</p> + +<p> +He went downstairs. +</p> + +<p> +He had barely reproached her. She wondered at that; and then remembered his +alien sad half-smile in quitting the room. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 +Renée, and she put it out of sight. But she had looked. She was reduced to look +again. +</p> + +<p> +Roland stood beside his father’s chair; Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +Decidedly Cecilia was a more beautiful woman than Renée: 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? +</p> + +<p> +Dark-eyed Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>not</i> in a piece of Art or nature. +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia’s avidity to see and study the face preserved her at a higher +mark. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“That is her brother Roland, and very like her, except in +complexion,” said Rosamund. +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia murmured of a general resemblance in the features. Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +That posture of Renée 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 Renée things +she would otherwise have disapproved. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Then, too, this Renée, 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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“What’s that?” asked the colonel, at Beauchamp’s heels. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +Colonel Halkett turned to him. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +By that the colonel knew he meant to stand by Nevil still and offer him his +chance of winning Cecilia. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Why the downs?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap35"></a>CHAPTER XXXV.<br /> +THE RIDE IN THE WRONG DIRECTION</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Red light struck into that round chalk maw, and the green slopes and channels +and half-circle hollows were brought a mile-stride nigher Steynham by the level +beams. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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...!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“How he goes on about Shrapnel!” +</p> + +<p> +“I shouldn’t think much of him if he didn’t.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’re one in a thousand, Romfrey. I object to seeing a man +worshipped.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s Nevil’s green-sickness, and Shrapnel’s the god of +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“I trust to heaven you’re right. It seems to me young fellows ought +to be out of it earlier.” +</p> + +<p> +“They generally are.” Mr. Romfrey named some of the processes by +which they are relieved of brain-flightiness, adding philosophically, +“This way or that.” +</p> + +<p> +His quick ear caught a sound of hoofs cantering down the avenue on the Northern +front of the house. +</p> + +<p> +He consulted his watch. “Ten minutes to eight. Say a quarter-past for +dinner. They’re here, colonel.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Romfrey met Nevil returning from the stables. Cecilia had disappeared. +</p> + +<p> +“Had a good day?” said Mr. Romfrey. +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp replied: “I’ll tell you of it after dinner,” and +passed by him. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He knocked at his daughter’s door in going upstairs to dress. +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia presented herself and kissed him. +</p> + +<p> +“Well?” said he. +</p> + +<p> +“By-and-by, papa,” she answered. “I have a headache. Beg Mr. +Romfrey to excuse me.” +</p> + +<p> +“No news for me?” +</p> + +<p> +She had no news. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Culling was with her. The colonel stepped on mystified to his room. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Where have you heard of him?” Rosamund asked. +</p> + +<p> +“We have been there.” +</p> + +<p> +“Bevisham? to Bevisham?” Rosamund was considering the opinion Mr. +Romfrey would form of the matter from the point of view of his horses. +</p> + +<p> +“It was Nevil’s wish,” said Cecilia. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia replied that she had ridden for an hour to Mount Laurels. +</p> + +<p> +“Alone? Mr. Romfrey must not hear of that,” said Rosamund. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“This terrible Dr. Shrapnel!” Rosamund exclaimed, but reported that +no loud voices were raised in the dining-room. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée’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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap36"></a>CHAPTER XXXVI.<br /> +PURSUIT OF THE APOLOGY OF Mr. ROMFREY TO DR. SHRAPNEL</h2> + +<p> +The contest, which was an alternation of hard hitting and close wrestling, had +recommenced when Colonel Halkett stepped into the drawing-room. +</p> + +<p> +“Colonel, I find they’ve been galloping to Bevisham and +back,” said Mr. Romfrey. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Cecilia did not dismount,” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +“You took her to that man’s gate. It was not with my sanction. You +know my ideas of the man.” +</p> + +<p> +“If you were to see him now, colonel, I don’t think you would speak +harshly of him.” +</p> + +<p> +“We’re not obliged to go and look on men who have had their measure +dealt them.” +</p> + +<p> +“Barbarously,” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Romfrey in the most placid manner took a chair. “Windy talk, +that!” he said. +</p> + +<p> +Colonel Halkett seated himself. Stukely Culbrett turned a sheet of manuscript +he was reading. +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp began a caged lion’s walk on the rug under the mantelpiece. +</p> + +<p> +“I shall not spare you from hearing what I think of it, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“This is what you have to take to heart, sir; that Dr. Shrapnel is now +seriously ill.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m sorry for it, and I’ll pay the doctor’s +bill.” +</p> + +<p> +“You make it hard for me to treat you with respect.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s well said!” came from Colonel Halkett. +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp stared at him, amazed by the commendation of empty language. +</p> + +<p> +“You acted in error; barbarously, but in error,” he addressed his +uncle. +</p> + +<p> +“And you have got a fine topic for mouthing,” Mr. Romfrey rejoined. +</p> + +<p> +“You mean to sit still under Dr. Shrapnel’s forgiveness?” +</p> + +<p> +“He’s taken to copy the Christian religion, has he?” +</p> + +<p> +“You know you were deluded when you struck him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not a whit.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, you know it now: Mrs. Culling—” +</p> + +<p> +“Drag in no woman, Nevil Beauchamp!” +</p> + +<p> +“She has confessed to you that Dr. Shrapnel neither insulted her nor +meant to ruffle her.” +</p> + +<p> +“She has done no such nonsense.” +</p> + +<p> +“If she has not!—but I trust her to have done it.” +</p> + +<p> +“You play the trumpeter, you terrorize her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Into opening her lips wider; nothing else. I’ll have the truth +from her, and no mincing: and from Cecil Baskelett and Palmet.” +</p> + +<p> +“Give Cecil a second licking, if you can, and have him off to +Shrapnel.” +</p> + +<p> +“You!” cried Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +At this juncture Stukely Culbrett closed the manuscript in his hands, and +holding it out to Beauchamp, said: +</p> + +<p> +“Here’s your letter, Nevil. It’s tolerably hard to decipher. +It’s mild enough; it’s middling good pulpit. I like it.” +</p> + +<p> +“What have you got there?” Colonel Halkett asked him. +</p> + +<p> +“A letter of his friend Dr. Shrapnel on the Country. Read a bit, +colonel.” +</p> + +<p> +“I? That letter! Mild, do you call it?” The colonel started back +his chair in declining to touch the letter. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Wait till they do say it.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s a long stretch. They’re turn-cocks of one +Water-company—to wash the greasy citizens!” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“He can’t!” ejaculated the colonel. +</p> + +<p> +“He sermonizes to shake, that’s all. I know the kind of man.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thank heaven, it’s not a common species in England!” +</p> + +<p> +“Common enough to be classed.” +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp struck through the conversation of the pair: “Can I see you +alone to-night, sir, or to-morrow morning?” +</p> + +<p> +“You may catch me where you can,” was Mr. Romfrey’s answer. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Shrapnel’s a rather long-legged sheep?” +</p> + +<p> +“He asks for nothing from you.” +</p> + +<p> +“He would have got nothing, at a cry of peccavi!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you’re his parrot.” +</p> + +<p> +“He pardons you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ha! t’ other cheek!” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“He tops me by half a head, and he’s my junior.” +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp suffered himself to give out a groan of sick derision: +“Ah!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“The Press of our country!” interjected Colonel Halkett in moaning +parenthesis. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>heading</i>. 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.” +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +Stukely’s unusually lengthy observations had somewhat heated him, and he +protested with earnestness: “It was pure Tory, my dear colonel.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Culbrett endangered his reputation for epigram in a good cause, it shall be +said. +</p> + +<p> +These interruptions were torture to Beauchamp. Nevertheless the end was gained. +He sank into a chair silent. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Why not drag Cecil to Shrapnel?” he said, for a provocation. +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp would not be goaded. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +This occurred at midnight, in that half-armoury, half-library, which was his +private room. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +We see the consequence of it in this Shrapnel complication. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“If one could only imagine Mr. Romfrey doing it!” Rosamund groaned. +</p> + +<p> +“He shall: and you will help him,” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +“If you loved a woman half as much as you do that man!” +</p> + +<p> +“If I knew a woman as good, as wise, as noble as he!” +</p> + +<p> +“You are losing her.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do not be so bitterly ironical, Nevil. You have not seen her as I +have.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Nevil,” said Cecilia, “you will not think it presumption in +me to give you advice?” +</p> + +<p> +Her counsel to him was, that he should leave Steynham immediately, and trust to +time for his uncle to reconsider his conduct. +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp urged the counter-argument of the stain on the family honour. +</p> + +<p> +She hinted at expediency; he frankly repudiated it. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“If meanwhile Dr. Shrapnel should die, and repentance comes too +late!” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +She assented. He said instantly, “Persuade him to speak to my uncle +Everard.” +</p> + +<p> +She was tempted to smile. +</p> + +<p> +“I must do only what I think wise, if I am to be of service, +Nevil.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said, not very warmly, though sadly. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +There was that to be thought of, certainly. +</p> + +<p> +Colonel Halkett came round a box-bush and discovered them pacing together in a +fashion to satisfy his paternal scrutiny. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +The colonel and Mr. Romfrey and Beauchamp were standing on the hall-steps when +Rosamund beckoned the latter and whispered a request for <i>that letter</i> of +Dr. Shrapnel’s. “It is for Miss Halkett, Nevil.” +</p> + +<p> +He plucked the famous epistle from his bulging pocketbook, and added a couple +of others in the same handwriting. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Send my portmanteau and bag after me to Bevisham,” he said to +Rosamund, and announced to the woefully astonished colonel that he would have +the pleasure of journeying in his company as far as the town. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you ready? No packing?” said the colonel. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s better to have your impediments in the rear of you, and +march!” said Mr. Romfrey. +</p> + +<p> +Colonel Halkett declined to wait for anybody. He shouted for his daughter. The +lady’s maid appeared, and then Cecilia with Rosamund. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Have ready at Holdesbury for the middle of the month,” said Mr. +Romfrey, unruffled, and bowed to Cecilia. +</p> + +<p> +“If you think of bringing my cousin Baskelett, give me warning, +sir,” cried Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap37"></a>CHAPTER XXXVII.<br /> +CECILIA CONQUERED</h2> + +<p> +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-manœuvre, +or, if need were, interpose forcibly and punish him for his half-heartedness. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“By the way, colonel,” he said, “you had a letter of Dr. +Shrapnel’s read to you by Captain Baskelett.” +</p> + +<p> +“Iniquitous rubbish!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“He does that to my temper,” said the colonel. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, we shall see you some day or other,” said the colonel. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you intend to start so early in the morning, papa?” she +ventured to say; and he replied, “As early as possible.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +She could have answered, “Not if you wish me not to”; while smiling +at the quaint sorrowfulness of his tone. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not entirely, colonel.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +“Worthier of you, <i>as I hope to become</i>,” 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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s the writing of a man who means well,” Mr. Austin +delivered his opinion. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, the man’s an infidel!” Colonel Halkett exclaimed. +</p> + +<p> +“There are numbers.” +</p> + +<p> +“They have the grace not to confess, then.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“I do call it insane,” said the colonel. +</p> + +<p> +He separated himself from his daughter by a sharp division. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Such men are too terrible for me,” said Mrs. Devereux. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée. Her +continual agitations made her doubtful of her human feelings: she clung to that +instance of her filial stedfastness. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia faltered: “Do you see a chance?” +</p> + +<p> +“Hardly more than an excuse for trying it,” he replied. +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +Hearing nothing from her, he silently put them in his pocket. The struggle with +his uncle seemed to be souring him or deadening him. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He walked up and down the room until Cecilia, to say something, said: +“Mr. Tuckham could not stay.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said her father; “he could not. He has to be back as +quick as he can to cut his legacy in halves!” +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia looked perplexed. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“He has disappointed me,” said Colonel Halkett. +</p> + +<p> +“Would you have had him allow a falsehood to enrich him and ruin Nevil, +papa?” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“You mean, why should Nevil have money?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“He has not failed.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“What were his words, papa?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Has he been to France lately?” asked Cecilia. +</p> + +<p> +Her breath hung for the answer, sedately though she sat. +</p> + +<p> +“The woman’s father is dead, I hear,” Colonel Halkett +remarked. +</p> + +<p> +“But he has not been there?” +</p> + +<p> +“How can I tell? He’s anywhere, wherever his passions whisk +him.” +</p> + +<p> +“No!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Colonel Halkett scoffed at her “Oh no,” and called it woman’s +logic. +</p> + +<p> +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...” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You misunderstood him, my dear.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not in matters of business: in matters of thought.” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear Cecilia! You’ve got hold of a language!... a way of +speaking! .... Who set you thinking on these things?” +</p> + +<p> +“That I owe to Nevil Beauchamp!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“He has never said that he loved me.” +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Never, papa.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, that proves the French story. At any rate, he’s a man of +honour. But you love him?” +</p> + +<p> +“The French story is untrue, papa.” +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia stood in a blush like the burning cloud of the sunset. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +She replied: “I know, papa, the French story is untrue.” +</p> + +<p> +“But when I tell you, silly woman, he confessed it to me out of his own +mouth!” +</p> + +<p> +“It is not true now.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s not going on, you mean? How do you know?” +</p> + +<p> +“I know.” +</p> + +<p> +“Has he been swearing it?” +</p> + +<p> +“He has not spoken of it to me.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know he is not immoral.” +</p> + +<p> +“There you shoot again! Haven’t you a yes or a no for your +father?” +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia cast her arms round his neck, and sobbed. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia looked up into his eyes, and said, “We will not be parted, papa, +ever.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia gazed away, breathing through tremulous dilating nostrils. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“If you find out you’re wrong?” +</p> + +<p> +She shook her head. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, papa, not I. I will not.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, that’s something for me to hold fast to,” said Colonel +Halkett, sighing. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap38"></a>CHAPTER XXXVIII.<br /> +LORD AVONLEY</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He should have known his uncle Everard better. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>is</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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 Molière, 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp did nothing of the kind. He wrote a letter to Steynham in the form of +an ultimatum. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Then it came out that Lord Avonley had also delivered an ultimatum to +Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>the</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +‘“An apology to the amiable and virtuous Mistress Culling?’ +says old Nevil: ‘an apology? what for?’—‘For unbecoming +and insolent behaviour,’ says my lord.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am that lady’s friend,” Stukely warned Captain Baskelett. +“Don’t let us have a third apology in the field.” +</p> + +<p> +“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 +manœuvres 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.” +</p> + +<p> +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 +<i>him</i> within three months of the date of the demand for it: otherwise +blank; but the shadowy index pointed to the destitution of Nevil Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Pay down half a million!” thundered Beauchamp; and dropping his +voice, “or go to him.” +</p> + +<p> +“You remind me,” his uncle observed. “I recommend you to ring +that bell, and have Mrs. Culling here.” +</p> + +<p> +“If she comes she will hear what I think of her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then, out of the house!” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well, sir. You decline to supply me with money?” +</p> + +<p> +“I do.” +</p> + +<p> +“I must have it!” +</p> + +<p> +“I dare say. Money’s a chain-cable for holding men to their +senses.” +</p> + +<p> +“I ask you, my lord, how I am to carry on Holdesbury?” +</p> + +<p> +“Give it up.” +</p> + +<p> +“I shall have to,” said Beauchamp, striving to be prudent. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap39"></a>CHAPTER XXXIX.<br /> +BETWEEN BEAUCHAMP AND CECILIA</h2> + +<p> +Beauchamp quitted the house without answering as to what next, and without +seeing Rosamund. +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée’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. +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée; 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 Renée, 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 Renée’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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>his</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Fretted by his relatives he cannot be much of a giant. +</p> + +<p> +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. +N<small>EVIL</small> B<small>EAUCHAMP</small> for D<small>R</small>. +S<small>HRAPNEL</small>, in the communications directed to solicitors of the +persecutors of poachers. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia looked at Beauchamp stedfastly. “Speak,” said the look. +</p> + +<p> +But he, though not blind, was keenly wounded. +</p> + +<p> +“Money I must have,” he said, half to the colonel, half to himself. +</p> + +<p> +Colonel Halkett shrugged. Cecilia waited for a directness in Beauchamp’s +eyes. +</p> + +<p> +Her father was too wary to leave them. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 +Renée 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.” +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp kept the appointment. Cecilia was absent. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 +T<small>HE</small> D<small>AWN</small>. +</p> + +<p> +True, he might now conscientiously approach the heiress, take her hand with an +open countenance, and retain it. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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, T<small>HE</small> +D<small>AWN</small>, 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. +</p> + +<p> +How offer himself when he was not perfectly certain that he was worthy of her? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 +D<small>AWN</small> 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 Renée: 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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap40"></a>CHAPTER XL.<br /> +A TRIAL OF HIM</h2> + +<p> +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 Renée: but it was Renée’s name he called. She rose from +her chair, saying, “I!” +</p> + +<p> +She was trembling. +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp asked her whisperingly if she had come alone. +</p> + +<p> +“Alone; without even a maid,” she murmured. +</p> + +<p> +He pulled down the blind of the window exposing them to the square, and led her +into the light to see her face. +</p> + +<p> +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? Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +“It is I who come to you”: she was half audible. +</p> + +<p> +“This time!” said he. “You have been suffering?” +</p> + +<p> +“No.” +</p> + +<p> +Her tone was brief; not reassuring. +</p> + +<p> +“You came straight to me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Without a deviation that I know of.” +</p> + +<p> +“From Tourdestelle?” +</p> + +<p> +“You have not forgotten Tourdestelle, Nevil?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +But of old, in Normandy, she had pledged herself to join him with no delay when +free, if ever free! +</p> + +<p> +So now she was free. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am warmly clad,” said Renée, suffering her hand to be drawn to +his breast at her arm’s-length, not bending with it. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Agnès? I left her at Tourdestelle,” said Renée. +</p> + +<p> +“And Roland? He never writes to me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Neither he nor I write much. He is at the military camp of instruction +in the North.” +</p> + +<p> +“He will run over to us.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do not expect it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why not?” +</p> + +<p> +Renée 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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +His nature was too prompt in responding to such a call on it for resolute +warmth. +</p> + +<p> +“If I had been firmer then, or you one year older!” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“That girl in Venice had no courage,” said Renée. +</p> + +<p> +She raised her head and looked about the room. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, a London house after Venice and Normandy!” said Beauchamp, +following her look. +</p> + +<p> +“Sicily: do not omit Syracuse; you were in your naval uniform: Normandy +was our third meeting,” said Renée. “This is the fourth. I should +have reckoned that.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why? Superstitiously?” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +The fiction of her being free could not be sustained. +</p> + +<p> +“Take you and leave you? I am absolutely at your command. But leave you? +You are alone: and you have told me nothing.” +</p> + +<p> +What was there to tell? The desperate act was apparent, and told all. +</p> + +<p> +Renée’s dark eyelashes lifted on him, and dropped. +</p> + +<p> +“Then things are as I left them in Normandy?” said he. +</p> + +<p> +She replied: “Almost.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée.” +</p> + +<p> +Her eyes were raised to his: “You see me here. It is for you to +speak.” +</p> + +<p> +“I do. There’s nothing I ask for now—if the step can’t +be retrieved.” +</p> + +<p> +“The step retrieved, my friend? There is no step backward in life.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am thinking of you, Renée.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I know,” she answered hurriedly. +</p> + +<p> +“If we discover that the step is a wrong one?” he pursued: +“why is there no step backward?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am talking of women,” said Renée. +</p> + +<p> +“Why not for women?” +</p> + +<p> +“Honourable women, I mean,” said Renée. +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp inclined to forget his position in finding matter to contest. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You wrote to me that you were unchanged, Nevil.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am.” +</p> + +<p> +“So, then, I came.” +</p> + +<p> +His rejoinder was the dumb one, commonly eloquent and satisfactory. +</p> + +<p> +Renée shut her eyes with a painful rigour of endurance. She opened them to look +at him steadily. +</p> + +<p> +The desperate act of her flight demanded immediate recognition from him in +simple language and a practical seconding of it. There was the test. +</p> + +<p> +“I cannot stay in this house, Nevil; take me away.” +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +“This house is wretched for you,” said he: “and you must be +hungry. Let me...” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“I love you with all my heart and soul.” +</p> + +<p> +“As in Normandy?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“In Venice?” +</p> + +<p> +“As from the first, Renée! That I can swear.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +A smile of her lips, parted in an anguish of expectancy, went to death over +Renée’s face. She looked at him tenderly. “The truth,” she +murmured to herself, and her eyelids fell. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“The world does not stone men,” said Renée. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“No, friend, I am not complaining.” Renée 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 Renée, 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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“I am passably rich, Nevil,” she said. “I do not care for +money, except that it gives wings. Roland inherits the château in Touraine. I +have one in Burgundy, and rentes and shares, my notary informs me.” +</p> + +<p> +“I have money,” said he. His heart began beating violently. He lost +sight of his intention of reasoning. “Good God! if you were free!” +</p> + +<p> +She faltered: “At Tourdestelle...” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, and I <i>am</i> 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? +</p> + +<p> +For years, down to one year back, and less—yesterday, it could be +said—all human blessedness appeared to him in the person of Renée, 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. +</p> + +<p> +“But we must live in England,” he cried abruptly out of his inner +mind. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! not England, Italy, Italy!” Renée 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!” +</p> + +<p> +Truly “the mad commander and his French marquise” of the Bevisham +Election ballad would make a pretty figure in England! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Florence,” he said, musing on the prospect of exile and idleness: +“there’s a kind of society to be had in Florence.” +</p> + +<p> +Renée asked him if he cared so much for society. +</p> + +<p> +He replied that women must have it, just as men must have exercise. +</p> + +<p> +“Old women, Nevil; intriguers, tattlers.” +</p> + +<p> +“Young women, Renée.” +</p> + +<p> +She signified no. +</p> + +<p> +He shook the head of superior knowledge paternally. +</p> + +<p> +Her instinct of comedy set a dimple faintly working in her cheek. +</p> + +<p> +“Not if they love, Nevil.” +</p> + +<p> +“At least,” said he, “a man does not like to see the woman he +loves banished by society and browbeaten.” +</p> + +<p> +“Putting me aside, do you care for it, Nevil?” +</p> + +<p> +“Personally not a jot.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am convinced of that,” said Renée. +</p> + +<p> +She spoke suspiciously sweetly, appearing perfect candour. +</p> + +<p> +The change in him was perceptible to her. The nature of the change was +unfathomable. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Renée shivered at the cloud thickening over her new light of intrepid defiant +life. +</p> + +<p> +“Think it not improbable that I have weighed everything I surrender in +quitting France,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +Remorse wrestled with Beauchamp and flung him at her feet. +</p> + +<p> +Renée remarked on the lateness of the hour. +</p> + +<p> +He promised to conduct her to her hotel immediately. +</p> + +<p> +“And to-morrow?” said Renée, simply, but breathlessly. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“I presume he is there at present: he was in Paris when I left.” +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp spoke hoarsely and incoherently in contrast with her composure: +“You will misunderstand me for a day or two, Renée. 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Are you imagining, Nevil, that there is a possibility of my returning to +him?” +</p> + +<p> +“To your place in the world! You have not had to endure tyranny?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“It was neglect.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“What?” cried Beauchamp, oppressed and impatient. +</p> + +<p> +Renée sank her voice. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 +Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +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: Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly Beauchamp glanced upward. +</p> + +<p> +Renée turned from a startled contemplation of his frown, and beheld Mrs. +Rosamund Culling in the room. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap41"></a>CHAPTER XLI.<br /> +A LAME VICTORY</h2> + +<p> +The intruder was not a person that had power to divide them; yet she came +between their hearts with a touch of steel. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +Renée withdrew her serious eyes from Beauchamp. She rose and acknowledged the +bow. +</p> + +<p> +“It is my first visit to England, madame!” +</p> + +<p> +“I could have desired, Madame la marquise, more agreeable weather for +you.” +</p> + +<p> +“My friends in England will dispel the bad weather for me, madame”; +Renée 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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You can have them up to-morrow morning.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +The absence of a cook in the house, Rosamund remarked, must prevent her from +seconding Captain Beauchamp’s invitation. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“M. le marquis is not in London?” said Rosamund, disregarding the +dumb imprecation she saw on Beauchamp’s features. +</p> + +<p> +“No, madame, my husband is not in London,” Renée rejoined +collectedly. +</p> + +<p> +“See to the necessary comforts of the house instantly,” said +Beauchamp, and telling Renée, 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.” +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund’s countenance had become less austere. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp bade her go, and not be away more than five minutes; and then he +would drive to the hotel for the luggage. +</p> + +<p> +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 +Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp closed the door on her. He walked back to Renée with a thoughtful air +that was consciously acted; his only thought being—now she knows me! +</p> + +<p> +Renée looked up at him once. Her eyes were unaccusing, unquestioning. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +The pang struck her when he uttered some words about Mrs. Culling, and +protection, and Roland. +</p> + +<p> +She thanked him. +</p> + +<p> +So have common executioners been thanked by queenly ladies baring their necks +to the axe. +</p> + +<p> +He called up the pain he suffered to vindicate him; and it was really an agony +of a man torn to pieces. +</p> + +<p> +“I have done the best.” +</p> + +<p> +This dogged and stupid piece of speech was pitiable to hear from Nevil +Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“I am sure of it. I believe it. I see it. At least I hope so.” +</p> + +<p> +“We are chiefly led by hope,” said Renée. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +He begged her to let him have Roland’s exact address. +</p> + +<p> +She named the regiment, the corps d’armée, the postal town, and the +department. +</p> + +<p> +“Roland will come at a signal,” he pursued; “we are not bound +to consult others.” +</p> + +<p> +Renée formed the French word of “we” on her tongue. +</p> + +<p> +He talked of Roland and Roland, his affection for him as a brother and as a +friend, and Roland’s love of them both. +</p> + +<p> +“It is true,” said Renée. +</p> + +<p> +“We owe him this; he represents your father.” +</p> + +<p> +“All that you say is true, my friend.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thus, you have come on a visit to madame, your old friend here—oh! +your hand. What have I done?” +</p> + +<p> +Renée motioned her hand as if it were free to be taken, and smiled faintly to +make light of it, but did not give it. +</p> + +<p> +“If you had been widowed!” he broke down to the lover again. +</p> + +<p> +“That man is attached to the remnant of his life: I could not wish him +dispossessed of it,” said Renée. +</p> + +<p> +“Parted! who parts us? It’s for a night. Tomorrow!” +</p> + +<p> +She breathed: “To-morrow.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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...” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +The door had not opened, and it did not open immediately. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +She gave him her hand. +</p> + +<p> +He bowed over the fingers. “Until to-morrow, madame.” +</p> + +<p> +“Adieu!” said Renée. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap42"></a>CHAPTER XLII.<br /> +THE TWO PASSIONS</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He had taken a bed at Renée’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 +“<i>Adieu</i>,” and the strange “<i>Do you think +so?</i>” and “<i>I know where I am; I scarcely know +more</i>.” 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 château, and the meeting her on the road, and the white light on the +branching river, and all that was Renée 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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée. 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? +</p> + +<p> +Is a good gift to be refused? And this was his first love! The brilliant Renée, +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—“<i>son amour, mon ami</i>,” shot through him, +lighting up the gulfs of a mind in wreck;—and one kind of happiness could +certainly be promised her! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée: 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. +</p> + +<p> +Nevertheless he was hardly grieved in missing Renée 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 +Renée, and thoroughly entered into the fiction of Renée’s visit to her as +her guest: he passed over everything else. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Madame de Rouaillout is indisposed with headache,” was her report +to Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +The conventional phraseology appeased him, though he saw his grief behind it. +</p> + +<p> +Presently he asked if Renée had taken food. +</p> + +<p> +“No: you know what a headache is,” Rosamund replied. +</p> + +<p> +It is true that we do not care to eat when we are in pain. +</p> + +<p> +He asked if she looked ill. +</p> + +<p> +“She will not have lights in the room,” said Rosamund. +</p> + +<p> +Piecemeal he gained the picture of Renée in an image of the death within which +welcomed a death without. +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund was impatient with him for speaking of medical aid. These men! She +remarked very honestly: +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, no; doctors are not needed.” +</p> + +<p> +“Has she mentioned me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not once.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why do you swing your watch-chain, ma’am?” cried Beauchamp, +bounding off his chair. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Any message would trouble her: what message would you send?” +Rosamund asked him. +</p> + +<p> +The weighty and the trivial contended; no fitting message could be thought of. +</p> + +<p> +“You are unused to real suffering—that is for women!—and want +to be doing instead of enduring,” said Rosamund. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +In the morning there was a flying word from Roland, on his way to England. +Rosamund tempered her report of Renée by saying of her, that she was very +quiet. He turned to the window. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“No.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is she dead silent?” +</p> + +<p> +“She answers, if I speak to her.” +</p> + +<p> +“I believe, ma’am,” said Beauchamp, “that we are the +coldest-hearted people in Europe.” +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée, would for love’s sake be +friendly to them. +</p> + +<p> +“I should have told you, Nevil, by the way, that the earl is dead,” +said Rosamund. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“You ate nothing yourself, Nevil, all day yesterday.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +He began to nibble at bread. +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund pushed over to him a plate of the celebrated Steynham pie, of her own +invention, such as no house in the county of Sussex could produce or imitate. +</p> + +<p> +“What would you have the parsons do?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund ahemed. “France, Nevil? I should hardly think that France would +please you, in the present state of things over there.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He pitched one of the morning papers to the floor in disorderly sheets, +muttering: “So they’re at me!” +</p> + +<p> +“Is Dr. Shrapnel better?” she asked. “I hold to a good +appetite as a sign of a man’s recovery.” +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp was confronting the fog at the window. He swung round: “Dr. +Shrapnel is better. He has a particularly clever young female cook.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah! then...” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, then, naturally! He would naturally hasten to recover to partake of +the viands, ma’am.” +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund murmured of her gladness that he should be able to enjoy them. +</p> + +<p> +“Oddly enough, he is not an eater of meat,” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +“A vegetarian!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And that poor girl, Nevil?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +It struck her that he was trying to be two men at once. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +A telegram arrived from her lord. She was bidden to have the house clear for +him by noon of the next day. +</p> + +<p> +How could that be done? +</p> + +<p> +But to write blankly to inform the Earl of Romfrey that he was excluded from +his own house was another impossibility. +</p> + +<p> +“Hateful man!” she apostrophized Captain Baskelett, and sat down, +supporting her chin in a prolonged meditation. +</p> + +<p> +The card of a French lady, bearing the name of Madame d’Auffray, was +handed to her. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s the best thing I’ve heard of late,” he said, +shaking Lydiard’s hand on the door-steps. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +With a scowl, and a very ugly “yah!” worthy of cannibal jaws, the +man passed off. +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp kept eye on him. “What class does a fellow like that come +of?” +</p> + +<p> +“He’s a harmless enthusiast,” said Lydiard. “He has +been reading the article, and has got excited over it.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“You see the effect of those articles,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“You see what I mean by unseasonable times,” Lydiard retorted. +</p> + +<p> +“He didn’t talk like a tradesman,” Beauchamp mused. +</p> + +<p> +“He may be one, for all that. It’s better to class him as an +enthusiast.” +</p> + +<p> +“An enthusiast!” Beauchamp stamped: “for what?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’d study that fellow, if I had the chance.” +</p> + +<p> +“You would probably find him one of the emptiest, with a rather worse +temper than most of them.” +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp shook Lydiard’s hand, saying, “The widow?” +</p> + +<p> +“There’s no woman like her!” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, now you’re free—why not? I think I put one man out of +the field.” +</p> + +<p> +“Too early! Besides—” +</p> + +<p> +“Repeat that, and you may have to say too late.” +</p> + +<p> +“When shall you go down to Bevisham?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve not given her the brains.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“She feels your influence.” +</p> + +<p> +“She’s against the publication of T<small>HE</small> +D<small>AWN</small>—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.” +</p> + +<p> +And you have her heart, Lydiard could have rejoined. +</p> + +<p> +They said good-bye, neither of them aware of the other’s task of +endurance. +</p> + +<p> +As they were parting, Beauchamp perceived his old comrade Jack Wilmore walking +past. +</p> + +<p> +“Jack!” he called. +</p> + +<p> +Wilmore glanced round. “How do you do, Beauchamp?” +</p> + +<p> +“Where are you off to, Jack?” +</p> + +<p> +“Down to the Admiralty. I’m rather in a hurry; I have an +appointment.” +</p> + +<p> +“Can’t you stop just a minute?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m afraid I can’t. Good morning.” +</p> + +<p> +It was incredible; but this old friend, the simplest heart alive, retreated +without a touch of his hand, and with a sorely wounded air. +</p> + +<p> +“That newspaper article appears to have been generally read,” +Beauchamp said to Lydiard, who answered: +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You wouldn’t take that man and me to have been messmates for +years! Old Jack Wilmore! Don’t go, Lydiard.” +</p> + +<p> +Lydiard declared that he was bound to go: he was engaged to read Italian for an +hour with Mrs. Wardour-Devereux. +</p> + +<p> +“Then go, by all means,” Beauchamp dismissed him. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Madame d’Auffray has been sitting for an hour with Madame de +Rouaillout,” said Rosamund. +</p> + +<p> +He spoke of Roland’s coming. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“If M. la Marquis will do it that honour, madame.” +</p> + +<p> +“My brother is in London,” Madame d’Auffray said to +Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +The shattering blow was merited by one who could not rejoice that he had acted +rightly. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap43"></a>CHAPTER XLIII.<br /> +THE EARL OF ROMFREY AND THE COUNTESS</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“And where have you arranged for me to go, ma’am?” he asked +her complacently. +</p> + +<p> +She named an hotel where she had taken rooms for him. +</p> + +<p> +He nodded, and was driven to the hotel, saying little on the road. +</p> + +<p> +As she expected, he was heavily armed against her and Nevil. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +He cast a comical glance of disapprobation on the fittings of the hotel +apartment, abhorring gilt. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“That is lucky, ma’am.” +</p> + +<p> +“Her brother, Nevil’s comrade in the war, was there also.” +</p> + +<p> +“Who came first?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ma’am, if her husband manages to be satisfied, what on earth have +I to do with it?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am thinking of Nevil, my lord.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’re never thinking of any one else, ma’am.” +</p> + +<p> +“He sleeps here, at this hotel. He left the house to Madame de +Rouaillout. I bear witness to that.” +</p> + +<p> +“You two seem to have made your preparations to stand a criminal +trial.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is pure truth, my lord.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you take me to be anxious about the fellow’s virtue?” +</p> + +<p> +“She is a lady who would please you.” +</p> + +<p> +“A scandal in my house does not please me.” +</p> + +<p> +“The only approach to a scandal was made by Captain Baskelett.” +</p> + +<p> +“A poor devil locked out of his bed on a Winter’s night hullabaloos +with pretty good reason. I suppose he felt the contrast.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +The earl with a gesture implied Rosamund’s privilege to act the hostess +to friends. +</p> + +<p> +“You invited her?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“That is, I had told her I hoped she would come to England.” +</p> + +<p> +“She expected you to be at the house in town on her arrival?” +</p> + +<p> +“It was her impulse to come.” +</p> + +<p> +“She came alone?” +</p> + +<p> +“She may have desired to be away from her own people for a time: there +may have been domestic differences. These cases are delicate.” +</p> + +<p> +“This case appears to have been so delicate that you had to lock out a +fourth party.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you suspect him to have known you were inside the house that +night?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +To this he did not reply, but remarked, “I am sorry he annoyed you, +ma’am.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is not the annoyance to me; it is the shocking, the unmanly insolence +to a lady, and a foreign lady.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s a matter between him and Nevil. I uphold him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then, my lord, I am silent.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Captain Baskelett stays at the Castle?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“He likes his quarters there.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, ma’am? But I have no objection to his making the marquis a +happy husband.” +</p> + +<p> +“He has done what few men would have done, that she may be a +self-respecting wife.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“He loves her.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Nevil has taken him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ha! pull and pull, then!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I sign no engagement. I stick to the bull.” +</p> + +<p> +“Consent to see Nevil to-night, my lord.” +</p> + +<p> +“When he has apologized to you, I may, ma’am.” +</p> + +<p> +“Surely he did more, in requesting me to render him a service.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Bitten perhaps: but not mad. As you have always contended, the true case +is incurable, but it is very rare: and is this one?” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s uncommonly like a true case, though I haven’t seen him +foam at the mouth, and shun water—as his mob does.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Boys!” Lord Romfrey ejaculated. +</p> + +<p> +“It is the same dispute between them as men.” +</p> + +<p> +“Have you forgotten my proposal to shield you from liars and +scandalmongers?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Has the rascal been questioning your conduct?” The earl frowned. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“He permitted himself to sneer at you?” +</p> + +<p> +“He has the art of sneering. On this occasion he wished to be direct and +personal.” +</p> + +<p> +“What sort of hints were they?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“The hints we call distinct.” said Rosamund. +</p> + +<p> +“In words?” +</p> + +<p> +“In hard words.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then you won’t meet Cecil?” +</p> + +<p> +Such a question, and the tone of indifference in which it came, surprised and +revolted her so that the unreflecting reply leapt out: +</p> + +<p> +“I would rather meet a devil.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He continued his long leisurely strides, nodding over his feet. +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund stood up. She looked a very noble figure in her broad black-furred +robe. “I have one serious confession to make, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“What’s that?” said he. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“I do. You trace it to Nevil immediately?” +</p> + +<p> +“I do. The fellow wants to upset the country, and he begins with +me.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, ma’am, you have tied the knot tight enough; perhaps now +you’ll cut it,” said the earl. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“He dug his pit to fall into it:—he’s jealous?” +</p> + +<p> +She shook her head to indicate the immeasurable. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Lord Romfrey appeared merely inquisitive; his eyebrows were lifted in +permanence; his eyes were mild. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of Romfrey?” said the earl. +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund bowed. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m afraid you’ve dished yourself.” +</p> + +<p> +“You cannot forgive me, my lord?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“The line ends undegenerate,” said Rosamund fervidly, though she +knew not where she stood. +</p> + +<p> +“Ends!” quoth the earl. +</p> + +<p> +“I must see Stukely,” he added briskly, and stooped to her: +“I beg you to drive me to my Club, countess.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“Once a countess, always a countess!” +</p> + +<p> +“But once an impostor, my lord?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not always, we’ll hope.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund failed to recollect that Everard Romfrey never took a step without +seeing a combination of objects to be gained by it. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap44"></a>CHAPTER XLIV.<br /> +THE NEPHEWS OF THE EARL, AND ANOTHER EXHIBITION OF THE TWO PASSIONS IN +BEAUCHAMP</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +Culling’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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You are jesting?—you are a jester,” he contrived to say. +</p> + +<p> +“It was a private marriage, and I was a witness,” replied Stukely. +</p> + +<p> +“Lord Romfrey has made an honest woman of her, has he?” +</p> + +<p> +“A peeress, you mean.” +</p> + +<p> +Cecil bowed. “Exactly. I am corrected. I mean a peeress.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund did not defend herself. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You have only to prove it,” said he. “If you can turn his +mind to marriage, you can send him to Bevisham.” +</p> + +<p> +“My chief thought is to serve you.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“He did, Nevil, and admired her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, if I suffer, let me think of <i>her!</i> 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!” +</p> + +<p> +“She could scarcely feel disdain. She was guilty of a sad error.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nevil, how foolish!” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s my will.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is unreasonable. You give your enemies licence.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know what’s in your head. Take my hand, and let me have your +word for it.” +</p> + +<p> +“But if persons you like very much, Nevil, should hear?” +</p> + +<p> +“Promise. You are a woman not to break your word.” +</p> + +<p> +“If I decline?” +</p> + +<p> +“Your hand! I’ll kiss it.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“But, Nevil, I repeat, if Miss Halkett should hear...?” +</p> + +<p> +“She knows by this time.” +</p> + +<p> +“At present she is ignorant of it.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what is Miss Halkett to me?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Cecilia can see through Baskelett,” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Cecilia’s? Where?” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Why had she given it to his warmest friend? For the asking, probably. +</p> + +<p> +This question was the first ripple of the breeze from other emotions beginning +to flow fast. +</p> + +<p> +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, T<small>HE</small> D<small>AWN</small>, 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 D<small>AWN</small> 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 +T<small>HE</small> D<small>AWN</small>, 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.” +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp’s illuminated dream of the power of his D<small>AWN</small> to +vitalize old England, liberated him singularly from his wearing regrets and +heart-sickness. +</p> + +<p> +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 T<small>HE</small> D<small>AWN</small> 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 +T<small>HE</small> D<small>AWN</small> 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. +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp reverted to the shining curl. It could not have been clearer to +vision if it had lain under his eyes. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +But proportionately as he grew tender to Cecilia, his consideration for Renée +increased; that became a law to him: pity nourished it, and glimpses of +self-contempt, and something like worship of her high-heartedness. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée. 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Lord Romfrey shouted “Ha!” like a checked peal of laughter, and +glanced at his wife. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap45"></a>CHAPTER XLV.<br /> +A LITTLE PLOT AGAINST CECILIA</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“But you don’t want money, Austin.” +</p> + +<p> +“No; but since I’ve had the habit of making it I have taken to like +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you’re not ambitious.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very little; but I should be sorry to be out of the tideway.” +</p> + +<p> +“I call it a system of slaughter,” said the colonel; and Mr. Austin +said, “The world goes in that way—love and slaughter.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not suicide though,” Colonel Halkett muttered. +</p> + +<p> +“No, that’s only incidental.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I wish he had married a good woman,” said the colonel. +</p> + +<p> +“He looks unwell, papa.” +</p> + +<p> +“He thinks you’re looking unwell, my dear.” +</p> + +<p> +“He thinks that of me?” +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia prepared a radiant face for Mr. Austin. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“We have just returned from Wales,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +He remarked that it was hardly a change to be within shot of our newspapers. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He noticed her perturbation, and spoke of it to her father. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is <i>she</i> that kind of young lady?” said Mr. Austin. +</p> + +<p> +“No one would have thought so. She pretends to have opinions upon +politics now. It’s of no use to talk of it!” +</p> + +<p> +But Beauchamp was fully indicated. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Austin proposed to Cecilia that they should spend Easter week in Rome. +</p> + +<p> +Her face lighted and clouded. +</p> + +<p> +“I should like it,” she said, negatively. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s the objection?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“We could carry him with us.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but I should wish to be entirely under your tutelage in +Rome.” +</p> + +<p> +“We would pair: your father and he; you and I.” +</p> + +<p> +“We might do that. But Mr. Tuckham is like you, devoted to work; and, +unlike you, careless of Antiquities and Art.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“He certainly does love papa,” said Cecilia. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Austin dwelt on that subject. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“He does himself injustice in his manner,” said Cecilia. +</p> + +<p> +“That has become somewhat tempered,” Mr. Austin assured her, and he +acknowledged what it had been with a smile that she reciprocated. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Did he thank you for his inheritance?” Colonel Halkett inquired. +</p> + +<p> +“Not he!” Tuckham replied jovially. +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia’s eyes, quick to flash, were dropped. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I fear we have postponed the expedition too long,” said Cecilia. +She could have sunk with languor. +</p> + +<p> +“Too long?” cried Colonel Halkett, mystified. +</p> + +<p> +“Until too late, I mean, papa. Do you not think, Mr. Austin, that a +fortnight in Rome is too short a time?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not if we make it a month, my dear Cecilia.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is not our salt air better for you? The yacht shall be fitted +out.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m a poor sailor!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, my dear child,” said her father, “you were all for +going, the other day.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“She certainly has another voice,” Mr. Austin assented gravely. +</p> + +<p> +He did not look on Beauchamp as the best of possible husbands for Cecilia. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not by speaking.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Austin readily undertook to mount guard over her while her father rode into +Bevisham on business. +</p> + +<p> +The enemy appeared. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +A transient coldness following the fit of ecstasy enabled her to swim through +the terrible first minutes face to face with him. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +His parting words were: “I must have five minutes with your father +to-morrow.” +</p> + +<p> +How had she behaved? What could be Seymour Austin’s idea of her? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 +<i>Esperanza’s</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“So will Nevil, papa,” said Cecilia. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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 +<i>Esperanza</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Impulsively she waved a hand from her lips. +</p> + +<p> +Now there was no retreat for either of them! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“He loves me!” The attestation of it had been visible. “No +one but me!” Was that so evident? +</p> + +<p> +Her father picked up silly stories of him—a man who made enemies +recklessly! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +The colonel was in his riding-suit. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“At what, my dear papa, at what?” cried Cecilia. +</p> + +<p> +“I ride over to Steynham this morning, and I shall bring you proofs, my +poor child, proofs. That foreign tangle of his...” +</p> + +<p> +“You speak of Nevil, papa?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +She had shuddered slightly. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +The colonel glanced at her windows. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Now I’m off,” said he, and kissed her. +</p> + +<p> +“If you would accept Nevil’s word!” she murmured. +</p> + +<p> +“Not where women are concerned!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“He fears he will die, because of his leaving Miss Denham +unprotected,” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s not satisfied with handing her to any kind of man.” +</p> + +<p> +“If the choice is to be among Radicals and infidels, I don’t +wonder. He has come to one of the tests.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll want money for that,” said Tuckham. +</p> + +<p> +“I know,” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you prepared to stand forty or fifty thousand a year?” +</p> + +<p> +“It need not be half so much.” +</p> + +<p> +“Counting the libels, I rate the outlay rather low.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, lawyers, judges, and juries of tradesmen, dealing justice to a +Radical print!” +</p> + +<p> +Tuckham brushed his hand over his mouth and ahemed. “It’s to be a +penny journal?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, a penny. I’d make it a farthing—” +</p> + +<p> +“Pay to have it read?” +</p> + +<p> +“Willingly.” +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Freedom of thought, for one thing.” +</p> + +<p> +“We have quite enough free-thinking.” +</p> + +<p> +“There’s not enough if there’s not perfect freedom.” +</p> + +<p> +“Dangerous!” quoth Mr. Austin. +</p> + +<p> +“But it’s that danger which makes men, sir; and it’s fear of +the danger that makes our modern Englishman.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“I shall get good men for the hire.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Money will do it,” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Austin disagreed with that observation. +</p> + +<p> +“Some patriotic spirit, I may hope, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Austin shook his head. “We put different constructions upon +patriotism.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“There’s the old charge against the people.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“My traders, as you call them, are the soundest foundation for a +civilized state that the world has yet seen.” +</p> + +<p> +“What is your paper to be called?” said Cecilia. +</p> + +<p> +“The D<small>AWN</small>,” Beauchamp answered. +</p> + +<p> +She blushed fiery red, and turned the leaves of a portfolio of drawings. +</p> + +<p> +“The D<small>AWN</small>!” ejaculated Tuckham. “The +grey-eyed, or the red? Extraordinary name for a paper, upon my word!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“The distinction shouldn’t exist!” +</p> + +<p> +“Only it does!” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“It was M. le comte de Croisnel, a very old friend and comrade of +mine,” Beauchamp replied. +</p> + +<p> +“Why do those Frenchmen everlastingly wear their uniforms?—tell me! +Don’t you think it detestable style?” +</p> + +<p> +“He came over in a hurry.” +</p> + +<p> +“Now, don’t be huffed. I know you, for defending your friends, +Captain Beauchamp! Did he not come over with ladies?” +</p> + +<p> +“With relatives, yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“It was quite by misadventure that M. de Croisnel chanced to come in his +uniform.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“So it happened.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, poor fellow, he was not. He is not an Imperialist; he had to remain +in garrison.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Two days.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +She proceeded to conduct Mrs. Grancey Lespel to her room. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I have not heard Captain Beauchamp’s cleverness much +praised,” said Cecilia. “This is your room, Mrs. Grancey.” +</p> + +<p> +“Stay with me a moment. It is the room I like. Are we to have him at +dinner?” +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia did not suppose that Captain Beauchamp would remain to dine. Feeling +herself in the clutches of a gossip, she would fain have gone. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>party</i> at the end, but +there was only <i>one</i> 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, <i>they</i> 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?” +</p> + +<p> +“If the countess—if ingratitude had anything to do with it,” +said Cecilia. +</p> + +<p> +She escaped to her room and dressed impatiently. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“Hear: none: but: accused: false.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +In the course of the evening her cousin remarked: +</p> + +<p> +“Captain Beauchamp must see merit in things undiscoverable by my poor +faculties. I will show you a book he has marked.” +</p> + +<p> +“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...” +</p> + +<p> +“About the sheikh in the stables, where he accused the pretended +physician? Yes, what was there in that?” +</p> + +<p> +“Where is the book?” said Mrs. Grancey. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“This newspaper, if it’s not merely an airy project, will be +ruination,” said Tuckham. “The fact is, Beauchamp has no +<i>bend</i> 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!” +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia’s heart beat fast. She had no defined cause for its excitement. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I think I’ll follow their example,” he said to Cecilia, +after drinking a tumbler of mulled wine. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you nothing to tell me, dear papa?” said she, caressing him +timidly. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia flung her arms round his neck. “Oh! papa.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +The colonel coughed, and perhaps exaggerated the premonitory symptoms of a +cold. +</p> + +<p> +“Italy, papa, would do you good,” said Cecilia. +</p> + +<p> +“It might,” said he. +</p> + +<p> +“If we go immediately, papa; to-morrow, early in the morning, before +there is a chance of any visitors coming to the house.” +</p> + +<p> +“From Bevisham?” +</p> + +<p> +“From Steynham. I cannot endure a second persecution.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you have a world of packing, my dear.” +</p> + +<p> +“An hour before breakfast will be sufficient for me.” +</p> + +<p> +“In that case, we might be off early, as you say, and have part of the +Easter week in Rome.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Austin wishes it greatly, papa, though he has not mentioned +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Austin, my darling girl, is not one of your impatient men who burst with +everything they have in their heads or their hearts.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp came to a vacated house that day. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap46"></a>CHAPTER XLVI.<br /> +AS IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN FORESEEN</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Tuckham laughed. “Something of that,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve read all that a hundred times,” quoth Tuckham bluntly. +</p> + +<p> +“So have I. I speak of it because I see it. We scoff at the simplicity of +the Germans.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“With Germans we are supercilious Celts; with Frenchmen we are sneering +Teutons:—Can we be loved, Mr. Tuckham?” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +She was really grieved to lose him. Business called him to England. +</p> + +<p> +“What business can it be, papa?” she inquired: and the colonel +replied briefly: “Ours.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +If Mr. Austin had no intentions, it was at least strange that he did not part +from her in London. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you come into the library?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She went with him into the library. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Does he wish for my pledge never to marry without his approval? I will +give it,” said Cecilia. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Is it so urgent?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Her father entered the library. He embraced her, and “Well?” he +said. +</p> + +<p> +“I must think, papa, I must think.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia came to him at last. +</p> + +<p> +“I hear, Nevil, that you are waiting to speak to me.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve been waiting some weeks. Shall I speak here?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, here, quickly.” +</p> + +<p> +“Before the house? I have come to ask you for your hand.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mine? I cannot...” +</p> + +<p> +“Step into the park with me. I ask you to marry me.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is too late.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap47"></a>CHAPTER XLVII.<br /> +THE REFUSAL OF HIM</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“You have been listening to tales of me,” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +“Nevil, we can always be friends, the best of friends.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you object to a walk with me?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia set her face to the garden. Her heart had entered on a course of heavy +thumping, like a sapper in the mine. +</p> + +<p> +Pain was not unwelcome to her, but this threatened weakness. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +This was the effect of Beauchamp’s latest words on her. He had disarmed +her anger. +</p> + +<p> +“We <i>must</i> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Will you not give me one half-hour?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am engaged,” Cecilia plunged and extricated herself, “I am +engaged to walk with Mr. Austin and papa.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nevil, I have said it finally. I have no longer the right to conceive it +unsaid.” +</p> + +<p> +“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>I?</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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nevil, I feel grief, and beg you to cease. I am——It +is——” +</p> + +<p> +“‘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.” +</p> + +<p> +He drew forth a golden locket and showed her a curl of her hair. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Engaged in earnest?” said he. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of your free will?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Here’s an accident to one of our ironclads,” he called to +Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +“Lives lost, sir?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, thank heaven! but, upon my word, it’s a warning. Read the +telegram; it’s the <i>Hastings</i>. 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +He handed back the paper to the colonel. +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia expected him to say that he had foreseen such an event. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>Hastings</i>, along the broad water, distant below them. +The “<i>swarms of swift vessels of attack</i>,” she recollected +particularly, and “<i>small wasps and rams under mighty +steam-power</i>,” 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. “<i>The defensive is perilous policy in war:</i>” +he had said it. She recollected also her childish ridicule of his excess of +emphasis: he certainly had foresight.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Anything else in the paper, colonel? I’ve not seen it +to-day,” said Beauchamp, for the sake of speaking. +</p> + +<p> +“No, I don’t think there’s anything,” Colonel Halkett +replied. “Our diplomatists haven’t been shining much: that’s +not our forte.” +</p> + +<p> +“No: it’s our field for younger sons.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, sir, we must sell our opium.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course we must. There’s a man writing about surrendering +Gibraltar!” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m afraid we can’t do that.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“The Chinaman has a case against our traders. Gibraltar concerns our +imperial policy.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Come! there we agree.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not so certain.” +</p> + +<p> +“The counter-argument, I call treason.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then strengthen your forces.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not a bit of it!” +</p> + +<p> +“Then bully the feeble and truckle to the strong; consent to be hated +till you have to stand your ground.” +</p> + +<p> +“Talk!” +</p> + +<p> +“It seems to me logical.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s the French notion—c’est lodgique!” +</p> + +<p> +Tuckham’s pronunciation caused Cecilia to level her eyes at him +passingly. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“That, the Tory reaction is responsible for!” said Tuckham, rather +by way of a joke than a challenge. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>therefore</i> apologized for the +perpetuation of knavery, villany, brutality, injustice, and foul dealing. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +He said this with a visible fire of conviction. +</p> + +<p> +Tuckham stood bursting at the monstrousness of such a statement. +</p> + +<p> +He condensed his indignant rejoinder to: “Madness can’t go +farther!” +</p> + +<p> +“There’s an idea in it,” said Mr. Austin. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s an idea foaming at the mouth, then.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am very well satisfied with my paper,” said the colonel. +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp sighed to himself. “We choose to be satisfied,” he said. +His pure and mighty D<small>AWN</small> was in his thoughts: the unborn light +of a day denied to earth! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +That ever-explosive name precipitated Beauchamp to the front rank of the +defence. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Eyes were turned on Beauchamp. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap48"></a>CHAPTER XLVIII.<br /> +OF THE TRIAL AWAITING THE EARL OF ROMFREY</h2> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp was inaudible, save in a word or two. As usual, he was the solitary +minority. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>Esperanza</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +It was not to be thought of. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>pro</i> and +<i>con</i>, 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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Right,” said Colonel Halkett. “But ‘the shadow of an +old hat and a cockhorse’: what does that mean?” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s what our Republicans are hitting at, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +He blamed Beauchamp for ingratitude to the countess, who had, he affirmed of +his own knowledge, married Lord Romfrey to protect Beauchamp’s interests. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Now, that’s brave news!” the colonel exclaimed. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 +<i>Esperanza’s</i> weather bow—a gallant boat carefully handled. +She watched it with some anxiety, but the <i>Esperanza</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, the fellow’s a sailor!” said Lord Romfrey. +</p> + +<p> +The countess rose from her chair and walked out. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +He hesitated a moment, and went after his wife. +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia sat with the countess, in the afternoon, at a window overlooking the +swelling woods of Romfrey. She praised the loveliness of the view. +</p> + +<p> +“It is fire to me,” said Rosamund. +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia looked at her, startled. Rosamund said no more. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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:— +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am not unhappy,” said Cecilia, musically clear to convince her +friend. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée 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 Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée. 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Have you heard he is very ill, Lady Romfrey?” +</p> + +<p> +“No! no!” Rosamund exclaimed; “it is by not hearing that I +<i>know</i> it!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia hinted some blame of Lord Romfrey to her father. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is it not a kind of cowardice to conceal it?” Cecilia suggested. +</p> + +<p> +“It saves her from fretting,” said the colonel. +</p> + +<p> +“But she is fretting! If Lord Romfrey would confide in her and trust to +her courage, papa, it would be best.” +</p> + +<p> +Colonel Halkett thought that Lord Romfrey was the judge. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m afraid that’s impossible, Romfrey,” said the +colonel. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you can’t surely expect me to force my daughter’s +inclinations, my dear Romfrey?” +</p> + +<p> +“Cecilia loves the fellow!” +</p> + +<p> +“She is engaged to Mr. Tuckham.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll see the man Tuckham.” +</p> + +<p> +“Really, my dear lord!” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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...” +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia herself broke down, and gave way to sobs in her father’s arms. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap49"></a>CHAPTER XLIX.<br /> +A FABRIC OF BARONIAL DESPOTISM CRUMBLES</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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 manœuvre. 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +At last she said: “The fever should be at its height.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, my dear brave girl, what ails you?” said he. +</p> + +<p> +“Ignorance.” +</p> + +<p> +She raised her eyelids. His head was bent down over her, like a raven’s +watching, a picture of gravest vigilance. +</p> + +<p> +Her bosom rose and sank. “What has Miss Denham written to-day?” +</p> + +<p> +“To-day?” he asked her gently. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Have you been to my desk at all?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“There’s no bad news, my love,” said the earl. +</p> + +<p> +“High fever, is it?” +</p> + +<p> +“The usual fever. Gannet’s with him. I sent for Gannet to go there, +to satisfy you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nevil is not dead?” +</p> + +<p> +“Lord! ma’am, my dear soul!” +</p> + +<p> +“He is alive?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I did not wish to tempt you to lie, my dear lord.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund smothered an outcry. “You mean that Nevil is past hope!” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +The earl smoothed her forehead. All her suspicions were rekindled. +“Truth! truth! give me truth. Let me know what world I am in.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“He is delirious? I ask you—I have fancied I heard him.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>you;</i> 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 <i>you</i> 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 Renée. He has never believed in his own long +living.” +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund refreshed her lord’s heart by smiling archly as she said: +“The boy to be <i>educated</i> to take the side of the people, of course! +The girl is to learn a profession.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“We do not see clearly when we are trying to deceive,” said +Rosamund. “My letters! my letters!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He endeavoured to tone her mind for the sadder items in Miss Denham’s +letters. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“He’s not going to die!” said Everard powerfully. +</p> + +<p> +“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 +<i>very</i> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap50"></a>CHAPTER L.<br /> +AT THE COTTAGE ON THE COMMON</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +The whole scene, and especially the behaviour of the boys, betokened to Lord +Romfrey that an event had come to pass. +</p> + +<p> +In the chronicle of a sickness the event is death. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s the poor commander, sir,” said a wet-shawled woman, +shivering. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s been at it twenty hours already, sir,” said one of the +boys. +</p> + +<p> +“Twenty-foor hour he’ve been at it,” said another. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He swung round, walked away, walked back, and listened. +</p> + +<p> +If it was indeed a voice, the voice, he would have said, was travelling high in +air along the sky. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +The voice of a broomstick-witch in the clouds could not be thinner and +stranger: Lord Romfrey had some such thought. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Is my nephew a dead man?” said the earl. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“On brandy?” +</p> + +<p> +“That would soon have sped him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ha. You have everything here that you want?” +</p> + +<p> +“Everything.” +</p> + +<p> +“He’s in your hands, Gannet.” +</p> + +<p> +The earl was conducted to a sitting-room, where Dr. Gannet left him for a +while. +</p> + +<p> +Mindful that he was under the roof of his enemy, he remained standing, +observing nothing. +</p> + +<p> +The voice overheard was off at a prodigious rate, like the far sound of a yell +ringing on and on. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +A lady addressing him familiarly, invited him to go upstairs. +</p> + +<p> +He thanked her. At the foot of the stairs he turned; he had recognized Cecilia +Halkett. +</p> + +<p> +Seeing her there was more strange to him than being there himself; but he bowed +to facts. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you think?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She did not answer intelligibly. +</p> + +<p> +He walked up. +</p> + +<p> +The crazed gabbling tongue had entire possession of the house, and rang through +it at an amazing pitch to sustain for a single minute. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +A dismal figure loomed above him at the head of the stairs. +</p> + +<p> +He distinguished it in the vast lean length he had once whipped and flung to +earth. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Lord Romfrey passed him by. +</p> + +<p> +The dumb consent of all present affirmed the creature lying on the bed to be +Nevil Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +Face, voice, lank arms, chicken neck: what a sepulchral sketch of him! +</p> + +<p> +It was the revelry of a corpse. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +A nurse was at the pillow smoothing it. Miss Denham stood at the foot of the +bed. +</p> + +<p> +“Is that pain?” Lord Romfrey said low to Dr. Gannet. +</p> + +<p> +“Unconscious,” was the reply. +</p> + +<p> +Miss Denham glided about the room and disappeared. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He was arrested in his hasty passage by Cecilia Halkett. +</p> + +<p> +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 déceptions. Lumière. Ce sont les ténèbres qui +tuent.” +</p> + +<p> +Her nimble wits had spied him on the road he was choosing, and outrun him. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +Lord Romfrey asked her where the colonel was. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +He squeezed her hand. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +Lord Romfrey looked through the venetian blinds of the parlour window. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s as good as a play to them,” he remarked. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I will bring letter paper and envelopes in the afternoon,” said +Lord Romfrey. “Don’t use black wax, my dear.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Plain; that’s right,” said Lord Romfrey. +</p> + +<p> +Black appeared to him like the torch of death flying over the country. +</p> + +<p> +“There may be hope,” he added. +</p> + +<p> +She sighed: “Oh! yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Gannet will do everything that man can do to save him.” +</p> + +<p> +“He will, I am sure.” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t keep watch in the room, my dear, do you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Miss Denham allows me an hour there in the day: it is the only rest she +takes. She gives me her bedroom.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ha: well: women!” ejaculated the earl, and paused. “That +sounded like him!” +</p> + +<p> +“At times,” murmured Cecilia. “All yesterday! all through the +night! and to-day!” +</p> + +<p> +“He’ll be missed.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Decidedly a fellow like Nevil would be missed by <i>him!</i> +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +Lord Romfrey reasoned himself into pathetic sentiment by degrees. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Not any,” said Miss Denham. +</p> + +<p> +The voice was abroad for proof of that. +</p> + +<p> +He stood with a swelling heart. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +He bowed. He was mute and surprised. +</p> + +<p> +The young lady was like no person of her age and sex that he remembered ever to +have met. +</p> + +<p> +“I will close the door,” he said, retiring softly. +</p> + +<p> +“Do not, my lord.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Some delirium. Gannet of good hope. All in the usual course”; he +transmitted intelligence to his wife. +</p> + +<p> +A strong desire for wine at his dinner-table warned him of something wrong with +his iron nerves. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap51"></a>CHAPTER LI.<br /> +IN THE NIGHT</h2> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +He walked to within view of the lights of Dr. Shrapnel’s at night: then +home to his hotel. +</p> + +<p> +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, sniffled, 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He had a dream. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund’s face awoke him. It was the face of a chalk-quarry, +featureless, hollowed, appalling. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Is it over? I don’t hear him,” said Lord Romfrey. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +Lord Romfrey bent his ear. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, yes,” the colonel assented. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ha! Fetch him to me, colonel; I beg you to do that,” said Lord +Romfrey. +</p> + +<p> +The colonel brought out Lydiard to the earl. +</p> + +<p> +“You have been at my nephew’s bedside, Mr. Lydiard?” +</p> + +<p> +“Within ten minutes, my lord.” +</p> + +<p> +“What is your opinion of the case?” +</p> + +<p> +“My opinion is, the chances are in his favour.” +</p> + +<p> +“Lay me under obligation by communicating that to Romfrey Castle at the +first opening of the telegraph office to-morrow morning.” +</p> + +<p> +Lydiard promised. +</p> + +<p> +“The raving has ended?” +</p> + +<p> +“Hardly, sir, but the exhaustion is less than we feared it would +be.” +</p> + +<p> +“Gannet is there?” +</p> + +<p> +“He is in an arm-chair in the room.” +</p> + +<p> +“And Dr. Shrapnel?” +</p> + +<p> +“He does not bear speaking to; he is quiet.” +</p> + +<p> +“He is attached to my nephew?” +</p> + +<p> +“As much as to life itself.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are very kind, my lord.” +</p> + +<p> +The earl stood at the door to see Colonel Halkett drive off: he declined to +accompany him to Mount Laurels. +</p> + +<p> +In the place of the carriage stood a man, who growled “Where’s your +horsewhip, butcher?” +</p> + +<p> +He dogged the earl some steps across the common. Everard returned to his hotel +and slept soundly during the remainder of the dark hours. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap52"></a>CHAPTER LII.<br /> +QUESTION OF A PILGRIMAGE AND AN ACT OF PENANCE</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>did</i> 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? +</p> + +<p> +These were poetic flights, but he knew them not by name, and had not to be +ashamed of them. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +He reciprocated her embrace warmly, in commendation of her fresher good looks. +</p> + +<p> +She asked him, “You have spoken to Dr. Shrapnel?” +</p> + +<p> +He answered her, “Twice.” +</p> + +<p> +The word seemed quaint. She recollected that he was quaint. +</p> + +<p> +He repeated, “I spoke to him the first day I saw him, and the +second.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Good, of course?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah me! the pleasure of the absence of pain. He is not gone.” +</p> + +<p> +Lord Romfrey liked her calm resignation. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s a Mr. Lydiard,” he said, “a friend of +Nevil’s, and a friend of Louise Devereux’s.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; we hear from him every four hours,” Rosamund rejoined. +“Mention him to her before me.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s exactly what I was going to tell you to do before +me,” said her husband, smiling. +</p> + +<p> +“Because, Everard, is it not so?—widows... and she loves this +gentleman!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Thoroughly upset, you know.” +</p> + +<p> +“What did he say?” +</p> + +<p> +“What was it? ‘Beauchamp! Beauchamp!’ the first time; and the +second time he said he thought it had left off raining.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah!” Rosamund drooped her head. +</p> + +<p> +She looked up. “Here is Louise. My lord has had a long conversation with +Mr. Lydiard.” +</p> + +<p> +“I trust he will come here before you leave us,” added the earl. +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund took her hand. “My lord has been more acute than I, or else your +friend is less guarded than you.” +</p> + +<p> +“What have you seen?” said the blushing lady. +</p> + +<p> +“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 +<i>no</i> chance?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! do.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“I thought you might come,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +He reproached her gently for indulging foolish nervous fears. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear girl, you are exciting yourself.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“He was at every man Jack of us.” +</p> + +<p> +“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 +Renée—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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear, your pulse is at ninety,” said the earl. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +The earl patted her cheek. “We’ll talk it over in the +morning,” he said. “Now go to sleep.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Lord Romfrey was for postponing the appointed discussion in the morning after +breakfast. He pleaded business engagements. +</p> + +<p> +“None so urgent as this of mine,” said Rosamund. +</p> + +<p> +“But we have excellent news of Nevil: you have Gannet’s word for +it,” he argued. “There’s really nothing to distress +you.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“My precious Rosamund! have you set your two eyes on it? What you are +asking, is for permission to make an <i>apology</i> to Shrapnel!” +</p> + +<p> +“That is the word.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s Nevil’s word.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is a prescription to me.” +</p> + +<p> +“An apology?” +</p> + +<p> +The earl’s gorge rose. Why, such an act was comparable to the circular +mission of the dog! +</p> + +<p> +“If I do not make the apology, the mother of your child is a +coward,” said Rosamund. +</p> + +<p> +“She’s not.” +</p> + +<p> +“I trust not.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are a reasonable woman, my dear. Now listen: the man insulted you. +It’s past: done with. He insulted you...” +</p> + +<p> +“He did not.” +</p> + +<p> +“What?” +</p> + +<p> +“He was courteous to me, hospitable to me, kind to me. He did not insult +me. I belied him.” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear saint, you’re dreaming. He spoke insultingly of you to +Cecil.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You carry it so far—fifty miles beyond the mark,” said he. +“The man roughed you, and I taught him manners.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“All the same, you can’t go to the man.” +</p> + +<p> +“I should have said so too, before my destiny touched me.” +</p> + +<p> +“A certain dignity of position, my dear, demands a corresponding dignity +of conduct: you can’t go.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Such flighty talk offended Lord Romfrey. +</p> + +<p> +“It comes to this: you’re in want of a parson.” +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund was too careful to hint that she would have expected succour and +seconding from one or other of the better order of clergymen. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund held him by the arm. “Not too long!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +She wrote to Lydiard for advice. +</p> + +<p> +He condensed a paragraph into a line: +</p> + +<p> +“It should be the earl. She is driving him to it, intentionally or +not.” +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +But the necessity was inconceivable. +</p> + +<p> +He had really done everything required of him, if anything was really required, +by speaking to Shrapnel civilly. He had spoken to Shrapnel twice. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I dare say they did,” he replied. “The monks got round +them.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is not to be laughed at, if it eased their hearts.” +</p> + +<p> +Timidly she renewed her request for permission to perform the pilgrimage to +Bevisham. +</p> + +<p> +“Wait,” said he, “till Nevil is on his legs.” +</p> + +<p> +“Have you considered where I may then be, Everard?” +</p> + +<p> +“My love, you sleep well, don’t you?” +</p> + +<p> +“You see me every night.” +</p> + +<p> +“I see you sound asleep.” +</p> + +<p> +“I see you watching me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Let’s reason,” said the earl; and again they went through +the argument upon the apology to Dr. Shrapnel. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +Lord Romfrey levelled a marksman’s eye at her. +</p> + +<p> +“Why London? You know my wish that it should be here at the +castle.” +</p> + +<p> +“I have decided to go to Bevisham. I have little time left.” +</p> + +<p> +“None, to my thinking.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh I yes; my heart will be light. I shall gain. You come with me to +London?” +</p> + +<p> +“You can’t go.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t attempt to reason with me, please, please!” +</p> + +<p> +“I command, madam.” +</p> + +<p> +“My lord, it is past the hour of commanding.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Feminine reasoning!” he interjected. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Make allowances for me if you can, my dear lord that is what I am going +to do.” +</p> + +<p> +“My wife going there?” He strode along furiously. “No!” +</p> + +<p> +“You will not stop her.” +</p> + +<p> +“There’s a palsy in my arm if I don’t.” +</p> + +<p> +She plucked at her watch. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Speak on, my dear husband,” said Rosamund, panting. +</p> + +<p> +“But your making the journey to Bevisham is a foolish notion.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes? well?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, we’ll wait.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Drop a line to Nevil.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Pooh,” quoth the earl. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Lord Romfrey sighed profoundly. He could not shake her off. How could he refuse +her? +</p> + +<p> +How on earth had it come about that suddenly he was expected to be the person +to go? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +She clung to him for his promise to go. +</p> + +<p> +He said: “Well, well.” +</p> + +<p> +“That means, you will,” said she. +</p> + +<p> +His not denying it passed for the affirmative. +</p> + +<p> +Then indeed she bloomed with love of him. +</p> + +<p> +“Yet do say yes,” she begged. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll go, ma’am,” shouted the earl. “I’ll +go, my love,” he said softly. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap53"></a>CHAPTER LIII.<br /> +THE APOLOGY TO DR. SHRAPNEL</h2> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He never thought of blaming her for formerly deceiving him, nor of blaming her +for now expediting him. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Speech of man could not have been more nobly uttered. +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Shrapnel replied: +</p> + +<p> +“To the half of that, sir—“tis over! What remains is done +with the hand.” +</p> + +<p> +He stretched his hand out. +</p> + +<p> +Lord Romfrey closed his own on it. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +A faint sign of firm-shutting shadowed the corners of Jenny’s lips. +</p> + +<p> +“You have brought my nephew to life,” Lord Romfrey said to her. +</p> + +<p> +“My share in it was very small, my lord.” +</p> + +<p> +“Gannet says that your share in it was very great.” +</p> + +<p> +“And I say so, with the authority of a witness,” added Cecilia. +</p> + +<p> +“And I, from my experience,” came from Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +His voice had a hollow sound, unlike his natural voice. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want to lose a month of my friend,” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +“Take your friend with you. After these fevers our Winters are +bad.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve been idle too long.” +</p> + +<p> +“But, Captain Beauchamp,” said Jenny, “you proposed to do +nothing but read for a couple of years.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ay, there’s the voyage!” sighed he, with a +sailor-invalid’s vision of sunny seas dancing in the far sky. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +He touched his uncle’s hand indifferently: “My love to the +countess: let me hear of her, sir, if you please.” +</p> + +<p> +“You shall,” said the earl. “But, off to Madeira, and up +Teneriffe: sail the Azores. I’ll hire you a good-sized schooner.” +</p> + +<p> +“There is the <i>Esperanza</i>,” said Cecilia. “And the +vessel is lying <i>idle</i>, Nevil! Can you allow it?” +</p> + +<p> +He consented to laugh at himself, and fell to coughing. +</p> + +<p> +Jenny Denham saw a real human expression of anxiety cross the features of the +earl at the sound of the cough. +</p> + +<p> +Lord Romfrey said “Adieu,” to her. +</p> + +<p> +He offered her his hand, which she contrived to avoid taking by dropping a +formal half-reverence. +</p> + +<p> +“Think of the <i>Esperanza;</i> she will be coasting her nominal native +land! and adieu for to-day,” Cecilia said to Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Both were overcome with remorse when Colonel Halkett, putting his head into the +room to say good-bye to Beauchamp and place the <i>Esperanza</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +To Miss Denham he remarked: “Lord Romfrey is very much concerned about +your health; he fears you have overdone it in nursing Captain Beauchamp.” +</p> + +<p> +“I must be off after him,” said Beauchamp, and began trembling so +that he could not stir. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, he deserves it all himself—all,” said Beauchamp and with +a dubious eye on Jenny Denham: “You see, we were unfair.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He sat himself down to write a hearty letter to his “dear old uncle +Everard.” +</p> + +<p> +Jenny left him, to go to her chamber and cry. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap54"></a>CHAPTER LIV.<br /> +THE FRUITS OF THE APOLOGY</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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>I</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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no deputations; let them send Killick, if they want to say +anything,” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“Send them,” said Beauchamp. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He put his finger to her cheek in reproof of such supererogatory counsel to a +man famous for his punctuality. +</p> + +<p> +The day had darkened. +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp begged Jenny to play to him on the piano. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I wish thousands did!” cried Beauchamp. “When you play I +seem to hear ideas. Your music makes me think.” +</p> + +<p> +Jenny lit a pair of candles and set them on the piano. “Waltzes?” +she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Call in a puppet-show at once!” +</p> + +<p> +She smiled, turned over some leaves, and struck the opening notes of the Ninth +Symphony of Beethoven, and made her selections. +</p> + +<p> +At the finish he said: “Now read me your father’s poem, +‘<i>The Hunt of the Fates.</i>’” +</p> + +<p> +She read it to him. +</p> + +<p> +“Now read, ‘<i>The Ascent from the Inferno.</i>’” +</p> + +<p> +That she read: and also “<i>Soul and Brute</i>,” another of his +favourites. +</p> + +<p> +He wanted more, and told her to read “<i>First Love—Last +Love.</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“I fear I have not the tone of voice for love-poems,” Jenny said, +returning the book to him. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll read it,” said he. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“He used to play with me like a boy,” said Jenny. She described her +father from a child’s recollection of him. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp interjected: “Lawyer’s money!” +</p> + +<p> +“It would have been useful to my mother’s household when I was an +infant,” said Jenny. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“Captain Beauchamp, you have never been blamed.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am Captain Beauchamp by courtesy, in public. My friends call me Nevil. +I think I have heard the name on your lips?” +</p> + +<p> +“When you were very ill.” +</p> + +<p> +He stood closer to her, very close. +</p> + +<p> +“Which was the arm that bled for me? May I look at it? There was a +bruise.” +</p> + +<p> +“Have you not forgotten that trifle? There is the faintest possible mark +of it left.” +</p> + +<p> +“I wish to see.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“It was for me!” +</p> + +<p> +“It was quite an accident: no harm was intended.” +</p> + +<p> +“But it was in my cause—for me!” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed, Captain Beauchamp...” +</p> + +<p> +“Nevil, we say indoors.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nevil—but is it not wiser to say what comes naturally to +us?” +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>Esperanza</i> for the Winter: you and I, and our +best friend with us. And you shall have a voice in the council, be sure.” +</p> + +<p> +“If you are two to one?” Jenny said quickly, to keep from +faltering. +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp pressed his mouth to the mark of the bruise on her arm. He held her +fast. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! Captain Beauchamp—Nevil, if you will... if I may have my hand. +You exaggerate common kindness. He loves you. We both esteem you.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you don’t love me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed I have no fear that I shall be unable to support myself, if I am +left alone.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I want your help. I wake from illness with my eyes open. I must have +your arm to lean on now and then.” +</p> + +<p> +Jenny dropped a shivering sigh. +</p> + +<p> +“Uncle is long absent!” she said. +</p> + +<p> +Her hand was released. Beauchamp inspected his watch. +</p> + +<p> +“He may have fallen! He may be lying on the common!” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh!” cried Jenny, “why did I let him go out without +me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Let me have his lantern; I’ll go and search over the +common.” +</p> + +<p> +“You must not go out,” said she. +</p> + +<p> +“I must. The old man may be perishing.” +</p> + +<p> +“It will be death to you... Nevil!” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s foolish. I can stand the air for a few minutes.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll go,” said Jenny. +</p> + +<p> +“Unprotected? No.” +</p> + +<p> +“Cook shall come with me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Two women!” +</p> + +<p> +“Nevil, if you care a little for me, be good, be kind, submit.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Rather than you should go out in this cold weather, anything!” she +said, in the desperation of physical inability to hold him back. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah!” Beauchamp crossed his arms round her. “I’ll wait +for five minutes.” +</p> + +<p> +One went by, with Jenny folded, broken and sobbing, senseless, against his +breast. +</p> + +<p> +They had not heard Dr. Shrapnel quietly opening the hall door and hanging up +his hat. He looked in. +</p> + +<p> +“Beauchamp!” he exclaimed. +</p> + +<p> +“Come, doctor,” said Beauchamp, and loosened his clasp of Jenny +considerately. +</p> + +<p> +She disengaged herself. +</p> + +<p> +“Beauchamp! now I die a glad man.” +</p> + +<p> +“Witness, doctor, she’s mine by her own confession.” +</p> + +<p> +“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...” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +Beauchamp kissed her hand. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +This ensued from the apology of Lord Romfrey to Dr. Shrapnel. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap55"></a>CHAPTER LV.<br /> +WITHOUT LOVE</h2> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.’ +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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? +</p> + +<p> +“He has not spoken of the D<small>AWN</small> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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; <i>in +England it is a cushion on springs</i>. Did you say it? He quotes it as yours, +half acquiescingly, and ruefully. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. Renée had sent her these lines: +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You do not object to such an alliance?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m past objection. There’s no law against a man’s +marrying his nurse.” +</p> + +<p> +“But she is not even in love with him!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Just as you like, my dear.” +</p> + +<p> +“I used to suspect Mr. Lydiard.” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps he’s the man.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, what an end of so brilliant a beginning!” +</p> + +<p> +“It strikes me, my dear,” said the earl, “it’s the +proper common sense beginning that may have a fairish end.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, but what I feel is that he—our Nevil!—has accomplished +hardly anything, if anything!” +</p> + +<p> +“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: <i>he got me down on my knees!</i>” +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +She embraced her husband with peals of loving laughter: the last laughter heard +in Romfrey Castle for many a day. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap56"></a>CHAPTER LVI.<br /> +THE LAST OF NEVIL BEAUCHAMP</h2> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +Rosamund drew nigh to her hour of peril with this torch of her love of +Beauchamp to illuminate her. +</p> + +<p> +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 +<i>Esperanza</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +Up to the last moment, before Cecilia Halkett left the deck of the +<i>Esperanza</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“But, Nevil,” she said, fearing what was to come: “they are +gentlemen, good men.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“They are educated men, Nevil.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Jenny dropped some tears on her bridal day. She sighed her submission. +“So long as you do not change,” said she. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“If we can be sure that we ourselves are using reason rightly, +Nevil!—not prejudice.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course. But don’t you see, my Jenny, we have no interest in +opposing reason?” +</p> + +<p> +“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...?” +</p> + +<p> +He put his legal right in force to shut her mouth, telling her presently she +might <i>Lydiardize</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +“That is to say, dear Nevil, that you have quite made up your mind to a +toddling chattering little nursery wife?” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps we may hope that the conflict will be seasonable on both +sides?—if you give me fair play, Nevil!” +</p> + +<p> +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 Renée 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>Esperanza</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +“And you’ve never seen Venice,” Beauchamp said to Jenny. +</p> + +<p> +“Everything is new to me,” said she, penetrating and gladly joining +the conspiracy to have him out of England. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Spiritually</i> bright!” +</p> + +<p> +“By comparison, Nevil.” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +They lost him once in Cadiz, and discovered him on the quay, looking about for +a vessel. In getting him to return to the <i>Esperanza</i>, 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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“The education of that child?” Mrs. Lydiard said to her husband. +</p> + +<p> +He considered that the mother would prevail. +</p> + +<p> +Cecilia feared she would not. +</p> + +<p> +“Depend upon it, he’ll make himself miserable if he can,” +said Tuckham. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“They couldn’t steer a ship in a gale, though.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +<p> +This good old commonplace reflection came to Beauchamp while clasping his +wife’s hand on the deck of the <i>Esperanza</i>, and looking up at the +mountains over the Gulf of Venice. The impression of that marvellous dawn when +he and Renée 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 Renée, 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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“O God, let’s find his body,” a woman called out. +</p> + +<p> +“Just a word; is it Commander Beauchamp?” Killick said to her. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“O God, let’s find the body!” the woman with the little boy +called out. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +The mother of the rescued boy sobbed, “Oh, my lord, my lord!” +</p> + +<p> +The earl caught sight of Dr. Shrapnel, and went to him. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +He put his arm within the arm of the heavily-breathing man whom he had once +flung to the ground, to support him. +</p> + +<p> +“My lord! my lord!” sobbed the woman, and dropped on her knees. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s this?” the earl said, drawing his hand away from the +woman’s clutch at it. +</p> + +<p> +“She’s the mother, my lord,” several explained to him. +</p> + +<p> +“Mother of what?” +</p> + +<p> +“My boy,” the woman cried, and dragged the urchin to Lord +Romfrey’s feet, cleaning her boy’s face with her apron. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s the boy Commander Beauchamp drowned to save,” said a +man. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +This is what we have in exchange for Beauchamp! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div style='display:block;margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER, COMPLETE ***</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0;'>This file should be named 4460-h.htm or 4460-h.zip</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0;'>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in https://www.gutenberg.org/4/4/6/4460/</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law 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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