A LITTLE PLOT AGAINST CECILIA
Some days before Easter week Seymour Austin went to Mount Laurels for
rest, at an express invitation from Colonel Halkett. The working
barrister, who is also a working member of Parliament, is occasionally
reminded that this mortal machine cannot adapt itself in perpetuity to
the long hours of labour by night in the House of Commons as well as by
day in the Courts, which would seem to have been arranged by a
compliant country for the purpose of aiding his particular, and most
honourable, ambition to climb, while continuing to fill his purse. Mr.
Austin broke down early in the year. He attributed it to a cold. Other
representative gentlemen were on their backs, of whom he could admit
that the protracted nightwork had done them harm, with the reservation
that their constitutions were originally unsound. But the House cannot
get on without lawyers, and lawyers must practise their profession, and
if they manage both to practise all day and sit half the night, others
should be able to do the simple late sitting; and we English are an
energetic people, we must toil or be beaten: and besides, “night brings
counsel,” men are cooler and wiser by night. Any amount of work can be
performed by careful feeders: it is the stomach that kills the
Englishman. Brains are never the worse for activity; they subsist on
it.
These arguments and citations, good and absurd, of a man more at home
in his harness than out of it, were addressed to the colonel to stop
his remonstrances and idle talk about burning the candle at both ends.
To that illustration Mr. Austin replied that he did not burn it in the
middle.
“But you don’t want money, Austin.”
“No; but since I’ve had the habit of making it I have taken to like
it.”
“But you’re not ambitious.”
“Very little; but I should be sorry to be out of the tideway.”
“I call it a system of slaughter,” said the colonel; and Mr. Austin
said, “The world goes in that way—love and slaughter.”
“Not suicide though,” Colonel Halkett muttered.
“No, that’s only incidental.”
The casual word “love” led Colonel Halkett to speak to Cecilia of an
old love-affair of Seymour Austin’s, in discussing the state of his
health with her. The lady was the daughter of a famous admiral,
handsome, and latterly of light fame. Mr. Austin had nothing to regret
in her having married a man richer than himself.
“I wish he had married a good woman,” said the colonel.
“He looks unwell, papa.”
“He thinks you’re looking unwell, my dear.”
“He thinks that of me?”
Cecilia prepared a radiant face for Mr. Austin.
She forgot to keep it kindled, and he suspected her to be a victim of
one of the forms of youthful melancholy, and laid stress on the benefit
to health of a change of scene.
“We have just returned from Wales,” she said.
He remarked that it was hardly a change to be within shot of our
newspapers.
The colour left her cheeks. She fancied her father had betrayed her to
the last man who should know her secret. Beauchamp and the newspapers
were rolled together in her mind by the fever of apprehension wasting
her ever since his declaration of Republicanism, and defence of it, and
an allusion to one must imply the other, she feared: feared, but far
from quailingly. She had come to think that she could read the man she
loved, and detect a reasonableness in his extravagance. Her father had
discovered the impolicy of attacking Beauchamp in her hearing. The
fever by which Cecilia was possessed on her lover’s behalf, often
overcame discretion, set her judgement in a whirl, was like a delirium.
How it had happened she knew not. She knew only her wretched state; a
frenzy seized her whenever his name was uttered, to excuse, account
for, all but glorify him publicly. And the immodesty of her conduct was
perceptible to her while she thus made her heart bare. She exposed
herself once of late at Itchincope, and had tried to school her tongue
before she went there. She felt that she should inevitably be seen
through by Seymour Austin if he took the world’s view of Beauchamp, and
this to her was like a descent on the rapids to an end one shuts eyes
from.
He noticed her perturbation, and spoke of it to her father.
“Yes, I’m very miserable about her,” the colonel confessed. “Girls
don’t see... they can’t guess... they have no idea of the right kind of
man for them. A man like Blackburn Tuckham, now, a man a father could
leave his girl to, with confidence! He works for me like a slave; I
can’t guess why. He doesn’t look as if he were attracted. There’s a
man! but, no; harum-scarum fellows take their fancy.”
“Is _she_ that kind of young lady?” said Mr. Austin.
“No one would have thought so. She pretends to have opinions upon
politics now. It’s of no use to talk of it!”
But Beauchamp was fully indicated.
Mr. Austin proposed to Cecilia that they should spend Easter week in
Rome.
Her face lighted and clouded.
“I should like it,” she said, negatively.
“What’s the objection?”
“None, except that Mount Laurels in Spring has grown dear to me; and we
have engagements in London. I am not quick, I suppose, at new projects.
I have ordered the yacht to be fitted out for a cruise in the
Mediterranean early in the Summer. There is an objection, I am
sure—yes; papa has invited Mr. Tuckham here for Easter.”
“We could carry him with us.”
“Yes, but I should wish to be entirely under your tutelage in Rome.”
“We would pair: your father and he; you and I.”
“We might do that. But Mr. Tuckham is like you, devoted to work; and,
unlike you, careless of Antiquities and Art.”
“He is a hard and serious worker, and therefore the best of companions
for a holiday. At present he is working for the colonel, who would
easily persuade him to give over, and come with us.”
“He certainly does love papa,” said Cecilia.
Mr. Austin dwelt on that subject.
Cecilia perceived that she had praised Mr. Tuckham for his devotedness
to her father without recognizing the beauty of nature in the young man
who could voluntarily take service under the elder he esteemed, in
simple admiration of him. Mr. Austin scarcely said so much, or expected
her to see the half of it, but she wished to be extremely grateful, and
could only see at all by kindling altogether.
“He does himself injustice in his manner,” said Cecilia.
“That has become somewhat tempered,” Mr. Austin assured her, and he
acknowledged what it had been with a smile that she reciprocated.
A rough man of rare quality civilizing under various influences, and
half ludicrous, a little irritating, wholly estimable, has frequently
won the benign approbation of the sex. In addition, this rough man over
whom she smiled was one of the few that never worried her concerning
her hand. There was not a whisper of it in him. He simply loved her
father.
Cecilia welcomed him to Mount Laurels with grateful gladness. The
colonel had hastened Mr. Tuckham’s visit in view of the expedition to
Rome, and they discoursed of it at the luncheon table. Mr. Tuckham let
fall that he had just seen Beauchamp.
“Did he thank you for his inheritance?” Colonel Halkett inquired.
“Not he!” Tuckham replied jovially.
Cecilia’s eyes, quick to flash, were dropped.
The colonel said: “I suppose you told him nothing of what you had done
for him?” and said Tuckham: “Oh no: what anybody else would have done”;
and proceeded to recount that he had called at Dr. Shrapnel’s on the
chance of an interview with his friend Lydiard, who used generally to
be hanging about the cottage. “But now he’s free: his lunatic wife is
dead, and I’m happy to think I was mistaken as to Miss Denham. Men
practising literature should marry women with money. The poor girl
changed colour when I informed her he had been released for upwards of
three months. The old Radical’s not the thing in health. He’s anxious
about leaving her alone in the world; he said so to me. Beauchamp’s for
rigging out a yacht to give him a sail. It seems that salt water did
him some good last year. They’re both of them rather the worse for a
row at one of their meetings in the North in support of that public
nuisance, the democrat and atheist Roughleigh. The Radical doctor lost
a hat, and Beauchamp almost lost an eye. He would have been a Nelson of
politics, if he had been a monops, with an excuse for not seeing. It’s
a trifle to them; part of their education. They call themselves
students. Rome will be capital, Miss Halkett. You’re an Italian
scholar, and I beg to be accepted as a pupil.”
“I fear we have postponed the expedition too long,” said Cecilia. She
could have sunk with languor.
“Too long?” cried Colonel Halkett, mystified.
“Until too late, I mean, papa. Do you not think, Mr. Austin, that a
fortnight in Rome is too short a time?”
“Not if we make it a month, my dear Cecilia.”
“Is not our salt air better for you? The yacht shall be fitted out.”
“I’m a poor sailor!”
“Besides, a hasty excursion to Italy brings one’s anticipated regrets
at the farewell too close to the pleasure of beholding it, for the
enjoyment of that luxury of delight which I associate with the name of
Italy.”
“Why, my dear child,” said her father, “you were all for going, the
other day.”
“I do not remember it,” said she. “One plans agreeable schemes. At
least we need not hurry from home so very soon after our return. We
have been travelling incessantly. The cottage in Wales is not home. It
is hardly fair to Mount Laurels to quit it without observing the
changes of the season in our flowers and birds here. And we have
visitors coming. Of course, papa, I would not chain you to England. If
I am not well enough to accompany you, I can go to Louise for a few
weeks.”
Was ever transparency so threadbare? Cecilia shrank from herself in
contemplating it when she was alone; and Colonel Halkett put the
question to Mr. Austin, saying to him privately, with no further
reserve: “It’s that fellow Beauchamp in the neighbourhood; I’m not so
blind. He’ll be knocking at my door, and I can’t lock him out. Austin,
would you guess it was my girl speaking? I never in my life had such an
example of intoxication before me. I’m perfectly miserable at the
sight. You know her; she was the proudest girl living. Her ideas were
orderly and sound; she had a good intellect. Now she more than half
defends him—a naval officer! good Lord!—for getting up in a public room
to announce that he’s a Republican, and writing heaps of mad letters to
justify himself. He’s ruined in his profession: hopeless! He can never
get a ship: his career’s cut short, he’s a rudderless boat. A gentleman
drifting to Bedlam, his uncle calls him. I call his treatment of
Grancey Lespel anything but gentlemanly. This is the sort of fellow my
girl worships! What can I do? I can’t interdict the house to him: it
would only make matters worse. Thank God, the fellow hangs fire
somehow, and doesn’t come to me. I expect it every day, either in a
letter or the man in person. And I declare to heaven I’d rather be
threading a Khyber Pass with my poor old friend who fell to a shot
there.”
“She certainly has another voice,” Mr. Austin assented gravely.
He did not look on Beauchamp as the best of possible husbands for
Cecilia.
“Let her see that you’re anxious, Austin,” said the colonel. “I’m her
old opponent in this affair. She loves me, but she’s accustomed to
think me prejudiced: you she won’t. You may have a good effect.”
“Not by speaking.”
“No, no; no assault: not a word, and not a word against him. Lay the
wind to catch a gossamer. I’ve had my experience of blowing cold, and
trying to run her down. He’s at Shrapnel’s. He’ll be up here to-day,
and I have an engagement in the town. Don’t quit her side. Let her
fancy you are interested in some discussion—Radicalism, if you like.”
Mr. Austin readily undertook to mount guard over her while her father
rode into Bevisham on business.
The enemy appeared.
Cecilia saw him, and could not step to meet him for trouble of heart.
It was bliss to know that he lived and was near.
A transient coldness following the fit of ecstasy enabled her to swim
through the terrible first minutes face to face with him.
He folded her round like a mist; but it grew a problem to understand
why Mr. Austin should be perpetually at hand, in the garden, in the
woods, in the drawing-room, wheresoever she wakened up from one of her
trances to see things as they were.
Yet Beauchamp, with a daring and cunning at which her soul exulted, and
her feminine nature trembled, as at the divinely terrible, had managed
to convey to her no less than if they had been alone together.
His parting words were: “I must have five minutes with your father
to-morrow.”
How had she behaved? What could be Seymour Austin’s idea of her?
She saw the blind thing that she was, the senseless thing, the
shameless; and vulture-like in her scorn of herself, she alighted on
that disgraced Cecilia and picked her to pieces hungrily. It was clear:
Beauchamp had meant nothing beyond friendly civility: it was only her
abject greediness pecking at crumbs. No! he loved her. Could a woman’s
heart be mistaken? She melted and wept, thanking him: she offered him
her remnant of pride, pitiful to behold.
And still she asked herself between-whiles whether it could be true of
an English lady of our day, that she, the fairest stature under sun,
was ever knowingly twisted to this convulsion. She seemed to look forth
from a barred window on flower, and field, and hill. Quietness existed
as a vision. Was it impossible to embrace it? How pass into it? By
surrendering herself to the flames, like a soul unto death! For why, if
they were overpowering, attempt to resist them? It flattered her to
imagine that she had been resisting them in their present burning might
ever since her lover stepped on the _Esperanza’s_ deck at the mouth of
Otley River. How foolish, seeing that they are fatal! A thrill of
satisfaction swept her in reflecting that her ability to reason was
thus active. And she was instantly rewarded for surrendering; pain
fled, to prove her reasoning good; the flames devoured her gently they
cared not to torture so long as they had her to themselves.
At night, candle in hand, on the corridor, her father told her he had
come across Grancey Lespel in Bevisham, and heard what he had not quite
relished of the Countess of Romfrey. The glittering of Cecilia’s eyes
frightened him. Taking her for the moment to know almost as much as he,
the colonel doubted the weight his communication would have on her; he
talked obscurely of a scandalous affair at Lord Romfrey’s house in
town, and Beauchamp and that Frenchwoman. “But,” said he, “Mrs. Grancey
will be here to-morrow.”
“So will Nevil, papa,” said Cecilia.
“Ah! he’s coming, yes; well!” the colonel puffed. “Well, I shall see
him, of course, but I... I can only say that if his oath’s worth
having, I ... and I think you too, my dear, if you... but it’s no use
anticipating. I shall stand out for your honour and happiness. There,
your cheeks are flushed. Go and sleep.”
Some idle tale! Cecilia murmured to herself a dozen times, undisturbed
by the recurrence of it. Nevil was coming to speak to her father
tomorrow! Adieu to doubt and division! Happy to-morrow! and dear Mount
Laurels! The primroses were still fair in the woods: and soon the
cowslips would come, and the nightingale; she lay lapt in images of
everything innocently pleasing to Nevil. Soon the _Esperanza_ would be
spreading wings. She revelled in a picture of the yacht on a tumbling
Mediterranean Sea, meditating on the two specks near the tiller,—who
were blissful human creatures, blest by heaven and in themselves—with
luxurious Olympian benevolence.
For all that, she awoke, starting up in the first cold circle of
twilight, her heart in violent action. She had dreamed that the vessel
was wrecked. “I did not think myself so cowardly,” she said aloud,
pressing her side and then, with the dream in her eyes, she gasped: “It
would be together!”
Strangely chilled, she tried to recover some fallen load. The birds of
the dawn twittered, chirped, dived aslant her window, fluttered back.
Instead of a fallen load, she fancied presently that it was an
expectation she was desiring to realize: but what? What could be
expected at that hour? She quitted her bed, and paced up and down the
room beneath a gold-starred ceiling. Her expectation, she resolved to
think, was of a splendid day of the young Spring at Mount Laurels—a day
to praise to Nevil.
She raised her window-blind at a window letting in sweet air, to gather
indications of promising weather. Her lover stood on the grass-plot
among the flower-beds below, looking up, as though it had been his
expectation to see her which had drawn her to gaze out with an idea of
some expectation of her own. So visionary was his figure in the grey
solitariness of the moveless morning that she stared at the apparition,
scarce putting faith in him as man, until he kissed his hand to her,
and had softly called her name.
Impulsively she waved a hand from her lips.
Now there was no retreat for either of them!
She awoke to this conviction after a flight of blushes that burnt her
thoughts to ashes as they sprang. Thoughts born blushing, all of the
crimson colour, a rose-garden, succeeded, and corresponding with their
speed her feet paced the room, both slender hands crossed at her throat
under an uplifted chin, and the curves of her dark eyelashes dropped as
in a swoon.
“He loves me!” The attestation of it had been visible. “No one but me!”
Was that so evident?
Her father picked up silly stories of him—a man who made enemies
recklessly!
Cecilia was petrified by a gentle tapping at her door. Her father
called to her, and she threw on her dressing-gown, and opened the door.
The colonel was in his riding-suit.
“I haven’t slept a wink, and I find it’s the same with you,” he said,
paining her with his distressed kind eyes. “I ought not to have hinted
anything last night without proofs. Austin’s as unhappy as I am.”
“At what, my dear papa, at what?” cried Cecilia.
“I ride over to Steynham this morning, and I shall bring you proofs, my
poor child, proofs. That foreign tangle of his...”
“You speak of Nevil, papa?”
“It’s a common scandal over London. That Frenchwoman was found at Lord
Romfrey’s house; Lady Romfrey cloaked it. I believe the woman would
swear black’s white to make Nevil Beauchamp appear an angel; and he’s a
desperately cunning hand with women. You doubt that.”
She had shuddered slightly.
“You won’t doubt if I bring you proofs. Till I come back from Steynham,
I ask you not to see him alone: not to go out to him.”
The colonel glanced at her windows.
Cecilia submitted to the request, out of breath, consenting to feel
like a tutored girl, that she might conceal her guilty knowledge of
what was to be seen through the windows.
“Now I’m off,” said he, and kissed her.
“If you would accept Nevil’s word!” she murmured.
“Not where women are concerned!”
He left her with this remark, which found no jealous response in her
heart, yet ranged over certain dispersed inflammable grains, like a
match applied to damp powder; again and again running in little leaps
of harmless firm keeping her alive to its existence, and surprising her
that it should not have been extinguished.
Beauchamp presented himself rather late in the afternoon, when Mr.
Austin and Blackburn Tuckham were sipping tea in Cecilia’s boudoir with
that lady, and a cousin of her sex, by whom she was led to notice a
faint discoloration over one of his eyes, that was, considering whence
it came, repulsive to compassion. A blow at a Radical meeting! He spoke
of Dr. Shrapnel to Tuckham, and assuredly could not complain that the
latter was unsympathetic in regard to the old man’s health, though when
he said, “Poor old man! he fears he will die!” Tuckham rejoined: “He
had better make his peace.”
“He fears he will die, because of his leaving Miss Denham unprotected,”
said Beauchamp.
“Well, she’s a good-looking girl: he’ll be able to leave her something,
and he might easily get her married, I should think,” said Tuckham.
“He’s not satisfied with handing her to any kind of man.”
“If the choice is to be among Radicals and infidels, I don’t wonder. He
has come to one of the tests.”
Cecilia heard Beauchamp speaking of a newspaper. A great Radical
Journal, unmatched in sincerity, superior in ability, soon to be equal
in power, to the leader and exemplar of the lucre-Press, would some day
see the light.
“You’ll want money for that,” said Tuckham.
“I know,” said Beauchamp.
“Are you prepared to stand forty or fifty thousand a year?”
“It need not be half so much.”
“Counting the libels, I rate the outlay rather low.”
“Yes, lawyers, judges, and juries of tradesmen, dealing justice to a
Radical print!”
Tuckham brushed his hand over his mouth and ahemed. “It’s to be a penny
journal?”
“Yes, a penny. I’d make it a farthing—”
“Pay to have it read?”
“Willingly.”
Tuckham did some mental arithmetic, quaintly, with rapidly blinking
eyelids and open mouth. “You may count it at the cost of two paying
mines,” he said firmly. “That is, if it’s to be a consistently Radical
Journal, at law with everybody all round the year. And by the time it
has won a reputation, it will be undermined by a radicaller Radical
Journal. That’s how we’ve lowered the country to this level. That’s an
Inferno of Circles, down to the ultimate mire. And what on earth are
you contending for?”
“Freedom of thought, for one thing.”
“We have quite enough free-thinking.”
“There’s not enough if there’s not perfect freedom.”
“Dangerous!” quoth Mr. Austin.
“But it’s that danger which makes men, sir; and it’s fear of the danger
that makes our modern Englishman.”
“Oh! Oh!” cried Tuckham in the voice of a Parliamentary Opposition.
“Well, you start your paper, we’ll assume it: what class of men will
you get to write?”
“I shall get good men for the hire.”
“You won’t get the best men; you may catch a clever youngster or two,
and an old rogue of talent; you won’t get men of weight. They’re
prejudiced, I dare say. The Journals which are commercial speculations
give us a guarantee that they mean to be respectable; they must, if
they wouldn’t collapse. That’s why the best men consent to write for
them.”
“Money will do it,” said Beauchamp.
Mr. Austin disagreed with that observation.
“Some patriotic spirit, I may hope, sir.”
Mr. Austin shook his head. “We put different constructions upon
patriotism.”
“Besides—fiddle! nonsense!” exclaimed Tuckham in the mildest
interjections he could summon for a vent in society to his offended
common sense; “the better your men the worse your mark. You’re not
dealing with an intelligent people.”
“There’s the old charge against the people.”
“But they’re not. You can madden, you can’t elevate them by writing and
writing. Defend us from the uneducated English! The common English are
doltish; except in the North, where you won’t do much with them.
Compare them with the Yankees for shrewdness, the Spaniards for
sobriety, the French for ingenuity, the Germans for enlightenment, the
Italians in the Arts; yes, the Russians for good-humour and
obedience—where are they? They’re only worth something when they’re
led. They fight well; there’s good stuff in them.”
“I’ve heard all that before,” returned Beauchamp, unruffled. “You don’t
know them. I mean to educate them by giving them an interest in their
country. At present they have next to none. Our governing class is
decidedly unintelligent, in my opinion brutish, for it’s indifferent.
My paper shall render your traders justice for what they do, and
justice for what they don’t do.”
“My traders, as you call them, are the soundest foundation for a
civilized state that the world has yet seen.”
“What is your paper to be called?” said Cecilia.
“The DAWN,” Beauchamp answered.
She blushed fiery red, and turned the leaves of a portfolio of
drawings.
“The DAWN!” ejaculated Tuckham. “The grey-eyed, or the red?
Extraordinary name for a paper, upon my word!”
“A paper that doesn’t devote half its columns to the vices of the
rich—to money-getting, spending and betting—will be an extraordinary
paper.”
“I have it before me now!—two doses of flattery to one of the whip. No,
no; you haven’t hit the disease. We want union, not division. Turn your
mind to being a moralist, instead of a politician.”
“The distinction shouldn’t exist!”
“Only it does!”
Mrs. Grancey Lespel’s entrance diverted their dialogue from a theme
wearisome to Cecilia, for Beauchamp shone but darkly in it, and Mr.
Austin did not join in it. Mrs. Grancey touched Beauchamp’s fingers.
“Still political?” she said. “You have been seen about London with a
French officer in uniform.”
“It was M. le comte de Croisnel, a very old friend and comrade of
mine,” Beauchamp replied.
“Why do those Frenchmen everlastingly wear their uniforms?—tell me!
Don’t you think it detestable style?”
“He came over in a hurry.”
“Now, don’t be huffed. I know you, for defending your friends, Captain
Beauchamp! Did he not come over with ladies?”
“With relatives, yes.”
“Relatives of course. But when British officers travel with ladies,
relatives or other, they prefer the simplicity of mufti, and so do I,
as a question of taste, I must say.”
“It was quite by misadventure that M. de Croisnel chanced to come in
his uniform.”
“Ah! I know you, for defending your friends, Captain Beauchamp. He was
in too great a hurry to change his uniform before he started, or en
route?”
“So it happened.”
Mrs. Grancey let a lingering eye dwell maliciously on Beauchamp, who
said, to shift the burden of it: “The French are not so jealous of
military uniforms as we are. M. de Croisnel lost his portmanteau.”
“Ah! lost it! Then of course he is excuseable, except to the naked eye.
Dear me! you have had a bruise on yours. Was Monsieur votre ami in the
Italian campaign?”
“No, poor fellow, he was not. He is not an Imperialist; he had to
remain in garrison.”
“He wore a multitude of medals, I have been told. A cup of tea,
Cecilia. And how long did he stay in England with his relatives?”
“Two days.”
“Only two days! A very short visit indeed—singularly short. Somebody
informed me of their having been seen at Romfrey Castle, which cannot
have been true.”
She turned her eyes from Beauchamp silent to Cecilia’s hand on the
teapot. “Half a cup,” she said mildly, to spare the poor hand its
betrayal of nervousness, and relapsed from her air of mistress of the
situation to chatter to Mr. Austin.
Beauchamp continued silent. He took up a book, and presently a pencil
from his pocket, then talked of the book to Cecilia’s cousin; and
leaving a paper-cutter between the leaves, he looked at Cecilia and
laid the book down.
She proceeded to conduct Mrs. Grancey Lespel to her room.
“I do admire Captain Beauchamp’s cleverness; he is as good as a French
romance!” Mrs. Grancey exclaimed on the stairs. “He fibs charmingly. I
could not help drawing him out. Two days! Why, my dear, his French
party were a fortnight in the country. It was the marquise, you
know—the old affair; and one may say he’s a constant man.”
“I have not heard Captain Beauchamp’s cleverness much praised,” said
Cecilia. “This is your room, Mrs. Grancey.”
“Stay with me a moment. It is the room I like. Are we to have him at
dinner?”
Cecilia did not suppose that Captain Beauchamp would remain to dine.
Feeling herself in the clutches of a gossip, she would fain have gone.
“I am just one bit glad of it, though I can’t dislike him personally,”
said Mrs. Grancey, detaining her and beginning to whisper. “It was
really too bad. There was a French _party_ at the end, but there was
only _one_ at the commencement. The brother was got over for a curtain,
before the husband arrived in pursuit. They say the trick Captain
Beauchamp played his cousin Cecil, to get him out of the house when he
had made a discovery, was monstrous—fiendishly cunning. However, Lady
Romfrey, as that woman appears to be at last, covered it all. You know
she has one of those passions for Captain Beauchamp which completely
blind women to right and wrong. He is her saint, let him sin ever so!
The story’s in everybody’s mouth. By the way, Palmet saw her. He
describes her pale as marble, with dark long eyes, the most innocent
look in the world, and a walk, the absurd fellow says, like a statue
set gliding. No doubt Frenchwomen do walk well. He says her eyes are
terrible traitors; I need not quote Palmet. The sort of eyes that would
look fondly on a stone, you know. What her reputation is in France I
have only indistinctly heard. She has one in England by this time, I
can assure you. She found her match in Captain Beauchamp for boldness.
Where any other couple would have seen danger, _they_ saw safety; and
they contrived to accomplish it, according to those horrid talebearers.
You have plenty of time to dress, my dear; I have an immense deal to
talk about. There are half-a-dozen scandals in London already, and you
ought to know them, or you will be behind the tittle-tattle when you go
to town; and I remember, as a girl, I knew nothing so excruciating as
to hear blanks, dashes, initials, and half words, without the key.
Nothing makes a girl look so silly and unpalatable. Naturally, the
reason why Captain Beauchamp is more talked about than the rest is the
politics. Your grand reformer should be careful. Doubly heterodox will
not do! It makes him interesting to women, if you like, but he won’t
soon hear the last of it, if he is for a public career. Grancey
literally crowed at the story. And the wonderful part of it is, that
Captain Beauchamp refused to be present at the earl’s first ceremonial
dinner in honour of his countess. Now, that, we all think, was
particularly ungrateful: now, was it not?”
“If the countess—if ingratitude had anything to do with it,” said
Cecilia.
She escaped to her room and dressed impatiently.
Her boudoir was empty: Beauchamp had departed. She recollected his look
at her, and turned over the leaves of the book he had been hastily
scanning, and had condescended to approve of. On the two pages where
the paper-cutter was fixed she perceived small pencil dots under
certain words. Read consecutively, with a participle termination struck
out to convey his meaning, they formed the pathetically ungrammatical
line:
“Hear: none: but: accused: false.”
Treble dots were under the word “to-morrow.” He had scored the margin
of the sentences containing his dotted words, as if in admiration of
their peculiar wisdom.
She thought it piteous that he should be reduced to such means of
communication. The next instant Cecilia was shrinking from the adept
intriguer—French-taught!
In the course of the evening her cousin remarked:
“Captain Beauchamp must see merit in things undiscoverable by my poor
faculties. I will show you a book he has marked.”
“Did you see it? I was curious to examine it,” interposed Cecilia; “and
I am as much at a loss as you to understand what could have attracted
him. One sentence...”
“About the sheikh in the stables, where he accused the pretended
physician? Yes, what was there in that?”
“Where is the book?” said Mrs. Grancey.
“Not here, I think.” Cecilia glanced at the drawing-room book-table,
and then at Mr. Austin, the victim of an unhappy love in his youth, and
unhappy about her, as her father had said. Seymour Austin was not one
to spread the contagion of intrigue! She felt herself caught by it,
even melting to feel enamoured of herself in consequence, though not
loving Beauchamp the more.
“This newspaper, if it’s not merely an airy project, will be
ruination,” said Tuckham. “The fact is, Beauchamp has no _bend_ in him.
He can’t meet a man without trying a wrestle, and as long as he keeps
his stiffness, he believes he has won. I’ve heard an oculist say that
the eye that doesn’t blink ends in blindness, and he who won’t bend
breaks. It’s a pity, for he’s a fine fellow. A Radical daily Journal of
Shrapnel’s colour, to educate the people by giving them an interest in
the country! Goodness, what a delusion! and what a waste of money!
He’ll not be able to carry it on a couple of years. And there goes his
eighty thousand!”
Cecilia’s heart beat fast. She had no defined cause for its excitement.
Colonel Halkett returned to Mount Laurels close upon midnight, very
tired, coughing and complaining of the bitter blowing East. His guests
shook hands with him, and went to bed.
“I think I’ll follow their example,” he said to Cecilia, after drinking
a tumbler of mulled wine.
“Have you nothing to tell me, dear papa?” said she, caressing him
timidly.
“A confirmation of the whole story from Lord Romfrey in person—that’s
all. He says Beauchamp’s mad. I begin to believe it. You must use your
judgement. I suppose I must not expect you to consider me. You might
open your heart to Austin. As to my consent, knowing what I do, you
will have to tear it out of me. Here’s a country perfectly contented,
and that fellow at work digging up grievances to persuade the people
they’re oppressed by us. Why should I talk of it? He can’t do much
harm; unless he has money—money! Romfrey says he means to start a
furious paper. He’ll make a bonfire of himself. I can’t stand by and
see you in it too. I may die; I may be spared the sight.”
Cecilia flung her arms round his neck. “Oh! papa.”
“I don’t want to make him out worse than he is, my dear. I own to his
gallantry—in the French sense as well as the English, it seems! It’s
natural that Romfrey should excuse his wife. She’s another of the women
who are crazy about Nevil Beauchamp. She spoke to me of the ‘pleasant
visit of her French friends,’ and would have enlarged on it, but
Romfrey stopped her. By the way, he proposes Captain Baskelett for you,
and we’re to look for Baskelett’s coming here, backed by his uncle.
There’s no end to it; there never will be till you’re married: and no
peace for me! I hope I shan’t find myself with a cold to-morrow.”
The colonel coughed, and perhaps exaggerated the premonitory symptoms
of a cold.
“Italy, papa, would do you good,” said Cecilia.
“It might,” said he.
“If we go immediately, papa; to-morrow, early in the morning, before
there is a chance of any visitors coming to the house.”
“From Bevisham?”
“From Steynham. I cannot endure a second persecution.”
“But you have a world of packing, my dear.”
“An hour before breakfast will be sufficient for me.”
“In that case, we might be off early, as you say, and have part of the
Easter week in Rome.”
“Mr. Austin wishes it greatly, papa, though he has not mentioned it.”
“Austin, my darling girl, is not one of your impatient men who burst
with everything they have in their heads or their hearts.”
“Oh! but I know him so well,” said Cecilia, conjuring up that innocent
enthusiasm of hers for Mr. Austin as an antidote to her sharp
suffering. The next minute she looked on her father as the key of an
enigma concerning Seymour Austin, whom, she imagined, possibly she had
not hitherto known at all. Her curiosity to pierce it faded. She and
her maid were packing through the night. At dawn she requested her maid
to lift the window-blind and give her an opinion of the weather. “Grey,
Miss,” the maid reported. It signified to Cecilia: no one roaming
outside.
The step she was taking was a desperate attempt at a cure; and she
commenced it, though sorely wounded, with pity for Nevil’s
disappointment, and a singularly clear-eyed perception of his aims and
motives.—“I am rich, and he wants riches; he likes me, and he reads my
weakness.”—Jealousy shook her by fits, but she had no right to be
jealous, nor any right to reproach him. Her task was to climb back to
those heavenly heights she sat on before he distracted her and drew her
down.
Beauchamp came to a vacated house that day.