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

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.'

 

 

BOOK 5. - 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