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A LAME VICTORY + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV + +THE FACE OF RENEE + +Shortly before the ringing of the dinner-bell Rosamund knocked at +Beauchamp's dressing-room door, the bearer of a telegram from Bevisham. +He read it in one swift run of the eyes, and said: 'Come in, ma'am, I +have something for you. Madame de Rouaillout sends you this.' + +Rosamund saw her name written in a French hand on the back of the card. + +'You stay with us, Nevil?' + +'To-night and to-morrow, perhaps. The danger seems to be over.' + +'Has Dr. Shrapnel been in danger?' + +'He has. If it's quite over now!' + +'I declare to you, Nevil . . .' + +'Listen to me, ma'am; I'm in the dark about this murderous business:--an +old man, defenceless, harmless as a child!--but I know this, that you are +somewhere in it.' + +'Nevil, do you not guess at some one else?' + +'He! yes, he! But Cecil Baskelett led no blind man to Dr. Shrapnel's +gate.' + +'Nevil, as I live, I knew nothing of it!' + +'No, but you set fire to the train. You hated the old man, and you +taught Mr. Romfrey to think that you had been insulted. I see it all. +Now you must have the courage to tell him of your error. There's no +other course for you. I mean to take Mr. Romfrey to Dr. Shrapnel, to +save the honour of our family, as far as it can be saved.' + +'What? Nevil!' exclaimed Rosamund, gaping. + +'It seems little enough, ma'am. But he must go. I will have the apology +spoken, and man to man.' + +'But you would never tell your uncle that?' + +He laughed in his uncle's manner. + +'But, Nevil, my dearest, forgive me, I think of you--why are the Halketts +here? It is not entirely with Colonel Halkett's consent. It is your +uncle's influence with him that gives you your chance. Do you not care +to avail yourself of it? Ever since he heard Dr. Shrapnel's letter to +you, Colonel Halkett has, I am sure, been tempted to confound you with +him in his mind: ah! Nevil, but recollect that it is only Mr. Romfrey who +can help to give you your Cecilia. There is no dispensing with him. +Postpone your attempt to humiliate--I mean, that is, Oh! Nevil, whatever +you intend to do to overcome your uncle, trust to time, be friends with +him; be a little worldly! for her sake! to ensure her happiness!' + +Beauchamp obtained the information that his cousin Cecil had read out the +letter of Dr. Shrapnel at Mount Laurels. + +The bell rang. + +'Do you imagine I should sit at my uncle's table if I did not intend to +force him to repair the wrong he has done to himself and to us?' he said. + +'Oh! Nevil, do you not see Captain Baskelett at work here?' + +'What amends can Cecil Baskelett make? My uncle is a man of honour: it +is in his power. There, I leave you to speak to him; you will do it +to-night, after we break up in the drawing-room.' + +Rosamund groaned: 'An apology to Dr. Shrapnel from Mr. Romfrey! It is an +impossibility, Nevil! utter!' + +'So you say to sit idle: but do as I tell you.' + +He went downstairs. + +He had barely reproached her. She wondered at that; and then remembered +his alien sad half-smile in quitting the room. + +Rosamund would not present herself at her lord's dinner-table when there +were any guests at Steynham. She prepared to receive Miss Halkett in the +drawing-room, as the guests of the house this evening chanced to be her +friends. + +Madame de Rouaillout's present to her was a photograph of M. de Croisnel, +his daughter and son in a group. Rosamund could not bear to look at the +face of Renee, and she put it out of sight. But she had looked. She was +reduced to look again. + +Roland stood beside his father's chair; Renee sat at his feet, clasping +his right hand. M. de Croisnel's fallen eyelids and unshorn white chin +told the story of the family reunion. He was dying: his two children +were nursing him to the end. + +Decidedly Cecilia was a more beautiful woman than Renee: but on which +does the eye linger longest--which draws the heart? a radiant landscape, +where the tall ripe wheat flashes between shadow and shine in the stately +march of Summer, or the peep into dewy woodland on to dark water? + +Dark-eyed Renee was not beauty but attraction; she touched the double +chords within us which are we know not whether harmony or discord, +but a divine discord if an uncertified harmony, memorable beyond plain +sweetness or majesty. There are touches of bliss in anguish that +superhumanize bliss, touches of mystery in simplicity, of the eternal in +the variable. These two chords of poignant antiphony she struck +throughout the range of the hearts of men, and strangely intervolved them +in vibrating unison. Only to look at her face, without hearing her +voice, without the charm of her speech, was to feel it. On Cecilia's +entering the drawing-room sofa, while the gentlemen drank claret, +Rosamund handed her the card of the photographic artist of Tours, +mentioning no names. + +'I should say the portrait is correct. A want of spirituality,' Rosamund +said critically, using one of the insular commonplaces, after that manner +of fastening upon what there is not in a piece of Art or nature. + +Cecilia's avidity to see and study the face preserved her at a higher +mark. + +She knew the person instantly; had no occasion to ask who this was. She +sat over the portrait blushing burningly: 'And that is a brother?' she +said. + +'That is her brother Roland, and very like her, except in complexion,' +said Rosamund. + +Cecilia murmured of a general resemblance in the features. Renee +enchained her. Though but a sun-shadow, the vividness of this French +face came out surprisingly; air was in the nostrils and speech flew from +the tremulous mouth. The eyes? were they quivering with internal light, +or were they set to seem so in the sensitive strange curves of the +eyelids whose awakened lashes appeared to tremble on some borderland +between lustreful significance and the mists? She caught at the nerves +like certain aoristic combinations in music, like tones of a stringed +instrument swept by the wind, enticing, unseizable. Yet she sat there at +her father's feet gazing out into the world indifferent to spectators, +indifferent even to the common sentiment of gracefulness. Her left hand +clasped his right, and she supported herself on the floor with the other +hand leaning away from him, to the destruction of conventional symmetry +in the picture. None but a woman of consummate breeding dared have done +as she did. It was not Southern suppleness that saved her from the +charge of harsh audacity, but something of the kind of genius in her mood +which has hurried the greater poets of sound and speech to impose their +naturalness upon accepted laws, or show the laws to have been our meagre +limitations. + +The writer in this country will, however, be made safest, and the +excellent body of self-appointed thongmen, who walk up and down our ranks +flapping their leathern straps to terrorize us from experiments in +imagery, will best be satisfied, by the statement that she was +indescribable: a term that exacts no labour of mind from him or from +them, for it flows off the pen as readily as it fills a vacuum. + +That posture of Renee displeased Cecilia and fascinated her. In an +exhibition of paintings she would have passed by it in pure displeasure: +but here was Nevil's first love, the woman who loved him; and she was +French. After a continued study of her Cecilia's growing jealousy +betrayed itself in a conscious rivalry of race, coming to the admission +that Englishwomen cannot fling themselves about on the floor without +agonizing the graces: possibly, too, they cannot look singularly without +risks in the direction of slyness and brazen archness; or talk animatedly +without dipping in slang. Conventional situations preserve them and +interchange dignity with them; still life befits them; pre-eminently that +judicial seat from which in briefest speech they deliver their judgements +upon their foreign sisters. Jealousy it was that plucked Cecilia from +her majestic place and caused her to envy in Renee things she would +otherwise have disapproved. + +At last she had seen the French lady's likeness! The effect of it was a +horrid trouble in Cecilia's cool blood, abasement, a sense of eclipse, +hardly any sense of deserving worthiness: 'What am I but an heiress!' +Nevil had once called her beautiful; his praise had given her beauty. +But what is beauty when it is outshone! Ask the owners of gems. You +think them rich; they are pining. + +Then, too, this Renee, who looked electrical in repose, might really love +Nevil with a love that sent her heart out to him in his enterprises, +justifying and adoring him, piercing to the hero in his very thoughts. +Would she not see that his championship of the unfortunate man +Dr. Shrapnel was heroic? + +Cecilia surrendered the card to Rosamund, and it was out of sight when +Beauchamp stepped in the drawing-room. His cheeks were flushed; he had +been one against three for the better part of an hour. + +'Are you going to show me the downs to-morrow morning?' Cecilia said to +him; and he replied, 'You will have to be up early.' + +'What's that?' asked the colonel, at Beauchamp's heels. + +He was volunteering to join the party of two for the early morning's ride +to the downs. Mr. Romfrey pressed his shoulder, saying, 'There's no +third horse can do it in my stables.' + +Colonel Halkett turned to him. + +'I had your promise to come over the kennels with me and see how I treat +a cry of mad dog, which is ninety-nine times out of a hundred mad fool +man,' Mr. Romfrey added. + +By that the colonel knew he meant to stand by Nevil still and offer him +his chance of winning Cecilia. + +Having pledged his word not to interfere, Colonel Halkett submitted, and +muttered, 'Ah! the kennels.' Considering however what he had been +witnessing of Nevil's behaviour to his uncle, the colonel was amazed at +Mr. Romfrey's magnanimity in not cutting him off and disowning him. + +'Why the downs?' he said. + +'Why the deuce, colonel?' A question quite as reasonable, and Mr. +Romfrey laughed under his breath. To relieve an uncertainty in Cecilia's +face, that might soon have become confusion, he described the downs +fronting the paleness of earliest dawn, and then their arch and curve and +dip against the pearly grey of the half-glow; and then, among their +hollows, lo, the illumination of the East all around, and up and away, +and a gallop for miles along the turfy thymy rolling billows, land to +left, sea to right, below you. 'It's the nearest hit to wings we can +make, Cecilia.' He surprised her with her Christian name, which kindled +in her the secret of something he expected from that ride on the downs. +Compare you the Alps with them? If you could jump on the back of an +eagle, you might. The Alps have height. But the downs have swiftness. +Those long stretching lines of the downs are greyhounds in full career. +To look at them is to set the blood racing! Speed is on the downs, +glorious motion, odorous air of sea and herb, exquisite as in the isles +of Greece. And the Continental travelling ninnies leave England for +health!--run off and forth from the downs to the steamboat, the railway, +the steaming hotel, the tourist's shivering mountain-top, in search of +sensations! There on the downs the finest and liveliest are at their +bidding ready to fly through them like hosts of angels. + +He spoke somewhat in that strain, either to relieve Cecilia or prepare +the road for Nevil, not in his ordinary style; on the contrary, with a +swing of enthusiasm that seemed to spring of ancient heartfelt fervours. +And indeed soon afterward he was telling her that there on those downs, +in full view of Steynham, he and his wife had first joined hands. + +Beauchamp sat silent. Mr. Romfrey despatched orders to the stables, +and Rosamund to the kitchen. Cecilia was rather dismayed by the formal +preparations for the ride. She declined the early cup of coffee. Mr. +Romfrey begged her to take it. 'Who knows the hour when you 'll be +back?' he said. Beauchamp said nothing. + +The room grew insufferable to Cecilia. She would have liked to be wafted +to her chamber in a veil, so shamefully unveiled did she seem to be. But +the French lady would have been happy in her place! Her father kissed +her as fathers do when they hand the bride into the travelling-carriage. +His 'Good-night, my darling!' was in the voice of a soldier on duty. +For a concluding sign that her dim apprehensions pointed correctly, Mr. +Romfrey kissed her on the forehead. She could not understand how it had +come to pass that she found herself suddenly on this incline, +precipitated whither she would fain be going, only less hurriedly, less +openly, and with her secret merely peeping, like a dove in the breast. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV + +THE RIDE IN THE WRONG DIRECTION + +That pure opaque of the line of downs ran luminously edged against the +pearly morning sky, with its dark landward face crepusculine yet clear in +every combe, every dotting copse and furze-bush, every wavy fall, and the +ripple, crease, and rill-like descent of the turf. Beauty of darkness +was there, as well as beauty of light above. + +Beauchamp and Cecilia rode forth before the sun was over the line, while +the West and North-west sides of the rolling downs were stamped with such +firmness of dusky feature as you see on the indentations of a shield of +tarnished silver. The mounting of the sun behind threw an obscurer +gloom, and gradually a black mask overcame them, until the rays shot +among their folds and windings, and shadows rich as the black pansy, +steady as on a dialplate rounded with the hour. + +Mr. Everard Romfrey embraced this view from Steynham windows, and loved +it. The lengths of gigantic 'greyhound backs' coursing along the South +were his vision of delight; no image of repose for him, but of the life +in swiftness. He had known them when the great bird of the downs was not +a mere tradition, and though he owned conscientiously to never having +beheld the bird, a certain mystery of holiness hung about the region +where the bird had been in his time. There, too, with a timely word he +had gained a wealthy and good wife. He had now sent Nevil to do the +same. + +This astute gentleman had caught at the idea of a ride of the young +couple to the downs with his customary alacrity of perception as being +the very best arrangement for hurrying them to the point. At Steynham +Nevil was sure to be howling all day over his tumbled joss Shrapnel. +Once away in the heart of the downs, and Cecilia beside him, it was a +matter of calculation that two or three hours of the sharpening air would +screw his human nature to the pitch. In fact, unless each of them was +reluctant, they could hardly return unbetrothed. Cecilia's consent was +foreshadowed by her submission in going: Mr. Romfrey had noticed her +fright at the suggestive formalities he cast round the expedition, and +felt sure of her. Taking Nevil for a man who could smell the perfume of +a ripe affirmative on the sweetest of lips, he was pretty well sure of +him likewise. And then a truce to all that Radical rageing and hot- +pokering of the country! and lie in peace, old Shrapnel! and get on your +legs when you can, and offend no more; especially be mindful not to let +fly one word against a woman! With Cecilia for wife, and a year of +marriage devoted to a son and heir, Nevil might be expected to resume his +duties as a naval officer, and win an honourable name for the inheritance +of the young one he kissed. + +There was benevolence in these previsions of Mr. Romfrey, proving how +good it is for us to bow to despotic authority, if only we will bring +ourselves unquestioningly to accept the previous deeds of the directing +hand. + +Colonel Halkett gave up his daughter for lost when she did not appear at +the breakfast-table: for yet more decidedly lost when the luncheon saw +her empty place; and as time drew on toward the dinner-hour, he began to +think her lost beyond hope, embarked for good and all with the madbrain. +Some little hope of a dissension between the pair, arising from the +natural antagonism of her strong sense to Nevil's extravagance, had +buoyed him until it was evident that they must have alighted at an inn to +eat, which signified that they had overleaped the world and its hurdles, +and were as dreamy a leash of lovers as ever made a dreamland of hard +earth. The downs looked like dreamland through the long afternoon. They +shone as in a veil of silk-softly fair, softly dark. No spot of +harshness was on them save where a quarry South-westward gaped at the +evening sun. + +Red light struck into that round chalk maw, and the green slopes and +channels and half-circle hollows were brought a mile-stride higher +Steynham by the level beams. + +The poor old colonel fell to a more frequent repetition of the 'Well!' +with which he had been unconsciously expressing his perplexed mind in the +kennels and through the covers during the day. None of the gentlemen +went to dress. Mr. Culbrett was indoors conversing with Rosamund +Culling. + +'What's come to them?' the colonel asked of Mr. Romfrey, who said +shrugging, 'Something wrong with one of the horses.' It had happened to +him on one occasion to set foot in the hole of a baked hedgehog that had +furnished a repast, not without succulence, to some shepherd of the +downs. Such a case might have recurred; it was more likely to cause an +upset at a walk than at a gallop: or perhaps a shoe had been cast; and +young people break no bones at a walking fall; ten to one if they do at +their top speed. Horses manage to kill their seniors for them: the young +are exempt from accident. + +Colonel Halkett nodded and sighed: 'I daresay they're safe. It's that +man Shrapnel's letter--that letter, Romfrey! A private letter, I know; +but I've not heard Nevil disown the opinions expressed in it. I submit. +It's no use resisting. I treat my daughter as a woman capable of judging +for herself. I repeat, I submit. I haven't a word against Nevil except +on the score of his politics. I like him. All I have to say is, I don't +approve of a republican and a sceptic for my son-in-law. I yield to you, +and my daughter, if she . . . !' + +'I think she does, colonel. Marriage 'll cure the fellow. Nevil will +slough his craze. Off! old coat. Cissy will drive him in strings. +"My wife!" I hear him.' Mr. Romfrey laughed quietly. 'It's all "my +country," now. The dog'll be uxorious. He wants fixing; nothing worse.' + +'How he goes on about Shrapnel!' + +'I shouldn't think much of him if he didn't.' + +'You're one in a thousand, Romfrey. I object to seeing a man +worshipped.' + +'It's Nevil's green-sickness, and Shrapnel's the god of it.' + +'I trust to heaven you're right. It seems to me young fellows ought to +be out of it earlier.' + +'They generally are.' Mr. Romfrey named some of the processes by which +they are relieved of brain-flightiness, adding philosophically, 'This way +or that.' + +His quick ear caught a sound of hoofs cantering down the avenue on the +Northern front of the house. + +He consulted his watch. 'Ten minutes to eight. Say a quarter-past for +dinner. They're here, colonel.' + +Mr. Romfrey met Nevil returning from the stables. Cecilia had +disappeared. + +'Had a good day?' said Mr. Romfrey. + +Beauchamp replied: 'I'll tell you of it after dinner,' and passed by him. + +Mr. Romfrey edged round to Colonel Halkett, conjecturing in his mind: +They have not hit it; as he remarked: 'Breakfast and luncheon have been +omitted in this day's fare,' which appeared to the colonel a confirmation +of his worst fears, or rather the extinction of his last spark of hope. + +He knocked at his daughter's door in going upstairs to dress. + +Cecilia presented herself and kissed him. + +'Well?' said he. + +'By-and-by, papa,' she answered. 'I have a headache. Beg Mr. Romfrey to +excuse me.' + +'No news for me?' + +She had no news. + +Mrs. Culling was with her. The colonel stepped on mystified to his room. + +When the door had closed Cecilia turned to Rosamund and burst into tears. +Rosamund felt that it must be something grave indeed for the proud young +lady so to betray a troubled spirit. + +'He is ill--Dr. Shrapnel is very ill,' Cecilia responded to one or two +subdued inquiries in as clear a voice as she could command. + +'Where have you heard of him?' Rosamund asked. + +'We have been there.' + +'Bevisham? to Bevisham?' Rosamund was considering the opinion Mr. +Romfrey would form of the matter from the point of view of his horses. + +'It was Nevil's wish,' said Cecilia. + +'Yes? and you went with him,' Rosamund encouraged her to proceed, +gladdened at hearing her speak of Nevil by that name; 'you have not been +on the downs at all?' + +Cecilia mentioned a junction railway station they had ridden to; and +thence, boxing the horses, by train to Bevisham. Rosamund understood +that some haunting anxiety had fretted Nevil during the night; in the +morning he could not withstand it, and he begged Cecilia to change their +destination, apparently with a vehemence of entreaty that had been +irresistible, or else it was utter affection for him had reduced her to +undertake the distasteful journey. She admitted that she was not the +most sympathetic companion Nevil could have had on the way, either going +or coming. She had not entered Dr. Shrapnel's cottage. Remaining on +horseback she had seen the poor man reclining in his garden chair. Mr. +Lydiard was with him, and also his ward Miss Denham, who had been +summoned by telegraph by one of the servants from Switzerland. And +Cecilia had heard Nevil speak of his uncle to her, and too humbly, she +hinted. Nor had the expression of Miss Denham's countenance in listening +to him pleased her; but it was true that a heavily burdened heart cannot +be expected to look pleasing. On the way home Cecilia had been compelled +in some degree to defend Mr. Romfrey. Blushing through her tears at the +remembrance of a past emotion that had been mixed with foresight, she +confessed to Rosamund she thought it now too late to prevent a rupture +between Nevil and his uncle. Had some one whom Nevil trusted and cared +for taken counsel with him and advised him before uncle and nephew met to +discuss this most unhappy matter, then there might have been hope. As it +was, the fate of Dr. Shrapnel had gained entire possession of Nevil. +Every retort of his uncle's in reference to it rose up in him: he used +language of contempt neighbouring abhorrence: he stipulated for one sole +thing to win back his esteem for his uncle; and that was, the apology to +Dr. Shrapnel. + +'And to-night,' Cecilia concluded, 'he will request Mr. Romfrey to +accompany. him to Bevisham to-morrow morning, to make the apology in +person. He will not accept the slightest evasion. He thinks Dr. +Shrapnel may die, and the honour of the family--what is it he says of +it?' Cecilia raised her eyes to the ceiling, while Rosamund blinked in +impatience and grief, just apprehending the alien state of the young +lady's mind in her absence of recollection, as well as her bondage in the +effort to recollect accurately. + +'Have you not eaten any food to-day, Miss Halkett?' she said; for it +might be the want of food which had broken her and changed her manner. + +Cecilia replied that she had ridden for an hour to Mount Laurels. + +'Alone? Mr. Romfrey must not hear of that,' said Rosamund. + +Cecilia consented to lie down on her bed. She declined the dainties +Rosamund pressed on her. She was feverish with a deep and unconcealed +affliction, and behaved as if her pride had gone. But if her pride had +gone she would have eased her heart by sobbing outright. A similar +division harassed her as when her friend Nevil was the candidate for +Bevisham. She condemned his extreme wrath with his uncle, yet was +attracted and enchained by the fire of passionate attachment which +aroused it: and she was conscious that she had but shown obedience to +his wishes throughout the day, not sympathy with his feelings. Under +cover of a patient desire to please she had nursed irritation and +jealousy; the degradation of the sense of jealousy increasing the +irritation. Having consented to the ride to Dr. Shrapnel, should she +not, to be consistent, have dismounted there? O half heart! A whole +one, though it be an erring, like that of the French lady, does at least +live, and has a history, and makes music: but the faint and uncertain is +jarred in action, jarred in memory, ever behind the day and in the shadow +of it! Cecilia reviewed herself: jealous, disappointed, vexed, ashamed, +she had been all day a graceless companion, a bad actress: and at the +day's close she was loving Nevil the better for what had dissatisfied, +distressed, and wounded her. She was loving him in emulation of his +devotedness to another person: and that other was a revolutionary common +people's doctor! an infidel, a traitor to his country's dearest +interests! But Nevil loved him, and it had become impossible for her not +to covet the love, or to think of the old offender without the halo cast +by Nevil's attachment being upon him. So intensely was she moved by her +intertwisting reflections that in an access of bodily fever she stood up +and moved before the glass, to behold the image of the woman who could be +the victim of these childish emotions: and no wonderful contrast struck +her eyes; she appeared to herself as poor and small as they. How could +she aspire to a man like Nevil Beauchamp? If he had made her happy by +wooing her she would not have adored him as she did now. He likes my +hair, she said, smoothing it out, and then pressing her temples, like one +insane. Two minutes afterward she was telling Rosamund her head ached +less. + +'This terrible Dr. Shrapnel!' Rosamund exclaimed, but reported that no +loud voices were raised in the dining-room. + +Colonel Halkett came to see his daughter, full of anxiety and curiosity. +Affairs had been peaceful below, for he was ignorant of the expedition to +Bevisham. On hearing of it he frowned, questioned Cecilia as to whether +she had set foot on that man's grounds, then said: 'Ah! well, we leave +to-morrow: I must go, I have business at home; I can't delay it. I +sanctioned no calling there, nothing of the kind. From Steynham to +Bevisham? Goodness, it's rank madness. I'm not astonished you're sick +and ill.' + +He waited till he was assured Cecilia had no special matter to relate, +and recommending her to drink the tea Mrs. Culling had made for her, and +then go to bed and sleep, he went down to the drawing-room, charged with +the worst form of hostility toward Nevil, the partly diplomatic. + +Cecilia smiled at her father's mention of sleep. She was in the contest +of the two men, however inanimately she might be lying overhead, and the +assurance in her mind that neither of them would give ground, so similar +were they in their tenacity of will, dissimilar in all else, dragged her +this way and that till she swayed lifeless between them. One may be as a +weed of the sea while one's fate is being decided. To love is to be on +the sea, out of sight of land: to love a man like Nevil Beauchamp is to +be on the sea in tempest. Still to persist in loving would be noble, +and but for this humiliation of utter helplessness an enviable power. +Her thoughts ran thus in shame and yearning and regret, dimly discerning +where her heart failed in the strength which was Nevil's, though it was +a full heart, faithful and not void of courage. But he never brooded, +he never blushed from insufficiency-the faintness of a desire, the callow +passion that cannot fly and feed itself: he never tottered; he walked +straight to his mark. She set up his image and Renee's, and cowered +under the heroical shapes till she felt almost extinct. With her weak +limbs and head worthlessly paining, the little infantile I within her +ceased to wail, dwindled beyond sensation. Rosamund, waiting on her in +the place of her maid, saw two big drops come through her closed eyelids, +and thought that if it could be granted to Nevil to look for a moment on +this fair and proud young lady's loveliness in abandonment, it would +tame, melt, and save him. The Gods presiding over custom do not permit +such renovating sights to men. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI + +PURSUIT OF THE APOLOGY OF Mr. ROMFREY TO DR. SHRAPNEL + +The contest, which was an alternation of hard hitting and close +wrestling, had recommenced when Colonel Halkett stepped into the drawing- +room. + +'Colonel, I find they've been galloping to Bevisham and back,' said Mr. +Romfrey. + +'I've heard of it,' the colonel replied. Not perceiving a sign of +dissatisfaction on his friend's face, he continued:: 'To that man +Shrapnel.' + +'Cecilia did not dismount,' said Beauchamp. + +'You took her to that man's gate. It was not with my sanction. You know +my ideas of the man.' + +'If you were to see him now, colonel, I don't think you would speak +harshly of him.' + +'We 're not obliged to go and look on men who have, had their measure +dealt them.' + +'Barbarously,' said Beauchamp. + +Mr. Romfrey in the most placid manner took a chair. 'Windy talk, that!' +he said. + +Colonel Halkett seated himself. Stukely Culbrett turned a sheet of +manuscript he was reading. + +Beauchamp began a caged lion's walk on the rug under the mantelpiece. + +'I shall not spare you from hearing what I think of it, sir.' + +'We 've had what you think of it twice over,' said Mr. Romfrey. +'I suppose it was the first time for information, the second time for +emphasis, and the rest counts to keep it alive in your recollection.' + +'This is what you have to take to heart, sir; that Dr. Shrapnel is now +seriously ill.' + +'I'm sorry for it, and I'll pay the doctor's bill.' + +'You make it hard for me to treat you with respect.' + +'Fire away. Those Radical friends of yours have to learn a lesson, and +it's worth a purse to teach them that a lady, however feeble she may seem +to them, is exactly of the strength of the best man of her acquaintance.' + +'That's well said!' came from Colonel Halkett. + +Beauchamp stared at him, amazed by the commendation of empty language. + +'You acted in error; barbarously, but in error,' he addressed his uncle. + +'And you have got a fine topic for mouthing,' Mr. Romfrey rejoined. + +'You mean to sit still under Dr. Shrapnel's forgiveness?' + +'He's taken to copy the Christian religion, has he?' + +'You know you were deluded when you struck him.' + +'Not a whit.' + +'Yes, you know it now: Mrs. Culling--' + +'Drag in no woman, Nevil Beauchamp!' + +'She has confessed to you that Dr. Shrapnel neither insulted her nor +meant to ruffle her.' + +'She has done no such nonsense.' + +'If she has not!--but I trust her to have done it.' + +'You play the trumpeter, you terrorize her.' + +'Into opening her lips wider; nothing else. I'll have the truth from +her, and no mincing: and from Cecil Baskelett and Palmet.' + +'Give Cecil a second licking, if you can, and have him off to Shrapnel.' + +'You!' cried Beauchamp. + +At this juncture Stukely Culbrett closed the manuscript in his hands, and +holding it out to Beauchamp, said: + +'Here's your letter, Nevil. It's tolerably hard to decipher. It's mild +enough; it's middling good pulpit. I like it.' + +'What have you got there?' Colonel Halkett asked him. + +'A letter of his friend Dr. Shrapnel on the Country. Read a bit, +colonel.' + +'I? That letter! Mild, do you call it?' The colonel started back his +chair in declining to touch the letter. + +'Try it,' said Stukely. 'It's the letter they have been making the noise +about. It ought to be printed. There's a hit or two at the middle-class +that I should like to see in print. It's really not bad pulpit; and I +suspect that what you object to, colonel, is only the dust of a well- +thumped cushion. Shrapnel thumps with his fist. He doesn't say much +that's new. If the parsons were men they'd be saying it every Sunday. +If they did, colonel, I should hear you saying, amen.' + +'Wait till they do say it.' + +'That's a long stretch. They're turn-cocks of one Water-company--to wash +the greasy citizens!' + +'You're keeping Nevil on the gape;' said Mr. Romfrey, with a whimsical +shrewd cast of the eye at Beauchamp, who stood alert not to be foiled, +arrow-like in look and readiness to repeat his home-shot. Mr. Romfrey +wanted to hear more of that unintelligible 'You!' of Beauchamp's. But +Stukely Culbrett intended that the latter should be foiled, and he +continued his diversion from the angry subject. + +'We'll drop the sacerdotals,' he said. 'They're behind a veil for us, +and so are we for them. I'm with you, colonel; I wouldn't have them +persecuted; they sting fearfully when whipped. No one listens to them +now except the class that goes to sleep under them, to "set an example" +to the class that can't understand them. Shrapnel is like the breeze +shaking the turf-grass outside the church-doors; a trifle fresher. He +knocks nothing down.' + +'He can't!' ejaculated the colonel. + +'He sermonizes to shake, that's all. I know the kind of man.' + +'Thank heaven, it's not a common species in England!' + +'Common enough to be classed.' + +Beauchamp struck through the conversation of the pair: 'Can I see you +alone to-night, sir, or to-morrow morning?' + +'You may catch me where you can,' was Mr. Romfrey's answer. + +'Where's that? It's for your sake and mine, not for Dr. Shrapnel's. +I have to speak to you, and must. You have done your worst with him; +you can't undo it. You have to think of your honour as a gentleman. +I intend to treat you with respect, but wolf is the title now, whether +I say it or not.' + +'Shrapnel's a rather long-legged sheep?' + +'He asks for nothing from you.' + +'He would have got nothing, at a cry of peccavi!' + +'He was innocent, perfectly blameless; he would not lie to save himself. +You mistook that for--but you were an engine shot along a line of rails. +He does you the justice to say you acted in error.' + +'And you're his parrot.' + +'He pardons you.' + +'Ha! t' other cheek!' + +'You went on that brute's errand in ignorance. Will you keep to the +character now you know the truth? Hesitation about it doubles the +infamy. An old man! the best of men! the kindest and truest! the most +unselfish!' + +'He tops me by half a head, and he's my junior.' + +Beauchamp suffered himself to give out a groan of sick derision: 'Ah!' + +'And it was no joke holding him tight,' said Mr. Romfrey, 'I 'd as lief +snap an ash. The fellow (he leaned round to Colonel Halkett) must be a +fellow of a fine constitution. And he took his punishment like a man. +I've known worse: and far worse: gentlemen by birth. There's the choice +of taking it upright or fighting like a rabbit with a weasel in his hole. +Leave him to think it over, he'll come right. I think no harm of him, +I've no animus. A man must have his lesson at some time of life. I did +what I had to do.' + +'Look here, Nevil,' Stukely Culbrett checked Beauchamp in season: 'I beg +to inquire what Dr. Shrapnel means by "the people." We have in our +country the nobles and the squires, and after them, as I understand it, +the people: that's to say, the middle-class and the working-class--fat +and lean. I'm quite with Shrapnel when he lashes the fleshpots. They +want it, and they don't get it from "their organ," the Press. I fancy +you and I agree about their organ; the dismallest organ that ever ground +a hackneyed set of songs and hymns to madden the thoroughfares.' + +'The Press of our country!' interjected Colonel Halkett in moaning +parenthesis. + +'It's the week-day Parson of the middle-class, colonel. They have their +thinking done for them as the Chinese have their dancing. But, Nevil, +your Dr. Shrapnel seems to treat the traders as identical with the +aristocracy in opposition to his "people." The traders are the cursed +middlemen, bad friends of the "people," and infernally treacherous to the +nobles till money hoists them. It's they who pull down the country. +They hold up the nobles to the hatred of the democracy, and the democracy +to scare the nobles. One's when they want to swallow a privilege, and +the other's when they want to ring-fence their gains. How is it Shrapnel +doesn't expose the trick? He must see through it. I like that letter of +his. People is one of your Radical big words that burst at a query. +He can't mean Quince, and Bottom, and Starveling, Christopher Sly, Jack +Cade, Caliban, and poor old Hodge? No, no, Nevil. Our clowns are the +stupidest in Europe. They can't cook their meals. They can't spell; +they can scarcely speak. They haven't a jig in their legs. And I +believe they're losing their grin! They're nasty when their blood's up. +Shakespeare's Cade tells you what he thought of Radicalizing the people. +"And as for your mother, I 'll make her a duke"; that 's one of their +songs. The word people, in England, is a dyspeptic agitator's dream when +he falls nodding over the red chapter of French history. Who won the +great liberties for England? My book says, the nobles. And who made the +great stand later?--the squires. What have the middlemen done but bid +for the people they despise and fear, dishonour us abroad and make a hash +of us at home? Shrapnel sees that. Only he has got the word people in +his mouth. The people of England, my dear fellow, want heading. Since +the traders obtained power we have been a country on all fours. Of +course Shrapnel sees it: I say so. But talk to him and teach him where +to look for the rescue.' + +Colonel Halkett said to Stukely: 'If you have had a clear idea in what +you have just spoken, my head's no place for it!' + +Stukely's unusually lengthy observations had somewhat heated him, and he +protested with earnestness: 'It was pure Tory, my dear colonel.' + +But the habitually and professedly cynical should not deliver themselves +at length: for as soon as they miss their customary incision of speech +they are apt to aim to recover it in loquacity, and thus it may be that +the survey of their ideas becomes disordered. + +Mr. Culbrett endangered his reputation for epigram in a good cause, it +shall be said. + +These interruptions were torture to Beauchamp. Nevertheless the end was +gained. He sank into a chair silent. + +Mr. Romfrey wished to have it out with his nephew, of whose comic +appearance as a man full of thunder, and occasionally rattling, yet all +the while trying to be decorous and politic, he was getting tired. He +foresaw that a tussle between them in private would possibly be too hot +for his temper, admirably under control though it was. + +'Why not drag Cecil to Shrapnel?' he said, for a provocation. + +Beauchamp would not be goaded. + +Colonel Halkett remarked that he would have to leave Steynham the next +day. His host remonstrated with him. The colonel said: 'Early.' He had +very particular business at home. He was positive, and declined every +inducement to stay. Mr. Romfrey glanced at Nevil, thinking, You poor +fool! And then he determined to let the fellow have five minutes alone +with him. + +This occurred at midnight, in that half-armoury, half-library, which was +his private room. + +Rosamund heard their voices below. She cried out to herself that it was +her doing, and blamed her beloved, and her master, and Dr. Shrapnel, in +the breath of her self-recrimination. The demagogue, the over- +punctilious gentleman, the faint lover, surely it must be reason wanting +in the three for each of them in turn to lead the other, by an excess of +some sort of the quality constituting their men's natures, to wreck a +calm life and stand in contention! Had Shrapnel been commonly reasonable +he would have apologized to Mr. Romfrey, or had Mr. Romfrey, he would not +have resorted to force to punish the supposed offender, or had Nevil, he +would have held his peace until he had gained his bride. As it was; the +folly of the three knocked at her heart, uniting to bring the heavy +accusation against one poor woman, quite in the old way: the Who is she? +of the mocking Spaniard at mention of a social catastrophe. Rosamund had +a great deal of the pride of her sex, and she resented any slur on it. +She felt almost superciliously toward Mr. Romfrey and Nevil for their not +taking hands to denounce the plotter, Cecil Baskelett. They seemed a +pair of victims to him, nearly as much so as the wretched man Shrapnel. +It was their senselessness which made her guilty! And simply because she +had uttered two or three exclamations of dislike of a revolutionary and +infidel she was compelled to groan under her present oppression! Is +there anything to be hoped of men? Rosamund thought bitterly of Nevil's +idea of their progress. Heaven help them! But the unhappy creatures +have ceased to look to a heaven for help. + +We see the consequence of it in this Shrapnel complication. + +Three men: and one struck down; the other defeated in his benevolent +intentions; the third sacrificing fortune and happiness: all three owing +their mischance to one or other of the vague ideas disturbing men's +heads! Where shall we look for mother wit?--or say, common suckling's +instinct? Not to men, thought Rosamund. + +She was listening to the voices of Mr. Romfrey and Beauchamp in a fever. +Ordinarily the lord of Steynham was not out of his bed later than twelve +o'clock at night. His door opened at half-past one. Not a syllable was +exchanged by the couple in the hall. They had fought it out. Mr. +Romfrey came upstairs alone, and on the closing of his chamber-door she +slipped down to Beauchamp and had a dreadful hour with him that subdued +her disposition to sit in judgement upon men. The unavailing attempt to +move his uncle had wrought him to the state in which passionate thoughts +pass into speech like heat to flame. Rosamund strained her mental sight +to gain a conception of his prodigious horror of the treatment of Dr. +Shrapnel that she might think him sane: and to retain a vestige of +comfort in her bosom she tried to moderate and make light of as much as +she could conceive. Between the two efforts she had no sense but that of +helplessness. Once more she was reduced to promise that she would speak +the whole truth to Mr. Romfrey, even to the fact that she had experienced +a common woman's jealousy of Dr. Shrapnel's influence, and had alluded to +him jealously, spitefully, and falsely. There was no mercy in Beauchamp. +He was for action at any cost, with all the forces he could gather, and +without delays. He talked of Cecilia as his uncle's bride to him. +Rosamund could hardly trust her ears when he informed her he had told his +uncle of his determination to compel him to accomplish the act of +penitence. 'Was it prudent to say it, Nevil?' she asked. But, as in +his politics, he disdained prudence. A monstrous crime had been +committed, involving the honour of the family. No subtlety of +insinuation, no suggestion, could wean him from the fixed idea that the +apology to Dr. Shrapnel must be spoken by his uncle in person. + +'If one could only imagine Mr. Romfrey doing it!' Rosamund groaned. + +'He shall: and you will help him,' said Beauchamp. + +'If you loved a woman half as much as you do that man!' + +'If I knew a woman as good, as wise, as noble as he!' + +'You are losing her.' + +'You expect me to go through ceremonies of courtship at a time like this! +If she cares for me she will feel with me. Simple compassion--but let +Miss Halkett be. I'm afraid I overtasked her in taking her to Bevisham. +She remained outside the garden. Ma'am, she is unsullied by contact with +a single shrub of Dr. Shrapnel's territory.' + +'Do not be so bitterly ironical, Nevil. You have not seen her as I +have.' + +Rosamund essayed a tender sketch of the fair young lady, and fancied that +she drew forth a sigh; she would have coloured the sketch, but he +commanded her to hurry off to bed, and think of her morning's work. + +A commission of which we feel we can accurately forecast the unsuccessful +end is not likely to be undertaken with an ardour that might perhaps +astound the presageing mind with unexpected issues. Rosamund fulfilled +hers in the style of one who has learnt a lesson, and, exactly as she had +anticipated, Mr. Romfrey accused her of coming to him from a conversation +with that fellow Nevil overnight. He shrugged and left the house for his +morning's walk across the fields. + +Colonel Halkett and Cecilia beheld him from the breakfast-room returning +with Beauchamp, who had waylaid him and was hammering his part in the now +endless altercation. It could be descried at any distance; and how fine +was Mr. Romfrey's bearing!--truly noble by contrast, as of a grave big +dog worried by a small barking dog. There is to an unsympathetic +observer an intense vexatiousness in the exhibition of such pertinacity. +To a soldier accustomed at a glance to estimate powers of attack and +defence, this repeated puny assailing of a, fortress that required years +of siege was in addition ridiculous. Mr. Romfrey appeared impregnable, +and Beauchamp mad. 'He's foaming again!' said the colonel, and was only +ultra-pictorial. 'Before breakfast!' was a further slur on Beauchamp. + +Mr. Romfrey was elevated by the extraordinary comicality of the notion of +the proposed apology to heights of humour beyond laughter, whence we see +the unbounded capacity of the general man for folly, and rather +commiserate than deride him. He was quite untroubled. It demanded a +steady view of the other side of the case to suppose of one whose control +of his temper was perfect, that he could be in the wrong. He at least +did not think so, and Colonel Halkett relied on his common sense. +Beauchamp's brows were smouldering heavily, except when he had to talk. +He looked paleish and worn, and said he had been up early. Cecilia +guessed that he had not been to bed. + +It was dexterously contrived by her host, in spite of the colonel's +manifest anxiety to keep them asunder, that she should have some minutes +with Beauchamp out in the gardens. Mr. Romfrey led them out, and then +led the colonel away to offer him a choice of pups of rare breed. + +'Nevil,' said Cecilia, 'you will not think it presumption in me to give +you advice?' + +Her counsel to him was, that he should leave Steynham immediately, and +trust to time for his uncle to reconsider his conduct. + +Beauchamp urged the counter-argument of the stain on the family honour. + +She hinted at expediency; he frankly repudiated it. + +The downs faced them, where the heavenly vast 'might have been' of +yesterday wandered thinner than a shadow of to-day; weaving a story +without beginning, crisis, or conclusion, flowerless and fruitless, but +with something of infinite in it sweeter to brood on than the future of +her life to Cecilia. + +'If meanwhile Dr. Shrapnel should die, and repentance comes too late!' +said Beauchamp. + +She had no clear answer to that, save the hope of its being an unfounded +apprehension. 'As far as it is in my power, Nevil, I will avoid +injustice to him in my thoughts.' + +He gazed at her thankfully. 'Well,' said he, 'that's like sighting the +cliffs. But I don't feel home round me while the colonel is so strangely +prepossessed. For a high-spirited gentleman like your father to approve, +or at least accept, an act so barbarous is incomprehensible. Speak to +him, Cecilia, will you? Let him know your ideas.' + +She assented. He said instantly, 'Persuade him to speak to my uncle +Everard.' + +She was tempted to smile. + +'I must do only what I think wise, if I am to be of service, Nevil.' + +'True, but paint that scene to him. An old man, utterly defenceless, +making no defence! a cruel error. The colonel can't, or he doesn't, +clearly get it inside him, otherwise I'm certain it would revolt him: +just as I am certain my uncle Everard is at this moment a stone-blind +man. If he has done a thing, he can't question it, won't examine it. +The thing becomes a part of him, as much as his hand or his head. He 's +a man of the twelfth century. Your father might be helped to understand +him first.' + +'Yes,' she said, not very warmly, though sadly. + +'Tell the colonel how it must have been brought about. For Cecil +Baskelett called on Dr. Shrapnel two days before Mr. Romfrey stood at his +gate.' + +The name of Cecil caused her to draw in her shoulders in a half-shudder. +'It may indeed be Captain Baskelett who set this cruel thing in motion!' + +'Then point that out to your father, said he, perceiving a chance of +winning her to his views through a concrete object of her dislike, and +cooling toward the woman who betrayed a vulgar characteristic of her sex; +who was merely woman, unable sternly to recognize the doing of a foul +wrong because of her antipathy, until another antipathy enlightened her. + +He wanted in fact a ready-made heroine, and did not give her credit for +the absence of fire in her blood, as well as for the unexercised +imagination which excludes young women from the power to realize unwonted +circumstances. We men walking about the world have perhaps no more +imagination of matters not domestic than they; but what we have is quick +with experience: we see the thing we hear of: women come to it how they +can. + +Cecilia was recommended to weave a narrative for her father, and +ultimately induce him, if she could, to give a gentleman's opinion of the +case to Mr. Romfrey. + +Her sensitive ear caught a change of tone in the directions she received. +'Your father will say so and so: answer him with this and that.' +Beauchamp supplied her with phrases. She was to renew and renew the +attack; hammer as he did. Yesterday she had followed him: to-day she was +to march beside him--hardly as an equal. Patience! was the word she +would have uttered in her detection of the one frailty in his nature +which this hurrying of her off her feet opened her eyes to with unusual +perspicacity. Still she leaned to him sufficiently to admit that he had +grounds for a deep disturbance of his feelings. + +He said: 'I go to Dr. Shrapnel's cottage, and don't know how to hold up +my head before Miss Denham. She confided him to me when she left for +Switzerland!' + +There was that to be thought of, certainly. + +Colonel Halkett came round a box-bush and discovered them pacing together +in a fashion to satisfy his paternal scrutiny. + +'I've been calling you several times, my dear,' he complained. 'We start +in seven minutes. Bustle, and bonnet at once. Nevil, I'm sorry for this +business. Good-bye. Be a good boy, Nevil,' he murmured kindheartedly, +and shook Beauchamp's hand with the cordiality of an extreme relief in +leaving him behind. + +The colonel and Mr. Romfrey and Beauchamp were standing on the hall-steps +when Rosamund beckoned the latter and whispered a request for that letter +of Dr. Shrapnel's. 'It is for Miss Halkett, Nevil.' + +He plucked the famous epistle from his bulging pocketbook, and added a +couple of others in the same handwriting. + +'Tell her, a first reading--it's difficult to read at first,' he said, +and burned to read it to Cecilia himself: to read it to her with his +comments and explanations appeared imperative. It struck him in a flash +that Cecilia's counsel to him to quit Steynham for awhile was good. And +if he went to Bevisham he would be assured of Dr. Shrapnel's condition: +notes and telegrams from the cottage were too much tempered to console +and deceive him. + +'Send my portmanteau and bag after me to Bevisham,' he said Rosamund, and +announced to the woefully astonish colonel that he would have the +pleasure of journeying in his company as far as the town. + +'Are you ready? No packing?' said the colonel. + +'It's better to have your impediments in the rear of you, and march!' +said Mr. Romfrey. + +Colonel Halkett declined to wait for anybody. He shouted for his +daughter. The lady's maid appeared, and then Cecilia with Rosamund. + +'We can't entertain you, Nevil; we're away to the island: I'm sorry,' +said the colonel; and observing Cecilia's face in full crimson, he looked +at her as if he had lost a battle by the turn of events at the final +moment. + +Mr. Romfrey handed Cecilia into the carriage. He exchanged a friendly +squeeze with the colonel, and offered his hand to his nephew. Beauchamp +passed him with a nod and 'Good-bye, sir.' + +'Have ready at Holdesbury for the middle of the month,' said Mr. Romfrey, +unruffled, and bowed to Cecilia. + +'If you think of bringing my cousin Baskelett, give me warning, sir,' +cried Beauchamp. + +'Give me warning, if you want the house for Shrapnel,' replied his uncle, +and remarked to Rosamund, as the carriage wheeled round the mounded +laurels to the avenue, 'He mayn't be quite cracked. The fellow seems to +have a turn for catching his opportunity by the tail. He had better hold +fast, for it's his last.' + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII + +CECILIA CONQUERED + +The carriage rolled out of the avenue and through the park, for some time +parallel with the wavy downs. Once away from Steynham Colonel Halkett +breathed freely, as if he had dropped a load: he was free of his bond to +Mr. Romfrey, and so great was the sense of relief in him that he resolved +to do battle against his daughter, supposing her still lively blush to be +the sign of the enemy's flag run up on a surrendered citadel. His +authority was now to be thought of: his paternal sanction was in his own +keeping. Beautiful as she looked, it was hardly credible that a fellow +in possession of his reason could have let slip his chance of such a +prize; but whether he had or had not, the colonel felt that he occupied a +position enabling him either to out-manoeuvre, or, if need were, +interpose forcibly and punish him for his half-heartedness. + +Cecilia looked the loveliest of women to Beauchamp's eyes, with her +blush, and the letters of Dr. Shrapnel in her custody, at her express +desire. Certain terms in the letters here and there, unsweet to ladies, +began to trouble his mind. + +'By the way, colonel,' he said, 'you had a letter of Dr. Shrapnel's read +to you by Captain Baskelett.' + +'Iniquitous rubbish!' + +'With his comments on it, I dare say you thought it so. I won't speak of +his right to make it public. He wanted to produce his impressions of it +and me, and that is a matter between him and me. Dr. Shrapnel makes use +of strong words now and then, but I undertake to produce a totally +different impression on you by reading the letter myself--sparing you' +(he turned to Cecilia) 'a word or two, common enough to men who write in +black earnest and have humour.' He cited his old favourite, the black +and bright lecturer on Heroes. 'You have read him, I know, Cecilia. +Well, Dr. Shrapnel is another, who writes in his own style, not the +leading-article style or modern pulpit stuff. He writes to rouse.' + +'He does that to my temper,' said the colonel. + +'Perhaps here and there he might offend Cecilia's taste,' Beauchamp +pursued for her behoof. 'Everything depends on the mouthpiece. I should +not like the letter to be read without my being by;--except by men: any +just-minded man may read it: Seymour Austin, for example. Every line is +a text to the mind of the writer. Let me call on you to-morrow.' + +'To-morrow?' Colonel Halkett put on a thoughtful air. 'To-morrow we're +off to the island for a couple of days; and there's Lord Croyston's +garden party, and the Yacht Ball. Come this evening-dine with us. No +reading of letters, please. I can't stand it, Nevil.' + +The invitation was necessarily declined by a gentleman who could not +expect to be followed by supplies of clothes and linen for evening wear +that day. + +'Ah, we shall see you some day or other,' said the colonel. + +Cecilia was less alive to Beauchamp's endeavour to prepare her for the +harsh words in the letter than to her father's insincerity. She would +have asked her friend to come in the morning next day, but for the dread +of deepening her blush. + +'Do you intend to start so early in the morning, papa?' she ventured to +say; and he replied, 'As early as possible.' + +'I don't know what news I shall have in Bevisham, or I would engage to +run over to the island,' said Beauchamp, with a flattering persistency or +singular obtuseness. + +'You will dance,' he subsequently observed to Cecilia, out of the heart +of some reverie. He had been her admiring partner on the night before +the drive from Itchincope into Bevisham, and perhaps thought of her +graceful dancing at the Yacht Ball, and the contrast it would present to +his watch beside a sick man-struck down by one of his own family. + +She could have answered, 'Not if you wish me not to'; while smiling at +the quaint sorrowfulness of his tone. + +'Dance!' quoth Colonel Halkett, whose present temper discerned a healthy +antagonism to misanthropic Radicals in the performance, 'all young people +dance. Have you given over dancing?' + +'Not entirely, colonel.' + + +Cecilia danced with Mr. Tuckham at the Yacht Ball, and was vividly +mindful of every slight incident leading to and succeeding her lover's +abrupt, 'You will dance' which had all passed by her dream-like up to +that hour his attempt to forewarn her of the phrases she would deem +objectionable in Dr. Shrapnel's letter; his mild acceptation of her +father's hostility; his adieu to her, and his melancholy departure on +foot from the station, as she drove away to Mount Laurels and gaiety. +Why do I dance? she asked herself. It was not in the spirit of +happiness. Her heart was not with Dr. Shrapnel, but very near him, +and heavy as a chamber of the sick. She was afraid of her father's +favourite, imagining, from the colonel's unconcealed opposition to +Beauchamp, that he had designs in the interests of Mr. Tuckham. But the +hearty gentleman scattered her secret terrors by his bluffness and +openness. He asked her to remember that she had recommended him to +listen to Seymour Austin, and he had done so, he said. Undoubtedly he +was much improved, much less overbearing. + +He won her confidence by praising and loving her father, and when she +alluded to the wonderful services he had rendered on the Welsh estate, +he said simply that her father's thanks repaid him. He recalled his +former downrightness only in speaking of the case of Dr. Shrapnel, upon +which, both with the colonel and with her, he was unreservedly +condemnatory of Mr. Romfrey. Colonel Halkett's defence of the true +knight and guardian of the reputation of ladies, fell to pieces in the +presence of Mr. Tuckham. He had seen Dr. Shrapnel, on a visit to Mr. +Lydiard, whom he described as hanging about Bevisham, philandering as a +married man should not, though in truth he might soon expect to be +released by the death of his crazy wife. The doctor, he said, had been +severely shaken by the monstrous assault made on him, and had been most +unrighteously handled. The doctor was an inoffensive man in his private +life, detestable and dangerous though his teachings were. Outside +politics Mr. Tuckham went altogether with Beauchamp. He promised also +that old Mrs. Beauchamp should be accurately informed of the state of +matters between Captain Beauchamp and Mr. Romfrey. He left Mount Laurels +to go back in attendance on the venerable lady, without once afflicting +Cecilia with a shiver of well-founded apprehension, and she was grateful +to him almost to friendly affection in the vanishing of her unjust +suspicion, until her father hinted that there was the man of his heart. +Then she closed all avenues to her own. + +A period of maidenly distress not previously unknown to her ensued. +Proposals of marriage were addressed to her by two untitled gentlemen, +and by the Earl of Lockrace: three within a fortnight. The recognition +of the young heiress's beauty at the Yacht Ball was accountable for the +bursting out of these fires. Her father would not have deplored her +acceptance of the title of Countess of Lockrace. In the matter of +rejections, however, her will was paramount, and he was on her side +against relatives when the subject was debated among them. He called her +attention to the fact impressively, telling her that she should not hear +a syllable from him to persuade her to marry: the emphasis of which +struck the unspoken warning on her intelligence: Bring no man to me of +whom I do not approve! + +'Worthier of you, as I hope to become,' Beauchamp had said. Cecilia lit +on that part of Dr. Shrapnel's letter where 'Fight this out within you,' +distinctly alluded to the unholy love. Could she think ill of the man +who thus advised him? She shared Beauchamp's painful feeling for him in +a sudden tremour of her frame; as it were through his touch. To the rest +of the letter her judgement stood opposed, save when a sentence here and +there reminded her of Captain Baskelett's insolent sing-song declamation +of it: and that would have turned Sacred Writing to absurdity. + +Beauchamp had mentioned Seymour Austin as one to whom he would willingly +grant a perusal of the letter. Mr. Austin came to Mount Laurels about +the close of the yachting season, shortly after Colonel Halkett had spent +his customary days of September shooting at Steynham. Beauchamp's folly +was the colonel's theme, for the fellow had dragged Lord Palmet there, +and driven his uncle out of patience. Mr. Romfrey's monumental patience +had been exhausted by him. The colonel boiled over with accounts of +Beauchamp's behaviour toward his uncle, and Palmet, and Baskelett, and +Mrs. Culling: how he flew at and worried everybody who seemed to him to +have had a hand in the proper chastisement of that man Shrapnel. That +pestiferous letter of Shrapnel's was animadverted on, of course; and, +'I should like you to have heard it, Austin,' the colonel said, 'just for +you to have a notion of the kind of universal blow-up those men are +scheming, and would hoist us with, if they could get a little more +blasting-powder than they mill in their lunatic heads.' + +Now Cecilia wished for Mr. Austin's opinion of Dr. Shrapnel; and as the +delicate state of her inclinations made her conscious that to give him +the letter covertly would be to betray them to him, who had once, not +knowing it, moved her to think of a possible great change in her life, +she mustered courage to say, 'Captain Beauchamp at my request lent me the +letter to read; I have it, and others written by Dr. Shrapnel.' + +Her father hummed to himself, and immediately begged Seymour Austin not +to waste his time on the stuff, though he had no idea that a perusal of +it could awaken other than the gravest reprehension in so rational a Tory +gentleman. + +Mr. Austin read the letter through. He asked to see the other letters +mentioned by Cecilia, and read them calmly, without a frown or an +interjection. She sat sketching, her father devouring newspaper columns. + +'It's the writing of a man who means well,' Mr. Austin delivered his +opinion. + +' Why, the man's an infidel!' Colonel Halkett exclaimed. + +'There are numbers.' + +'They have the grace not to confess, then.' + +'It's as well to know what the world's made of, colonel. The clergy shut +their eyes. There's no treating a disease without reading it; and if we +are to acknowledge a "vice," as Dr. Shrapnel would say of the so-called +middle-class, it is the smirking over what they think, or their not +caring to think at all. Too many time-servers rot the State. I can +understand the effect of such writing on a mind like Captain Beauchamp's. +It would do no harm to our young men to have those letters read publicly +and lectured on-by competent persons. Half the thinking world may think +pretty much the same on some points as Dr. Shrapnel; they are too wise or +too indolent to say it: and of the other half, about a dozen members +would be competent to reply to him. He is the earnest man, and flies at +politics as uneasy young brains fly to literature, fancying they can +write because they can write with a pen. He perceives a bad adjustment +of things: which is correct. He is honest, and takes his honesty for a +virtue: and that entitles him to believe in himself: and that belief +causes him to see in all opposition to him the wrong he has perceived in +existing circumstances: and so in a dream of power he invokes the people: +and as they do not stir, he takes to prophecy. This is the round of the +politics of impatience. The study of politics should be guided by some +light of statesmanship, otherwise it comes to this wild preaching. + +These men are theory-tailors, not politicians. They are the men who make +the "strait-waistcoat for humanity." They would fix us to first +principles like tethered sheep or hobbled horses. I should enjoy +replying to him, if I had time. The whole letter is composed of +variations upon one idea. Still I must say the man interests me; I +should like to talk to him.' + +Mr. Austin paid no heed to the colonel's 'Dear me! dear me!' of +amazement. He said of the style of the letters, that it was the puffing +of a giant: a strong wind rather than speech: and begged Cecilia to note +that men who labour to force their dreams on mankind and turn vapour into +fact, usually adopt such a style. Hearing that this private letter had +been deliberately read through by Mr. Romfrey, and handed by him to +Captain Baskelett, who had read it out in various places, Mr. Austin +said: + +'A strange couple!' He appeared perplexed by his old friend's approval +of them. 'There we decidedly differ,' said he, when the case of Dr. +Shrapnel was related by the colonel, with a refusal to condemn Mr. +Romfrey. He pronounced Mr. Romfrey's charges against Dr. Shrapnel, taken +in conjunction with his conduct, to be baseless, childish, and wanton. +The colonel would not see the case in that light; but Cecilia did. It +was a justification of Beauchamp; and how could she ever have been blind +to it?--scarcely blind, she remembered, but sensitively blinking her +eyelids to distract her sight in contemplating it, and to preserve her +repose. As to Beauchamp's demand of the apology, Mr. Austin considered +that it might be an instance of his want of knowledge of men, yet could +not be called silly, and to call it insane was the rhetoric of an +adversary. + +'I do call it insane,' said the colonel. + +He separated himself from his daughter by a sharp division. + +Had Beauchamp appeared at Mount Laurels, Cecilia would have been ready to +support and encourage him, boldly. Backed by Mr. Austin, she saw some +good in Dr. Shrapnel's writing, much in Beauchamp's devotedness. He +shone clear to her reason, at last: partly because her father in his +opposition to him did not, but was on the contrary unreasonable, cased in +mail, mentally clouded. She sat with Mr. Austin and her father, trying +repeatedly, in obedience to Beauchamp's commands, to bring the latter to +a just contemplation of the unhappy case; behaviour on her part which +rendered the colonel inveterate. + +Beauchamp at this moment was occupied in doing secretary's work for Dr. +Shrapnel. So Cecilia learnt from Mr. Lydiard, who came to pay his +respects to Mrs. Wardour-Devereux at Mount Laurels. The pursuit of the +apology was continued in letters to his uncle and occasional interviews +with him, which were by no means instigated by the doctor, Mr. Lydiard +informed the ladies. He described Beauchamp as acting in the spirit of a +man who has sworn an oath to abandon every pleasure in life, that he may, +as far as it lies in his power, indemnify his friend for the wrong done +to him. + +'Such men are too terrible for me,' said Mrs. Devereux. + +Cecilia thought the reverse: Not for me! But she felt a strain upon +her nature, and she was miserable in her alienation from her father. +Kissing him one night, she laid her head on his breast, and begged his +forgiveness. He embraced her tenderly. 'Wait, only wait; you will see +I am right,' he said, and prudently said no more, and did not ask her +to speak. + +She was glad that she had sought the reconciliation from her heart's +natural warmth, on hearing some time later that M. de Croisnel was dead, +and that Beauchamp meditated starting for France to console his Renee. +Her continual agitations made her doubtful of her human feelings: she +clung to that instance of her filial stedfastness. + +The day before Cecilia and her father left Mount Laurels for their season +in Wales, Mr. Tuckham and Beauchamp came together to the house, and were +closeted an hour with her father. Cecilia sat in the drawing-room, +thinking that she did indeed wait, and had great patience. Beauchamp +entered the room alone. He looked worn and thin, of a leaden colour, +like the cloud that bears the bolt. News had reached him of the death of +Lord Avonley in the hunting-field, and he was going on to Steynham to +persuade his uncle to accompany him to Bevisham and wash the guilt of his +wrong-doing off him before applying for the title. 'You would advise me +not to go?' he said. 'I must. I should be dishonoured myself if I let +a chance pass. I run the risk of being a beggar: I'm all but one now.' + +Cecilia faltered: 'Do you see a chance?' + +'Hardly more than an excuse for trying it,' he replied. + +She gave him back Dr. Shrapnel's letters. 'I have read them,' was all +she said. For he might have just returned from France, with the breath +of Renee about him, and her pride would not suffer her to melt him in +rivalry by saying what she had been led to think of the letters. + +Hearing nothing from her, he silently put them in his pocket. The +struggle with his uncle seemed to be souring him or deadening him. + +They were not alone for long. Mr. Tuckham presented himself to take his +leave of her. Old Mrs. Beauchamp was dying, and he had only come to +Mount Laurels on special business. Beauchamp was just as anxious to +hurry away. + +Her father found her sitting in the solitude of a drawing-room at midday, +pale-faced, with unoccupied fingers, not even a book in her lap. + +He walked up and down the room until Cecilia, to say something, said: +'Mr. Tuckham could not stay.' + +'No,' said her father; 'he could not. He has to be back as quick as he +can to cut his legacy in halves!' + +Cecilia looked perplexed. + +'I'll speak plainly,' said the colonel. 'He sees that Nevil has ruined +himself with his uncle. The old lady won't allow Nevil to visit her; in +her condition it would be an excitement beyond her strength to bear. She +sent Blackburn to bring Nevil here, and give him the option of stating +before me whether those reports about his misconduct in France were true +or not. He demurred at first: however, he says they are not true. He +would have run away with the Frenchwoman, and he would have fought the +duel: but he did neither. Her brother ran ahead of him and fought for +him: so he declares and she wouldn't run. So the reports are false. We +shall know what Blackburn makes of the story when we hear of the legacy. +I have been obliged to write word to Mrs. Beauchamp that I believe Nevil +to have made a true statement of the facts. But I distinctly say, and so +I told Blackburn, I don't think money will do Nevil Beauchamp a +farthing's worth of good. Blackburn follows his own counsel. He induced +the old lady to send him; so I suppose he intends to let her share the +money between them. I thought better of him; I thought him a wiser man.' + +Gratitude to Mr. Tuckham on Beauchamp's behalf caused Cecilia to praise +him, in the tone of compliments. The difficulty of seriously admiring +two gentlemen at once is a feminine dilemma, with the maidenly among +women. + +'He has disappointed me,' said Colonel Halkett. + +'Would you have had him allow a falsehood to enrich him and ruin Nevil, +papa?' + +'My dear child, I'm sick to death of romantic fellows. I took Blackburn +for one of our solid young men. Why should he share his aunt's fortune?' + +'You mean, why should Nevil have money?' + +'Well, I do mean that. Besides, the story was not false as far as his +intentions went: he confessed it, and I ought to have put it in a +postscript. If Nevil wants money, let him learn to behave himself like a +gentleman at Steynham.' + +'He has not failed.' + +'I'll say, then, behave himself, simply. He considers it a point of +honour to get his uncle Everard to go down on his knees to Shrapnel. But +he has no moral sense where I should like to see it: none: he confessed +it.' + +'What were his words, papa?' + +'I don't remember words. He runs over to France, whenever it suits him, +to carry on there . . .' The colonel ended in a hum and buzz. + +'Has he been to France lately?' asked Cecilia. + +Her breath hung for the answer, sedately though she sat. + +'The woman's father is dead, I hear,' Colonel Halkett remarked. + +'But he has not been there?' + +'How can I tell? He's anywhere, wherever his passions whisk him.' + +'No!' + +'I say, yes. And if he has money, we shall see him going sky-high and +scattering it in sparks, not merely spending; I mean living immorally, +infidelizing, republicanizing, scandalizing his class and his country.' + +'Oh no!' exclaimed Cecilia, rising and moving to the window to feast her +eyes on driving clouds, in a strange exaltation of mind, secretly sure +now that her idea of Nevil's having gone over to France was groundless; +and feeling that she had been unworthy of him who strove to be 'worthier +of her, as he hoped to become.' + +Colonel Halkett scoffed at her 'Oh no,' and called it woman's logic. + +She could not restrain herself. 'Have you forgotten Mr. Austin, papa? +It is Nevil's perfect truthfulness that makes him appear worse to you +than men who are timeservers. Too many time-servers rot the State, Mr. +Austin said. Nevil is not one of them. I am not able to judge or +speculate whether he has a great brain or is likely to distinguish +himself out of his profession: I would rather he did not abandon it: but +Mr. Austin said to me in talking of him . . .' + +'That notion of Austin's of screwing women's minds up to the pitch of +men's!' interjected the colonel with a despairing flap of his arm. + +'He said, papa, that honestly active men in a country, who decline to +practise hypocrisy, show that the blood runs, and are a sign of health.' + +'You misunderstood him, my dear.' + +'I think I thoroughly understood him. He did not call them wise. He +said they might be dangerous if they were not met in debate. But he +said, and I presume to think truly, that the reason why they are decried +is, that it is too great a trouble for a lazy world to meet them. And, +he said, the reason why the honest factions agitate is because they +encounter sneers until they appear in force. If they were met earlier, +and fairly--I am only quoting him--they would not, I think he said, or +would hardly, or would not generally, fall into professional agitation.' + +'Austin's a speculative Tory, I know; and that's his weakness,' observed +the colonel. 'But I'm certain you misunderstood him. He never would +have called us a lazy people.' + +'Not in matters of business: in matters of thought.' + +'My dear Cecilia! You've got hold of a language!.... a way of speaking! +.... Who set you thinking on these things?' + +'That I owe to Nevil Beauchamp! + +Colonel Halkett indulged in a turn or two up and down the room. He threw +open a window, sniffed the moist air, and went to his daughter to speak +to her resolutely. + +'Between a Radical and a Tory, I don't know where your head has been +whirled to, my dear. Your heart seems to be gone: more sorrow for us! +And for Nevil Beauchamp to be pretending to love you while carrying on +with this Frenchwoman!' + +'He has never said that he loved me.' + +The splendour of her beauty in humility flashed on her father, and he +cried out: 'You are too good for any man on earth! We won't talk in the +dark, my darling. You tell me he has never, as they say, made love to +you?' + +'Never, papa.' + +'Well, that proves the French story. At any rate, he 's a man of honour. +But you love him?' + +'The French story is untrue, papa.' + +Cecilia stood in a blush like the burning cloud of the sunset.' + +'Tell me frankly: I'm your father, your old dada, your friend, my dear +girl! do you think the man cares for you, loves you?' + +She replied: 'I know, papa, the French story is untrue.' + +'But when I tell you, silly woman, he confessed it to me out of his own +mouth!' + +'It is not true now.' + +'It's not going on, you mean? How do you know?' + +'I know.' + +'Has he been swearing it?' + +'He has not spoken of it to me.' + +'Here I am in a woman's web!' cried the colonel. 'Is it your instinct +tells you it's not true? or what? what? You have not denied that you +love the man.' + +'I know he is not immoral.' + +'There you shoot again! Haven't you a yes or a no for your father?' + +Cecilia cast her arms round his neck, and sobbed. + +She could not bring it to her lips to say (she would have shunned the +hearing) that her defence of Beauchamp, which was a shadowed avowal of +the state of her heart, was based on his desire to read to her the +conclusion of Dr. Shrapnel's letter touching a passion to be overcome; +necessarily therefore a passion that was vanquished, and the fullest and +bravest explanation of his shifting treatment of her: nor would she +condescend to urge that her lover would have said he loved her when they +were at Steynham, but for the misery and despair of a soul too noble to +be diverted from his grief and sense of duty, and, as she believed, +unwilling to speak to win her while his material fortune was in jeopardy. + +The colonel cherished her on his breast, with one hand regularly patting +her shoulder: a form of consolation that cures the disposition to sob as +quickly as would the drip of water. + +Cecilia looked up into his eyes, and said, 'We will not be parted, papa, +ever.' + +The colonel said absently: 'No'; and, surprised at himself, added: 'No, +certainly not. How can we be parted? You won't run away from me? No, +you know too well I can't resist you. I appeal to your judgement, and I +must accept what you decide. But he is immoral. I repeat that. He has +no roots. We shall discover it before it's too late, I hope.' + +Cecilia gazed away, breathing through tremulous dilating nostrils. + +'One night after dinner at Steynham,' pursued the colonel, 'Nevil was +rattling against the Press, with Stukely Culbrett to prime him: and he +said editors of papers were growing to be like priests, and as timid as +priests, and arrogant: and for one thing, it was because they supposed +themselves to be guardians of the national morality. I forget exactly +what the matter was: but he sneered at priests and morality.' + +A smile wove round Cecilia's lips, and in her towering superiority to one +who talked nonsense, she slipped out of maiden shame and said: 'Attack +Nevil for his political heresies and his wrath with the Press for not +printing him. The rest concerns his honour, where he is quite safe, and +all are who trust him.' + +'If you find out you're wrong?' + +She shook her head. + +'But if you find out you're wrong about him,' her father reiterated +piteously, 'you won't tear me to strips to have him in spite of it?' + +'No, papa, not I. I will not.' + +'Well, that's something for me to hold fast to,' said Colonel Halkett, +sighing. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII + +LORD AVONLEY + +Mr. Everard Romfrey was now, by consent, Lord Avonley, mounted on his +direct heirship and riding hard at the earldom. His elevation occurred +at a period of life that would have been a season of decay with most men; +but the prolonged and lusty Autumn of the veteran took new fires from a +tangible object to live for. His brother Craven's death had slightly +stupefied, and it had grieved him: it seemed to him peculiarly pathetic; +for as he never calculated on the happening of mortal accidents to men of +sound constitution, the circumstance imparted a curious shake to his own +solidity. It was like the quaking of earth, which tries the balance of +the strongest. If he had not been raised to so splendid a survey of the +actual world, he might have been led to think of the imaginary, where +perchance a man may meet his old dogs and a few other favourites, in a +dim perpetual twilight. Thither at all events Craven had gone, and +goodnight to him! The earl was a rapidly lapsing invalid. There could +be no doubt that Everard was to be the head of his House. + +Outwardly he was the same tolerant gentleman who put aside the poor fools +of the world to walk undisturbed by them in the paths he had chosen: in +this aspect he knew himself: nor was the change so great within him as to +make him cognizant of a change. It was only a secret turn in the bent of +the mind, imperceptible as the touch of the cunning artist's brush on a +finished portrait, which will alter the expression without discomposing a +feature, so that you cannot say it is another face, yet it is not the +former one. His habits were invariable, as were his meditations. +He thought less of Romfrey Castle than of his dogs and his devices for +trapping vermin; his interest in birds and beasts and herbs, 'what +ninnies call Nature in books,' to quote him, was undiminished; +imagination he had none to clap wings to his head and be off with it. +He betrayed as little as he felt that the coming Earl of Romfrey was +different from the cadet of the family. + +A novel sharpness in the 'Stop that,' with which he crushed Beauchamp's +affectedly gentle and unusually roundabout opening of the vexed Shrapnel +question, rang like a shot in the room at Steynham, and breathed a +different spirit from his customary easy pugnacity that welcomed and +lured on an adversary to wild outhitting. Some sorrowful preoccupation +is, however, to be expected in the man who has lost a brother, and some +degree of irritability at the intrusion of past disputes. He chose to +repeat a similar brief forbidding of the subject before they started +together for the scene of the accident and Romfrey Castle. No notice was +taken of Beauchamp's remark, that he consented to go though his duty lay +elsewhere. Beauchamp had not the faculty of reading inside men, or he +would have apprehended that his uncle was engaged in silently heaping +aggravations to shoot forth one fine day a thundering and astonishing +counterstroke. + +He should have known his uncle Everard better. + +In this respect he seemed to have no memory. But who has much that has +given up his brains for a lodging to a single idea? It is at once a +devouring dragon, and an intractable steamforce; it is a tyrant that +has eaten up a senate, and a prophet with a message. Inspired of +solitariness and gigantic size, it claims divine origin. The world +can have no peace for it. + +Cecilia had not pleased him; none had. He did not bear in mind that the +sight of Dr. Shrapnel sick and weak, which constantly reanimated his +feelings of pity and of wrath, was not given to the others of whom he +demanded a corresponding energy of just indignation and sympathy. The +sense that he was left unaided to the task of bending his tough uncle, +combined with his appreciation of the righteousness of the task to +embitter him and set him on a pedestal, from which he descended at every +sign of an opportunity for striking, and to which he retired continually +baffled and wrathful, in isolation. + +Then ensued the dreadful division in his conception of his powers: for he +who alone saw the just and right thing to do, was incapable of compelling +it to be done. Lay on to his uncle as he would, that wrestler shook him +off. And here was one man whom he could not move! How move a nation? + +There came on him a thirst for the haranguing of crowds. They agree with +you or they disagree; exciting you to activity in either case. They do +not interpose cold Tory exclusiveness and inaccessibility. You have them +in the rough; you have nature in them, and all that is hopeful in nature. +You drive at, over, and through them, for their good; you plough them. +You sow them too. Some of them perceive that it is for their good, +and what if they be a minority? Ghastly as a minority is in an Election, +in a lifelong struggle it is refreshing and encouraging. The young world +and its triumph is with the minority. Oh to be speaking! Condemned to +silence beside his uncle, Beauchamp chafed for a loosed tongue and an +audience tossing like the well-whipped ocean, or open as the smooth sea- +surface to the marks of the breeze. Let them be hostile or amicable, he +wanted an audience as hotly as the humped Richard a horse. + +At Romfrey Castle he fell upon an audience that became transformed into a +swarm of chatterers, advisers, and reprovers the instant his lips were +parted. The ladies of the family declared his pursuit of the Apology to +be worse and vainer than his politics. The gentlemen said the same, but +they were not so outspoken to him personally, and indulged in asides, +with quotations of some of his uncle Everard's recent observations +concerning him: as for example, 'Politically he's a mad harlequin jumping +his tights and spangles when nobody asks him to jump; and in private life +he's a mad dentist poking his tongs at my sound tooth:' a highly +ludicrous image of the persistent fellow, and a reminder of situations in +Moliere, as it was acted by Cecil Baskelett and Lord Welshpool. +Beauchamp had to a certain extent restored himself to favour with his +uncle Everard by offering a fair suggestion on the fatal field to account +for the accident, after the latter had taken measurements and examined +the place in perplexity. His elucidation of the puzzle was referred to +by Lord Avonley at Romfrey, and finally accepted as possible and this +from a wiseacre who went quacking about the county, expecting to upset +the order of things in England! Such a mixing of sense and nonsense in a +fellow's noddle was never before met with, Lord Avonley said. Cecil took +the hint. He had been unworried by Beauchamp: Dr. Shrapnel had not been +mentioned: and it delighted Cecil to let it be known that he thought old +Nevil had some good notions, particularly as to the duties of the +aristocracy--that first war-cry of his when a midshipman. News of +another fatal accident in the hunting-field confirmed Cecil's higher +opinion of his cousin. On the day of Craven's funeral they heard at +Romfrey that Mr. Wardour-Devereux had been killed by a fall from his +horse. Two English gentlemen despatched by the same agency within a +fortnight! 'He smoked,' Lord Avonley said of the second departure, to +allay some perturbation in the bosoms of the ladies who had ceased to +ride, by accounting for this particular mishap in the most reassuring +fashion. Cecil's immediate reflection was that the unfortunate smoker +had left a rich widow. Far behind in the race for Miss Halkett, and +uncertain of a settled advantage in his other rivalry with Beauchamp, he +fixed his mind on the widow, and as Beauchamp did not stand in his way, +but on the contrary might help him--for she, like the generality of +women, admired Nevil Beauchamp in spite of her feminine good sense and +conservatism--Cecil began to regard the man he felt less opposed to with +some recognition of his merits. The two nephews accompanied Lord Avonley +to London, and slept at his town-house. + +They breakfasted together the next morning on friendly terms. Half an +hour afterward there was an explosion; uncle and nephews were scattered +fragments: and if Cecil was the first to return to cohesion with his lord +and chief, it was, he protested energetically, common policy in a man in +his position to do so: all that he looked for being a decent pension and +a share in the use of the town-house. Old Nevil, he related, began +cross-examining him and entangling him with the cunning of the deuce, in +my lord's presence, and having got him to make an admission, old Nevil +flung it at the baron, and even crossed him and stood before him when he +was walking out of the room. A furious wrangle took place. Nevil and +the baron gave it to one another unmercifully. The end of it was that +all three flew apart, for Cecil confessed to having a temper, and in +contempt of him for the admission wrung out of him, Lord Avonley had +pricked it. My lord went down to Steynham, Beauchamp to Holdesbury, and +Captain Baskelett to his quarters; whence in a few days he repaired +penitently to my lord--the most placable of men when a full submission +was offered to him. + +Beauchamp did nothing of the kind. He wrote a letter to Steynham in the +form of an ultimatum. + +This egregious letter was handed to Rosamund for a proof of her darling's +lunacy. She in conversation with Stukely Culbrett unhesitatingly accused +Cecil of plotting his cousin's ruin. + +Mr. Culbrett thought it possible that Cecil had been a little more than +humorous in the part he had played in the dispute, and spoke to him. + +Then it came out that Lord Avonley had also delivered an ultimatum to +Beauchamp. + +Time enough had gone by for Cecil to forget his ruffling, and relish the +baron's grandly comic spirit in appropriating that big word Apology, and +demanding it from Beauchamp on behalf of the lady ruling his household. +What could be funnier than the knocking of Beauchamp's blunderbuss out of +his hands, and pointing the muzzle at him! + +Cecil dramatized the fun to amuse Mr. Culbrett. Apparently Beauchamp had +been staggered on hearing himself asked for the definite article he +claimed. He had made a point of speaking of the Apology. Lord Avonley +did likewise. And each professed to exact it for a deeply aggrieved +person: each put it on the ground that it involved the other's rightful +ownership of the title of gentleman. + +"'An apology to the amiable and virtuous Mistress Culling?" says old +Nevil: "an apology? what for?"--"For unbecoming and insolent behaviour," +says my lord.' + +'I am that lady's friend,' Stukely warned Captain Baskelett. 'Don't let +us have a third apology in the field.' + +'Perfectly true; you are her friend, and you know what a friend of mine +she is,' rejoined Cecil. 'I could swear "that lady" flings the whole +affair at me. I give you my word, old Nevil and I were on a capital +footing before he and the baron broke up. I praised him for tickling the +aristocracy. I backed him heartily; I do now; I'll do it in Parliament. +I know a case of a noble lord, a General in the army, and he received an +intimation that he might as well attend the Prussian cavalry manoeuvres +last Autumn on the Lower Rhine or in Silesia--no matter where. He +couldn't go: he was engaged to shoot birds! I give you my word. Now +there I see old Nevil 's right. It 's as well we should know something +about the Prussian and Austrian cavalry, and if our aristocracy won't go +abroad to study cavalry, who is to? no class in the kingdom understands +horses as they do. My opinion is, they're asleep. Nevil should have +stuck to that, instead of trying to galvanize the country and turning +against his class. But fancy old Nevil asked for the Apology! It +petrified him. "I've told her nothing but the truth," says Nevil. +"Telling the truth to women is an impertinence," says my lord. Nevil +swore he'd have a revolution in the country before he apologized.' + +Mr. Culbrett smiled at the absurdity of the change of positions between +Beauchamp and his uncle Everard, which reminded him somewhat of the old +story of the highwayman innkeeper and the market farmer who had been +thoughtful enough to recharge his pistols after quitting the inn at +midnight. A practical 'tu quoque' is astonishingly laughable, and backed +by a high figure and manner it had the flavour of triumphant repartee. +Lord Avonley did not speak of it as a retort upon Nevil, though he +reiterated the word Apology amusingly. He put it as due to the lady +governing his household; and his ultimatum was, that the Apology should +be delivered in terms to satisfy him within three months of the date of +the demand for it: otherwise blank; but the shadowy index pointed to the +destitution of Nevil Beauchamp. + +No stroke of retributive misfortune could have been severer to Rosamund +than to be thrust forward as the object of humiliation for the man she +loved. She saw at a glance how much more likely it was (remote as the +possibility appeared) that her lord would perform the act of penitence +than her beloved Nevil. And she had no occasion to ask herself why. +Lord Avonley had done wrong, and Nevil had not. It was inconceivable +that Nevil should apologize to her. It was horrible to picture the act +in her mind. She was a very rational woman, quite a woman of the world, +yet such was her situation between these two men that the childish tale +of a close and consecutive punishment for sins, down to our little +naughtinesses and naturalnesses, enslaved her intelligence, and amazed +her with the example made of her, as it were to prove the tale true of +our being surely hauled back like domestic animals learning the habits of +good society, to the rueful contemplation of certain of our deeds, +however wildly we appeal to nature to stand up for them. + +But is it so with all of us? No, thought Rosamund, sinking dejectedly +from a recognition of the heavenliness of the justice which lashed her +and Nevil, and did not scourge Cecil Baskelett. That fine eye for +celestially directed consequences is ever haunted by shadows of unfaith +likely to obscure it completely when chastisement is not seen to fall on +the person whose wickedness is evident to us. It has been established +that we do not wax diviner by dragging down the Gods to our level. + +Rosamund knew Lord Avonley too well to harass him with further petitions +and explanations. Equally vain was it to attempt to persuade Beauchamp. +He made use of the house in London, where he met his uncle occasionally, +and he called at Steynham for money, that he could have obtained upon the +one condition, which was no sooner mentioned than fiery words flew in the +room, and the two separated. The leaden look in Beauchamp, noticed by +Cecilia Halkett in their latest interview, was deepening, and was of +itself a displeasure to Lord Avonley, who liked flourishing faces, and +said: 'That fellow's getting the look of a sweating smith': presumptively +in the act of heating his poker at the furnace to stir the country. + +It now became an offence to him that Beauchamp should continue doing this +in the speeches and lectures he was reported to be delivering; he stamped +his foot at the sight of his nephew's name in the daily journals; a novel +sentiment of social indignation was expressed by his crying out, at the +next request for money: 'Money to prime you to turn the country into a +rat-hole? Not a square inch of Pennsylvanian paper-bonds! What right +have you to be lecturing and orationing? You've no knowledge. All +you've got is your instincts, and that you show in your readiness to +exhibit them like a monkey. You ought to be turned inside out on your +own stage. You've lumped your brains on a point or two about Land, and +Commonland, and the Suffrage, and you pound away upon them, as if you had +the key of the difficulty. It's the Scotchman's metaphysics; you know +nothing clear, and your working-classes know nothing at all; and you blow +them with wind like an over-stuffed cow. What you're driving at is to +get hob-nail boots to dance on our heads. Stukely says you should be off +over to Ireland. There you'd swim in your element, and have speechifying +from instinct, and howling and pummelling too, enough to last you out. +I 'll hand you money for that expedition. You're one above the number +wanted here. You've a look of bad powder fit only to flash in the pan. +I saved you from the post of public donkey, by keeping you out of +Parliament. You're braying and kicking your worst for it still at these +meetings of yours. A naval officer preaching about Republicanism and +parcelling out the Land!' + +Beauchamp replied quietly, 'The lectures I read are Dr. Shrapnel's. When +I speak I have his knowledge to back my deficiencies. He is too ill to +work, and I consider it my duty to do as much of his work as I can +undertake.' + +'Ha! You're the old infidel's Amen clerk. It would rather astonish +orthodox congregations to see clerks in our churches getting into the +pulpit to read the sermon for sick clergymen,' said Lord Avonley. His +countenance furrowed. 'I'll pay that bill,' he added. + +'Pay down half a million!' thundered Beauchamp; and dropping his voice, +'or go to him.' + +'You remind me,' his uncle observed. 'I recommend you to ring that bell, +and have Mrs. Culling here.' + +'If she comes she will hear what I think of her.' + +'Then, out of the house!' + +'Very well, sir. You decline to supply me with money?' + +'I do.' + +'I must have it!' + +'I dare say. Money's a chain-cable for holding men to their senses.' + +'I ask you, my lord, how I am to carry on Holdesbury?' + +'Give it up.' + +'I shall have to,' said Beauchamp, striving to be prudent. + +'There isn't a doubt of it,' said his uncle, upon a series of nods +diminishing in their depth until his head assumed a droll interrogative +fixity, with an air of 'What next?' + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX + +BETWEEN BEAUCHAMP AND CECILIA + +Beauchamp quitted the house without answering as to what next, and +without seeing Rosamund. + +In the matter of money, as of his physical health, he wanted to do too +much at once; he had spent largely of both in his efforts to repair the +injury done to Dr. Shrapnel. He was overworked, anxious, restless, +craving for a holiday somewhere in France, possibly; he was all but +leaping on board the boat at times, and, unwilling to leave his dear old +friend who clung to him, he stayed, keeping his impulses below the tide- +mark which leads to action, but where they do not yield peace of spirit. +The tone of Renee's letters filled him with misgivings. She wrote word +that she had seen M. d'Henriel for the first time since his return from +Italy, and he was much changed, and inclined to thank Roland for the +lesson he had received from him at the sword's point. And next she urged +Beauchamp to marry, so that he and she might meet, as if she felt a +necessity for it. 'I shall love your wife; teach her to think amiably of +me,' she said. And her letter contained womanly sympathy for him in his +battle with his uncle. Beauchamp thought of his experiences of Cecilia's +comparative coldness. He replied that there was no prospect of his +marrying; he wished there were one of meeting! He forbore from writing +too fervently, but he alluded to happy days in Normandy, and proposed to +renew them if she would say she had need of him. He entreated her to +deal with him frankly; he reminded her that she must constantly look to +him, as she had vowed she would, when in any kind of trouble; and he +declared to her that he was unchanged. He meant, of an unchanged +disposition to shield and serve her; but the review of her situation, and +his knowledge of her quick blood, wrought him to some jealous lover's +throbs, which led him to impress his unchangeableness upon her, to bind +her to that standard. + +She declined his visit: not now; 'not yet': and for that he presumed to +chide her, half-sincerely. As far as he knew he stood against everybody +save his old friend and Renee; and she certainly would have refreshed his +heart for a day. In writing, however, he had an ominous vision of the +morrow to the day; and, both for her sake and his own, he was not +unrejoiced to hear that she was engaged day and night in nursing her +husband. Pursuing his vision of the morrow of an unreproachful day with +Renee, the madness of taking her to himself, should she surrender at last +to a third persuasion, struck him sharply, now that he and his uncle were +foot to foot in downright conflict, and money was the question. He had +not much remaining of his inheritance--about fifteen hundred pounds. +He would have to vacate Holdesbury and his uncle's town-house in a month. +Let his passion be never so desperate, for a beggared man to think of +running away with a wife, or of marrying one, the folly is as big as the +worldly offence: no justification is to be imagined. Nay, and there is +no justification for the breach of a moral law. Beauchamp owned it, +and felt that Renee's resistance to him in Normandy placed her above him. +He remembered a saying of his moralist: 'We who interpret things heavenly +by things earthly must not hope to juggle with them for our pleasures, +and can look to no absolution of evil acts.' The school was a hard one. +It denied him holidays; it cut him off from dreams. It ran him in heavy +harness on a rough highroad, allowing no turnings to right or left, no +wayside croppings; with the simple permission to him that he should daily +get thoroughly tired. And what was it Jenny Denham had said on the +election day? 'Does incessant battling keep the intellect clear?' + +His mind was clear enough to put the case, that either he beheld a +tremendous magnification of things, or else that other men did not attach +common importance to them; and he decided that the latter was the fact. + +An incessant struggle of one man with the world, which position usually +ranks his relatives against him, does not conduce to soundness of +judgement. He may nevertheless be right in considering that he is right +in the main. The world in motion is not so wise that it can pretend to +silence the outcry of an ordinarily generous heart even--the very infant +of antagonism to its methods and establishments. It is not so difficult +to be right against the world when the heart is really active; but the +world is our book of humanity, and before insisting that his handwriting +shall occupy the next blank page of it, the noble rebel is bound for the +sake of his aim to ask himself how much of a giant he is, lest he fall +like a blot on the page, instead of inscribing intelligible characters +there. + +Moreover, his relatives are present to assure him that he did not jump +out of Jupiter's head or come of the doctor. They hang on him like an +ill-conditioned prickly garment; and if he complains of the irritation +they cause him, they one and all denounce his irritable skin. + +Fretted by his relatives he cannot be much of a giant. + +Beauchamp looked from Dr. Shrapnel in his invalid's chair to his uncle +Everard breathing robustly, and mixed his uncle's errors with those of +the world which honoured and upheld him. His remainder of equability +departed; his impatience increased. His appetite for work at Dr. +Shrapnel's writing-desk was voracious. He was ready for any labour, the +transcribing of papers, writing from dictation, whatsoever was of service +to Lord Avonley's victim: and he was not like the Spartan boy with the +wolf at his vitals; he betrayed it in the hue his uncle Everard detested, +in a visible nervousness, and indulgence in fits of scorn. Sharp +epigrams and notes of irony provoked his laughter more than fun. He +seemed to acquiesce in some of the current contemporary despair of our +immoveable England, though he winced at a satire on his country, and +attempted to show that the dull dominant class of moneymakers was the +ruin of her. Wherever he stood to represent Dr. Shrapnel, as against Mr. +Grancey Lespel on account of the Itchincope encroachments, he left a +sting that spread the rumour of his having become not only a black torch +of Radicalism--our modern provincial estateholders and their wives bestow +that reputation lightly--but a gentleman with the polish scratched off +him in parts. And he, though individually he did not understand how +there was to be game in the land if game-preserving was abolished, signed +his name R. C. S. NEVIL BEAUCHAMP for Dr. SHRAPNEL, in the +communications directed to solicitors of the persecutors of poachers. + +His behaviour to Grancey Lespel was eclipsed by his treatment of Captain +Baskelett. Cecil had ample reason to suppose his cousin to be friendly +with him. He himself had forgotten Dr. Shrapnel, and all other +dissensions, in a supremely Christian spirit. He paid his cousin the +compliment to think that he had done likewise. At Romfrey and in London +he had spoken to Nevil of his designs upon the widow: Nevil said nothing +against it and it was under Mrs. Wardour-Devereux's eyes, and before a +man named Lydiard, that, never calling to him to put him on his guard, +Nevil fell foul of him with every capital charge that can be brought +against a gentleman, and did so abuse, worry, and disgrace him as to +reduce him to quit the house to avoid the scandal of a resort to a +gentleman's last appeal in vindication of his character. Mrs. Devereux +spoke of the terrible scene to Cecilia, and Lydiard to Miss Denham. The +injured person communicated it to Lord Avonley, who told Colonel Halkett +emphatically that his nephew Cecil deserved well of him in having kept +command of his temper out of consideration for the family. There was a +general murmur of the family over this incident. The widow was rich, and +it ranked among the unwritten crimes against blood for one offshoot of a +great house wantonly to thwart another in the wooing of her by humbling +him in her presence, doing his utmost to expose him as a schemer, a +culprit, and a poltroon. + +Could it be that Beauchamp had reserved his wrath with his cousin to +avenge Dr. Shrapnel upon him signally? Miss Denham feared her guardian +was the cause. Lydiard was indefinitely of her opinion. The idea struck +Cecilia Halkett, and as an example of Beauchamp's tenacity of purpose and +sureness of aim it fascinated her. But Mrs. Wardour-Devereux did not +appear to share it. She objected to Beauchamp's intemperateness and +unsparingness, as if she was for conveying a sisterly warning to Cecilia; +and that being off her mind, she added, smiling a little and colouring a +little: 'We learn only from men what men are.' How the scene commenced +and whether it was provoked, she failed to recollect. She described +Beauchamp as very self-contained in manner throughout his tongue was the +scorpion. Cecilia fancied he must have resembled his uncle Everard. + +Cecilia was conquered, but unclaimed. While supporting and approving him +in her heart she was dreading to receive some new problem of his conduct; +and still while she blamed him for not seeking an interview with her, she +liked him for this instance of delicacy in the present state of his +relations with Lord Avonley. + +A problem of her own conduct disturbed the young lady's clear conception +of herself: and this was a ruffling of unfaithfulness in her love of +Beauchamp, that was betrayed to her by her forgetfulness of him whenever +she chanced to be with Seymour Austin. In Mr. Austin's company she +recovered her forfeited repose, her poetry of life, her image of the +independent Cecilia throned above our dust of battle, gazing on broad +heaven. She carried the feeling so far that Blackburn Tuckham's +enthusiasm for Mr. Austin gave him grace in her sight, and praise of her +father's favourite from Mr. Austin's mouth made him welcome to her. The +image of that grave capable head, dusty-grey about the temples, and the +darkly sanguine face of the tried man, which was that of a seasoned +warrior and inspired full trust in him, with his vivid look, his personal +distinction, his plain devotion to the country's business, and the +domestic solitude he lived in, admired, esteemed, loved perhaps, but +unpartnered, was often her refuge and haven from tempestuous Beauchamp. +She could see in vision the pride of Seymour Austin's mate. It flushed +her reflectively. Conquered but not claimed, Cecilia was like the frozen +earth insensibly moving round to sunshine in nature, with one white +flower in her breast as innocent a sign of strong sweet blood as a woman +may wear. She ascribed to that fair mate of Seymour Austin's many lofty +charms of womanhood; above all, stateliness: her especial dream of an +attainable superlative beauty in women. And supposing that lady to be +accused of the fickle breaking of another love, who walked beside him, +matched with his calm heart and one with him in counsel, would the +accusation be repeated by them that beheld her husband? might it not +rather be said that she had not deviated, but had only stepped higher? +She chose no youth, no glistener, no idler: it was her soul striving +upward to air like a seed in the earth that raised her to him: and she +could say to the man once enchaining her: Friend, by the good you taught +me I was led to this! + +Cecilia's reveries fled like columns of mist before the gale when tidings +reached her of a positive rupture between Lord Avonley and Nevil +Beauchamp, and of the mandate to him to quit possession of Holdesbury and +the London house within a certain number of days, because of his refusal +to utter an apology to Mrs. Culling. Angrily on his behalf she prepared +to humble herself to him. Louise Wardour-Devereux brought them to a +meeting, at which Cecilia, with her heart in her hand, was icy. Mr. +Lydiard, prompted by Mrs. Devereux, gave him better reasons for her +singular coldness than Cecilia could give to herself, and some time +afterward Beauchamp went to Mount Laurels, where Colonel Halkett mounted +guard over his daughter, and behaved, to her thinking, cruelly. 'Now you +have ruined yourself there's nothing ahead for you but to go to the +Admiralty and apply for a ship,' he said, sugaring the unkindness with +the remark that the country would be the gainer. He let fly a side-shot +at London men calling themselves military men who sought to repair their +fortunes by chasing wealthy widows, and complimented Beauchamp: 'You're +not one of that sort.' + +Cecilia looked at Beauchamp stedfastly. 'Speak,' said the look. + +But he, though not blind, was keenly wounded. + +'Money I must have,' he said, half to the colonel, half to himself. + +Colonel Halkett shrugged. Cecilia waited for a directness in Beauchamp's +eyes. + +Her father was too wary to leave them. + +Cecilia's intuition told her that by leading to a discussion of politics, +and adopting Beauchamp's views, she could kindle him. Why did she +refrain? It was that the conquered young lady was a captive, not an +ally. To touch the subject in cold blood, voluntarily to launch on those +vexed waters, as if his cause were her heart's, as much as her heart was +the man's, she felt to be impossible. He at the same time felt that the +heiress, endowing him with money to speed the good cause, should be his +match in ardour for it, otherwise he was but a common adventurer, winning +and despoiling an heiress. + +They met in London. Beauchamp had not vacated either Holdesbury or the +town-house; he was defying his uncle Everard, and Cecilia thought with +him that it was a wise temerity. She thought with him passively +altogether. On this occasion she had not to wait for directness in his +eyes; she had to parry it. They were at a dinner-party at Lady Elsea's, +generally the last place for seeing Lord Palmet, but he was present, and +arranged things neatly for them, telling Beauchamp that he acted under +Mrs. Wardour-Devereux's orders. Never was an opportunity, more +propitious for a desperate lover. Had it been Renee next him, no petty +worldly scruples of honour would have held him back. And if Cecilia had +spoken feelingly of Dr. Shrapnel, or had she simulated a thoughtful +interest in his pursuits, his hesitations would have vanished. As it +was, he dared to look what he did not permit himself to speak. She was +nobly lovely, and the palpable envy of men around cried fool at his +delays. Beggar and heiress he said in his heart, to vitalize the three- +parts fiction of the point of honour which Cecilia's beauty was fast +submerging. When she was leaving he named a day for calling to see her. +Colonel Halkett stood by, and she answered, 'Come.' + +Beauchamp kept the appointment. Cecilia was absent. + +He was unaware that her father had taken her to old Mrs. Beauchamp's +death-bed. Her absence, after she had said, 'Come,' appeared a +confirmation of her glacial manner when they met at the house of Mrs. +Wardour-Devereux; and he charged her with waywardness. A wound of the +same kind that we are inflicting is about the severest we can feel. + +Beauchamp received intelligence of his venerable great-aunt's death from +Blackburn Tuckham, and after the funeral he was informed that eighty +thousand pounds had been bequeathed to him: a goodly sum of money for a +gentleman recently beggared; yet, as the political enthusiast could not +help reckoning (apart from a fervent sentiment of gratitude toward his +benefactress), scarcely enough to do much more than start and push for +three or more years a commanding daily newspaper, devoted to Radical +interests, and to be entitled THE DAWN. + +True, he might now conscientiously approach the heiress, take her hand +with an open countenance, and retain it. + +Could he do so quite conscientiously? The point of honour had been +centred in his condition of beggary. Something still was in his way. A +quick spring of his blood for air, motion, excitement, holiday freedom, +sent his thoughts travelling whither they always shot away when his +redoubtable natural temper broke loose. + +In the case of any other woman than Cecilia Halkett he would not have +been obstructed by the minor consideration as to whether he was wholly +heart-free to ask her in marriage that instant; for there was no +hindrance, and she was beautiful. She was exceedingly beautiful; and she +was an unequalled heiress. She would be able with her wealth to float +his newspaper, THE DAWN, so desired of Dr. Shrapnel!--the best +restorative that could be applied to him! Every temptation came +supplicating him to take the step which indeed he wished for: one feeling +opposed. He really respected Cecilia: it is not too much to say that he +worshipped her with the devout worship rendered to the ideal Englishwoman +by the heart of the nation. For him she was purity, charity, the keeper +of the keys of whatsoever is held precious by men; she was a midway +saint, a light between day and darkness, in whom the spirit in the flesh +shone like the growing star amid thin sanguine colour, the sweeter, the +brighter, the more translucent the longer known. And if the image will +allow it, the nearer down to him the holier she seemed. + +How offer himself when he was not perfectly certain that he was worthy of +her? + +Some jugglery was played by the adept male heart in these later +hesitations. Up to the extent of his knowledge of himself, the man was +fairly sincere. Passion would have sped him to Cecilia, but passion is +not invariably love; and we know what it can be. + +The glance he cast over the water at Normandy was withdrawn. He went to +Bevisham to consult with Dr. Shrapnel about the starting of a weekly +journal, instead of a daily, and a name for it--a serious question: for +though it is oftener weekly than daily that the dawn is visible in +England, titles must not invite the public jest; and the glorious project +of the daily DAWN was prudently abandoned for by-and-by. He thought +himself rich enough to put a Radical champion weekly in the field and +this matter, excepting the title, was arranged in Bevisham. Thence he +proceeded to Holdesbury, where he heard that the house, grounds, and farm +were let to a tenant preparing to enter. Indifferent to the blow, he +kept an engagement to deliver a speech at the great manufacturing town of +Gunningham, and then went to London, visiting his uncle's town-house for +recent letters. Not one was from Renee: she had not written for six +weeks, not once for his thrice! A letter from Cecil Baskelett informed +him that 'my lord' had placed the town-house at his disposal. Returning +to dress for dinner on a thick and murky evening of February, Beauchamp +encountered his cousin on the steps. He said to Cecil, 'I sleep here to- +night: I leave the house to you tomorrow.' + +Cecil struck out his underjaw to reply: 'Oh! good. You sleep here to- +night. You are a fortunate man. I congratulate you. I shall not +disturb you. I have just entered on my occupation of the house. I have +my key. Allow me to recommend you to go straight to the drawing-room. +And I may inform you that the Earl of Romfrey is at the point of death. +My lord is at the castle.' + +Cecil accompanied his descent of the steps with the humming of an opera +melody: Beauchamp tripped into the hall-passage. A young maid-servant +held the door open, and she accosted him: 'If you please, there is a lady +up-stairs in the drawing-room; she speaks foreign English, sir.' + +Beauchamp asked if the lady was alone, and not waiting for the answer, +though he listened while writing, and heard that she was heavily veiled, +he tore a strip from his notebook, and carefully traced half-a-dozen +telegraphic words to Mrs. Culling at Steynham. His rarely failing +promptness, which was like an inspiration, to conceive and execute +measures for averting peril, set him on the thought of possibly +counteracting his cousin Cecil's malignant tongue by means of a message +to Rosamund, summoning her by telegraph to come to town by the next train +that night. He despatched the old woman keeping the house, as trustier +than the young one, to the nearest office, and went up to the drawing- +room, with a quick thumping heart that was nevertheless as little +apprehensive of an especial trial and danger as if he had done nothing at +all to obviate it. Indeed he forgot that he had done anything when he +turned the handle of the drawing-room door. + + + + +CHAPTER XL + +A TRIAL OF HIM + +A low-burning lamp and fire cast a narrow ring on the shadows of the +dusky London room. One of the window-blinds was drawn up. Beauchamp +discerned a shape at that window, and the fear seized him that it might +be Madame d'Auffray with evil news of Renee: but it was Renee's name he +called. She rose from her chair, saying, 'I!' + +She was trembling. + +Beauchamp asked her whisperingly if she had come alone. + +'Alone; without even a maid,' she murmured. + +He pulled down the blind of the window exposing them to the square, and +led her into the light to see her face. + +The dimness of light annoyed him, and the miserable reception of her; +this English weather, and the gloomy house! And how long had she been +waiting for him? and what was the mystery? Renee in England seemed +magical; yet it was nothing stranger than an old dream realized. He +wound up the lamp, holding her still with one hand. She was woefully +pale; scarcely able to bear the increase of light. + +'It is I who come to you': she was half audible. + +'This time!' said he. 'You have been suffering?' + +'No.' + +Her tone was brief; not reassuring. + +'You came straight to me?' + +'Without a deviation that I know of.' + +'From Tourdestelle?' + +'You have not forgotten Tourdestelle, Nevil?' + +The memory of it quickened his rapture in reading her features. It was +his first love, his enchantress, who was here: and how? Conjectures shot +through him like lightnings in the dark. + +Irrationally, at a moment when reason stood in awe, he fancied it must be +that her husband was dead. He forced himself to think it, and could have +smiled at the hurry of her coming, one, without even a maid: and deeper +down in him the devouring question burned which dreaded the answer. + +But of old, in Normandy, she had pledged herself to join him with no +delay when free, if ever free! + +So now she was free. + +One side of him glowed in illumination; the other was black as Winter +night; but light subdues darkness; and in a situation like Beauchamp's, +the blood is livelier than the prophetic mind. + +'Why did you tell me to marry? What did that mean?' said he. 'Did you +wish me to be the one in chains? And you have come quite alone!--you +will give me an account of everything presently:--You are here! in +England! and what a welcome for you! You are cold.' + +'I am warmly clad,' said Renee, suffering her hand to be drawn to his +breast at her arm's-length, not bending with it. + +Alive to his own indirectness, he was conscious at once of the slight +sign of reservation, and said: 'Tell me . . .' and swerved sheer away +from his question: 'how is Madame d'Auffray?' + +'Agnes? I left her at Tourdestelle,' said Renee. + +'And Roland? He never writes to me.' + +'Neither he nor I write much. He is at the military camp of instruction +in the North.' + +'He will run over to us.' + +'Do not expect it.' + +'Why not?' + +Renee sighed. 'We shall have to live longer than I look for . . .' +she stopped. 'Why do you ask me why not? He is fond of us both, and +sorry for us; but have you forgotten Roland that morning on the +Adriatic?' + +Beauchamp pressed her hand. The stroke of Then and Now rang in his +breast like a bell instead of a bounding heart. Something had stunned +his heart. He had no clear central feeling; he tried to gather it from +her touch, from his joy in beholding her and sitting with her alone, from +the grace of her figure, the wild sweetness of her eyes, and the beloved +foreign lips bewitching him with their exquisite French and perfection of +speech. + +His nature was too prompt in responding to such a call on it for resolute +warmth. + +'If I had been firmer then, or you one year older!' he said. + +'That girl in Venice had no courage,' said Renee. + +She raised her head and looked about the room. + +Her instinct of love sounded her lover through, and felt the deficiency +or the contrariety in him, as surely as musical ears are pained by a +discord that they require no touchstone to detect. Passion has the +sensitiveness of fever, and is as cruelly chilled by a tepid air. + +'Yes, a London house after Venice and Normandy!' said Beauchamp, +following her look. + +'Sicily: do not omit Syracuse; you were in your naval uniform: Normandy +was our third meeting,' said Renee. 'This is the fourth. I should have +reckoned that.' + +'Why? Superstitiously?' + +'We cannot be entirely wise when we have staked our fate. Sailors are +credulous: you know them. Women are like them when they embark . . . +Three chances! Who can boast of so many, and expect one more! Will you +take me to my hotel, Nevil?' + +The fiction of her being free could not be sustained. + +'Take you and leave you? I am absolutely at your command. But leave +you? You are alone: and you have told me nothing.' + +What was there to tell? The desperate act was apparent, and told all. + +Renee's dark eyelashes lifted on him, and dropped. + +'Then things are as I left them in Normandy?' said he. + +She replied: 'Almost.' + +He quivered at the solitary word; for his conscience was on edge. It ran +the shrewdest irony through him, inexplicably. 'Almost': that is, 'with +this poor difference of one person, now finding herself worthless, +subtracted from the list; no other; it should be little to them as it is +little to you': or, reversing it, the substance of the word became +magnified and intensified by its humble slightness: 'Things are the same, +but for the jewel of the province, a lustre of France, lured hither to +her eclipse'--meanings various, indistinguishable, thrilling and piercing +sad as the half-tones humming round the note of a strung wire, which is a +blunt single note to the common ear. + +Beauchamp sprang to his feet and bent above her: 'You have come to me, +for the love of me, to give yourself to me, and for ever, for good, till +death? Speak, my beloved Renee.' + +Her eyes were raised to his: 'You see me here. It is for you to speak.' + +'I do. There's nothing I ask for now--if the step can't be retrieved.' + +'The step retrieved, my friend? There is no step backward in life.' + +'I am thinking of you, Renee.' + +'Yes, I know,' she answered hurriedly. + +'If we discover that the step is a wrong one?' he pursued: 'why is there +no step backward?' + +'I am talking of women,' said Renee. + +'Why not for women?' + +'Honourable women, I mean,' said Renee. + +Beauchamp inclined to forget his position in finding matter to contest. + +Yet it is beyond contest that there is no step backward in life. She +spoke well; better than he, and she won his deference by it. Not only +she spoke better: she was truer, distincter, braver: and a man ever on +the look-out for superior qualities, and ready to bow to them, could not +refuse her homage. With that a saving sense of power quitted him. + +'You wrote to me that you were unchanged, Nevil.' + +'I am.' + +'So, then, I came.' + +His rejoinder was the dumb one, commonly eloquent and satisfactory. + +Renee shut her eyes with a painful rigour of endurance. She opened them +to look at him steadily. + +The desperate act of her flight demanded immediate recognition from him +in simple language and a practical seconding of it. There was the test. + +'I cannot stay in this house, Nevil; take me away.' + +She named her hotel in her French English, and the sound of it penetrated +him with remorseful pity. It was for him, and of his doing, that she was +in an alien land and an outcast! + +'This house is wretched for you,' said he: 'and you must be hungry. Let +me . . .' + +'I cannot eat. I will ask you': she paused, drawing on her energies, and +keeping down the throbs of her heart: 'this: do you love me?' + +'I love you with all my heart and soul.' + +'As in Normandy?' + +'Yes.' + +'In Venice?' + +'As from the first, Renee! That I can swear.' + +'Oaths are foolish. I meant to ask you--my friend, there is no question +in my mind of any other woman: I see you love me: I am so used to +consider myself the vain and cowardly creature, and you the boldest and +faithfullest of men, that I could not abandon the habit if I would: I +started confiding in you, sure that I should come to land. But I have to +ask you: to me you are truth: I have no claim on my lover for anything +but the answer to this:--Am I a burden to you?' + +His brows flew up in furrows. He drew a heavy breath, for never had he +loved her more admiringly, and never on such equal terms. She was his +mate in love and daring at least. A sorrowful comparison struck him, of +a little boat sailing out to a vessel in deep seas and left to founder. + +Without knotting his mind to acknowledge or deny the burden, for he could +do neither, he stood silent, staring at her, not so much in weakness as +in positive mental division. No, would be false; and Yes, not less +false; and if the step was irretrievable, to say Yes would be to plunge a +dagger in her bosom; but No was a vain deceit involving a double wreck. +Assuredly a man standing against the world in a good cause, with a +runaway wife on his hands, carries a burden, however precious it be to +him. + +A smile of her lips, parted in an anguish of expectancy, went to death +over Renee's face. She looked at him tenderly. 'The truth,' she +murmured to herself, and her eyelids fell. + +'I am ready to bear anything,' said Beauchamp. 'I weigh what you ask me, +that is all. You a burden to me? But when you ask me, you make me turn +round and inquire how we stand before the world.' + +'The world does not stone men,' said Renee. + +'Can't I make you feel that I am not thinking of myself?' Beauchamp +stamped in his extreme perplexity. He was gagged; he could not possibly +talk to her, who had cast the die, of his later notions of morality and +the world's dues, fees, and claims on us. + +'No, friend, I am not complaining.' Renee put out her hand to him; with +compassionate irony feigning to have heard excuses. 'What right have I +to complain? I have not the sensation. I could not expect you to be +everlastingly the sentinel of love. Three times I rejected you! Now +that I have lost my father--Oh! poor father: I trifled with my lover, +I tricked him that my father might live in peace. He is dead. I wished +you to marry one of your own countrywomen, Nevil. You said it was +impossible; and I, with my snake at my heart, and a husband grateful +for nursing and whimpering to me for his youth like a beggar on the road, +I thought I owed you this debt of body and soul, to prove to you I have +some courage; and for myself, to reward myself for my long captivity and +misery with one year of life: and adieu to Roland my brother! adieu to +friends! adieu to France! Italy was our home. I dreamed of one year in +Italy; I fancied it might be two; more than that was unimaginable. +Prisoners of long date do not hope; they do not calculate: air, light, +they say; to breathe freely and drop down! They are reduced to the +instincts of the beasts. I thought I might give you happiness, pay part +of my debt to you. Are you remembering Count Henri? That paints what I +was! I could fly to that for a taste of life! a dance to death! And +again you ask: Why, if I loved you then, not turn to you in preference? +No, you have answered it yourself, Nevil;--on that day in the boat, when +generosity in a man so surprised me, it seemed a miracle to me; and it +was, in its divination. How I thank my dear brother Roland for saving me +the sight of you condemned to fight, against your conscience! He taught +poor M. d'Henriel his lesson. You, Nevil, were my teacher. And see how +it hangs: there was mercy for me in not having drawn down my father's +anger on my heart's beloved. He loved you. He pitied us. He reproached +himself. In his last days he was taught to suspect our story: perhaps +from Roland; perhaps I breathed it without speaking. He called heaven's +blessings on you. He spoke of you with tears, clutching my hand. He +made me feel he would have cried out: "If I were leaving her with Nevil +Beauchamp!" and "Beauchamp," I heard him murmuring once: "take down +Froissart": he named a chapter. It was curious: if he uttered my name +Renee, yours, "Nevil," soon followed. That was noticed by Roland. Hope +for us, he could not have had; as little as I! But we were his two: his +children. I buried him--I thought he would know our innocence, and now +pardon our love. I read your letters, from my name at the beginning, to +yours at the end, and from yours back to mine, and between the lines, for +any doubtful spot: and oh, rash! But I would not retrace the step for my +own sake. I am certain of your love for me, though . . .' She paused: +'Yes, I am certain of it. And if I am a burden to you?' + +'About as much as the air, which I can't do without since I began to +breathe it,' said Beauchamp, more clear-mindedly now that he supposed he +was addressing a mind, and with a peril to himself that escaped his +vigilance. There was a secret intoxication for him already in the half- +certainty that the step could not be retraced. The idea that he might +reason with her, made her seductive to the heart and head of him. + +'I am passably rich, Nevil,' she said. 'I do not care for money, except +that it gives wings. Roland inherits the chateau in Touraine. I have +one in Burgundy, and rentes and shares, my notary informs me.' + +'I have money,' said he. His heart began beating violently. He lost +sight of his intention of reasoning. 'Good God! if you were free!' + +She faltered: 'At Tourdestelle . . .' + +'Yes, and I am unchanged,' Beauchamp cried out. 'Your life there was +horrible, and mine's intolerable.' He stretched his arms cramped like +the yawning of a wretch in fetters. That which he would and would not +became so intervolved that he deemed it reasonable to instance their +common misery as a ground for their union against the world. And what +has that world done for us, that a joy so immeasurable should be rejected +on its behalf? And what have we succeeded in doing, that the childish +effort to move it should be continued at such a cost? + +For years, down to one year back, and less--yesterday, it could be said-- +all human blessedness appeared to him in the person of Renee, given him +under any condition whatsoever. She was not less adorable now. In her +decision, and a courage that he especially prized in women, she was a +sweeter to him than when he was with her in France: too sweet to be +looked at and refused. + +'But we must live in England,' he cried abruptly out of his inner mind. + +'Oh! not England, Italy, Italy!' Renee exclaimed: 'Italy, or Greece: +anywhere where we have sunlight. Mountains and valleys are my dream. +Promise it, Nevil. I will obey you; but this is my wish. Take me +through Venice, that I may look at myself and wonder. We can live at +sea, in a yacht; anywhere with you but in England. This country frowns +on me; I can hardly fetch my breath here, I am suffocated. The people +all walk in lines in England. Not here, Nevil! They are good people, +I am sure; and it is your country: but their faces chill me, their voices +grate; I should never understand them; they would be to me like their +fogs eternally; and I to them? O me! it would be like hearing sentence +in the dampness of the shroud perpetually. Again I say I do not doubt +that they are very good: they claim to be; they judge others; they may +know how to make themselves happy in their climate; it is common to most +creatures to do so, or to imagine it. Nevil! not England!' + +Truly 'the mad commander and his French marquise' of the Bevisham +Election ballad would make a pretty figure in England! + +His friends of his own class would be mouthing it. The story would be +a dogging shadow of his public life, and, quite as bad, a reflection on +his party. He heard the yelping tongues of the cynics. He saw the +consternation and grief of his old Bevisham hero, his leader and his +teacher. + +'Florence,' he said, musing on the prospect of exile and idleness: +'there's a kind of society to be had in Florence.' + +Renee asked him if he cared so much for society. + +He replied that women must have it, just as men must have exercise. + +'Old women, Nevil; intriguers, tattlers.' + +'Young women, Renee.' + +She signified no. + +He shook the head of superior knowledge paternally. + +Her instinct of comedy set a dimple faintly working in her cheek. + +'Not if they love, Nevil.' + +'At least,' said he, 'a man does not like to see the woman he loves +banished by society and browbeaten.' + +'Putting me aside, do you care for it, Nevil?' + +'Personally not a jot.' + +'I am convinced of that,' said Renee. + +She spoke suspiciously sweetly, appearing perfect candour. + +The change in him was perceptible to her. The nature of the change was +unfathomable. + +She tried her wits at the riddle. But though she could be an actress +before him with little difficulty, the torment of her situation roused +the fever within her at a bare effort to think acutely. Scarlet suffused +her face: her brain whirled. + +'Remember, dearest, I have but offered myself: you have your choice. +I can pass on. Yes, I know well I speak to Nevil Beauchamp; you have +drilled me to trust you and your word as a soldier trusts to his officer +--once a faint-hearted soldier! I need not remind you: fronting the +enemy now, in hard truth. But I want your whole heart to decide. Give +me no silly, compassion! Would it have been better to me to have written +to you? If I had written I should have clipped my glorious impulse, +brought myself down to earth with my own arrow. I did not write, for I +believed in you.' + +So firm had been her faith in him that her visions of him on the passage +to England had resolved all to one flash of blood-warm welcome awaiting +her: and it says much for her natural generosity that the savage delicacy +of a woman placed as she now was, did not take a mortal hurt from the +apparent voidness of this home of his bosom. The passionate gladness of +the lover was wanting: the chivalrous valiancy of manful joy. + +Renee shivered at the cloud thickening over her new light of intrepid +defiant life. + +'Think it not improbable that I have weighed everything I surrender in +quitting France,' she said. + +Remorse wrestled with Beauchamp and flung him at her feet. + +Renee remarked on the lateness of the hour. + +He promised to conduct her to her hotel immediately. + +'And to-morrow?' said Renee, simply, but breathlessly. + +'To-morrow, let it be Italy! But first I telegraph to Roland and +Tourdestelle. I can't run and hide. The step may be retrieved: or no, +you are right; the step cannot, but the next to it may be stopped--that +was the meaning I had! I 'll try. It 's cutting my hand off, tearing my +heart out; but I will. O that you were free! You left your husband at +Tourdestelle?' + +'I presume he is there at present: he was in Paris when I left.' + +Beauchamp spoke hoarsely and incoherently in contrast with her composure: +'You will misunderstand me for a day or two, Renee. I say if you were +free I should have my first love mine for ever. Don't fear me: I have no +right even to press your fingers. He may throw you into my arms. Now +you are the same as if you were in your own home: and you must accept me +for your guide. By all I hope for in life, I'll see you through it, and +keep the dogs from barking, if I can. Thousands are ready to give +tongue. And if they can get me in the character of a law-breaker!-- +I hear them.' + +'Are you imagining, Nevil, that there is a possibility of my returning to +him?' + +'To your place in the world! You have not had to endure tyranny?' + +'I should have had a certain respect for a tyrant, Nevil. At least I +should have had an occupation in mocking him and conspiring against him. +Tyranny! There would have been some amusement to me in that.' + +'It was neglect.' + +'If I could still charge it on neglect, Nevil! Neglect is very +endurable. He rewards me for nursing him . . . he rewards me with a +little persecution: wives should be flattered by it: it comes late.' + +'What?' cried Beauchamp, oppressed and impatient. + +Renee sank her voice. + +Something in the run of the unaccented French: 'Son amour, mon ami': +drove the significance of the bitterness of the life she had left behind +her burningly through him. This was to have fled from a dragon! was the +lover's thought: he perceived the motive of her flight: and it was a +vindication of it that appealed to him irresistibly. The proposal for +her return grew hideous: and this ever multiplying horror and sting of +the love of a married woman came on him with a fresh throbbing shock, +more venom. + +He felt for himself now, and now he was full of feeling for her. +Impossible that she should return! Tourdestelle shone to him like a +gaping chasm of fire. And becoming entirely selfish he impressed his +total abnegation of self upon Renee so that she could have worshipped +him. A lover that was like a starry frost, froze her veins, bewildered +her intelligence. She yearned for meridian warmth, for repose in a +directing hand; and let it be hard as one that grasps a sword: what +matter? unhesitatingness was the warrior virtue of her desire. And for +herself the worst might happen if only she were borne along. Let her +life be torn and streaming like the flag of battle, it must be forward to +the end. + +That was a quality of godless young heroism not unexhausted in +Beauchamp's blood. Reanimated by him, she awakened his imagination of +the vagrant splendours of existence and the rebel delights which have +their own laws and 'nature' for an applauding mother. Radiant Alps rose +in his eyes, and the morning born in the night suns that from mountain +and valley, over sea and desert, called on all earth to witness their +death. The magnificence of the contempt of humanity posed before him +superbly satanesque, grand as thunder among the crags and it was not a +sensual cry that summoned him from his pedlar labours, pack on back along +the level road, to live and breathe deep, gloriously mated: Renee kindled +his romantic spirit, and could strike the feeling into him that to be +proud of his possession of her was to conquer the fretful vanity to +possess. She was not a woman of wiles and lures. + +Once or twice she consulted her watch: but as she professed to have no +hunger, Beauchamp's entreaty to her to stay prevailed, and the subtle +form of compliment to his knightly manliness in her remaining with him, +gave him a new sense of pleasure that hung round her companionable +conversation, deepening the meaning of the words, or sometimes +contrasting the sweet surface commonplace with the undercurrent of +strangeness in their hearts, and the reality of a tragic position. Her +musical volubility flowed to entrance and divert him, as it did. + +Suddenly Beauchamp glanced upward. + +Renee turned from a startled contemplation of his frown, and beheld Mrs. +Rosamund Culling in the room. + + + + +CHAPTER XLI + +A LAME VICTORY + +The intruder was not a person that had power to divide them; yet she came +between their hearts with a touch of steel. + +'I am here in obedience to your commands in your telegram of this +evening,' Rosamund replied to Beauchamp's hard stare at her; she +courteously spoke French, and acquitted herself demurely of a bow to the +lady present. + +Renee withdrew her serious eyes from Beauchamp. She rose and +acknowledged the bow. + +'It is my first visit to England, madame! + +'I could have desired, Madame la marquise, more agreeable weather for +you.' + +'My friends in England will dispel the bad weather for me, madame'; Renee +smiled softly: 'I have been studying my French-English phrase-book, that +I may learn how dialogues are conducted in your country to lead to +certain ceremonies when old friends meet, and without my book I am at +fault. I am longing to be embraced by you . . . if it will not be +offending your rules?' + +Rosamund succumbed to the seductive woman, whose gentle tooth bit through +her tutored simplicity of manner and natural graciousness, administering +its reproof, and eluding a retort or an excuse. + +She gave the embrace. In doing so she fell upon her conscious +awkwardness for an expression of reserve that should be as good as irony +for irony, though where Madame de Rouaillout's irony lay, or whether it +was irony at all, our excellent English dame could not have stated, after +the feeling of indignant prudery responding to it so guiltily had +subsided. + +Beauchamp asked her if she had brought servants with her; and it +gratified her to see that he was no actor fitted to carry a scene through +in virtue's name and vice's mask with this actress. + +She replied, 'I have brought a man and a maid-servant. The establishment +will be in town the day after tomorrow, in time for my lord's return from +the Castle.' + +'You can have them up to-morrow morning.' + +'I could,' Rosamund admitted the possibility. Her idolatry of him was +tried on hearing him press the hospitality of the house upon Madame de +Rouaillout, and observing the lady's transparent feint of a reluctant +yielding. For the voluble Frenchwoman scarcely found a word to utter: +she protested languidly that she preferred the independence of her hotel, +and fluttered a singular look at him, as if overcome by his vehement +determination to have her in the house. Undoubtedly she had a taking +face and style. His infatuation, nevertheless, appeared to Rosamund +utter dementedness, considering this woman's position, and Cecilia +Halkett's beauty and wealth, and that the house was no longer at his +disposal. He was really distracted, to judge by his forehead, or else he +was over-acting his part. + +The absence of a cook in the house, Rosamund remarked, must prevent her +from seconding Captain Beauchamp's invitation. + +He turned on her witheringly. 'The telegraph will do that. You're in +London; cooks can be had by dozens. Madame de Rouaillout is alone here; +she has come to see a little of England, and you will do the honours of +the house.' + +'M. le marquis is not in London?' said Rosamund, disregarding the dumb +imprecation she saw on Beauchamp's features. + +'No, madame, my husband is not in London,' Renee rejoined collectedly. + +'See to the necessary comforts of the house instantly,' said Beauchamp, +and telling Renee, without listening to her, that he had to issue orders, +he led Rosamund, who was out of breath at the effrontery of the pair, +toward the door. 'Are you blind, ma'am? Have you gone foolish? What +should I have sent for you for, but to protect her? I see your mind; +and off with the prude, pray! Madame will have my room; clear away every +sign of me there. I sleep out; I can find a bed anywhere. And bolt and +chain the house-door to-night against Cecil Baskelett; he informs me that +he has taken possession.' + +Rosamund's countenance had become less austere. + +'Captain Baskelett!' she exclaimed, leaning to Beauchamp's views on the +side of her animosity to Cecil; 'he has been promised by his uncle the +use of a set of rooms during the year, when the mistress of the house is +not in occupation. I stipulated expressly that he was to see you and +suit himself to your convenience, and to let me hear that you and he had +agreed to an arrangement, before he entered the house. He has no right +to be here, and I shall have no hesitation in locking him out.' + +Beauchamp bade her go, and not be away more than five minutes; and then +he would drive to the hotel for the luggage. + +She scanned him for a look of ingenuousness that might be trusted, and +laughed in her heart at her credulity for expecting it of a man in such a +case. She saw Renee sitting stonily, too proudly self-respecting to put +on a mask of flippant ease. These lovers might be accomplices in +deceiving her; they were not happy ones, and that appeared to her to be +some assurance that she did well in obeying him. + +Beauchamp closed the door on her. He walked back to Renee with a +thoughtful air that was consciously acted; his only thought being--now +she knows me! + +Renee looked up at him once. Her eyes were unaccusing, unquestioning. + +With the violation of the secresy of her flight she had lost her +initiative and her intrepidity. The world of human eyes glared on her +through the windows of the two she had been exposed to, paralyzing her +brain and caging her spirit of revolt. That keen wakefulness of her +self-defensive social instinct helped her to an understanding of her +lover's plan to preserve her reputation, or rather to give her a corner +of retreat in shielding the worthless thing--twice detested as her cloak +of slavery coming from him! She comprehended no more. She was a house +of nerves crowding in against her soul like fiery thorns, and had no +space within her torture for a sensation of gratitude or suspicion; but +feeling herself hurried along at lightning speed to some dreadful shock, +her witless imagination apprehended it in his voice: not what he might +say, only the sound. She feared to hear him speak, as the shrinking ear +fears a thunder at the cavity; yet suspense was worse than the downward- +driving silence. + +The pang struck her when he uttered some words about Mrs. Culling, and +protection, and Roland. + +She thanked him. + +So have common executioners been thanked by queenly ladies baring their +necks to the axe. + +He called up the pain he suffered to vindicate him; and it was really an +agony of a man torn to pieces. + +'I have done the best.' + +This dogged and stupid piece of speech was pitiable to hear from Nevil +Beauchamp. + +'You think so?' said she; and her glass-like voice rang a tremour in its +mildness that swelled through him on the plain submissive note, which was +more assent than question. + +'I am sure of it. I believe it. I see it. At least I hope so.' + +'We are chiefly led by hope,' said Renee. + +'At least, if not!' Beauchamp cried. 'And it's not too late. I have no +right--I do what I can. I am at your mercy. Judge me later. If I am +ever to know what happiness is, it will be with you. It's not too late +either way. There is Roland--my brother as much as if you were my wife!' + +He begged her to let him have Roland's exact address. + +She named the regiment, the corps d'armee, the postal town, and the +department. + +'Roland will come at a signal,' he pursued; 'we are not bound to consult +others.' + +Renee formed the French word of 'we' on her tongue. + +He talked of Roland and Roland, his affection for him as a brother and as +a friend, and Roland's love of them both. + +'It is true,' said Renee. + +'We owe him this; he represents your father.' + +'All that you say is true, my friend.' + +'Thus, you have come on a visit to madame, your old friend here--oh! +your hand. What have I done?' + +Renee motioned her hand as if it were free to be taken, and smiled +faintly to make light of it, but did not give it. + +'If you had been widowed!' he broke down to the lover again. + +'That man is attached to the remnant of his life: I could not wish him +dispossessed of it,' said Rende. + +'Parted! who parts us? It's for a night. Tomorrow!' + +She breathed: 'To-morrow.' + +To his hearing it craved an answer. He had none. To talk like a lover, +or like a man of honour, was to lie. Falsehood hemmed him in to the +narrowest ring that ever statue stood on, if he meant to be stone. + +'That woman will be returning,' he muttered, frowning at the vacant door. +'I could lay out my whole life before your eyes, and show you I am +unchanged in my love of you since the night when Roland and I walked on +the Piazzetta . . .' + +'Do not remind me; let those days lie black!' A sympathetic vision of +her maiden's tears on the night of wonderful moonlight when, as it seemed +to her now, San Giorgio stood like a dark prophet of her present +abasement and chastisement, sprang tears of a different character, and +weak as she was with her soul's fever and for want of food, she was +piteously shaken. She said with some calmness: 'It is useless to look +back. I have no reproaches but for myself. Explain nothing to me. +Things that are not comprehended by one like me are riddles I must put +aside. I know where I am: I scarcely know more. Here is madame.' + +The door had not opened, and it did not open immediately. + +Beauchamp had time to say, 'Believe in me.' Even that was false to his +own hearing, and in a struggle with the painful impression of insincerity +which was denied and scorned by his impulse to fling his arms round her +and have her his for ever, he found himself deferentially accepting her +brief directions concerning her boxes at the hotel, with Rosamund Culling +to witness. + +She gave him her hand. + +He bowed over the fingers. 'Until to-morrow, madame.' + +'Adieu!' said Renee. + + + + +ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + +A wound of the same kind that we are inflicting +Affectedly gentle and unusually roundabout opening +Carry a scene through in virtue's name and vice's mask +Cordiality of an extreme relief in leaving +Dark-eyed Renee was not beauty but attraction +Decline to practise hypocrisy +Fine eye for celestially directed consequences is ever haunted +Fretted by his relatives he cannot be much of a giant +Given up his brains for a lodging to a single idea +He never calculated on the happening of mortal accidents +He smoked, Lord Avonley said of the second departure +Heights of humour beyond laughter +Irony provoked his laughter more than fun +Irritability at the intrusion of past disputes +Led him to impress his unchangeableness upon her +Money's a chain-cable for holding men to their senses +On which does the eye linger longest--which draws the heart? +Once called her beautiful; his praise had given her beauty +Passion is not invariably love +People is one of your Radical big words that burst at a query +Scotchman's metaphysics; you know nothing clear +Their not caring to think at all +There is no step backward in life +They have their thinking done for them +They may know how to make themselves happy in their climate +Thirst for the haranguing of crowds +Too many time-servers rot the State +We are chiefly led by hope +Welcomed and lured on an adversary to wild outhitting +What ninnies call Nature in books + + + + +End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Beauchamp's Career, v5 +by George Meredith + diff --git a/4457.zip b/4457.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..b1d816d --- /dev/null +++ b/4457.zip diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. 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