Beauchamps Career, v5 - George Meredith (top novels TXT) 📗

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