WITHOUT LOVE
At the end of November, Jenny Denham wrote these lines to Mr. Lydiard,
in reply to his request that she should furnish the latest particulars
of Nevil Beauchamp, for the satisfaction of the Countess of Romfrey:
“There is everything to reassure Lady Romfrey in the state of Captain
Beauchamp’s health, and I have never seen him so placidly happy as he
has been since the arrival, yesterday morning, of a lady from France,
Madame la Marquise de Rouaillout, with her brother, M. le Comte de
Croisnel. Her husband, I hear from M. de Croisnel, dreads our climate
and coffee too much to attempt the voyage. I understand that she writes
to Lady Romfrey to-day. Lady Romfrey’s letter to her, informing her of
Captain Beauchamp’s alarming illness, went the round from Normandy to
Touraine and Dauphiny, otherwise she would have come over earlier.
“Her first inquiry of me was, ‘Il est mort?’ You would have supposed
her disappointed by my answer. A light went out in her eyes, like that
of a veilleuse in the dawn. She looked at me without speaking, while
her beautiful eyes regained their natural expression. She shut them and
sighed. ‘Tell him that M. de Croisnel and his sister are here.’
“This morning her wish to see Miss Halkett was gratified. You know my
taste was formed in France; I agree with Captain Beauchamp in his more
than admiration of Frenchwomen; ours, though more accomplished, are
colder and less plastic. But Miss Halkett is surpassingly beautiful,
very amiable, very generous, a perfect friend. She is our country at
its best. Probably she is shy of speaking French; she frequently puts
the Italian accent. Madame de Rouaillout begged to speak with her
alone: I do not know what passed. Miss Halkett did not return to us.
“Dr. Shrapnel and Captain Beauchamp have recently been speculating on
our becoming a nation of artists, and authorities in science and
philosophy, by the time our coalfields and material wealth are
exhausted. That, and the cataclysm, are their themes.
“They say, will things end utterly?—all our gains be lost? The question
seems to me to come of that love of earth which is recognition of God:
for if they cannot reconcile themselves to believe in extinction, to
what must they be looking? It is a confirmation of your saying, that
love leads to God, through art or in acts.
“You will regret to hear that the project of Captain Beauchamp’s voyage
is in danger of being abandoned. A committee of a vacant Radical
borough has offered to nominate him. My influence is weak; madame would
have him go back with her and her brother to Normandy. My influence is
weak, I suppose, because he finds me constantly leaning to expediency—I
am your pupil. It may be quite correct that powder is intended for
explosion: we do not therefore apply a spark to the barrel. I ventured
on that. He pitied me in the snares of simile and metaphor. He is the
same, you perceive. How often have we not discussed what would have
become of him, with that ‘rocket brain’ of his, in less quiet times!
Yet, when he was addressing a deputation of workmen the other day, he
recommended patience to them as one of the virtues that count under
wisdom. He is curiously impatient for knowledge. One of his reasons for
not accepting Colonel Halkett’s offer of his yacht is, that he will not
be able to have books enough on board. Definite instead of vast and
hazy duties are to be desired for him, I think. Most fervently I pray
that he will obtain a ship and serve some years. At the risk of your
accusing me of ‘sententious posing,’ I would say, that men who do not
live in the present chiefly, but hamper themselves with giant tasks in
excess of alarm for the future, however devoted and noble they may
be—and he is an example of one that is—reduce themselves to the
dimensions of pigmies; they have the cry of infants. You reply,
Foresight is an element of love of country and mankind. But how often
is not the foresight guess-work?
“He has not spoken of the DAWN project. To-day he is repeating one of
uncle’s novelties—‘Sultry Tories.’ The sultry Tory sits in the sun and
prophecies woefully of storm, it appears. Your accusation that I am one
at heart amuses me; I am not quite able to deny it. ‘Sultriness’ I am
not conscious of. But it would appear to be an epithet for the
Conservatives of wealth. So that England, being very wealthy, we are to
call it a sultry country? You are much wanted, for where there is no
‘middleman Liberal’ to hold the scales for them, these two have it all
their own way, which is not good for them.
Captain Beauchamp quotes you too. It seems that you once talked to him
of a machine for measuring the force of blows delivered with the fist,
and compared his efforts to those of one perpetually practising at it:
and this you are said to have called ‘The case of the Constitutional
Realm and the extreme Radical.’ Elsewhere the Radical smites at iron or
rotten wood; _in England it is a cushion on springs_. Did you say it?
He quotes it as yours, half acquiescingly, and ruefully.
“For visitors, we have had Captain Baskelett for two minutes, and Lord
Palmet, who stayed longer, and seems to intend to come daily. He
attempts French with Madame de R., and amuses her a little: a silver
foot and a ball of worsted. Mr. and Mrs. Grancey Lespel have called,
and Lord and Lady Croyston. Colonel Halkett, Miss Halkett, and Mr.
Tuckham come frequently. Captain Beauchamp spoke to her yesterday of
her marriage. “Madame de R. leaves us to-morrow. Her brother is a
delightful, gay-tempered, very handsome boyish Frenchman—not her equal,
to my mind, for I do not think Frenchmen comparable to the women of
France; but she is exceedingly grave, with hardly a smile, and his high
spirits excite Nevil’s, so it is pleasant to see them together.”
The letter was handed to Lady Romfrey. She read through it thoughtfully
till she came to the name of Nevil, when she frowned. On the morrow she
pronounced it a disingenuous letter. Renée had sent her these lines:
“I should come to you if my time were not restricted; my brother’s
leave of absence is short. I have done here what lay in my power, to
show you I have learnt something in the school of self-immolation. I
have seen Mlle. Halkett. She is a beautiful young woman, deficient only
in words, doubtless. My labour, except that it may satisfy you, was the
vainest of tasks. She marries a ruddy monsieur of a name that I forget,
and of the bearing of a member of the gardes du corps, without the
stature. Enfin, madame, I have done my duty, and do not regret it,
since I may hope that it will win for me some approbation and a portion
of the esteem of a lady to whom I am indebted for that which is now the
best of life to me: and I do not undervalue it in saying I would gladly
have it stamped on brass and deposited beside my father’s. I have my
faith. I would it were Nevil’s too—and yours, should you be in need of
it.
“He will marry Mlle. Denham. If I may foretell events, she will steady
him. She is a young person who will not feel astray in society of his
rank; she possesses the natural grace we do not expect to see out of
our country—from sheer ignorance of what is beyond it. For the moment
she affects to consider herself unworthy; and it is excuseable that she
should be slightly alarmed at her prospect. But Nevil must have a wife.
I presume to think that he could not have chosen better. Above all,
make him leave England for the Winter. Adieu, dear countess. Nevil
promises me a visit after his marriage. I shall not set foot on England
again: but you, should you ever come to our land of France, will find
my heart open to you at the gates of undying grateful recollection. I
am not skilled in writing. You have looked into me once; look now; I am
the same. Only I have succeeded in bringing myself to a greater
likeness to the dead, as it becomes a creature to be who is coupled
with one of their body. Meanwhile I shall have news of you. I trust
that soon I may be warranted in forwarding congratulations to Lord
Romfrey.”
Rosamund handed the letters to her husband. Not only did she think Miss
Denham disingenuous, she saw that the girl was not in love with
Beauchamp: and the idea of a loveless marriage for him threw the
mournfullest of Hecate’s beams along the course of a career that the
passionate love of a bride, though she were not well-born and not
wealthy, would have rosily coloured.
“Without love!” she exclaimed to herself. She asked the earl’s opinion
of the startling intelligence, and of the character of that Miss
Denham, who could pen such a letter, after engaging to give her hand to
Nevil.
Lord Romfrey laughed in his dumb way. “If Nevil must have a wife—and
the marquise tells you so, and she ought to know—he may as well marry a
girl who won’t go all the way down hill with him at his pace. He’ll be
cogged.”
“You do not object to such an alliance?”
“I’m past objection. There’s no law against a man’s marrying his
nurse.”
“But she is not even in love with him!”
“I dare say not. He wants a wife: she accepts a husband. The two women
who were in love with him he wouldn’t have.”
Lady Romfrey sighed deeply: “He has lost Cecilia! She might still have
been his: but he has taken to that girl. And Madame de Rouaillout
praises the girl because—oh! I see it—she has less to be jealous of in
Miss Denham: of whose birth and blood we know nothing. Let that pass!
If only she loved him! I cannot endure the thought of his marrying a
girl who is not in love with him.”
“Just as you like, my dear.”
“I used to suspect Mr. Lydiard.”
“Perhaps he’s the man.”
“Oh, what an end of so brilliant a beginning!”
“It strikes me, my dear,” said the earl, “it’s the proper common sense
beginning that may have a fairish end.”
“No, but what I feel is that he—our Nevil!—has accomplished hardly
anything, if anything!”
“He hasn’t marched on London with a couple of hundred thousand men: no,
he hasn’t done that,” the earl said, glancing back in his mind through
Beauchamp’s career. “And he escapes what Stukely calls his nation’s
scourge, in the shape of a statue turned out by an English chisel. No:
we haven’t had much public excitement out of him. But one thing he did
do: _he got me down on my knees!_”
Lord Romfrey pronounced these words with a sober emphasis that struck
the humour of it sharply into Rosamund’s heart, through some contrast
it presented between Nevil’s aim at the world and hit of a man: the
immense deal thought of it by the earl, and the very little that Nevil
would think of it—the great domestic achievement to be boasted of by an
enthusiastic devotee of politics!
She embraced her husband with peals of loving laughter: the last
laughter heard in Romfrey Castle for many a day.