THE FRUITS OF THE APOLOGY
This clear heart had cause for tears. Her just indignation with Lord
Romfrey had sustained her artificially hitherto: now that it was
erased, she sank down to weep. Her sentiments toward Lydiard had been
very like Cecilia Halkett’s in favour of Mr. Austin; with something
more to warm them on the part of the gentleman. He first had led her
mind in the direction of balanced thought, when, despite her affection
for Dr. Shrapnel, her timorous maiden wits, unable to contend with the
copious exclamatory old politician, opposed him silently. Lydiard had
helped her tongue to speak, as well as her mind to rational views; and
there had been a bond of union in common for them in his admiration of
her father’s writings. She had known that he was miserably yoked, and
had respected him when he seemed inclined for compassion without wooing
her for tenderness. He had not trifled with her, hardly flattered; he
had done no more than kindle a young girl’s imaginative liking. The
pale flower of imagination, fed by dews, not by sunshine, was born
drooping, and hung secret in her bosom, shy as a bell of the frail
wood-sorrel. Yet there was pain for her in the perishing of a thing so
poor and lowly. She had not observed the change in Lydiard after
Beauchamp came on the scene: and that may tell us how passionlessly
pure the little maidenly sentiment was. For do but look on the dewy
wood-sorrel flower; it is not violet or rose inviting hands to pluck
it: still it is there, happy in the woods. And Jenny’s feeling was that
a foot had crushed it.
She wept, thinking confusedly of Lord Romfrey; trying to think he had
made his amends tardily, and that Beauchamp prized him too highly for
the act. She had no longer anything to resent: she was obliged to weep.
In truth, as the earl had noticed, she was physically depressed by the
strain of her protracted watch over Beauchamp, as well as rather
heartsick.
But she had been of aid and use in saving him! She was not quite a
valueless person; sweet, too, was the thought that he consulted her,
listened to her, weighed her ideas. He had evidently taken to study
her, as if dispersing some wonderment that one of her sex should have
ideas. He had repeated certain of her own which had been forgotten by
her. His eyes were often on her with this that she thought humorous
intentness. She smiled. She had assisted in raising him from his bed of
sickness, whereof the memory affrighted her and melted her. The
difficulty now was to keep him indoors, and why he would not go even
temporarily to a large house like Mount Laurels, whither Colonel
Halkett was daily requesting him to go, she was unable to comprehend.
His love of Dr. Shrapnel might account for it.
“Own, Jenny,” said Beauchamp, springing up to meet her as she entered
the room where he and Dr. Shrapnel sat discussing Lord Romfrey’s
bearing at his visit, “own that my uncle Everard is a true nobleman. He
has to make the round to the right mark, but he comes to it. _I_ could
not move him—and I like him the better for that. He worked round to it
himself. I ought to have been sure he would. You’re right: I break my
head with impatience.”
“No; you sowed seed,” said Dr. Shrapnel. “Heed not that girl, my
Beauchamp. The old woman’s in the Tory, and the Tory leads the young
maid. Here’s a fable I draw from a Naturalist’s book, and we’ll set it
against the dicta of Jenny Do-nothing, Jenny Discretion, Jenny
Wait-for-the-Gods: Once upon a time in a tropical island a man lay
sick; so ill that he could not rise to trouble his neighbours for help;
so weak that it was lifting a mountain to get up from his bed; so
hopeless of succour that the last spark of distraught wisdom perching
on his brains advised him to lie where he was and trouble not himself,
since peace at least he could command, before he passed upon the black
highroad men call our kingdom of peace: ay, he lay there. Now it
chanced that this man had a mess to cook for his nourishment. And life
said, Do it, and death said, To what end? He wrestled with the stark
limbs of death, and cooked the mess; and that done he had no strength
remaining to him to consume it, but crept to his bed like the toad into
winter. Now, meanwhile a steam arose from the mess, and he lay
stretched. So it befel that the birds of prey of the region scented the
mess, and they descended and thronged at that man’s windows. And the
man’s neighbours looked up at them, for it was the sign of one who is
fit for the beaks of birds, lying unburied. Fail to spread the pall one
hour where suns are decisive, and the pall comes down out of heaven!
They said, The man is dead within. And they went to his room, and saw
him and succoured him. They lifted him out of death by the last uncut
thread.
“Now, my Jenny Weigh-words, Jenny Halt-there! was it they who saved the
man, or he that saved himself? The man taxed his expiring breath to sow
seed of life. Lydiard shall put it into verse for a fable in song for
our people. I say it is a good fable, and sung spiritedly may serve for
nourishment, and faith in work, to many of our poor fainting fellows!
Now you?”
Jenny said: “I think it is a good fable of self-help. Does it quite
illustrate the case? I mean, the virtue of impatience. But I like the
fable and the moral; and I think it would do good if it were made
popular, though it would be hard to condense it to a song.”
“It would be hard! ay, then we do it forthwith. And you shall compose
the music. As for the ‘case of impatience,’ my dear, you tether the
soaring universal to your pet-lamb’s post, the special. I spoke of seed
sown. I spoke of the fruits of energy and resolution. Cared I for an
apology? I took the blows as I take hail from the clouds—which
apologize to you the moment you are in shelter, if you laugh at them.
So, good night to that matter! Are we to have rain this evening? I must
away into Bevisham to the Workmen’s Hall, and pay the men.”
“There will not be rain; there will be frost, and you must be well
wrapped if you must go,” said Jenny. “And tell them not to think of
deputations to Captain Beauchamp yet.”
“No, no deputations; let them send Killick, if they want to say
anything,” said Beauchamp.
“Wrong!” the doctor cried; “wrong! wrong! Six men won’t hurt you more
than one. And why check them when their feelings are up? They burn to
be speaking some words to you. Trust me, Beauchamp, if we shun to
encounter the good warm soul of numbers, our hearts are narrowed to
them. The business of our modern world is to open heart and stretch out
arms to numbers. In numbers we have our sinews; they are our iron and
gold. Scatter them not; teach them the secret of cohesion. Practically,
since they gave you not their entire confidence once, you should not
rebuff them to suspicions of you as aristocrat, when they rise on the
effort to believe a man of, as “tis called, birth their undivided
friend. Meet them!”
“Send them,” said Beauchamp.
Jenny Denham fastened a vast cloak and a comforter on the doctor’s
heedless shoulders and throat, enjoining on him to return in good time
for dinner.
He put his finger to her cheek in reproof of such supererogatory
counsel to a man famous for his punctuality.
The day had darkened.
Beauchamp begged Jenny to play to him on the piano.
“Do you indeed care to have music?” said she. “I did not wish you to
meet a deputation, because your strength is not yet equal to it. Dr.
Shrapnel dwells on principles, forgetful of minor considerations.”
“I wish thousands did!” cried Beauchamp. “When you play I seem to hear
ideas. Your music makes me think.”
Jenny lit a pair of candles and set them on the piano. “Waltzes?” she
asked.
“Call in a puppet-show at once!”
She smiled, turned over some leaves, and struck the opening notes of
the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven, and made her selections.
At the finish he said: “Now read me your father’s poem, ‘_The Hunt of
the Fates._’”
She read it to him.
“Now read, ‘_The Ascent from the Inferno._’”
That she read: and also “_Soul and Brute_,” another of his favourites.
He wanted more, and told her to read “_First Love—Last Love._”
“I fear I have not the tone of voice for love-poems,” Jenny said,
returning the book to him.
“I’ll read it,” said he.
He read with more impressiveness than effect. Lydiard’s reading
thrilled her: Beauchamp’s insisted too much on particular lines. But it
was worth while observing him. She saw him always as in a picture,
remote from herself. His loftier social station and strange character
precluded any of those keen suspicions by which women learn that a fire
is beginning to glow near them.
“How I should like to have known your father!” he said. “I don’t wonder
at Dr. Shrapnel’s love of him. Yes, he was one of the great men of his
day! and it’s a higher honour to be of his blood than any that rank can
give. You were ten years old when you lost him. Describe him to me.”
“He used to play with me like a boy,” said Jenny. She described her
father from a child’s recollection of him.
“Dr. Shrapnel declares he would have been one of the first surgeons in
Europe: and he was one of the first of poets,” Beauchamp pursued with
enthusiasm. “So he was doubly great. I hold a good surgeon to be in the
front rank of public benefactors—where they put rich brewers, bankers,
and speculative manufacturers now. Well! the world is young. We shall
alter that in time. Whom did your father marry?”
Jenny answered, “My mother was the daughter of a London lawyer. She
married without her father’s approval of the match, and he left her
nothing.”
Beauchamp interjected: “Lawyer’s money!”
“It would have been useful to my mother’s household when I was an
infant,” said Jenny.
“Poor soul! I suppose so. Yes; well,” Beauchamp sighed. “Money! never
mind how it comes. We’re in such a primitive condition that we catch at
anything to keep us out of the cold; dogs with a bone!—instead of
living, as Dr. Shrapnel prophecies, for and, with one another. It’s war
now, and money’s the weapon of war. And we’re the worst nation in
Europe for that. But if we fairly recognize it, we shall be the first
to alter our ways. There’s the point. Well, Jenny, I can look you in
the face to-night. Thanks to my uncle Everard at last!”
“Captain Beauchamp, you have never been blamed.”
“I am Captain Beauchamp by courtesy, in public. My friends call me
Nevil. I think I have heard the name on your lips?”
“When you were very ill.”
He stood closer to her, very close.
“Which was the arm that bled for me? May I look at it? There was a
bruise.”
“Have you not forgotten that trifle? There is the faintest possible
mark of it left.”
“I wish to see.”
She gently defended the arm, but he made it so much a matter of earnest
to see the bruise of the old Election missile on her fair arm, that,
with a pardonable soft blush, to avoid making much of it herself, she
turned her sleeve a little above the wrist. He took her hand.
“It was for me!”
“It was quite an accident: no harm was intended.”
“But it was in my cause—for me!”
“Indeed, Captain Beauchamp...”
“Nevil, we say indoors.”
“Nevil—but is it not wiser to say what comes naturally to us?”
“Who told you to-day that you had brought me to life? I am here to
prove it true. If I had paid attention to your advice, I should not
have gone into the cottage of those poor creatures and taken away the
fever. I did no good there. But the man’s wife said her husband had
been ruined by voting for me: and it was a point of honour to go in and
sit with him. You are not to have your hand back: it is mine. Don’t you
remember, Jenny, how you gave me your arm on the road when I staggered;
two days before the fever knocked me over? Shall I tell you what I
thought then? I thought that he who could have you for a mate would
have the bravest and helpfullest wife in all England. And not a mere
beauty, for you have good looks: but you have the qualities I have been
in search of. Why do your eyes look so mournfully at me? I am full of
hope. We’ll sail the _Esperanza_ for the Winter: you and I, and our
best friend with us. And you shall have a voice in the council, be
sure.”
“If you are two to one?” Jenny said quickly, to keep from faltering.
Beauchamp pressed his mouth to the mark of the bruise on her arm. He
held her fast.
“I mean it, if you will join me, that you and I should rejoice the
heart of the dear old man—will you? He has been brooding over your
loneliness here if you are unmarried, ever since his recovery. I owe my
life to you, and every debt of gratitude to him. Now, Jenny!”
“Oh! Captain Beauchamp—Nevil, if you will... if I may have my hand. You
exaggerate common kindness. He loves you. We both esteem you.”
“But you don’t love me?”
“Indeed I have no fear that I shall be unable to support myself, if I
am left alone.”
“But I want your help. I wake from illness with my eyes open. I must
have your arm to lean on now and then.”
Jenny dropped a shivering sigh.
“Uncle is long absent!” she said.
Her hand was released. Beauchamp inspected his watch.
“He may have fallen! He may be lying on the common!”
“Oh!” cried Jenny, “why did I let him go out without me?”
“Let me have his lantern; I’ll go and search over the common.”
“You must not go out,” said she.
“I must. The old man may be perishing.”
“It will be death to you... Nevil!”
“That’s foolish. I can stand the air for a few minutes.”
“I’ll go,” said Jenny.
“Unprotected? No.”
“Cook shall come with me.”
“Two women!”
“Nevil, if you care a little for me, be good, be kind, submit.”
“He is half an hour behind dinner-time, and he’s never late. Something
must have happened to him. Way for me, my dear girl.”
She stood firm between him and the door. It came to pass that she
stretched her hands to arrest him, and he seized the hands.
“Rather than you should go out in this cold weather, anything!” she
said, in the desperation of physical inability to hold him back.
“Ah!” Beauchamp crossed his arms round her. “I’ll wait for five
minutes.”
One went by, with Jenny folded, broken and sobbing, senseless, against
his breast.
They had not heard Dr. Shrapnel quietly opening the hall door and
hanging up his hat. He looked in.
“Beauchamp!” he exclaimed.
“Come, doctor,” said Beauchamp, and loosened his clasp of Jenny
considerately.
She disengaged herself.
“Beauchamp! now I die a glad man.”
“Witness, doctor, she’s mine by her own confession.”
“Uncle!” Jenny gasped. “Oh! Captain Beauchamp, what an error! what
delusion!... Forget it. I will. Here are more misunderstandings! You
shall be excused. But be...”
“Be you the blessedest woman alive on this earth, my Jenny!” shouted
Dr. Shrapnel. “You have the choice man on all the earth for husband,
sweetheart! Ay, of all the earth! I go with a message for my old friend
Harry Denham, to quicken him in the grave; for the husband of his girl
is Nevil Beauchamp! The one thing I dared not dream of thousands is
established. Sunlight, my Jenny!”
Beauchamp kissed her hand.
She slipped away to her chamber, grovelling to find her diminished self
somewhere in the mid-thunder of her amazement, as though it were to
discover a pin on the floor by the flash of lightning. Where was she!
This ensued from the apology of Lord Romfrey to Dr. Shrapnel.