LORD AVONLEY
Mr. Everard Romfrey was now, by consent, Lord Avonley, mounted on his
direct heirship and riding hard at the earldom. His elevation occurred
at a period of life that would have been a season of decay with most
men; but the prolonged and lusty Autumn of the veteran took new fires
from a tangible object to live for. His brother Craven’s death had
slightly stupefied, and it had grieved him: it seemed to him peculiarly
pathetic; for as he never calculated on the happening of mortal
accidents to men of sound constitution, the circumstance imparted a
curious shake to his own solidity. It was like the quaking of earth,
which tries the balance of the strongest. If he had not been raised to
so splendid a survey of the actual world, he might have been led to
think of the imaginary, where perchance a man may meet his old dogs and
a few other favourites, in a dim perpetual twilight. Thither at all
events Craven had gone, and goodnight to him! The earl was a rapidly
lapsing invalid. There could be no doubt that Everard was to be the
head of his House.
Outwardly he was the same tolerant gentleman who put aside the poor
fools of the world to walk undisturbed by them in the paths he had
chosen: in this aspect he knew himself: nor was the change so great
within him as to make him cognizant of a change. It was only a secret
turn in the bent of the mind, imperceptible as the touch of the cunning
artist’s brush on a finished portrait, which will alter the expression
without discomposing a feature, so that you cannot say it is another
face, yet it is not the former one. His habits were invariable, as were
his meditations. He thought less of Romfrey Castle than of his dogs and
his devices for trapping vermin; his interest in birds and beasts and
herbs, “what ninnies call Nature in books,” to quote him, was
undiminished; imagination he had none to clap wings to his head and be
off with it. He betrayed as little as he felt that the coming Earl of
Romfrey was different from the cadet of the family.
A novel sharpness in the “Stop that,” with which he crushed Beauchamp’s
affectedly gentle and unusually roundabout opening of the vexed
Shrapnel question, rang like a shot in the room at Steynham, and
breathed a different spirit from his customary easy pugnacity that
welcomed and lured on an adversary to wild outhitting. Some sorrowful
preoccupation is, however, to be expected in the man who has lost a
brother, and some degree of irritability at the intrusion of past
disputes. He chose to repeat a similar brief forbidding of the subject
before they started together for the scene of the accident and Romfrey
Castle. No notice was taken of Beauchamp’s remark, that he consented to
go though his duty lay elsewhere. Beauchamp had not the faculty of
reading inside men, or he would have apprehended that his uncle was
engaged in silently heaping aggravations to shoot forth one fine day a
thundering and astonishing counterstroke.
He should have known his uncle Everard better.
In this respect he seemed to have no memory. But who has much that has
given up his brains for a lodging to a single idea? It is at once a
devouring dragon, and an intractable steamforce; it is a tyrant that
has eaten up a senate, and a prophet with a message. Inspired of
solitariness and gigantic size, it claims divine origin. The world can
have no peace for it.
Cecilia had not pleased him; none had. He did not bear in mind that the
sight of Dr. Shrapnel sick and weak, which constantly reanimated his
feelings of pity and of wrath, was not given to the others of whom he
demanded a corresponding energy of just indignation and sympathy. The
sense that he was left unaided to the task of bending his tough uncle,
combined with his appreciation of the righteousness of the task to
embitter him and set him on a pedestal, from which he descended at
every sign of an opportunity for striking, and to which he retired
continually baffled and wrathful, in isolation.
Then ensued the dreadful division in his conception of his powers: for
he who alone saw the just and right thing to do, was incapable of
compelling it to be done. Lay on to his uncle as he would, that
wrestler shook him off. And here was one man 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 Molière, 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 manœuvres 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
ill to work, and I consider it my duty to do as much of his work as I
can undertake.”
“Ha! You’re the old infidel’s Amen clerk. It would rather astonish
orthodox congregations to see clerks in our churches getting into the
pulpit to read the sermon for sick clergymen,” said Lord Avonley. His
countenance furrowed. “I’ll pay that bill,” he added.
“Pay down half a million!” thundered Beauchamp; and dropping his voice,
“or go to him.”
“You remind me,” his uncle observed. “I recommend you to ring that
bell, and have Mrs. Culling here.”
“If she comes she will hear what I think of her.”
“Then, out of the house!”
“Very well, sir. You decline to supply me with money?”
“I do.”
“I must have it!”
“I dare say. Money’s a chain-cable for holding men to their senses.”
“I ask you, my lord, how I am to carry on Holdesbury?”
“Give it up.”
“I shall have to,” said Beauchamp, striving to be prudent.
“There isn’t a doubt of it,” said his uncle, upon a series of nods
diminishing in their depth until his head assumed a droll interrogative
fixity, with an air of “What next?”