TOUCHING A YOUNG LADY’S HEART AND HER INTELLECT
Mr. Tuckham found his way to Dr. Shrapnel’s cottage to see his kinsman
on the day after the election. There was a dinner in honour of the
Members for Bevisham at Mount Laurels in the evening, and he was five
minutes behind military time when he entered the restive drawing-room
and stood before the colonel. No sooner had he stated that he had been
under the roof of Dr. Shrapnel, than his unpunctuality was immediately
overlooked in the burst of impatience evoked by the name.
“That pestilent fellow!” Colonel Halkett ejaculated. “I understand he
has had the impudence to serve a notice on Grancey Lespel about
encroachments on common land.”
Some one described Dr. Shrapnel’s appearance under the flour storm.
“He deserves anything,” said the colonel, consulting his mantelpiece
clock.
Captain Baskelett observed: “I shall have my account to settle with Dr.
Shrapnel.” He spoke like a man having a right to be indignant, but
excepting that the doctor had bestowed nicknames upon him in a speech
at a meeting, no one could discover the grounds for it. He nodded
briefly. A Radical apple had struck him on the left cheekbone as he
performed his triumphal drive through the town, and a slight
disfigurement remained, to which his hand was applied sympathetically
at intervals, for the cheek-bone was prominent in his countenance, and
did not well bear enlargement. And when a fortunate gentleman, desiring
to be still more fortunate, would display the winning amiability of his
character, distension of one cheek gives him an afflictingly false look
of sweetness.
The bent of his mind, nevertheless, was to please Miss Halkett. He
would be smiling, and intimately smiling. Aware that she had a kind of
pitiful sentiment for Nevil, he smiled over Nevil—poor Nevil! “I give
you my word, Miss Halkett, old Nevil was off his head yesterday. I
daresay he meant to be civil. I met him; I called out to him, ‘Good
day, cousin, I’m afraid you’re beaten’ and says he, ‘I fancy you’ve
gained it, _uncle_.’ He didn’t know where he was; all abroad, poor boy.
Uncle!—to me!”
Miss Halkett would have accepted the instance for a proof of Nevil’s
distraction, had not Mr. Seymour Austin, who sat beside her, laughed
and said to her: “I suppose ‘uncle’ was a chance shot, but it’s equal
to a poetic epithet in the light it casts on the story.” Then it seemed
to her that Nevil had been keenly quick, and Captain Baskelett’s
impenetrability was a sign of his density. Her mood was to think Nevil
Beauchamp only too quick, too adventurous and restless: one that
wrecked brilliant gifts in a too general warfare; a lover of hazards, a
hater of laws. Her eyes flew over Captain Baskelett as she imagined
Nevil addressing him as uncle, and, to put aside a spirit of mockery
rising within her, she hinted a wish to hear Seymour Austin’s opinion
of Mr. Tuckham. He condensed it in an interrogative tone: “The _other_
extreme?” The Tory extreme of Radical Nevil Beauchamp. She assented.
Mr. Tuckham was at that moment prophesying the Torification of mankind;
not as the trembling venturesome idea which we cast on doubtful winds,
but as a ship is launched to ride the waters, with huzzas for a thing
accomplished. Mr. Austin raised his shoulders imperceptibly, saying to
Miss Halkett: “The turn will come to us as to others—and go. Nothing
earthly can escape _that_ revolution. We have to meet it with a policy,
and let it pass with measures carried and our hands washed of some of
our party sins. I am, I hope, true to my party, but the enthusiasm of
party I do not share. He is right, however, when he accuses the nation
of cowardice for the last ten years. One third of the Liberals have
been with us at heart, and dared not speak, and we dared not say what
we wished. We accepted a compact that satisfied us both—satisfied _us_
better than when we were opposed by Whigs—that is, the Liberal reigned,
and we governed: and I should add, a very clever juggler was our common
chief. Now we have the consequences of hollow peacemaking, in a
suffrage that bids fair to extend to the wearing of hats and boots for
a qualification. The moral of it seems to be that cowardice is even
worse for nations than for individual men, though the consequences come
on us more slowly.”
“You spoke of party sins,” Miss Halkett said incredulously.
“I shall think we are the redoubtable party when we admit the charge.”
“Are you alluding to the landowners?”
“Like the land itself, they have rich veins in heavy matter. For
instance, the increasing wealth of the country is largely recruiting
our ranks; and we shall be tempted to mistake numbers for strength, and
perhaps again be reading Conservatism for a special thing of our own—a
fortification. That would be a party sin. Conservatism is a principle
of government; the best because the safest for an old country; and the
guarantee that we do not lose the wisdom of past experience in our
struggle with what is doubtful. Liberalism stakes too much on the
chance of gain. It is uncomfortably seated on half-a-dozen horses; and
it has to feed them too, and on varieties of corn.”
“Yes,” Miss Halkett said, pausing, “and I know you would not talk down
to me, but the use of imagery makes me feel that I am addressed as a
primitive intelligence.”
“That’s the fault of my trying at condensation, as the hieroglyphists
put an animal for a paragraph. I am incorrigible, you see; but the
lecture in prose must be for by-and-by, if you care to have it.”
“If you care to read it to me. Did a single hieroglyphic figure stand
for so much?”
“I have never deciphered one.”
“You have been speaking to me too long in earnest, Mr. Austin!”
“I accept the admonition, though it is wider than the truth. Have you
ever consented to listen to politics before?”
Cecilia reddened faintly, thinking of him who had taught her to listen,
and of her previous contempt of the subject.
A political exposition devoid of imagery was given to her next day on
the sunny South-western terrace of Mount Laurels, when it was only by
mentally translating it into imagery that she could advance a step
beside her intellectual guide; and she was ashamed of the volatility of
her ideas. She was constantly comparing Mr. Austin and Nevil Beauchamp,
seeing that the senior and the junior both talked to her with the
familiar recognition of her understanding which was a compliment
without the gross corporeal phrase. But now she made another discovery,
that should have been infinitely more of a compliment, and it was
bewildering, if not repulsive to her:—could it be credited? Mr. Austin
was a firm believer in new and higher destinies for women. He went
farther than she could concede the right of human speculation to go; he
was, in fact, as Radical there as Nevil Beauchamp politically; and
would not the latter innovator stare, perchance frown conservatively,
at a prospect of woman taking counsel, _in council_, with men upon
public affairs, like the women in the Germania! Mr. Austin, if this
time he talked in earnest, deemed that Englishwomen were on the road to
win such a promotion, and would win it ultimately. He said soberly that
he saw more certain indications of the reality of progress among women
than any at present shown by men. And he was professedly temperate. He
was but for opening avenues to the means of livelihood for them, and
leaving it to their strength to conquer the position they might wish to
win. His belief that they would do so was the revolutionary sign.
“Are there points of likeness between Radicals and Tories?” she
inquired.
“I suspect a cousinship in extremes,” he answered.
“If one might be present at an argument,” said she.
“We have only to meet to fly apart as wide as the Poles,” Mr. Austin
rejoined.
But she had not spoken of a particular person to meet him; and how,
then, had she betrayed herself? She fancied he looked unwontedly arch
as he resumed:
“The end of the argument would see us each entrenched in his party.
Suppose me to be telling your Radical friend such truisms as that we
English have not grown in a day, and were not originally made free and
equal by decree; that we have grown, and must continue to grow, by the
aid and the development of our strength; that ours is a fairly legible
history, and a fair example of the good and the bad in human growth;
that his landowner and his peasant have no clear case of right and
wrong to divide them, one being the descendant of strong men, the other
of weak ones; and that the former may sink, the latter may rise—there
is no artificial obstruction; and if it is difficult to rise, it is
easy to sink. Your Radical friend, who would bring them to a level by
proclamation, could not adopt a surer method for destroying the manhood
of a people: he is for doctoring wooden men, and I for not letting our
stout English be cut down short as Laplanders; he would have them in a
forcing house, and I in open air, as hitherto. Do you perceive a
discussion? and you apprehend the nature of it. We have nerves. That is
why it is better for men of extremely opposite opinions not to meet. I
dare say Radicalism has a function, and so long as it respects the laws
I am ready to encounter it where it cannot be avoided. Pardon my
prosing.”
“Recommend me some hard books to study through the Winter,” said
Cecilia, refreshed by a discourse that touched no emotions, as by a
febrifuge. Could Nevil reply to it? She fancied him replying, with that
wild head of his—wildest of natures. She fancied also that her wish was
like Mr. Austin’s not to meet him. She was enjoying a little rest.
It was not quite generous in Mr. Austin to assume that “her Radical
friend” had been prompting her. However, she thanked him in her heart
for the calm he had given her. To be able to imagine Nevil Beauchamp
intellectually erratic was a tonic satisfaction to the proud young
lady, ashamed of a bondage that the bracing and pointing of her
critical powers helped her to forget. She had always preferred the
society of men of Mr. Austin’s age. How old was he? Her father would
know. And why was he unmarried? A light frost had settled on the hair
about his temples; his forehead was lightly wrinkled; but his mouth and
smile, and his eyes, were lively as a young man’s, with more in them.
His age must be something less than fifty. O for peace! she sighed.
When he stepped into his carriage, and stood up in it to wave adieu to
her, she thought his face and figure a perfect example of an English
gentleman in his prime.
Captain Baskelett requested the favour of five minutes of conversation
with Miss Halkett before he followed Mr. Austin, on his way to
Steynham.
She returned from that colloquy to her father and Mr. Tuckham. The
colonel looked straight in her face, with an elevation of the brows. To
these points of interrogation she answered with a placid fall of her
eyelids. He sounded a note of approbation in his throat.
All the company having departed, Mr. Tuckham for the first time spoke
of his interview with his kinsman Beauchamp. Yesterday evening he had
slurred it, as if he had nothing to relate, except the finding of an
old schoolfellow at Dr. Shrapnel’s named Lydiard, a man of ability fool
enough to have turned author on no income. But that which had appeared
to Miss Halkett a want of observancy, became attributable to depth of
character on its being clear that he had waited for the departure of
the transient guests of the house, to pour forth his impressions
without holding up his kinsman to public scorn. He considered Shrapnel
mad and Beauchamp mad. No such grotesque old monster as Dr. Shrapnel
had he seen in the course of his travels. He had never listened to a
madman running loose who was at all up to Beauchamp. At a loss for
words to paint him, he said: “Beauchamp seems to have a head like a
firework manufactory, he’s perfectly pyrocephalic.” For an example of
Dr. Shrapnel’s talk: “I happened,” said Mr. Tuckham, “casually, meaning
no harm, and not supposing I was throwing a lighted match on powder, to
mention the word Providence. I found myself immediately confronted by
Shrapnel—overtopped, I should say. He is a lank giant of about seven
feet in height; the kind of show man that used to go about in caravans
over the country; and he began rocking over me like a poplar in a gale,
and cries out: ‘Stay there! away with that! Providence? Can you set a
thought on Providence, not seeking to propitiate it? And have you not
there the damning proof that you are at the foot of an Idol?’—The old
idea about a special Providence, I suppose. These fellows have nothing
new but their trimmings. And he went on with: ‘Ay, invisible,’ and his
arm chopping, ‘but an Idol! an Idol!’—I was to think of ‘nought but
Laws.’ He admitted there might be one above the Laws. ‘To realize him
is to fry the brains in their pan,’ says he, and struck his forehead—a
slap: and off he walked down the garden, with his hands at his
coat-tails. I venture to say it may be taken for a proof of incipient
insanity to care to hear such a fellow twice. And Beauchamp holds him
up for a sage and a prophet!”
“He is a very dangerous dog,” said Colonel Halkett.
“The best of it is—and I take this for the strongest possible proof
that Beauchamp is mad—Shrapnel stands for an _advocate of morality_
against him. I’ll speak of it....”
Mr. Tuckham nodded to the colonel, who said: “Speak out. My daughter
has been educated for a woman of the world.”
“Well, sir, it’s nothing to offend a young lady’s ears. Beauchamp is
for socially enfranchising the sex—that is all. Quite enough. Not a
whit politically. Love is to be the test: and if a lady ceases to love
her husband... if she sets her fancy elsewhere, she’s bound to leave
him. The laws are tyrannical, our objections are cowardly. Well, this
Dr. Shrapnel harangued about society; and men as well as women are to
sacrifice their passions _on that altar_. If he could burlesque himself
it would be in coming out as a cleric—the old Pagan!”
“Did he convince Captain Beauchamp?” the colonel asked, manifestly for
his daughter to hear the reply; which was: “Oh dear, no!”
“Were you able to gather from Captain Beauchamp’s remarks whether he is
much disappointed by the result of the election?” said Cecilia.
Mr. Tuckham could tell her only that Captain Beauchamp was incensed
against an elector named Tomlinson for withdrawing a promised vote on
account of lying rumours, and elated by the conquest of a Mr.
Carpendike, who was reckoned a tough one to drag by the neck. “The only
sane people in the house are a Miss Denham and the cook: I lunched
there,” Mr. Tuckham nodded approvingly. “Lydiard must be mad. What he’s
wasting his time there for I can’t guess. He says he’s engaged there in
writing a prefatory essay to a new publication of Harry Denham’s
poems—whoever that may be. And why wasting it there? I don’t like it.
He ought to be earning his bread. He’ll be sure to be borrowing money
by-and-by. We’ve got ten thousand too many fellows writing already, and
they’ve seen a few inches of the world, on the Continent! He can write.
But it’s all unproductive—dead weight on the country, these fellows
with their writings! He says Beauchamp’s praise of Miss Denham is quite
deserved. He tells me, that at great peril to herself—and she nearly
had her arm broken by a stone he saved Shrapnel from rough usage on the
election-day.”
“Hum!” Colonel Halkett grunted significantly.
“So I thought,” Mr. Tuckham responded. “One doesn’t want the man to be
hurt, but he ought to be put down in some way. My belief is he’s a
Fire-worshipper. I warrant I would extinguish him if he came before me.
He’s an incendiary, at any rate.”
“Do you think,” said Cecilia, “that Captain Beauchamp is now satisfied
with his experience of politics?”
“Dear me, no,” said Mr. Tuckham. “It’s the opening of a campaign. He’s
off to the North, after he has been to Sussex and Bucks. He’s to be at
it all his life. One thing he shows common sense in. If I heard him
once I heard him say half-a-dozen times, that he must have money:—‘_I
must have money!_’ And so he must if he’s to head the Radicals. He
wants to start a newspaper! Is he likely to get money from his uncle
Romfrey?”
“Not for his present plan of campaign.” Colonel Halkett enunciated the
military word sarcastically. “Let’s hope he won’t get money.”
“He says he must have it.”
“Who is to stand and deliver, then?”
“I don’t know; I only repeat what he says: unless he has an eye on my
Aunt Beauchamp; and I doubt his luck there, if he wants money for
political campaigning.”
“Money!” Colonel Halkett ejaculated.
That word too was in the heart of the heiress.
Nevil must have money! Could he have said it? Ordinary men might say or
think it inoffensively; Captain Baskelett, for instance: but not Nevil
Beauchamp.
Captain Baskelett, as she had conveyed the information to her father
for his comfort in the dumb domestic language familiar between them on
these occasions, had proposed to her unavailingly. Italian and English
gentlemen were in the list of her rejected suitors: and hitherto she
had seen them come and go, one might say, from a watchtower in the
skies. None of them was the ideal she waited for: what their feelings
were, their wishes, their aims, she had not reflected on. They dotted
the landscape beneath the unassailable heights, busy after their
fashion, somewhat quaint, much like the pigmy husbandmen in the fields
were to the giant’s daughter, who had more curiosity than Cecilia. But
Nevil Beauchamp had compelled her to quit her lofty station, pulled her
low as the littlest of women that throb and flush at one man’s
footstep: and being well able to read the nature and aspirations of
Captain Baskelett, it was with the knowledge of her having been
proposed to as heiress of a great fortune that she chanced to hear of
Nevil’s resolve to have money. If he did say it! And was anything
likelier? was anything unlikelier? His foreign love denied to him, why,
now he devoted himself to money: money—the last consideration of a man
so single-mindedly generous as he! But he must have money to pursue his
contest! But would he forfeit the truth in him for money for any
purpose?
The debate on this question grew as incessant as the thought of him.
Was it not to be supposed that the madness of the pursuit of his
political chimaera might change his character?
She hoped he would not come to Mount Laurels, thinking she should
esteem him less if he did; knowing that her defence of him, on her own
behalf, against herself, depended now on an esteem lodged perhaps in
her wilfulness. Yet if he did not come, what an Arctic world!
He came on a November afternoon when the woods glowed, and no sun. The
day was narrowed in mist from earth to heaven: a moveless and
possessing mist. It left space overhead for one wreath of high cloud
mixed with touches of washed red upon moist blue, still as the mist,
insensibly passing into it. Wet webs crossed the grass, chill in the
feeble light. The last flowers of the garden bowed to decay. Dead
leaves, red and brown and spotted yellow, fell straight around the
stems of trees, lying thick. The glow was universal, and the chill.
Cecilia sat sketching the scene at a window of her study, on the level
of the drawing-room, and he stood by outside till she saw him. He
greeted her through the glass, then went round to the hall door, giving
her time to recover, if only her heart had been less shaken.
Their meeting was like the features of the day she set her brush to
picture: characteristic of a season rather than cheerless in tone,
though it breathed little cheer. Is there not a pleasure in
contemplating that which is characteristic? Her unfinished sketch
recalled him after he had gone: he lived in it, to startle her again,
and bid her heart gallop and her cheeks burn. The question occurred to
her: May not one love, not craving to be beloved? Such a love does not
sap our pride, but supports it; increases rather than diminishes our
noble self-esteem. To attain such a love the martyrs writhed up to the
crown of saints. For a while Cecilia revelled in the thought that she
could love in this most saint-like manner. How they fled, the sordid
ideas of him which accused him of the world’s one passion, and were
transferred to her own bosom in reproach that she should have imagined
them existing in his! He talked simply and sweetly of his defeat, of
time wasted away from the canvass, of loss of money: and he had little
to spare, he said. The water-colour drawing interested him. He said he
envied her that power of isolation, and the eye for beauty in every
season. She opened a portfolio of Mr. Tuckham’s water-colour drawings
in every clime; scenes of Europe, Asia, and the Americas; and he was to
be excused for not caring to look through them. His remark, that they
seemed hard and dogged, was not so unjust, she thought, smiling to
think of the critic criticized. His wonderment that a young man like
his Lancastrian cousin should be “an unmitigated Tory” was perhaps
natural.
Cecilia said, “Yet I cannot discern in him a veneration for
aristocracy.” “That’s not wanted for modern Toryism,” said Nevil. “One
may venerate old families when they show the blood of the founder, and
are not dead wood. I do. And I believe the blood of the founder, though
the man may have been a savage and a robber, had in his day finer
elements in it than were common. But let me say at a meeting that I
respect true aristocracy, I hear a growl and a hiss beginning: why?
Don’t judge them hastily: because the people have seen the aristocracy
opposed to the cause that was weak, and only submitting to it when it
commanded them to resist at their peril; clinging to traditions, and
not anywhere standing for humanity: much more a herd than the people
themselves. Ah! well, we won’t talk of it now. I say that is no
aristocracy, if it does not head the people in virtue—military,
political, national: I mean the qualities required by the times for
leadership. I won’t bother you with my ideas now. I love to see you
paint-brush in hand.”
Her brush trembled on the illumination of a scarlet maple. “In this
country we were not originally made free and equal by decree, Nevil.”
“No,” said he, “and I cast no blame on our farthest ancestors.”
It struck her that this might be an outline of a reply to Mr. Austin.
“So you have been thinking over it?” he asked.
“Not to conclusions,” she said, trying to retain in her mind the
evanescent suggestiveness of his previous remark, and vexed to find
herself upon nothing but a devious phosphorescent trail there.
Her forehead betrayed the unwonted mental action. He cried out for
pardon. “What right have I to bother you? I see it annoys you. The
truth is, I came for peace. I think of you when they talk of English
homes.”
She felt then that he was comparing her home with another, a foreign
home. After he had gone she felt that there had been a comparison of
two persons. She remembered one of his observations: “Few women seem to
have courage”; when his look at her was for an instant one of scrutiny
or calculation. Under a look like that we perceive that we are being
weighed. She had no clue to tell her what it signified.
Glorious and solely glorious love, that has risen above emotion, quite
independent of craving! That is to be the bird of upper air, poised on
his wings. It is a home in the sky. Cecilia took possession of it
systematically, not questioning whether it would last; like one who is
too enamoured of the habitation to object to be a tenant-at-will. If it
was cold, it was in recompense immeasurably lofty, a star-girdled
place; and dwelling in it she could avow to herself the secret which
was now working self-deception, and still preserve her pride unwounded.
Her womanly pride, she would have said in vindication of it: but
Cecilia Halkett’s pride went far beyond the merely womanly.
Thus she was assisted to endure a journey down to Wales, where Nevil
would surely not be. She passed a Winter without seeing him. She
returned to Mount Laurels from London at Easter, and went on a visit to
Steynham, and back to London, having sight of him nowhere, still firm
in the thought that she loved ethereally, to bless, forgive, direct,
encourage, pray for him, impersonally. She read certain speeches
delivered by Nevil at assemblies of Liberals or Radicals, which were
reported in papers in the easy irony of the style of here and there a
sentence, here and there a summary: salient quotations interspersed
with running abstracts: a style terrible to friends of the speaker so
reported, overwhelming if they differ in opinion: yet her charity was a
match for it. She was obliged to have recourse to charity, it should be
observed. Her father drew her attention to the spectacle of R. C. S.
Nevil Beauchamp, Commander R.N., fighting those reporters with letters
in the newspapers, and the dry editorial comment flanked by three stars
on the left. He was shocked to see a gentleman writing such letters to
the papers. “But one thing hangs on another,” said he.
“But you seem angry with Nevil, papa,” said she.
“I do hate a turbulent, restless fellow, my dear,” the colonel burst
out.
“Papa, he has really been unfairly reported.”
Cecilia laid three privately-printed full reports of Commander
Beauchamp’s speeches (very carefully corrected by him) before her
father.
He suffered his eye to run down a page. “Is it possible you read
this?—this trash!—dangerous folly, I call it.”
Cecilia’s reply, “In the interests of justice, I do,” was meant to
express her pure impartiality. By a toleration of what is detested we
expose ourselves to the keenness of an adverse mind.
“Does he write to you, too?” said the colonel.
She answered: “Oh, no; I am not a politician.”
“He seems to have expected you to read those tracts of his, though.”
“Yes, I think he would convert me if he could,” said Cecilia.
“Though you’re not a politician.”
“He relies on the views he delivers in public, rather than on writing
to persuade; that was my meaning, papa.”
“Very well,” said the colonel, not caring to show his anxiety.
Mr. Tuckham dined with them frequently in London. This gentleman
betrayed his accomplishments one by one. He sketched, and was no
artist; he planted, and was no gardener; he touched the piano neatly,
and was no musician; he sang, and he had no voice. Apparently he tried
his hand at anything, for the privilege of speaking decisively upon all
things. He accompanied the colonel and his daughter on a day’s
expedition to Mrs. Beauchamp, on the Upper Thames, and they agreed that
he shone to great advantage in her society. Mrs. Beauchamp said she had
seen her great-nephew Nevil, but without a comment on his conduct or
his person; grave silence. Reflecting on it, Cecilia grew indignant at
the thought that Mr. Tuckham might have been acting a sinister part.
Mrs. Beauchamp alluded to a newspaper article of her favourite
great-nephew Blackburn, written, Cecilia knew through her father, to
controvert some tremendous proposition of Nevil’s. _That_ was writing,
Mrs. Beauchamp said. “I am not in the habit of fearing a conflict, so
long as we have stout defenders. I rather like it,” she said.
The colonel entertained Mrs. Beauchamp, while Mr. Tuckham led Miss
Halkett over the garden. Cecilia considered that his remarks upon Nevil
were insolent.
“Seriously, Miss Halkett, to take him at his best, he is a very good
fellow, I don’t doubt; I am told so; and a capital fellow among men, a
good friend and not a bad boon-fellow, and for that matter, the
smoking-room is a better test than the drawing-room; all he wants is
emphatically school—school—school. I have recommended the simple
iteration of that one word in answer to him at his meetings, and the
printing of it as a foot-note to his letters.”
Cecilia’s combative spirit precipitated her to say, “I hear the mob in
it shouting Captain Beauchamp down.”
“Ay,” said Mr. Tuckham, “it would be setting the mob to shout wisely at
last.”
“The mob is a wild beast.”
“Then we should hear wisdom coming out of the mouth of the wild beast.”
“Men have the phrase, ‘fair play.’”
“Fair play, I say, is not applicable to a man who deliberately goes
about to stir the wild beast. He is laughed at, plucked, hustled, and
robbed, by those who deafen him with their ‘plaudits’—their roars. Did
you see his advertisement of a great-coat, lost at some rapscallion
gathering down in the North, near my part of the country? A great-coat
and a packet of letters. He offers a reward of L10. But that’s honest
robbery compared with the bleeding he’ll get.”
“Do you know Mr. Seymour Austin?” Miss Halkett asked him.
“I met him once at your father’s table. Why?”
“I think you would like to listen to him.”
“Yes, my fault is not listening enough,” said Mr. Tuckham.
He was capable of receiving correction.
Her father told her he was indebted to Mr. Tuckham past payment in
coin, for services rendered by him on a trying occasion among the
miners in Wales during the first spring month. “I dare say he can speak
effectively to miners,” Cecilia said, outvying the contemptuous young
man in superciliousness, but with effort and not with satisfaction.
She left London in July, two days before her father could be induced to
return to Mount Laurels. Feverish, and strangely subject to caprices
now, she chose the longer way round by Sussex, and alighted at the
station near Steynham to call on Mrs. Culling, whom she knew to be at
the Hall, preparing it for Mr. Romfrey’s occupation. In imitation of
her father she was Rosamund’s fast friend, though she had never quite
realized her position, and did not thoroughly understand her. Would it
not please her father to hear that she had chosen the tedious route for
the purpose of visiting this lady, whose champion he was?
So she went to Steynham, and for hours she heard talk of no one, of
nothing, but her friend Nevil. Cecilia was on her guard against
Rosamund’s defence of his conduct in France. The declaration that there
had been no misbehaviour at all could not be accepted; but the news of
Mr. Romfrey’s having installed Nevil in Holdesbury to manage that
property, and of his having mooted to her father the question of an
alliance between her and Nevil, was wonderful. Rosamund could not say
what answer her father had made: hardly favourable, Cecilia supposed,
since he had not spoken of the circumstance to her. But Mr. Romfrey’s
influence with him would certainly be powerful.
It was to be assumed, also, that Nevil had been consulted by his uncle.
Rosamund said full-heartedly that this alliance had for years been her
life’s desire, and then she let the matter pass, nor did she once loop
at Cecilia searchingly, or seem to wish to probe her. Cecilia disagreed
with Rosamund on an insignificant point in relation to something Mr.
Romfrey and Captain Baskelett had done, and, as far as she could
recollect subsequently, there was a packet of letters, or a pocket-book
containing letters of Nevil’s which he had lost, and which had been
forwarded to Mr. Romfrey; for the pocket-book was originally his, and
his address was printed inside. But among these letters was one from
Dr. Shrapnel to Nevil: a letter so horrible that Rosamund frowned at
the reminiscence of it, holding it to be too horrible for the quotation
of a sentence. She owned she had forgotten any three consecutive words.
Her known dislike of Captain Baskelett, however, was insufficient to
make her see that it was unjustifiable in him to run about London
reading it, with comments of the cruellest. Rosamund’s greater
detestation of Dr. Shrapnel blinded her to the offence committed by the
man she would otherwise have been very ready to scorn. So small did the
circumstance appear to Cecilia, notwithstanding her gentle opposition
at the time she listened to it, that she never thought of mentioning it
to her father, and only remembered it when Captain Baskelett, with Lord
Palmet in his company, presented himself at Mount Laurels, and proposed
to the colonel to read to him “a letter from that scoundrelly old
Shrapnel to Nevil Beauchamp, upon women, wives, thrones, republics,
British loyalty, et cætera,”—an et cætera that rolled a series of
tremendous reverberations down the list of all things held precious by
freeborn Englishmen.
She would have prevented the reading. But the colonel would have it.
“Read on,” said he. “Mr. Romfrey saw no harm.”
Captain Baskelett held up Dr. Shrapnel’s letter to Commander Beauchamp,
at about half a yard’s distance on the level of his chin, as a
big-chested singer in a concert-room holds his music-scroll.