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

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