THE NEPHEWS OF THE EARL, AND ANOTHER EXHIBITION OF THE TWO PASSIONS IN
BEAUCHAMP
It was now the season when London is as a lighted tower to her
provinces, and, among other gentlemen hurried thither by attraction,
Captain Baskelett arrived. Although not a personage in the House of
Commons, he was a vote; and if he never committed himself to the perils
of a speech, he made himself heard. His was the part of chorus, which
he performed with a fairly close imitation of the original cries of
periods before parliaments were instituted, thus representing a stage
in the human development besides the borough of Bevisham. He arrived in
the best of moods for the emission of high-pitched vowel-sounds;
otherwise in the worst of tempers. His uncle had notified an addition
of his income to him at Romfrey, together with commands that he should
quit the castle instantly: and there did that woman, Mistress Culling,
do the honours to Nevil Beauchamp’s French party. He assured Lord
Palmet of his positive knowledge of the fact, incredible as the
sanction of such immoral proceedings by the Earl of Romfrey must appear
to that young nobleman. Additions to income are of course acceptable,
but in the form of a palpable stipulation for silence, they neither
awaken gratitude nor effect their purpose. Quite the contrary; they
prick the moral mind to sit in judgement on the donor. It means, she
fears me! Cecil confidently thought and said of the intriguing woman
who managed his patron.
The town-house was open to him. Lord Romfrey was at Steynham. Cecil
could not suppose that he was falling into a pit in entering it. He
happened to be the favourite of the old housekeeper, who liked him for
his haughtiness, which was to her thinking the sign of real English
nobility, and perhaps it is the popular sign, and a tonic to the
people. She raised lamentations over the shame of the locking of the
door against him that awful night, declaring she had almost mustered
courage to go down to him herself, in spite of Mrs. Culling’s orders.
The old woman lowered her voice to tell him that her official superior
had permitted the French gentleman and ladies to call her countess.
This she knew for a certainty, though she knew nothing of French; but
the French lady who came second brought a maid who knew English a
little, and she said the very words—the countess, and said also that
her party took Mrs. Culling for the Countess of Romfrey. What was more,
my lord’s coachman caught it up, and he called her countess, and he had
a quarrel about it with the footman Kendall; and the day after a
dreadful affair between them in the mews, home drives madam, and
Kendall is to go up to her, and down the poor man comes, and not a word
to be got out of him, but as if he had seen a ghost. “She have such
power,” Cecil’s admirer concluded.
“I wager I match her,” Cecil said to himself, pulling at his wristbands
and letting his lower teeth shine out. The means of matching her were
not so palpable as the resolution. First he took men into his
confidence. Then he touched lightly on the story to ladies, with the
question, “What ought I to do?” In consideration for the Earl of
Romfrey he ought not to pass it over, he suggested. The ladies of the
family urged him to go to Steynham and boldly confront the woman. He
was not prepared for that. Better, it seemed to him, to blow the
rumour, and make it the topic of the season, until Lord Romfrey should
hear of it. Cecil had the ear of the town for a month. He was in the
act of slicing the air with his right hand in his accustomed style, one
evening at Lady Elsea’s, to protest how vast was the dishonour done to
the family by Mistress Culling, when Stukely Culbrett stopped him,
saying, “The lady you speak of is the Countess of Romfrey. I was
present at the marriage.”
Cecil received the shock in the attitude of those martial figures we
see wielding two wooden swords in provincial gardens to tell the
disposition of the wind: abruptly abandoned by it, they stand
transfixed, one sword aloft, the other at their heels. The resemblance
extended to his astonished countenance. His big chest heaved. Like many
another wounded giant before him, he experienced the insufficiency of
interjections to solace pain. For them, however, the rocks were handy
to fling, the trees to uproot; heaven’s concave resounded companionably
to their bellowings. Relief of so concrete a kind is not to be obtained
in crowded London assemblies.
“You are jesting?—you are a jester,” he contrived to say.
“It was a private marriage, and I was a witness,” replied Stukely.
“Lord Romfrey has made an honest woman of her, has he?”
“A peeress, you mean.”
Cecil bowed. “Exactly. I am corrected. I mean a peeress.”
He got out of the room with as high an air as he could command, feeling
as if a bar of iron had flattened his head.
Next day it was intimated to him by one of the Steynham servants that
apartments were ready for him at the residence of the late earl: Lord
Romfrey’s house was about to be occupied by the Countess of Romfrey.
Cecil had to quit, and he chose to be enamoured of that dignity of
sulking so seductive to the wounded spirit of man.
Rosamund, Countess of Romfrey, had worse to endure from Beauchamp. He
indeed came to the house, and he went through the formalities of
congratulation, but his opinion of her step was unconcealed, that she
had taken it for the title. He distressed her by reviving the case of
Dr. Shrapnel, as though it were a matter of yesterday, telling her she
had married a man with a stain on him; she should have exacted the
Apology as a nuptial present; ay, and she would have done it if she had
cared for the earl’s honour or her own. So little did he understand
men! so tenacious was he of his ideas! She had almost forgotten the
case of Dr. Shrapnel, and to see it shooting up again in the new path
of her life was really irritating.
Rosamund did not defend herself.
“I am very glad you have come, Nevil,” she said; “your uncle holds to
the ceremony. I may be of real use to you now; I wish to be.”
“You have only to prove it,” said he. “If you can turn his mind to
marriage, you can send him to Bevisham.”
“My chief thought is to serve you.”
“I know it is, I know it is,” he rejoined with some fervour. “You have
served me, and made me miserable for life, and rightly. Never mind,
all’s well while the hand’s to the axe.” Beauchamp smoothed his
forehead roughly, trying hard to inspire himself with the tonic
draughts of sentiments cast in the form of proverbs. “Lord Romfrey saw
her, you say?”
“He did, Nevil, and admired her.”
“Well, if I suffer, let me think of _her!_ For courage and nobleness I
shall never find her equal. Have you changed your ideas of Frenchwomen
now? Not a word, you say, not a look, to show her disdain of me
whenever my name was mentioned!”
“She could scarcely feel disdain. She was guilty of a sad error.”
“Through trusting in me. Will nothing teach you where the fault lies?
You women have no mercy for women. She went through the parade to
Romfrey Castle and back, and she must have been perishing at heart.
That, you English call acting. In history you have a respect for such
acting up to the scaffold. Good-bye to her! There’s a story ended. One
thing you must promise: you’re a peeress, ma’am: the story’s out,
everybody has heard of it; that babbler has done his worst: if you have
a becoming appreciation of your title, you will promise me honestly—no,
give me your word as a woman I can esteem—that you will not run about
excusing me. Whatever you hear said or suggested, say nothing yourself.
I insist on your keeping silence. Press my hand.”
“Nevil, how foolish!”
“It’s my will.”
“It is unreasonable. You give your enemies licence.”
“I know what’s in your head. Take my hand, and let me have your word
for it.”
“But if persons you like very much, Nevil, should hear?”
“Promise. You are a woman not to break your word.”
“If I decline?”
“Your hand! I’ll kiss it.”
“Oh! my darling.” Rosamund flung her arms round him and strained him an
instant to her bosom. “What have I but you in the world? My comfort was
the hope that I might serve you.”
“Yes! by slaying one woman as an offering to another. It would be
impossible for you to speak the truth. Don’t you see, it would be a lie
against her, and making a figure of me that a man would rather drop to
the ground than have shown of him? I was to blame, and only I. Madame
de Rouaillout was as utterly deceived by me as ever a trusting woman by
a brute. I look at myself and hardly believe it’s the same man. I wrote
to her that I was unchanged—and I was entirely changed, another
creature, anything Lord Romfrey may please to call me.”
“But, Nevil, I repeat, if Miss Halkett should hear...?”
“She knows by this time.”
“At present she is ignorant of it.”
“And what is Miss Halkett to me?”
“More than you imagined in that struggle you underwent, I think, Nevil.
Oh! if only to save her from Captain Baskelett! He gained your uncle’s
consent when they were at the Castle, to support him in proposing for
her. He is persistent. Women have been snared without loving. She is a
great heiress. Reflect on his use of her wealth. You respect her, if
you have no warmer feeling. Let me assure you that the husband of
Cecilia, if he is of Romfrey blood, has the fairest chance of the
estates. That man will employ every weapon. He will soon be here bowing
to me to turn me to his purposes.”
“Cecilia can see through Baskelett,” said Beauchamp.
“Single-mindedly selfish men may be seen through and through, and still
be dangerous, Nevil. The supposition is, that we know the worst of
them. He carries a story to poison her mind. She could resist it, if
you and she were in full confidence together. If she did not love you,
she could resist it. She does, and for some strange reason beyond my
capacity to fathom, you have not come to an understanding. Sanction my
speaking to her, just to put her on her guard, privately: not to injure
that poor lady, but to explain. Shall she not know the truth? I need
say but very little. Indeed, all I can say is, that finding the
marquise in London one evening, you telegraphed for me to attend on
her, and I joined you. You shake your head. But surely it is due to
Miss Halkett. She should be protected from what will certainly wound
her deeply. Her father is afraid of you, on the score of your theories.
I foresee it: he will hear the scandal: he will imagine you as bad in
morals as in politics. And you have lost your friend in Lord
Romfrey—though he shall not be your enemy. Colonel Halkett and Cecilia
called on us at Steynham. She was looking beautiful; a trifle
melancholy. The talk was of your—that—I do not like it, but you hold
those opinions—the Republicanism. She had read your published letters.
She spoke to me of your sincerity. Colonel Halkett of course was vexed.
It is the same with all your friends. She, however, by her tone, led me
to think that she sees you as you are, more than in what you do. They
are now in Wales. They will be in town after Easter. Then you must
expect that her feeling for you will be tried, unless but you will! You
will let me speak to her, Nevil. My position allows me certain
liberties I was previously debarred from. You have not been so very
tender to your Cecilia that you can afford to give her fresh reasons
for sorrowful perplexity. And why should you stand to be blackened by
scandalmongers when a few words of mine will prove that instead of weak
you have been strong, instead of libertine blameless? I am not using
fine phrases: I would not. I would be as thoughtful of you as if you
were present. And for her sake, I repeat, the truth should be told to
her. I have a lock of her hair.”
“Cecilia’s? Where?” said Beauchamp.
“It is at Steynham.” Rosamund primmed her lips at the success of her
probing touch; but she was unaware of the chief reason for his doting
on those fair locks, and how they coloured his imagination since the
day of the drive into Bevisham.
“Now leave me, my dear Nevil,” she said. “Lord Romfrey will soon be
here, and it is as well for the moment that you should not meet him, if
it can be avoided.”
Beauchamp left her, like a man out-argued and overcome. He had no wish
to meet his uncle, whose behaviour in contracting a misalliance and
casting a shadow on the family, in a manner so perfectly objectless and
senseless, appeared to him to call for the reverse of compliments.
Cecilia’s lock of hair lying at Steynham hung in his mind. He saw the
smooth flat curl lying secret like a smile.
The graceful head it had fallen from was dimmer in his mental eye. He
went so far in this charmed meditation as to feel envy of the possessor
of the severed lock: passingly he wondered, with the wonder of
reproach, that the possessor should deem it enough to possess the lock,
and resign it to a drawer or a desk. And as when life rolls back on us
after the long ebb of illness, little whispers and diminutive images of
the old joys and prizes of life arrest and fill our hearts; or as, to
men who have been beaten down by storms, the opening of a daisy is
dearer than the blazing orient which bids it open; so the visionary
lock of Cecilia’s hair became Cecilia’s self to Beauchamp, yielding him
as much of her as he could bear to think of, for his heart was
shattered.
Why had she given it to his warmest friend? For the asking, probably.
This question was the first ripple of the breeze from other emotions
beginning to flow fast.
He walked out of London, to be alone, and to think and from the palings
of a road on a South-western run of high land, he gazed, at the great
city—a place conquerable yet, with the proper appliances for
subjugating it: the starting of his daily newspaper, THE DAWN, say, as
a commencement. It began to seem a possible enterprise. It soon seemed
a proximate one. If Cecilia! He left the exclamation a blank, but not
an empty dash in the brain; rather like the shroud of night on a vast
and gloriously imagined land.
Nay, the prospect was partly visible, as the unknown country becomes by
degrees to the traveller’s optics on the dark hill-tops. It is much, of
course, to be domestically well-mated: but to be fortified and armed by
one’s wife with a weapon to fight the world, is rare good fortune; a
rapturous and an infinite satisfaction. He could now support of his own
resources a weekly paper. A paper published weekly, however, is a poor
thing, out of the tide, behind the date, mainly a literary periodical,
no foremost combatant in politics, no champion in the arena; hardly
better than a commentator on the events of the six past days; an echo,
not a voice. It sits on a Saturday bench and pretends to sum up. Who
listens? The verdict knocks dust out of a cushion. It has no steady
continuous pressure of influence. It is the organ of sleepers. Of all
the bigger instruments of money, it is the feeblest, Beauchamp thought.
His constant faith in the good effects of utterance naturally inclined
him to value six occasions per week above one; and in the fight he was
for waging, it was necessary that he should enter the ring and hit blow
for blow sans intermission. A statement that he could call false must
be challenged hot the next morning. The covert Toryism, the fits of
flunkeyism, the cowardice, of the relapsing middle-class, which is now
England before mankind, because it fills the sails of the Press, must
be exposed. It supports the Press in its own interests, affecting to
speak for the people. It belies the people. And this Press, declaring
itself independent, can hardly walk for fear of treading on an interest
here, an interest there. It cannot have a conscience. It is a bad
guide, a false guardian; its abject claim to be our national and
popular interpreter—even that is hollow and a mockery! It is powerful
only while subservient. An engine of money, appealing to the
sensitiveness of money, it has no connection with the mind of the
nation. And that it is not of, but apart from, the people, may be seen
when great crises come. Can it stop a war? The people would, and with
thunder, had they the medium. But in strong gales the power of the
Press collapses; it wheezes like a pricked pigskin of a piper. At its
best Beauchamp regarded our lordly Press as a curiously diapered
curtain and delusive mask, behind which the country struggles vainly to
show an honest feature; and as a trumpet that deafened and terrorized
the people; a mere engine of leaguers banded to keep a smooth face upon
affairs, quite soullessly: he meanwhile having to be dumb.
But a Journal that should be actually independent of circulation and
advertisements: a popular journal in the true sense, very lungs to the
people, for them to breathe freely through at last, and be heard out of
it, with well-paid men of mark to head and aid them;—the establishment
of such a Journal seemed to him brave work of a life, though one should
die early. The money launching it would be coin washed pure of its
iniquity of selfish reproduction, by service to mankind. This DAWN of
his conception stood over him like a rosier Aurora for the country. He
beheld it in imagination as a new light rising above hugeous London.
You turn the sheets of THE DAWN, and it is the manhood of the land
addressing you, no longer that alternately puling and insolent cry of
the coffers. The health, wealth, comfort, contentment of the greater
number are there to be striven for, in contempt of compromise and
“unseasonable times.”
Beauchamp’s illuminated dream of the power of his DAWN to vitalize old
England, liberated him singularly from his wearing regrets and
heart-sickness.
Surely Cecilia, who judged him sincere, might be bent to join hands
with him for so good a work! She would bring riches to her husband:
sufficient. He required the ablest men of the country to write for him,
and it was just that they should be largely paid. They at least in
their present public apathy would demand it. To fight the brewers,
distillers, publicans, the shopkeepers, the parsons, the landlords, the
law limpets, and also the indifferents, the logs, the cravens and the
fools, high talent was needed, and an ardour stimulated by rates of pay
outdoing the offers of the lucre-journals. A large annual outlay would
therefore be needed; possibly for as long as a quarter of a century.
Cecilia and her husband would have to live modestly. But her
inheritance would be immense. Colonel Halkett had never spent a tenth
of his income. In time he might be taught to perceive in THE DAWN the
one greatly beneficent enterprise of his day. He might through his
daughter’s eyes, and the growing success of the Journal. Benevolent and
gallant old man, patriotic as he was, and kind at heart, he might learn
to see in THE DAWN a broader channel of philanthropy and chivalry than
any we have yet had a notion of in England!—a school of popular
education into the bargain.
Beauchamp reverted to the shining curl. It could not have been clearer
to vision if it had lain under his eyes.
Ay, that first wild life of his was dead. He had slain it. Now for the
second and sober life! Who can say? The Countess of Romfrey suggested
it:—Cecilia may have prompted him in his unknown heart to the sacrifice
of a lawless love, though he took it for simply barren iron duty.
Brooding on her, he began to fancy the victory over himself less and
less a lame one: for it waxed less and less difficult in his
contemplation of it. He was looking forward instead of back.
Who cut off the lock? Probably Cecilia herself; and thinking at the
moment that he would see it, perhaps beg for it. The lustrous little
ring of hair wound round his heart; smiled both on its emotions and its
aims; bound them in one.
But proportionately as he grew tender to Cecilia, his consideration for
Renée increased; that became a law to him: pity nourished it, and
glimpses of self-contempt, and something like worship of her
high-heartedness.
He wrote to the countess, forbidding her sharply and absolutely to
attempt a vindication of him by explanations to any persons whomsoever;
and stating that he would have no falsehoods told, he desired her to
keep to the original tale of the visit of the French family to her as
guests of the Countess of Romfrey. Contradictory indeed. Rosamund shook
her head over him. For a wilful character that is guilty of issuing
contradictory commands to friends who would be friends in spite of him,
appears to be expressly angling for the cynical spirit, so surely does
it rise and snap at such provocation. He was even more emphatic when
they next met. He would not listen to a remonstrance; and though, of
course, her love of him granted him the liberty to speak to her in what
tone he pleased, there were sensations proper to her new rank which his
intemperateness wounded and tempted to revolt when he vexed her with
unreason. She had a glimpse of the face he might wear to his enemies.
He was quite as resolute, too, about that slight matter of the Jersey
bull. He had the bull in Bevisham, and would not give him up without
the sign manual of Lord Romfrey to an agreement to resign him over to
the American Quaker gentleman, after a certain term. Moreover, not once
had he, by exclamation or innuendo, during the period of his recent
grief for the loss of his first love, complained of his uncle Everard’s
refusal in the old days to aid him in suing for Renée. Rosamund had
expected that he would. She thought it unloverlike in him not to stir
the past, and to bow to intolerable facts. This idea of him, coming in
conjunction with his present behaviour, convinced her that there
existed a contradiction in his nature: whence it ensued that she lost
her warmth as an advocate designing to intercede for him with Cecilia;
and warmth being gone, the power of the scandal seemed to her
unassailable. How she could ever have presumed to combat it, was an
astonishment to her. Cecilia might be indulgent, she might have faith
in Nevil. Little else could be hoped for.
The occupations, duties, and ceremonies of her new position contributed
to the lassitude into which Rosamund sank. And she soon had a
communication to make to her lord, the nature of which was more
startling to herself, even tragic. The bondwoman is a free woman
compared with the wife.
Lord Romfrey’s friends noticed a glow of hearty health in the splendid
old man, and a prouder animation of eye and stature; and it was agreed
that matrimony suited him well. Luckily for Cecil he did not sulk very
long. A spectator of the earl’s first introduction to the House of
Peers, he called on his uncle the following day, and Rosamund accepted
his homage in her husband’s presence. He vowed that my lord was the
noblest figure in the whole assembly; that it had been to him the most
moving sight he had ever witnessed; that Nevil should have been there
to see it and experience what he had felt; it would have done old Nevil
incalculable good! and as far as his grief at the idea and some
reticence would let him venture, he sighed to think of the last Earl of
Romfrey having been seen by him taking the seat of his fathers.
Lord Romfrey shouted “Ha!” like a checked peal of laughter, and glanced
at his wife.