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

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