Beauchamps Career, v5 by George Meredith (best classic books to read TXT) 📖

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.

 

 

 

BOOK 5. - 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