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 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 
 
 JUN25 :97t 
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 L161— O-1096
 
 "L I B RARY 
 
 OF THE 
 U N 1 VLR5ITY 
 Of ILLl NOIS 
 
 COP, to
 
 BEAUCHAMPS CAEEEE. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 Digitizpd by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2009 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/beauchampscareer01merp
 
 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER 
 
 By GEOEGE MEREDITH, 
 
 ACTHOR OF "the SHAVTS"G OF SHAGPAT," "THE ORDEAL OF RICHARD 
 FEVERELL," ETC., ETC. 
 
 I>' THEEE VOLUMES. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON : 
 CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY. 
 
 1876. 
 [All rights reserved.]
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY VIRTUE AND CO., LIMITED, 
 
 CITY ROAD.
 
 2Z3 
 
 too- ^ 
 
 ■I 
 
 ^ CONTENTS TO VOL. I. 
 
 1 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 The Champion of his Country . . .1 
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 Uncle, Nephew, and Another 22 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Contains Baronial Views of the Present Time . 38 
 
 .^ 
 
 
 
 
 CHAPTER IT. 
 
 «> 
 
 
 
 
 
 A Glimpse 
 
 OF 
 
 Neyil in Action . . . . 
 
 f^ 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ^ 
 
 Eenee . 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 

 
 VI CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGK 
 
 CHA.PTER VI. 
 Love in Venice 82 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 An Awakening for Both 88 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 A Night on the Adriatic 105 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 Morning at Sea under the Alps . . . .122 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 A Singular Council . . . . . . .129 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 Captain Baskelett 142 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 An Interview with the Infamous De. Shrapnel 164 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 A Superfine Conscience 190
 
 COXTEXTS. Yll 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER XIT. 
 The Leading Article axd Mr. Timothy Tuebot . 199 
 
 CHAPTER XT. 
 Cecilia Halkett 222 
 
 CHAPTEE XYI. 
 A Partial Display of Beauchamp ix his Colours 239 
 
 CHAPTEE XVn. 
 His Friexd and Foe 249 
 
 CHAPTEE XYni. 
 Concerning the Act of Cantassing . . .270 
 
 CHAPTEE XIX. 
 
 Lord Palmet, and certain Electors of Betisham 281
 
 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 THE CHAMPIOX OF HIS COUNTRY. 
 
 "When young Xeyil Beauchamp was throwing off 
 his midshipman's jacket for a holiday in the garb 
 of peace, we had across Channel a host of dreadful 
 military officers flashing swords at us for some 
 critical observations of ours upon their sovereign, 
 threatening Afric's fires and savagery. We were 
 unarmed, and the spectacle was distressing. We 
 had done nothing except to speak our minds accord- 
 ing to the habit of the free, and such an explosion 
 appeared as irrational and excessive as that of a 
 powder-magazine in reply to nothing more than the 
 light of a spark. Xot very long before, a valorous 
 General of the Algerian wars had proposed to make 
 a clean march to the capital of the British empire at 
 the head of ten thousand men ; which seems a small 
 quantity to think much about, but they wore wide 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 red breeches blown out by Fame, big as her cheeks, 
 and a ten thousand of that sort would never think 
 of retreating. Their spectral advance on quaking 
 London through Kentish hop-gardens, Sussex corn- 
 fields, or by the pleasant hills of Surrey, after a 
 gymnastic leap over the riband of salt water, 
 haunted many pillows. And now those horrid 
 shouts of the legions of Caesar, crying to the in- 
 heritor of an invading name to lead them against 
 us, as the origin of his title had led the army of 
 Gaul of old gloriously, scared sweet sleep. We 
 saw them in imagination lining the opposite shore ; 
 eagle and standard-bearers, and gaUiferSf brandish- 
 ing their fowls and their banners in a manner to 
 frighten the decorum of the universe. Where were 
 our men ? 
 
 The returns of the census of our population were 
 oppressively satisfactory, and so was the condition 
 of our youth. We could row and ride and fish 
 and shoot, and breed largely : we were athletes 
 with a fine history and a full purse : we had 
 first-rate sporting guns, unrivalled park-hacks and 
 hunters, promising babies to carry on the renown 
 of England to the next generation, and a wonderful 
 Press, and a Constitution the highest reach of 
 practical human sagacity. But where were our
 
 THE CHAMPION OF HIS COUNTEY. 3 
 
 armed men ? where our great artillery ? where our 
 proved captains, to resist a sudden sharp trial of 
 the national mettle ? Where was the first line of 
 England^s defence, her nary ? These were ques- 
 tions, and ministers were called upon to answer 
 them. The Press answered them boldly, with the 
 appalling statement that we had no navy and no 
 army. At the most we could muster a few old 
 ships, a couple of experimental vessels of war, 
 and twenty-five thousand soldiers indifferently 
 weaponed. 
 
 We were in fact as naked to the imperial foe as 
 the merely painted Britons. 
 
 This being apprehended, by the aid of our own 
 shortness of figures and the agitated images of the 
 red-breeched only waiting the signal to jump and be 
 at us, there ensued a curious exhibition that would 
 be termed, in simple language, writing to the news- 
 papers, for it took the outward form of letters : in 
 reality, it was the deliberate saddling of our ancient 
 nightmare of Invasion, putting the postillion on her, 
 and trotting her along the high-road with a wind- 
 ing horn to rouse old Panic. Panic we will, for the 
 sake of convenience, assume to be of the feminine 
 gender and a spinster, though properly she should 
 be classed ^^ith the large mixed race of mental and
 
 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 moral neuters whicli are the bulk of comfortable 
 nations. Slie turned in her bed at first like the 
 sluggard of the venerable hymnist : but once fairly 
 awakened, she directed a stare towards the terrific 
 foreign contortionists, and became in an instant all 
 stormy nightcap and fingers starving for the bell- 
 rope. Forthwith she burst into a series of shrieks, 
 howls, and high piercing notes that caused even 
 the parliamentary Opposition, in the heat of an 
 assault on a parsimonious Government, to abandon 
 its temporary advantage and be still awhile. Yet 
 she likewise performed her part with a certain 
 deliberation and method, as if aware that it was a 
 part she had to play in the composition of a singu- 
 lar people. She did a little mischief by dropping 
 on the stock-markets ; in other respects she was 
 harmless, and, inasmuch as she established a subject 
 for conversation, useful. 
 
 Then, lest she should have been taken too 
 seriously, the Press, which had kindled, proceeded 
 to extinguish her with the formidable engines 
 called leading articles^ which fling fire or water, 
 as the occasion may require. It turned out that 
 we had ships ready for launching, and certain regi- 
 ments coming home from India; hedges we had, 
 and a spirited body of yeomanry; and we had
 
 THE CHAMPION OF HIS COU:S'TRY. 
 
 pluck and patriotism, the father and mother of 
 volunteers innumerable. Things were not so bad. 
 
 Panic, however, sent up a plaintive whine. 
 What country had anything like our treasures to 
 defend ? — countless riches, beautiful women, an in- 
 violate soil ! True, and it must be done. Ministers 
 were authoritatively summoned to set to work im- 
 mediately. They repKed that they had been at 
 work all the time, and were at work now. They 
 could assure the country that, though they flourished 
 no trumpets, they positively guaranteed the safety 
 of our virgins and coffers. 
 
 Then the people, rather ashamed,, abused the 
 Press for unreasonably distui'bing them. The Press 
 attacked old Panic and stripped her naked. Panic, 
 with a desolate scream, arraigned the parKamentary 
 Opposition for having inflated her to serve base 
 party purposes. The Opposition challenged the 
 allegations of Government, pointed to the trimness 
 of army and navy^ during its term of office, and 
 proclaimed itself watch-dog of the country, which 
 is at all events an office of a kind. Hereupon the 
 ambassador of yonder ireful soldiery let fall a 
 word, saying, by the faith of his Master, there was 
 no necessity for watch-dogs to bark ; an ardent and 
 a reverent army had but fancied its beloved chosen
 
 6 
 
 Chief insulted ; the Chief and chosen held them 
 in ; he, despite obloquy, discerned our merits and 
 esteemed us. 
 
 So, then, Panic, or what remained of her, was 
 put to bed again. The Opposition retired into its 
 kennel growling. The People coughed like a man 
 of two minds, doubting whether he has been 
 divinely inspired or has cut a ridiculous figure. 
 The Press interpreted the cough as a warning to 
 (Grovernment ; and Government launched a big ship 
 with hurrahs, and ordered the recruiting- sergeant 
 to be seen conspicuously. 
 
 And thus we obtained a moderate reinforcement 
 of our arms. 
 
 It was not arrived at by connivance all round, 
 though there was a look of it. Certainly it did not 
 come of accident, though there was a look of that 
 as well. Nor do we explain much of the secret 
 by attributing it to the working of a complex 
 machinery. The housewife's remedy of a good 
 shaking for the invalid who will not arise and 
 dance away his gout, partly illustrates the action of 
 the Press upon the country : and perhaps the country 
 shaken may suffer a comparison with the family 
 chariot of the last century, built in a previous one, 
 commodious, furnished agreeably, being all that the
 
 THE CHAMPION OF HIS COUXTRT. 7 
 
 inside occupants could require of a conveyance, 
 until the report of horsemen crossing the heath 
 at a gallop sets it dishonourably creaking and 
 complaining in rapid motion, and the squire curses 
 his miserly purse that would not hire a guard, and 
 his dame says, I told you so I — Foolhardy man, to 
 suppose, because we have constables in the streets 
 of big cities, we have dismissed the highwayman to 
 limbo. And here he is, and he T^411 cost you fifty 
 times the sum you would have laid out to keep him 
 at a mile's respectful distance ! But see, the wretch 
 is bowing : he smiles at our carriage, and tells the 
 coachman that he remembers he has been our guest, 
 and really thinks we need not go so fast. He 
 leaves word for you, sir, on your peril to denounce 
 him on another occasion from the magisterial 
 Bench, for that albeit he is a gentleman of the 
 road, he has a mission to right society, and succeeds 
 legitimately to that bold Good Robin Hood who fed 
 the poor. — Fresh from this poKte encounter, the 
 squire vows money for his personal protection : and 
 he determines to speak his opinion of Sherwood's 
 latest captain as loudly as ever. That he will, I do 
 not say. It might involve a large sum per annum. 
 
 Similes are very well in their way. Xone can 
 be sufficient in this case without levelling a finger
 
 8 
 
 at tlie taxpayer-— nay, directly mentioning him. He 
 is tlie key of our ingenuity. He pays his dues ; "he 
 will not pay the additional penny or two wanted 
 of him, that we may be a step or two ahead of 
 the day we live in, unless he is frightened. But 
 scarcely anything less than the wild alarum of a 
 tocsin will frighten him. Consequently the tocsin 
 has to be sounded; and the effect is woeful past 
 measure : his hugging of his army, his kneeling 
 on the shore to his navy, his implorations of his 
 yeomanry and his hedges, are sad to note. His 
 bursts of pot-valiancy (the male side of the maiden 
 Panic within his bosom) are awful to his friends. 
 Particular care must be taken after he has begun 
 to cool and calculate his chances of security, that 
 he do not gather to him a curtain of volunteers 
 and go to sleep again behind them ; for they cost 
 little in proportion to the much they pretend to be 
 to him. Patriotic taxpayers doubtless exist : pro- 
 phetic ones, provident ones, do not. At least we 
 show that we are wanting in them. The taxpayer 
 of a free land taxes himself, and his disinclination 
 towards the bitter task, save under circumstances 
 of screaming urgency — as when the night-gear and 
 bed-linen of old convulsed Panic are like the 
 churned Channel sea in the track of two hundred
 
 THE CHAMPION OF HIS COUXTRT. 9 
 
 hostile steamboats, let me say — is of the kind the 
 gentle schoolboy feels when death or an expedition 
 has relieved him of his tyrant, and he is entreated 
 notwithstandino^ to o^o to his books. 
 
 "Will yon not own that the working of the system 
 for scaring him and bleeding is very ingenious ? 
 But whether the ingenuity comes of native sagacity, 
 as it is averred by some, or whether it shows an 
 instinct labouring to supply the- deficiencies of 
 stupidity, according to others, I cannot express an 
 opinion. I give you the position of the country 
 imdisturbed by any moralisings of mine. The 
 youth I introduce to you will rarely let us escape 
 from it ; for the reason that he was bom with so 
 extreme and passionate a love for his country, that 
 he thought all things else of mean importance in 
 comparison : and our union is one in which, follow- 
 ing the counsel of a sage and seer, I must try to 
 paint for you what is, not that which I imagine. 
 This day, this hour, this life, and even politics, the 
 centre and throbbing heart of it (enough, when 
 unburlesqued, to blow the down off the gossamer- 
 stump of fiction at a single breath, I have heard 
 tell), must be treated of : men, and the ideas of 
 men, which are — it is policy to be emphatic upon 
 truisms — are actually the motives of men in a
 
 10 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 greater degree tlian their appetites : these are my 
 theme ; and may it be my fortune to keep them at 
 blood-heat, and myself calm as a statue of Memnon 
 in prostrate Egypt ! He sits there waiting for the 
 sunlight ; I here, and readier to be musical than you 
 think. I can at any rate be impartial ; and do but 
 fix your eyes on the sunlight striking him and 
 swallowing the day in rounding him, and you have 
 an image of the passive receptivity of shine and 
 shade I hold it good to aim at, if at the same time 
 I may keep my characters at blood-heat. I shoot 
 m}^ arrows at a mark that is pretty certain to 
 return them to me. And as to perfect success, I 
 should be like the panic-stricken shopkeepers in my 
 alarm at it ; for I should believe that genii of the 
 air fly above our tree-tops between us and the in- 
 cognisable spheres, catching those ambitious shafts 
 they deem it a promise of fun to play pranks wath. 
 
 Young Mr. Beauchamp at that period of the 
 panic had not the slightest feeling for the tax- 
 payer. He was therefore unable to penetrate the 
 mystery of our roundabout way of enlivening him. 
 He pored over the journals in perplexity, and talked 
 of his indignation nightly to his pretty partners 
 at balls, who knew not they were lesser Andro-
 
 THE CHAMPIOX OF HIS COrXTRY. 11 
 
 medas of his dear Andromeda country, but danced 
 and chatted and were gay, and said they were 
 sure he would defend them. The men he addressed 
 were civil. They listened to him, sometimes with 
 smiles and sometimes with laughter, but approv- 
 ingly, liking the lad's quick spirit. They were 
 accustomed to the machinery employed to give our 
 land a shudder and to soothe it, and generally 
 remarked that it meant nothing. His uncle 
 Everard and his uncle's friend, Stukely Culbrett, 
 expounded the nature of Frenchmen to him, say- 
 ing that they were uneasy when not periodically 
 thrashed ; it would be cruel to deny them their 
 crow beforehand ; and so the pair of gentlemen 
 pooh-poohed the affair ; agreeing with him, how- 
 ever, that we had no great reason to be proud of 
 our appearance, and the groimds they assigned 
 for this were the activity and the prevalence of the 
 ignoble doctrines of Manchester — a power whose 
 very existence was unknown to Mr. Beauchamp. 
 He would by no means allow the burden of our 
 national disgrace to be cast on one part of the 
 nation. We were insulted, and all in a poultry- 
 flutter, yet no one seemed to feel it but himself! 
 Outside the Press and Parliament, which must 
 necessarily be the face we show to the foreigner,
 
 12 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 absolute indifFerence reigned. Navy men and red- 
 coats were willing to join him or anybody in sneers 
 at a clipping and paring miserly Government, but 
 they were insensible to the insult, the panic, the 
 startled-poultry show, tbe shame of our exhibition 
 of ourselves in Europe. It looked as if the bluster- 
 ing French Guard were to have it all their own 
 way. And what would they, what could they 
 but, think of us ! He sat down to write them a 
 challenge. 
 
 He is not the only Englishman who has been 
 impelled by a youthful chivalry to do that. He is 
 perhaps the youngest who ever did it, and conse- 
 quently there were various difficulties to be over- 
 Come. As regards his qualifications for addressing 
 Frenchmen, a year of his prae-neptunal time had 
 been spent in their capital city for the purpose of 
 acquiring French of Paris, its latest refinements 
 of pronunciation and polish, and the art of con- 
 versing. He had read the French tragic poets and 
 Moliere ; he could even relish the Gallic-classic — 
 " Qu'il mourut ! " and he spoke French passably, 
 being quite beyond the Bullish treatment of the 
 tongue. Writing a letter in French was a different 
 undertaking. The one he projected bore no resem- 
 blance to an ordinary letter. The briefer the better,
 
 THE CHAMPIOJ^ OF HIS COUNTRY. 13 
 
 of course ; but a tone of dignity was imperatiye, and 
 the tone must be individual, distinctive, Nevil Beau- 
 champ's, though not in his native language. First 
 he tried his letter in French, and lost sight of 
 himself completely. *' Messieurs de la Garde Fran- 
 caise," was a good beginning : the remainder gave 
 him a false air of a masquerader, most uncomfortable 
 to see ; it was Nevil Beauchamp in moustache and 
 imperial, and bag-breeches badly fitting. He tried 
 English, which was really himself, and all that 
 heart could desire supposing he addressed a body 
 of midshipmen just a little loftily. But the English, 
 when translated, was bald and blunt to the verge 
 of ofiensiveness. 
 
 • ** Gentlemen of the French Guard, 
 
 " I take up the glove you have tossed us. 
 I am an Englishman. That will do for a reason." 
 
 This might possibly pass with the gentlemen of 
 the English Guard. But read : — 
 
 " Messieurs de la Garde Fran^aise, 
 
 " J'accepte votre gant. Je suis Anglais. La 
 raison est suffisante.'' 
 
 And imagine French Guardsmen reading it !
 
 14 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 Mr. Beaiichamp knew the virtue of punctilious- 
 ness in epithets and phrases of courtesy towards a 
 formal people, and as the officers of the French 
 Guard were gentlemen of birth, he would have 
 them to perceive in him their equal at a glance. 
 On the other hand, a bare excess of phrasing dis- 
 torted him to a likeness of Mascarille playing 
 Marquis. How to be English and think French ! 
 The business was as laborious as if he had started on 
 the rough sea of the Channel to get at them in an 
 open boat. 
 
 The lady governing his uncle Everard's house, 
 Mrs. Eosamund Culling, entered his room and 
 found him writing with knitted brows. She was 
 young, that is, she was not in her middle-age ; and 
 they were the dearest of friends ; each had given the 
 other proof of it. Nevil looked up and beheld her 
 lifted finger. 
 
 " You are composing a love-letter, Nevil ! '' The 
 accusation sounded like irony. 
 
 " No," said he, puffing ; " I wish I were.'' 
 
 " What can it be, then ? " 
 
 He thrust pen and paper a hand's length on the 
 table, and gazed at her. 
 
 " My dear Nevil, is it really anything serious ? " 
 said she.
 
 THE CHAMPION OF HIS COrXTRY. 15 
 
 *' I am writing French, ma'am." 
 
 '' Then I may help you. It must be very 
 absorbing, for you did not hear my knock at your 
 door." 
 
 Xow, could he trust her ? The widow of a 
 British officer killed nobly fighting for his country 
 in India, was a person to be relied on for active 
 and burning sympathy in a matter that touched 
 the country's honour. She was a woman, and a 
 woman of spirit. Men had not pleased him of late. 
 Something might be hoped from a woman. 
 
 He stated his occupation, saying that if she 
 would assist him in his French she would oblige 
 him ; the letter must be written and must go. 
 This was uttered so positively that she bowed her 
 head, amused by the funny semi-tone of defiance to 
 the person to whom he confided the secret. She 
 had humour, and was ravished by his English boy- 
 ishness, with the novel blush of the .heroical-non- 
 sensical in it. 
 
 Mrs. Culling promised him demurely that she 
 would listen, objecting nothing to his plan, only to 
 his French. 
 
 " Messieurs de la Garde Francaise ! " he com- 
 menced. 
 
 Her criticism followed swiftly.
 
 16 BE AUCH amp's CAREER. 
 
 " I think you are writing to the Garde Imperiale." 
 He admitted his error, and thanked her warmly. 
 " Messieurs de la Garde Imperiale ! " 
 "Does not that," she said, "include the non- 
 commissioned officers, the privates, and the cooks, of 
 all the regiments ? " 
 
 He could scarcely think that, but thought it 
 provoking the French had no distinctive working 
 title corresponding to gentlemen, and suggested 
 " Messieurs les Officiers : '' which might, Mrs. 
 Culling assured him, comprise the barbers. He 
 frowned, and she prescribed his writing, " Messieurs 
 les Colonels de la Garde Imperiale." This he set 
 down. The point was that a stand must be made 
 against the flood of sarcasms and bullyings to which 
 the country was exposed in increasing degrees, 
 under a belief that we would fight neither in the 
 mass nor individually. Possibly, if it became known 
 that the colonels refused to meet a midshipman, 
 the gentlemen of our Household troops would ad- 
 vance a step. 
 
 Mrs. Culling's adroit efforts to weary him out 
 of his project were unsuccessful. He was too much 
 on fire to know the taste of absurdity. 
 
 Nevil repeated what he had written in French, 
 and next the English of what he intended to say.
 
 TKE CHAMPION OF HIS COUNTRY. 17 
 
 The lady conscientiously did her utmost to 
 reconcile the two languages. She softened his 
 downrightness, passed with approval his compli- 
 ments to France and the ancient high reputation 
 of her army, and, seeing that a loophole was left for 
 them to apologize, asked how many French colonels 
 he wanted to fight. 
 
 " I do not leant J ma'am," said Nevil. 
 
 He had simply taken up the glove they had 
 again flung at our feet : and he had done it to stop 
 the incessant revilings, little short of positive con- 
 tempt, which we in our indolence exposed our- 
 selves to from the foreigner, particularly from 
 Frenchmen, whom he liked ; and precisely bocause 
 he liked them he insisted on forcing them to respect 
 us. Let his challenge be accepted, and he would 
 find backers. He knew the stuff of Englishmen : 
 they only required an example. 
 
 "French officers are skilful swordsmen," said 
 Mrs. CulHng. "My husband has told me they 
 will spend hours of the day thrusting and parrying. 
 They are used to duelling." 
 
 "We," Nevil answered, "don't get apprenticed 
 to the shambles to learn our duty on the field. 
 Duelling is, I know, sickening folly. We go too 
 far in pretending to despise every insult pitched 
 
 VOL. I. c
 
 18 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 at us. A man may do for liis country what he 
 wouldn't do for himself.'* 
 
 Mrs. Culling gravely said she hoped that blood- 
 shed would be avoided, and Mr. Beauchamp 
 nodded. 
 
 She left him hard at work. 
 
 He was a popular boy, a favourite of women, and 
 therefore full of engagements to balls and dinners. 
 And he was a modest boy, though his uncle en- 
 couraged him to deKver his opinions freely and 
 argue with men. The little drummer attached to 
 wheeling columns thinks not more of himself be- 
 cause his short legs perform the same strides as the 
 grenadiers' ; he is happy to be able to keep the step ; 
 and so was Nevil; and if ever he contradicted a 
 senior, it was in the interests of the country. Vene- 
 ration of heroes, living and dead, kept down his 
 conceit. He worshipped devotedly. From an early 
 age he exacted of his flattering ladies that they 
 must love his hero. Not to love his hero was to 
 be strangely in error, to be in need of conversion, 
 and he proselytized with the ardour of the Moslem. 
 His uncle Everard was proud of his good looks, fire, 
 and nonsense, during the boy's extreme youth. He 
 traced him by cousinships back to the great Earl 
 Beauchamp of Froissart, and would have it so ;
 
 THE cha:mpiox of his coryTEY. 19 
 
 and he would have spoilt him had not the young 
 fellow's mind been possessed by his reverence for 
 men of deeds. How could he think of himself who 
 had done nothing, accompKshed nothing, so long 
 as he brooded on the images of signal Englishmen 
 whose names were historic for daring, and the 
 strong arm, and artfiilness, all given to the service 
 of the country ? — men of a magnanimity overcast 
 with simplicity, which Kevil held to be pure insular 
 EngKsh ; our type of splendid manhood, not dis- 
 coverable elsewhere. A method of enraging him 
 was to distinguish one or other of them as Irish, 
 Scotch, or Cambrian. He considered it a dis- 
 memberment of the country. And notwithstand- 
 ing the pleasure he had in imiting in his person 
 the strong red blood of the chivalrous Lord Beau- 
 champ with the hard and tenacious Romfrey blood, 
 he hated the title of ]N^orman, We are English — 
 British, he said. A family resting its pride on 
 mere ancestry provoked his contempt, if it did 
 not show him one of his men. He had also a dis- 
 position to esteem lightly the family which, having 
 produced a man, settled down after that effort for 
 generations to enjoy the country's pay. Boys are 
 unjust ; but Nevil thought of the country mainly, 
 arguing that we should not accept the country's
 
 20 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 money for what we do not ourselves perform. 
 These traits of his were regarded as characteristics 
 hopeful rather than the reverse ; none of his friends 
 and relatives foresaw danger in them. He was a 
 capital hoy for his elders to trot out and banter. 
 
 Mrs. Rosamund Culling usually went to his room 
 to see him and doat on him before he started on 
 his rounds of an evening. She suspected that 
 his necessary attention to his toilet would barely 
 have allowed him time to finish his copy of the 
 letter. Certain phrases had bothered him. The 
 thrice recurrence of * ma patrie ' jarred on his 
 ear. ' Sentiments ' afflicted his acute sense of the 
 declamatory twice. " C'est avec les sentiments du 
 plus profond regret : " and again, ^' Je suis bien 
 sur que vous comprendrez mes sentiments, et 
 m'accorderez I'honneur que je reclame au nom 
 de ma patrie outragee." The word 'patrie' was 
 broadcast over the letter, and * honneur ' appeared 
 four times, and a more delicate word to harp on 
 than the others ! 
 
 " Not to Frenchmen," said his friend Rosamund. 
 " I would put ' Je suis convaincu : ' it is not so 
 familiar." 
 
 " But I have written out the fair copy, ma'am, 
 and that alteration seems a trifle."
 
 THE CHAMPION OF HIS COUXTRY. 21 
 
 " I would copy it again and again, Xevil, to get 
 it right." 
 
 " No : I'd rather see it off than have it right," 
 said Nevil, and he folded the letter. 
 
 How the deuce to address it, and what direction 
 to write on it, were further difficulties. He had 
 half a mind to remain at home to conquer them by 
 excogitation. 
 
 Rosamund urged him not to break his engage- 
 ment to dine at the Halkett's, where perhaps from 
 his friend Colonel Halkett, who would never ima- 
 gine the reason for the inquiry, he might learn 
 how a letter to a crack French regiment should be 
 addressed and directed. 
 
 This proved persuasive, and as the hour was late 
 Nevil had to act on her advice in a hurry. 
 
 His uncle Everard enjoyed a perusal of the 
 manuscript in his absence.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 UNCLE, NEPHEW, AND ANOTHER. 
 
 The Honourable Everard Romfrey came of a race 
 of fighting earls, toughest of men, whose high, stout, 
 western castle had weathered our cyclone periods of 
 history without changing hands more than once, 
 and then but for a short year or two, as if to teach 
 the original possessors the wisdom of inclining to 
 the stronger side. They had a queen's chamber in 
 it, and a king's ; and they stood well up against the 
 charge of having dealt darkly with the king. He 
 died among them — how has not been told. We will 
 not discuss the conjectures here. A savour of 
 North Sea foam and ballad pirates hangs about the 
 early chronicles of the family. Indications of an 
 ancestry that had lived between the wave and the 
 cloud were discernible in their notions of right and 
 wrong. But a settlement on^ solid earth has its 
 influences. They were chivalrous loiights ban-
 
 UNCLE, XEPHEW, AJfD ANOTHER. 23 
 
 nerets, and leaders in the tented field, paying and 
 taking fair ransom for captures ; and they were 
 good landlords, good masters blithely followed to 
 the wars. Sing an old battle of Kormandy, Picardy, 
 Gascony, and you celebrate deeds of theirs. At 
 home they were vexatious neighbours to a town of 
 burghers claiming privileges : nor was it unreason- 
 able that the Earl should flout the pretensions of 
 the town to read things for themselves, documents, 
 titleships, rights, and the rest. As well might the 
 flat plain boast of seeing as far as the pillar. 
 Earl and town fought the fight of Barons and 
 Commons in epitome. The Earl gave way ; the 
 Barons gave way. Mighty men may thrash num- 
 bers for a time ; in the end the numbers will be 
 thrashed into the art of beating their teachers. It 
 is bad policy to fight the odds inch by inch. Those 
 primitive schoolmasters of the miUion liked it, and 
 took their pleasure in that vraj. The Eomfreys did 
 not breed warriors for a parade at Court ; wars, 
 though frequent, were not constant, and they 
 wanted occupation : they may even have felt that 
 they were bound in no common degree to the pur- 
 suit of an answer to what may be called the parent 
 question of himianity : Am I thy master, or thou 
 mine ? They put it to lords of other castles, to
 
 24 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 town corporations, and sometimes brother to bro- 
 ther: and notwithstanding that the answer often 
 unseated, and once discastled, them, they swam back 
 to their places, as born warriors, nrged by a passion 
 for land, are almost sure to do ; are indeed quite 
 sure, so long as they multiply sturdily, and will 
 never take no from Fortune. A family passion for 
 land, that survives a generation, is as effective as 
 genius in producing the object it conceives ; and 
 through marriages and conflicts, the seizure of 
 lands, and brides bearing land, these sharp-feeding 
 eagle-eyed Earls of Romfrey spied few spots within 
 their top tower's wide circle of the heavens not their 
 own. It is therefore manifest that they had the 
 root qualities, the prime active elements, of men in 
 perfection, and notably that appetite to flourish at 
 the cost of the weaker, which is the blessed exemjdi- 
 iication of strength, and has been man's cheerfullest 
 encouragement to fight on since his comparative 
 subjugation (on the whole, it seems complete) of the 
 animal world. By-and-by the struggle is trans- 
 ferred to higher ground, and we begin to perceive 
 how much we are indebted to the fighting spirit. 
 Strength is the brute form of truth. No con- 
 spicuously great man was born of the Eomfreys, 
 who were better served by a succession of able
 
 IJ^rCLE, XEPHEW, AXD AXOTHER. 25 
 
 sons. They sent nndistinguislied able men to army 
 and navy — lieutenants given to be critics of their 
 captains, but trustworthy for their work. In the 
 later life of the family, they preferred the provincial 
 state of splendid squires to Court and poKtical 
 honours. They were renowned shots, long-Kmbed 
 stalking sportsmen in field and bower, fast friends, 
 intemperate enemies, handsome to feminine eyes, 
 resembling one another in build, and mostly of the 
 northern colour, or betwixt the tints, with an here- 
 ditary nose and mouth that cried Romfrey from 
 faces thrice diluted in cousinships. 
 
 The Hon. Everard (Stephen Denely Craven Rom- 
 frey), third son of the late Earl, had some hopes of 
 the title, and was in person a noticeable gentleman, 
 in mind a medisaeval baron, in politics a crotchety 
 umntelligible Whig. He inherited the estate of 
 Holdesbury, on the borders of Hampshire and 
 Wilts, and espoused that of Steynham in Sussex, 
 where he generally resided. His favourite in the 
 family had been the Lady Emily, his eldest sister, 
 who, contrary to the advice of her other brothers 
 and sisters, had yielded her hand to his not wealthy 
 friend Colonel Richard Beauchamp. After the death 
 of Nevil's parents, he adopted the boy, being him- 
 self childless, and a widower. Childlessness was
 
 26 BEAUCHAMP'S CAEEEE. 
 
 the affliction of the family. Everard, having no 
 son, could hardly hope that his brother, the Earl, 
 and Craven, Lord Avonley, would have one, for he 
 loved the prospect of the title. Yet, as there were 
 no cousins of the male branch extant, the lack of 
 an heir was a serious omission, and to become the 
 Earl of Romfrey, and be the last Earl of Eomfrey, 
 was a melancholy thought, however brilliant. So 
 sinks the sun : but he could not desire the end of 
 a great day. At one time he was a hot Parlia- 
 mentarian, calling himself a Whig, called by the 
 Whigs a Radical, called by the Radicals a Tory, and 
 very happy in fighting them all round. This was 
 during the decay of his party, before the Liberals 
 were defined. A Liberal deprived him of the seat 
 he had held for fifteen years, and the clearness of 
 his understanding was obscured by that black visi£>n 
 of popular ingratitude which afflicts the free fight- 
 ing man yet more than the malleable public servant. 
 The latter has a clerkly humility attached to him 
 like a second nature, from his habit of doing as 
 others bid him : the former smacks a voluntarily 
 sweating forehead and throbbing wounds for -witness 
 of his claim upon your palpable thankfulness. It is 
 an insult to tell him that he fought for his own 
 satisfaction. Mr. Romfrey still called himseK a
 
 TJNCLE, NEPHEW, AXD ANOTHER. 27 
 
 TVTiig, thougli ' it was Whig mean vengeance on 
 account of his erratic vote and voice on two or 
 three occasions that denied him a peerage and a 
 seat in haven. Thither let your good sheep go, 
 your echoes, your wag-tail dogs, your wealthy 
 pursy manufacturers ! He decried the attractions 
 of the sublimer House, and laughed at the trans- 
 parent Whiggery of his party in replenishing it 
 from the upper shoots of the commonalty : *■ Drag- 
 ging it down to prop it up I swamping it to keep 
 it swimming I " he said. He was nevertheless a 
 vehement supporter of that House. He stood for 
 King, Lords, and Commons, in spite of his per- 
 sonal grievances, harping the triad as vigorously as 
 bard of old Britain. Commons he added out of 
 courtesy, or from usage or policy, or for . emphasis 
 oi: for the sake of the constitutional number of the 
 estates of the realm, or it was because he had an 
 intidtion of the folly of omitting them ; the same, 
 to some extent, that builders have regarding bricks 
 when they plan a fabric. Thus, although King 
 and Lords prove the existence of Commons in days 
 of the poKtical deluge almost syllogistically, the 
 example of not including one of the estiites might 
 be imitated, and Commons and King do not necessi- 
 tate the conception of an intermediate third, while
 
 28 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREEK. 
 
 Lords and Commons suggest the decapitation of 
 tlie leading figure. Tlie united three, however, no 
 longer cast reflections on one another, and were an 
 assurance to this acute politician that his birds were 
 safe. He preserved game rigorously, and the deduc- 
 tion was the work of instinct with him. To his 
 mind the game-laws were the corner-stone of Law, 
 and of a man's right to hold his own ; and so 
 delicately did he think the country poised, that an 
 attack on them threatened the structure of justice. 
 His head -gamekeepers therefore were the three 
 conjoined Estates ; their duty was to back him 
 against the poacher, if they would not see the 
 countr}^ tumble. As to his under- gamekeepers, he 
 was their intimate and their friend, saying, with 
 none of the misanthropy which proclaims the virtues 
 of the faithful dog to the confusion of humankind, 
 he liked their company better than that of his 
 equals, and learnt more from them. They also 
 listened deferentially to their instructor. The con- 
 versation he delighted in most might have been 
 going on in any century since the Conquest. Grant 
 him his not unreasonable argument upon his pro- 
 perty in game, he was a liberal landlord. No 
 tenants were forced to take his farms. He dragged 
 none by the collar. He gave them liberty to go to
 
 UNCLE, NEPHEW, AND ANOTHER. 29 
 
 Australia, Canada, the Americas, if ttey liked. He 
 asked in retui-n to have the liberty to shoot on his 
 own grounds, and rear the marks for his shot, treat- 
 ing the question of indemnification as a gentleman 
 should. Still there were grumbKng tenants. He 
 swarmed with game, and, though he was liberal, his 
 hares and his birds were immensely destructive : 
 computation could not fix the damage done by 
 .them. Probably the farmers expected them not 
 to eat. " There are two parties to a bargain," 
 said Everard, " and one gets the worst of it. But 
 if he was never obliged to make it, where's his 
 right to complain?" Men of sense rarely obtain 
 satisfactory answers : they are provoked to despise 
 their kind. But the poacher was another kind of 
 vermin than the stupid tenant. Everard did him 
 the honour to hate him, and twice in a fray had 
 he collared his ruffian, and subsequently sat in 
 condemnation of the wretch : for he who can attest 
 a villany is best qualified to punish it. Gangs 
 from the metropolis foimd him too determined and 
 alert for their sport. It was the fractiousness of 
 here and there an unbroken young scoundi-elly colt 
 poacher of the neighbourhood, a born thief, a fellow 
 damned in an inveterate taste for game, which gave 
 him annoyance. One night he took Master Nevil
 
 30 BEAUCHAMP'S CAEEER. 
 
 out witli him, and they hunted down a couple of 
 sinners that showed fight against odds. Nevil 
 attempted to beg them off because of their boldness. 
 '' I don't set my traps for nothing," said his uncle, 
 silencing him. But the'boy reflected that his uncle 
 was perpetually lamenting the cowed spirit of the 
 common English — formerly such fresh and merry 
 men ! He touched Rosamund Culling's heart with 
 his description of their attitudes when they stood, 
 resisting and bawling to the keepers, ^' Come on ! 
 well die for it." They did not die. Everard ex- 
 plained to the boy that he could have killed them, 
 and was contented to have sent them to gaol for a 
 few weeks. Nevil gaped at the empty magnanimity 
 which his uncle presented to him as a remarkably 
 big morsel. At the age of fourteen he was de- 
 spatched to sea. 
 
 He went unwillingly ; not so much from an 
 objection to a naval life as from a wish, incompre- 
 hensible to grown men and boys, and especially to 
 his cousin Cecil Baskelett, that he might remain at 
 school and learn. '' The fellow would like to be a 
 parson ! " Everard said in disgust. 'No parson had 
 ever been known of in the Romfrey family, or in 
 the Beauchamp. A legend of a parson that had been 
 a tutor in one of the Romfrey houses, and had
 
 UNCLE, NEPHEW, AND ANOTHER. 31 
 
 talked and sung blandly to a damsel of the blood — 
 degenerate maid I — to receive a handsome trouncing 
 for his pains, instead of the holy marriage-tie he 
 aimed at, was the only connection of the Romfreys 
 with the parsonry, as Everard called them. He 
 attributed the boy's feeling to the influence of his 
 great-aunt Beauchamp, who would, he said, infal- 
 libly have made a parson of him. " I'd rather 
 enlist for a soldier," !N^evil said, and he ceased to 
 dream of rebellion, and of his little property of a 
 few thousand pounds in the funds to aid him in it. 
 He confessed to his dear friend Eosamund Culling 
 that he thought the parsons happy in having time 
 to read history. And oh, to feel for certain which 
 side was the wrong side in our Ci"sdl War, so that 
 one should not hesitate in choosing. Such puzzles 
 are never, he seemed to be aware, solved in a mid- 
 shipman's mess. He hated bloodshed and was 
 guilty of the ' cotton-spinners' babble,' abhorred of 
 Everard, in alluding to it. Rosamund liked him 
 for his humanity; but she, too, feared he was a 
 slack Romfrey when she heard him speak in pre- 
 cocious contempt of glory. Somewhere, somehow, 
 he had got hold of Manchester sarcasms concerning 
 glory : a weedy word of the newspapers had been 
 sown in his bosom, perhaps. He said : "I don't
 
 32 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 care to win glory ; I know all about that ; I've seen 
 an old hat in the Louvre." And he would have had 
 her to suppose that he had looked on the cam- 
 paigning head-cover of Napoleon simply as a shock- 
 ing bad, bald, brown-rubbed old tricorne rather than 
 as the nod of extinction to thousands, the great orb 
 of darkness, the still- trembling gloomy quiver — the 
 brain of the lightnings of battles. 
 
 Now this boy nursed no secret presumptuous 
 belief that he was fitted for the walks of the higher 
 intellect; he was not having his impudent boy's 
 fling at superiority over the superior, as here and 
 there a subtle-minded vain juvenile will ; nor was 
 he a parrot repeating a line from some Lancastrian 
 pamphlet. He really disliked war and the sword; 
 and scorning the prospect of an Idle life, confessing 
 that his abilities barely adapted him for a sailor's, 
 he was opposed to the career opened to him almost 
 to the extreme of shrinking and terror. Or that 
 was the impression conveyed to a not unsympathetic 
 hearer by his forlorn efforts to make himself under- 
 stood, which were like the tappings of the stick of a 
 blind man mystified b}^ his sense of touch at wrong 
 corners. His bewilderment and speechlessness were 
 a comic display, tragic to him. 
 
 Just as his uncle Everard predicted, he came
 
 UNCLE, NEPHEW, AND ANOTHER. 33 
 
 home from his first Yovage a pleasant sailor lad. 
 His features, more than handsome to a woman, so 
 mobile they were, shone of sea and spirit, the 
 chance lights of the sea, and the spirit breathing 
 out of it. As to war and bloodshed, a man's first 
 thought must be his country, young Jacket re- 
 marked, and Ich dien was the best motto afloat. 
 Rosamund noticed the peculiarity of the books he 
 selected for his private reading. They were not 
 boys' books, books of adventure and the like. His 
 favourite author was one writing of Heroes, in (so 
 she esteemed it) a style resembling either early 
 architecture or utter dilapidation, so loose and 
 rough it seemed ; a wind-in-the-orchard style, that 
 tumbled down here and there an appreciable fruit 
 with imcouth bluster ; sentences without commence- 
 ments running to abrupt endings and smoke, like 
 waves against a sea-wall, learned dictionary words 
 giving a hand to street-slang, and accents falling on 
 them haphazard, like slant rays from driving clouds ; 
 all the pages in a breeze, the whole book producing 
 a kind of electrical agitation in the mind and the 
 joints. This was its efi'ect on the lady. To her the 
 incomprehensible was the abominable, for she had 
 our country's high critical feeling ; but he, while 
 admitting that he could not quite master it, liked it. 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 BEATJCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 He had. dug the book out of a bookseller's shop in 
 Malta, captivated by its title, and bad since the day 
 of bis purchase gone at it again and again, getting 
 nibbles of golden meaning by instalments, as with a 
 solitary pick in a very dark mine, until the illimii- 
 nation of an idea struck him that there was a great 
 deal more in the book than there was in himself. 
 This was sufficient to secure the devoted attachment 
 of young Mr. Beauchamp. Eosamund sighed with 
 apprehension to think of his unlikeness to boys and 
 men among his countrymen in some things. Why 
 should he hug a book he owned he could not quite 
 comprehend ? He said he liked a bone in his 
 mouth ; and it was natural wisdom, though unap- 
 preciated by woman. A bone in a boy's mind for 
 him to gnaw and worry, corrects the vagrancies and 
 promotes the healthy activities, whether there be 
 marrow in it or not. Supposing it furnishes only 
 dramatic entertainment in that usually vacant tene- 
 ment or powder- shell, it will be of service. 
 
 Nevil proposed to her that her next present 
 should be the entire Hst of his beloved Incompre- 
 hensible's published works, and she promised, and 
 was not sorry to keep her promise dangling at the 
 skirts of memor}^ to drop away in time. For that 
 fire -and -smoke writer dedicated volumes to the
 
 ITN-CLE, NEPHEW, ANT) ANOTHER. 35 
 
 praise of a regicide. Nice reading for her dear boy ! 
 Some weeks after Xevil was off again, she abused 
 herself for her half-hearted love of him, and would 
 have given him anything — the last word in favour 
 of the Country versus the royal Martyr, for ex- 
 ample, had he insisted on it. She gathered, bit by 
 bit, that he had dashed at his big blustering cousin 
 Cecil to vindicate her good name. The direful 
 youths fought in the Steynham stables, overheard 
 by the grooms. Everard received a fine account of 
 the tussle from these latter, and Eosamund, know- 
 ing him to be of the order of gentlemen who, what- 
 soever their sins, will at all costs protect a woman's 
 delicacy, and a dependant's, man or woman, did 
 not fear to have her ears shocked in probing him on 
 the subject. 
 
 Everard was led to say that Xevil's cousins were 
 bedevilled with womanfolk. 
 
 From which Rosamund perceived that women 
 had been at work ; and if so, it was upon the busi- 
 ness of the scandal-monger ; and if so, Nevil fought 
 his cousin to protect her good name from a babbler 
 of the family gossip. 
 
 She spoke to Stukely Culbrett, her dead husband's 
 friend, to whose recommendation she was indebted 
 for her place in Everard Romfrey's household.
 
 36 BEATJCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 ''Nevil behaved like a kniglit, I hear." 
 
 *' Your beauty was disputed," said be, '' and K"evil 
 knocked tbe blind man down for not being able to 
 see." 
 
 She thought, " Not my beauty. Nevil struck hi^ 
 cousin on behalf of the only fair thing I have left to 
 me!" 
 
 This was a moment with her when many sensa- 
 tions rush together and form a knot in sensitive 
 natures. She had been very good-looking. She 
 was good-looking still, but she remembered the 
 bloom of her looks in her husband's days (the 
 tragedy of the mirror is one for a woman to write : 
 I am ashamed to find myself smiling while the poor 
 lady weeps), she remembered his praises, her pride ; 
 his death in battle, her anguish : then, on her 
 strange entry to this house, her bitter wish to be 
 older ; and then, the oppressive calm of her recog- 
 nition of her wish's fulfilment, the heavy drop to 
 dead earth, when she could say, or pretend to 
 think she could say — I look old enough : will 
 they tattle of me now? JSTevirs championship of 
 her good name brought her history spinning about 
 her head, and threw a finger of light on her real 
 position. In that she saw the slenderness of her 
 hold on respect, as well as felt her personal stain-
 
 UNCLE, NEPHETV, AND ANOTHER. 37 
 
 lessness. The boy warmed her chill widowhood. 
 It was written that her second love should be of the 
 pattern of mother's love. She loved him hungrily 
 and jealously, always in fear for him when he was 
 absent, even anxiously when she had him near. 
 For some cause, born, one may fancy, of the hour 
 of her love's conception, his image in her heart 
 was steeped in tears. She was not, happily, one of 
 the women who betray strong feeling, and humoui* 
 preserved her from excesses of sentiment.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 CONTAINS BARONIAL VIEWS OF THE PRESENT TIME. 
 
 Upon the word of honour of Rosamund, the letter 
 to the officers of the French Guard was posted. 
 
 "Post it, post it,'* Everard said, on her con- 
 sulting him, with the letter in her hand. "Let 
 the fellow stand his luck." It was addressed to 
 the Colonel of the First Regiment of the Imperial 
 Guard, Paris. That superscription had been sug- 
 gested by Colonel Halkett. Rosamund was in 
 favour of addressing it to Versailles, Nevil to the 
 Tuileries ; but Paris could hardly fail to hit the 
 mark, and Nevil waited for the reply, half expect- 
 ing an appointment on the French sands : for the 
 act of posting a letter, though it be to little short 
 of the Pleiades even, will stamp an incredible 
 proceeding as a matter of business, so ready is the 
 ardent mind to take footing on the last thing done. 
 The flight of Mr. Beauchamp's letter placed it in
 
 BARONIAL VIEWS OF THE PRESEXT TIME. 39 
 
 the common order of occurrences for the youthful 
 author of it. Jack Wilmore, a messmate, offered to 
 second him, though he should be dismissed the 
 service for it. Another second would easily be 
 found somewhere ; for, as Xevil observed, you have 
 only to set these affairs going, and British blood 
 rises. We are not the people you see on the 
 surface. Wilmore's father was a parson, for in- 
 stance. "What did he do ? He could not help 
 himself: he supplied the army and navy with re- 
 cruits ! One son was in a marching regiment, the 
 other was Jack, and three girls had vowed never 
 to quit the rectory save as brides of officers. Xevil 
 thought that seemed encouraging ; we were evi- 
 dently not a nation of shopkeepers at heart ; and 
 he quoted sayings of Mr. Stukely Culbrett's, in 
 which neither his ear nor Wilmore's detected the 
 underring Stukely was famous for : as that England 
 had saddled herself with India for the express 
 purpose of better obeying the Commandments in 
 Europe ; and that it would be a lamentable thing 
 for the Continent and our doctrines if ever beef 
 should fail the Briton, and such like. '* Depend 
 upon it we're a fighting nation naturally, Jack," 
 said Nevil. ''How we can submit! . . . however, 
 I shall not be impatient. I dislike duelling, and
 
 40 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 hate war, but I will have the country respected." 
 They planned a defence of the country, drawing 
 their strategy from magazine articles by military 
 pens, reverberations of the extinct voices of the 
 daily and weekly journals, customary after a panic, 
 and making bloody stands on spots of extreme 
 pastoral beauty, which they visited by coach and 
 rail, looking back on unfortified London with par- 
 ticular melancholy. 
 
 Rosamund's word may be trusted that she dropped 
 the letter into a London post-office in pursuance of 
 her promise to Nevil. The singular fact was that 
 no answer to it ever arrived. Nevil, without a 
 doubt of her honesty, proposed an expedition to 
 Paris; he was ordered to join his ship, and he lay 
 moored across the water in the port of Bevisham, 
 panting for notice to be taken of him. The slight 
 of the total disregard of his letter now affected him 
 personally ; it took him some time to get over this 
 indignity put upon hini, particularly because of his 
 being under the impression that the country suf- 
 fered, not he at all. The letter had served its object: 
 ever since the transmission of it the menaces and 
 insults had ceased. But they might be renewed, 
 and he desired to stop them altogether. His last 
 feeling was one of genuine regret that Frenchmen
 
 BAROXIAL VIEWS OF THE PRESE^TT TIME. 41 
 
 should have behaved unworthily of the high esti- 
 mation he held them in. With which he dismissed 
 the afiair. 
 
 He was rallied about it when he next sat at his 
 uncle's table, and had to pardon Rosamund for 
 telling. 
 
 Nevil replied modestly, " I dare say you think me 
 half a fool, sir. All I know is, I waited for my betters 
 to speak first. I have no dislike of Frenchmen." 
 
 Everard shook his head to signify, "not lialf.'^ 
 But he was gentle enough in his observations. 
 " There's a motto. Ex pede Herculem. You stepped 
 out for the dogs to judge better of us. It's an 
 infernally tripping motto for a composite structure 
 like the kingdom of Great Britain and Manchester, 
 boy Nevil. We can fight foreigners when the time 
 comes." He directed JN^evil to look home, and cast 
 an eye on the cotton-spinners, with the remark 
 that they were binding us hand and foot to sell us 
 to the biggest buyer, and were not Englishmen 
 but " Germans and Jews, and quakers and hybrids, 
 diligent clerks and speculators, and commercial 
 travellers, who have raised a fortune from foisting 
 drugged goods on an idiot population." 
 
 He loathed them for the curse they were to the 
 country. And he was one of the few who spoke
 
 42 BEATJCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 out. Tlie fashion was to pet them. We stood 
 against them ; were half-hearted, and were beaten ; 
 and then we petted them, and bit by bit our privi- 
 leges were torn away. We made lords of them to 
 catch them, and they grocers of us by way of a 
 return. ** Already," said Everard, " they have 
 knocked the nation's head off, and dry-rotted the 
 bone of the people." 
 
 *' Don't they," Nevil asked, "belong to the Liberal 
 party ? " 
 
 " I'll tell you," Everard replied, " they belong 
 to any party that upsets the party above them. 
 They belong to the George Foxe party, and my 
 poultry-roosts are the mark they aim at. You 
 shall have a glance at the manufacturing district 
 some day. You shall see the machines they work 
 with. You shall see the miserable lank- jawed half- 
 stewed pantaloons they've managed to make of 
 Englishmen there. My blood's past boiling. They 
 work young children in their factories from morn- 
 ing to night. Their manufactories are spreading 
 like the webs of the devil to suck the blood of the 
 country. In that district of theirs an epidemic 
 levels men like a disease in sheep. Skeletons 
 can't make a stand. On the top of it aU they sing 
 Sunday tunes ! "
 
 BAEOXIAL VIEWS OF THE PRESEXT Tl-STE. 43 
 
 This behaviour of corn-law agitators and pro- 
 tectors of poachers was an hypocrisy too horrible 
 for comment. Everard sipped claret. jS'eyil lashed 
 his head for the clear idea which objurgation in- 
 sists upon implanting, but batters to pieces in the 
 act. 
 
 *' Manchester's the belly of this country ! " Eve- 
 rard continued. " So long as Manchester flourishes, 
 we're a country governed and led by the belly. 
 The head and the legs of the country are sound 
 still ; I don't guarantee it for long, but the middle's 
 rapacious and corrupt. Take it on a question of 
 foreign afiairs, it's an alderman after a feast. Bring 
 it upon home politics, you meet a w^olf." 
 
 The faithful Whig veteran spoke with jolly ad- 
 miration of the speech of a famous Tory chief. 
 
 " That was the way to talk to them ! Denounce 
 them traitors ! Up whip, and set the ruffians caper- 
 ing ! Hit them facers ! Our men are always for 
 the too-clever trick. They pluck the sprouts and 
 eat them, as if the loss of a sprout or two thinned 
 Manchester ! Your policy of absorption is good 
 enough when you're dealing with fragments. It's 
 a devilish unlucky thing to attempt with a concrete 
 mass. You might as well ask your head to absorb 
 a wall by running at it like a pugnacious nigger. I
 
 44 BEAUCHAMP'S CAEEER. 
 
 don't want you to go into Parliament ever. You're 
 a fitter man out of it ; but if ever you're bitten — 
 and it's the curse of our country to have politics as 
 well as tbe other diseases — don't follow a flag, be 
 independent, keep a free vote : remember bow I've 
 been tied, and hold foot against Manchester. Do it 
 blindfold ; you don't want counselling, you're sure 
 to be right. I'll lay you a blood-brood mare to a 
 cab-stand skeleton, you'll have an easy conscience 
 and deserve the thanks of the country." 
 
 Nevil listened gravely. The soundness of the 
 head and legs of the country he took for granted. 
 The inflated state of the unchivalrous middle, de- 
 nominated Manchester, terrified him. Could it be 
 true that England was betraying signs of decay? 
 and signs how ignoble ! Half-a-dozen crescent lines 
 cunningly turned, sketched her figure before the 
 world, and the reflection for one ready to die up- 
 holding her was that the portrait was no caricature. 
 Such an emblematic presentation of the land of his 
 fij.ial affection haunted him with hideous mockeries. 
 Surely the foreigner hearing our boasts of her must 
 compare us to showmen bawling the attractions of 
 a Fat Lady at a fair ! 
 
 Swoln Manchester bore the blame of it. Everard 
 exulted to hear his young echo attack the cotton-
 
 BAEONIAL VIEWS OF THE PRESEIs^T TliTE. 45 
 
 spinners. But Nevil was for a plan, a system, im- 
 mediate action ; the descending among the people, 
 and taking an initiative, leading them, insisting on 
 their following, not standing aloof and shrugging. 
 
 "We lead them in war," said he; ''why not in 
 peace ? There's a front for peace as well as war, and 
 that's our place rightly. TVe're pushed aside ; why, 
 it seems to me we're treated Kke old-fashioned 
 ornaments ! The fault must be ours. Shrugging 
 and sneering is about as honourable as blazing 
 fireworks oyer your own defeat. Back we have to 
 go! that's the 'point, sir. And as for jeering the 
 cotton- spinners, I can't while they've the lead of us. 
 We let them have it ! And we have thrice the 
 stake in the country. I don't mean properties and 
 titles." 
 
 " Deuce you don't," said his uncle. 
 
 *' I mean our names, our histories ; I mean our 
 duties. As for titles, the way to defend them is to 
 be worthy of them." 
 
 " Damned fine speech," remarked Everard. " !N*ow 
 you get out of that trick of prize- orationing. I call 
 it snufiery, sir ; it's all to your own nose ! You're 
 talking to me, not to a gallery. ' Worthy of them ! ' 
 Caesar wraps his head in his robe : he gets his 
 dig in the ribs for all his attitudinizing. It's very
 
 46 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 well for a man to talk like that who owns no more 
 than his bare-bodkin life, poor devil. Tall talk's 
 his jewelry : he must have his dandification in 
 bunkum. You ought to know better. Property 
 and titles are worth having, whether you are 
 ' worthy of them' or a disgrace to your class. 
 The best way of defending them is to keep a strong 
 fist, and take care you don't draw your fore-foot 
 back more than enough." 
 
 " Please propose something to be done," said 
 Nevil, depressed by the recommendation of that 
 attitude. 
 
 Everard proposed a fight for every privilege his 
 class possessed. " They say," he said, '' a nobleman 
 fighting the odds is a sight for the gods : and I 
 wouldn't yield an inch of ground. It's no use 
 calling things by fine names — the country's ruined 
 by cowardice. Poursuivez ! I cry. Haro ! at them ! 
 The biggest heart wins in the end. I haven't a 
 doubt about that. And I haven't a doubt we carry 
 the tonnage." 
 
 ''There's the people," sig;hed Nevil, entangled 
 in his uncle's haziness. 
 
 ''What people?" 
 
 "I suppose the people of Great Britain count, 
 sir."
 
 BARONIAL VIEWS OF THE PRESEXT TI]VrE. 47 
 
 " Of course they do ; when the battle's done, the 
 fight is lost and won." 
 
 " Do you expect the people to look on, sir ? " 
 
 "The people alwaj^s wait for the winner, boy 
 NevH/' 
 
 The young fellow exclaimed despondently, "If 
 it were a race ! " 
 
 "It's Kke a race, and we're confoundedly out of 
 training," said Everard. 
 
 There he rested. A mediaeval gentleman with 
 the docile notions of the twelfth century, com- 
 placently driving them to grass and wattling them 
 in the nineteenth, could be of no use to a boy 
 trying to think, though he could set the youngster 
 galloping. Nevil wandered about the woods of 
 Steynham, disinclined to shoot and lend a hand 
 to country sports. The popping of the guns of his 
 uncle and guests hung about his ears much like 
 their speech, which was unobjectionable in itself, 
 but not sufficient ; a little hard, he thought, a 
 little idle. He wanted something, and wanted 
 them to give their time and energy to something, 
 that was not to be had in a market. The nobles, 
 he felt sure, might resume their natural alliance 
 with the people, and lead them, as they did of old, 
 to the battle-field. How might they? A comely
 
 48 
 
 Sussex lass could not well tell him how. Sarcastic 
 reports of the troublesome questioner represented 
 him applying to a nymph of the country for en- 
 lightenment. He thrilled surprisingly under the 
 charm of feminine beauty. "The fellow's sound 
 at bottom," his uncle said, hearing of his having 
 really been seen walking in the complete form 
 proper to his budding age, that is, in two halves. 
 Nevil showed that he had gained an acquaintance 
 with the struggles of the neighbouring agricul- 
 tural poor to live and rear their children. His 
 uncle's table roared at his enumeration of the sickly 
 little beings, consumptive or bandy-legged, within 
 a radius of five miles of Steynham. Action was 
 what he wanted, Everard said. Nevil perhaps 
 thought the same, for he dashed out of his moon- 
 ing with a wave of the Tory standard, delighting 
 the ladies, though in that conflict of the Lion and 
 the Unicorn (which was a Tory song) he seemed 
 rather to wish to goad the dear lion than crush the 
 one-horned intrusive upstart. His calling on the 
 crack corps of Peers to enrol themselves forthwith 
 in the front ranks, and to anticipate opposition by 
 initiating measures, and so cut out that funny old 
 crazy old galleon, the People, from under the bat- 
 teries of the enemy, highly amused the gentlemen.
 
 BAEO^TAL VIEWS OF THE PRESENT TIME. 49 
 
 Before rejoining Ms skip, Nevil paid his cus- 
 tomary short visit of ceremony to his great-aimt 
 Eeauchamp — a venerable lady past eighty, hitherto 
 divided from him in sympathy by her dislike of his 
 uncle Everard, who had once been his living hero. 
 That was when he was in frocks, and still the tena- 
 cious fellow could not bear to hear his uncle spoken 
 ill of. 
 
 "All the men of that family are heartless, and 
 he is a man of wood, my dear, and a bad man," 
 the old lady said. "He should have kept you at 
 school, and sent you to college. You want reading 
 and teaching and talking to. Such a house as that 
 is should never be a home for you." She hinted at 
 Eosamund. Xevil defended the persecuted woman, 
 but with no better success than from the attacks of 
 the Romfrey ladies ; with this difference, however, 
 that these decried the woman's vicious arts, and 
 Mistress Elizabeth Mary Beauchamp put all the 
 sru upon the man. Such a man ! she said. " Let 
 me hear that he has married her, I will not utter 
 another word." Nevil echoed, "Married!" in a 
 different key. 
 
 "I am as much of an aristocrat as any of you, 
 only I rank morality higher," said Mrs. Beauchamp. 
 " When you were a child I offered to take you and 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 50 
 
 make you my heir, and / would have educated 
 you. You shall see a great-nephew of mine that 
 I did educate; he is eating his dinners for the 
 bar in London, and comes to me every Sunday. I 
 shall marry him to a good girl, and I shall show 
 your uncle what my kind of man-making is." 
 
 Nevil had no desire to meet the other great- 
 nephew, especially when he was aware of the ex- 
 traordinary circumstance that a Beauchamp great- 
 niece, having no money, had bestowed her hand 
 on a Manchester man defunct, whereof this young 
 Blackburn Tuckham, the lawyer, was issue. He 
 took his leave of Mrs. Elizabeth Beauchamp, 
 respecting her for her constitutional health and 
 brightness, and regretting for the sake of the 
 country that she had not married to give England 
 men and women resembling her. On the whole 
 he considered her wiser in her prescription for the 
 malady besetting him than his uncle. He knew that 
 action was but a temporary remedy. College would 
 have been his chronic medicine, and the old ladj^'s 
 acuteness in seeing it impressed him forcibly. She 
 had given him a peaceable two days on the Upper 
 Thames, in an atmosphere of plain good sense and 
 just-mindedness. He wrote to thank her, saying ; 
 *' My England at sea will be your parlour- window
 
 BARONIAL VIEWS OF THE PEESEXT TI^^IE. 51 
 
 looking down the grass to the river and rushes ; 
 and when you do me the honour to write, please 
 tell me the names of those wild-flowers growing 
 along the banks in summer." The old lady replied 
 immediately, enclosing a cheque for fifty pounds : 
 " Colonel Halkett informs me you are under cloud 
 at Steynham, and I have thought you may be in 
 want of pocket-money. The wild-flowers are willow- 
 herb, meadow-sweet, and loosestrife. I shall be 
 glad when you are here in summer to see them." 
 
 Nevil dispatched the following : "I thank you, 
 but I shall not cash the cheque. The StejTiham 
 tale is this : I happened to be out at night, and 
 stopped the keepers in chase of a young fellow 
 trespassing. I caught him myself, but recognised 
 him as one of a family I take an interest in, and 
 let him run before they came up. My uncle heard 
 a gun ; I sent the head gamekeeper word in the 
 morning to out with it all. Uncle E. was annoyed, 
 and we had a rough parting. If you are reward- 
 ing me for this, I have no right to it." 
 
 Mrs. Beauchamp rejoined : " Your profession 
 should teach you subordination, if it does nothing 
 else that is valuable to a Christian gentleman. You 
 will receive from the publisher the 'Life and 
 Letters of Lord Colling wood/ whom I have it in 
 
 l-»»'"'''oc,-r( Of ILUNO'S
 
 52 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 my mind that a young midshipman should task 
 himself to imitate. Spend the money as you think 
 fit." 
 
 Nevil*s ship, commanded hy Captain Robert Hall 
 (a most gallant oflBcer, one of his heroes, and of 
 Lancashire origin, strangely !), flew to the South 
 American station, in and about Lord Cochrane's 
 waters ; then as swiftly back. For, Kke the frail 
 Norwegian bark on the edge of the maelstrom, liker 
 to a country of conflicting interests and passions, 
 that is not mentally on a level with its good 
 fortune, England was drifting into foreign compli- 
 cations. A paralyzed Minister proclaimed it. The 
 governing people, which is looked to for direction 
 in grave dilemmas by its representatives and re- 
 flectors, shouted that it had been accused of pusil- 
 lanimity. No one had any desire for war, only we 
 really had (and it was perfectly true) been talking 
 gigantic nonsense of peace, and of the everlastingness 
 of the exchange of fruits for money, with angels 
 waving raw-groceries of Eden in joy of the com- 
 mercial picture. Therefore, to correct the excesses 
 of that fit, we held the standing by the Moslem, on 
 behalf of the Mediterranean (and the Moslem is 
 one of our customers bearing an excellent reputation 
 for the payment of debts), to be good, granting the
 
 BAEOXIAL YIEWS OF THE PRESENT THTE. 53 
 
 necessity. We deplored the necessity. The Press 
 wept over it. That, however, was not the politic 
 tone for us while the imperial berg of Polar ice 
 watched us keenly; and the Press proceeded to 
 remind us that we had once been bull-dogs. "Was 
 there not an animal within us having a right to a 
 turn now and then ? And was it not (Falstaff, on 
 a calm world, was quoted) for the benefit of our 
 constitutions now and then to loosen the animal ? 
 Granting the necessity, of course. By dint of 
 incessantly speaking of the necessity we granted it 
 unknowingly. The lighter hearts regarded our 
 period of monotonously lyrical prosperity as a man 
 sensible of fresh morning air looks back on the 
 snoring bolster. Many of the graver were glad of 
 a changre. After all that maunderino: over the 
 blessed peace which brings the raisin and the 
 currant for the pudding, and shuts up the cannon 
 with a sheep's head, it became a principle of 
 popular taste to descant on the vivifying virtues 
 of war ; even as, after ten months of money- 
 mongering in smoky London, the citizen hails the 
 sea-breeze and an immersion in uni'uly brine, 
 despite the cost, that breeze and brine may make 
 a man of him, according to the doctor's prescrip- 
 tion : sweet is home, but health is sweeter ! Then
 
 54 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 was there another curious exhibition of us. Gentle- 
 men, to the exact number of the Graces, dressed in 
 drab of an ancient cut, made a pilgrimage to the 
 icy despot, and besought him to give way for 
 Piety's sake. He, courteous, colossal, and im- 
 movable, waved them homeward. They returned 
 and were hooted for belying the bellicose by their 
 mission, and interpreting too well the peaceful. 
 They were the unparalyzed Ministers of the occa- 
 sion, but helpless. 
 
 And now came war, the purifier and the pesti- 
 lence. 
 
 The cry of the English people for war was 
 pretty general, as far as the criers went. They put 
 on their Sabbath face concerning the declaration of 
 war, and told with approval how the royal hand 
 had trembled in committing itself to the form of 
 signature to which its action is limited. If there 
 was money to be paid, there was a bugbear to be 
 slain for it ; and a bugbear is as obnoxious to the 
 repose of commercial communities as rivals are to 
 kings. 
 
 The cry for war was absolutely unanimous, and 
 a supremely national cry, Everard Romfrey said, 
 for it excluded the cotton-spinners. 
 
 He smacked his hands, crowing at the vocifera-
 
 BABOXIAL VIEWS OF THE PRESENT TI3JE. 55 
 
 tions of disgust of those negrophiles and sweaters of 
 Christians, whose isolated clamour amid the popular 
 uproar sounded of gagged mouths. 
 
 One of the half- stifled cotton- spinners, a notorious 
 one, a spouter of rank sedition and hater of aristo- 
 cracy, a political poacher, managed to make himself 
 heard. He was tossed to the Press for a morsel, 
 and tossed back to the people in strips. Everard 
 had a sharp return of appetite m reading the daily 
 and weekly journals. They printed logic, they 
 printed sense ; they abused the treasonable barking 
 cur unmercifully. They printed almost as much 
 as he would have uttered, excepting the strong salt 
 of his similes, likening that rascal and his crew 
 to the American weed in our waters, to the rotting 
 wild bee's nest in our trees, to the worm in. our 
 ships' timbers, and to lamentable afflictions of 
 the human frame, and of sheep, oxen, honest 
 hounds. Manchester was in eclipse. The world of 
 England discovered that the peace-party which 
 opposed was the actual cause of the war : never 
 was indication clearer. But my business is with 
 Mr. Beauchamp, to know whom, and partly imder- 
 stand his conduct in after-days, it will be as well 
 to take a bird's-eye glance at him through the 
 war.
 
 56 BEAUCHAMP'S CAEEER. 
 
 " Now/' said Everard, " we shall see wliat stuff 
 there is in that fellow Nevil." 
 
 He expected, as you may imagine, a true young 
 Beauchamp-Komfrey to be straining his collar like 
 a leash-hound.
 
 CHAPTER lY. 
 
 A GLIMPSE OF NEVIL IN ACTION. 
 
 The young gentleman to whom Eyerard Romfrey 
 transferred his combative spirit dispatched a letter 
 from the Dardanelles, requesting his uncle not to 
 ask him for a spark of enthusiasm. He despised 
 our Moslem allies, he said, and thought with pity 
 of the miserable herds of men in regiments marching 
 across the steppes at the bidding of a despot that we 
 were helping to popularise. He certainly wrote in 
 the tone of a jejune politician ; pardonable stuff 
 to seniors entertaining similar opinions, but most 
 exasperating when it runs counter to them : 
 though one question put by Nevil was not easily 
 answerable. He wished to know whether the 
 English people would be so anxious to be at it if 
 their man stood on the opposite shore and talked 
 of trying conclusions on their green fields. And 
 he suggested that they had become so ready for war
 
 58 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 because of their having grown rather ashamed of 
 themselves, and for the special reason that they 
 could have it at a distance. 
 
 " The rascal's liver's out of order," Everard said. 
 
 Coming to the sentence : — " Who speaks out in 
 this crisis ? There is one, and I am with him ; " 
 Mr. Eomfrey's compassionate sentiments veered 
 round to irate amazement. For the person alluded 
 to was indeed the infamous miauling cotton- spinner. 
 Nevil admired him. He said so bluntly. He 
 pointed to that traitorous George-Foxite as the one 
 heroical Englishman of his day, declaring that he 
 felt bound in honour to make known his admira- 
 tion for the man ; and he hoped his uncle would 
 excuse him. ''If we differ, I am sorry, sir ; but 
 I should be a coward to withhold what I think of 
 him when he has all England against him, and he 
 is in the right, as England will discover. I maintain 
 he speaks wisely — I don't mind saying, like a 
 prophet ; and he speaks on behalf of the poor as 
 well as of the country. He appears to me the only 
 public man who looks to the state of the poor — I 
 mean, their interests. They pay for war, and if we 
 are to have peace at home and strength for a really 
 national war, the only war we can ever call neces- 
 sary, the poor must be contented. He sees that. I
 
 A GLIMPSE OF KEYIL IN ACTION. 59 
 
 shall not run the risk of angering you by writing to 
 defend him, unless I hear of his being shamefully 
 mishandled, and the bearer of an old name can be 
 of service to him. I cannot say less, and will say 
 no more." 
 
 Everard apostrophized his absent nephew : " You 
 jackass ! " 
 
 I am reminded by Mr. Romfrey's profound dis- 
 appointment in the youth, that it will be repeatedly 
 shared by many others : and I am bound to forewarn 
 readers of this history that there is no plot in it. 
 The hero is chargeable with the official disqualifica- 
 tion of constantly offending prejudices, never seeking 
 to please ; and all the while it is upon him the 
 narrative hangs. To be a public favourite is his 
 last thought. Beauchampism, as one confronting 
 him calls it, may be said to stand for nearly every 
 thing which is the obverse of Byronism, and rarely 
 woos your sympathy, shuns the statuesque pathetic, 
 or any kind of posturing. For Beauchamp will not 
 even look at happiness to mourn its absence ; 
 melodious lamentations, demoniacal scorn, are quite 
 alien to him. His faith is in working and fighting. 
 "With every inducement to offer himself for a 
 romantic figure, he despises the pomades and curling-
 
 62 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 Tlie torch of war was actually lighting, and he was 
 not fashioned to be heedless of what surrounded him. 
 Our diplomacy, after dancing with all the suppleness 
 of stilts, gravely resigned the gift of motion. Our 
 dauntless Lancastrian thundered like a tempest 
 over a gambling tent, disregarded. Our worthy 
 people, consenting to the doctrine that war is a 
 scourge, contracted the habit of thinking it the, in 
 this case, dire necessity which is the sole excuse 
 for giving way to an irritated pugnacity, and 
 sucked the comforting caramel of an alliance with 
 their troublesome next-door neighbour, profuse in 
 comfits as in scorpions. Nevil detected that politic 
 element of their promptitude for war. His recol- 
 lections of dissatisfaction in former days assisted 
 him to perceive the nature of it, but he was too 
 young to hold his own against the hubbub of a 
 noisy people, much too young to remain sceptical 
 of a modern people's enthusiasm for war while 
 journals were testifying to it down the length of 
 their columns, and letters from home palpitated 
 with it, and shipmates yawned wearily for the 
 signal, and shiploads of red coats and blue, in- 
 fantry, cavalry, artillery, were singing farewell to 
 the girl at home, and hurrah for anything in foreign 
 waters. He joined the stream with a cordial spirit.
 
 A GLIilPSE OF XEYIL IX ACTIOX. 63 
 
 Since it must be so ! Tlie wind of that haughty 
 proceeding of the Grreat Bear in putting a paw over 
 the neutral brook brushed his cheek unpleasantly. 
 He clapped hands for the fezzy defenders of the 
 border fortress, and when the order came for the 
 fleet to enter the old romantic sea of storms and 
 fables, he wrote home a letter fit for his uncle 
 Everard to read. Then there was the saiKng and 
 the landing, and the march up the heights, which 
 Nevil was condemned to look at. To his joy he 
 obtained an appointment on shore, and after that 
 Everard heard of him from other channels. The 
 two were of a mind when the savage winter advanced 
 which froze the attack of the city, and might be 
 imaged as the hoar god of hostile elements pointing 
 a hand to the line reached and menacing at one 
 farther step. Both blamed the Government, but 
 they divided as to the origin of governmental 
 inefficiency ; Nevil accusing the Lords guilty of 
 foulest sloth, Everard the Quakers of dry-rotting 
 the country. He passed with a shrug Xevil's 
 puling outcry for the enemy as well as our own 
 poor fellows : " At his steppes again ! " And he 
 had to be forgiving when reports came of his 
 nephew's turn for overdoing his duty : *' show-fight- 
 ing," as he termed it.
 
 64 BEATJCHAMP'S CAEEER. 
 
 " Braggadocioing in deeds is only next bad to 
 mouthing it/' lie wrote 'very sensibly. "Stick to 
 your line. Don't go out of it till you are ordered 
 out. Remember tbat we want soldiers and sailors, 
 we don't want suicides." He condescended to tbese 
 italics, considering impressiveness to be urgent. 
 In bis beart, notwithstanding his implacably clear 
 judgment, he was passably well pleased with the 
 congratulations encompassing him on account of 
 his nephew's gallantry at a period of dejection in 
 Britain : for the winter was dreadful ; every kind 
 heart that went to bed with cold feet felt acutely 
 for our soldiers on the frozen heights, and thoughts 
 of heroes were as good as warming-pans. Heroes 
 we would have. It happens in war as in wit, that 
 all the birds of wonder fly to a flaring reputation. 
 He that has done one wild thing must necessarily 
 have done the other ; so Nevil found himself stand- 
 ing in the thick of a fame that blew rank eulogies 
 on him for acts he had not performed. The Earl 
 of Romfrey forwarded hampers and a letter of praise. 
 *' They tell me that while you were facing the 
 enemy, temporarily attaching yourself to one of the 
 regiments — I forget which, though I have heard it 
 named — you sprang out under fire on an eagle 
 clawing a hare. I like that. I hope you had the
 
 A GLnrPSE OF XEVIL IX ACTION. 65 
 
 benefit of the hare. She is our property, and I 
 have issued an injunction that she shall not go into 
 the newspapers." Everard was entirely of a con- 
 trary opinion concerning the episode of eagle and 
 hare, though it was a case of a bird of prey inter- 
 fering with an object of the chase. Xevil wrote 
 home most entreatingly and imperatively, like one 
 wincing, begging him to contradict that and certain 
 other stories, and prescribing the form of a public 
 renunciation of his proclaimed part in them. " The 
 hare," he sent word, '4s the property of young 
 Michell of the Rodneu, and he is the humanest and 
 the gallantest fellow in the service. I have written 
 to my Lord. Pray help to rid me of burdens that 
 make me feel like a robber and impostor. '^ 
 
 Everard repKed : 
 
 " I have a letter from your captain, informing 
 me that I am unlikely to see you home unless you 
 learn to hold yourself in. I wish you were in 
 another battery than Robert Hall's. He forgets 
 the force of example, however much of a dab he 
 may be at precept. But there you are, and please 
 clap a hundredweight on your appetite for figuring, 
 wiU you. Do you think there is any good in 
 helping to Frenchify our army ? I loathe a fellow 
 who shoots at a medal. I wager he is easy enough 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 66 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 to be caught by circumvention — put me in tbe open 
 with. him. Tom Biggot, the boxer, went over to 
 Paris, and stood in the ring with one of their 
 dancing pugilists, and the first round he got a crack 
 on the chin from the rogue's foot ; the second round 
 he caught him by the lifted leg, and punished him 
 till pec was all he could say of peccavi. Fight the 
 straightforward fight. Hang elan ! Battle is a 
 game of give and take, and if our men get elanned, 
 we shall see them refusing to come up to time. 
 This new crossing and medalling is the devil's own 
 notion for upsetting a solid British line, and tempt- 
 ing fellows to get invalided that they may blaze it 
 before the shopkeepers and their wives in the city. 
 Give us an army ! — none of your caperers. Here 
 are lots of circussy heroes coming home to rest after 
 their fatigues. One was spouting at a public dinner 
 yesterday night. He went into it upright, and he 
 ran out of it upright — at the head of his men ! — and 
 here he is feasted by the citizens and making a 
 speech upright, and my boy fronting the enemy ! " 
 
 Everard's involuntary break-down from his 
 veteran's roughness to a touch of feeling thrilled 
 Nevil, who began to perceive what his uncle was 
 driving at when he rebuked the coxcombry of the 
 field, and spoke of the description of compliment
 
 A GLIMPSE OF XEVIL IN ACTION. 67 
 
 your hero was paying Englislimeii in affecting to 
 give them examples of bravery and preternatural 
 coolness. Is^evil sent home humble confessions of 
 guilt in this respect, with fresh praises of young 
 Michell: for though Everard, as JSTevil recognised 
 it, was perfectly right in the abstract, and generally 
 right, there are times when an example is needed 
 by brave men — times when the fiery furnace of 
 death's dragon-jaw is not inviting even to English- 
 men receiving the word that duty bids them advance, 
 and they require a leader of the way. A national 
 coxcombry that pretends to an independence of 
 human sensations, and makes a motto of our dan- 
 diacal courage, is more perilous to the armies of the 
 nation than that of a few heroes. It is this cox- 
 combry which has too often caused disdain of the 
 wise chief's maxim of calculation for winners, 
 namely, to have always the odds on your side, and 
 which has bled, shattered, and occasionally disgraced 
 us. Young Michell's carrpng powder-bags to the 
 assault, and when ordered to retire, bearing them on 
 his back, and helping a wounded soldier on the way, 
 did surely well ; nor did Mr. Beauchamp himself 
 behave so badly on an occasion when the sailors of 
 his battery caught him out of a fire of shell that 
 raised jets of dust and smoke like a range of geysers
 
 66 
 
 to be caught by circumvention — put me in the open 
 with him. Tom Biggot, the boxer, went over to 
 Paris, and stood in the ring with one of their 
 dancing pugilists, and the first round he got a crack 
 on the chin from the rogue's foot ; the second round 
 he caught him by the lifted leg, and punished him 
 till pec was all he could say of peccavi. Fight the 
 straightforward fight. Hang elan ! Battle is a 
 game of give and take, and if our men get elanned, 
 we shall see them refusing to come up to time. 
 This new crossing and medalling is the devil's own 
 notion for upsetting a solid British line, and tempt- 
 ing fellows to get invalided that they may blaze it 
 before the shopkeepers and their wives in the city. 
 Give us an army ! — none of your caperers. Here 
 are lots of circussy heroes coming home to rest after 
 their fatigues. One was spouting at a public dinner 
 yesterday night. He went into it upright, and he 
 ran out of it upright — at the head of his men ! — and 
 here he is feasted by the citizens and making a 
 speech upright, and my boy fronting the enemy ! " 
 
 Everard's involuntary break-down from his 
 veteran's roughness to a touch of feeling thrilled 
 Nevil, who began to perceive what his uncle was 
 driving at when he rebuked the coxcombry of the 
 field, and spoke of the description of compliment
 
 A gli:3j:pse of neyil in action. 67 
 
 your hero was paying Englislimen in affecting to 
 give them examples of bravery and preternatural 
 coolness. Xevil sent home humble confessions of 
 guilt in this respect, with fresh praises of young 
 Michell: for though Everard, as Nevil recognised 
 it, was perfectly right in the abstract, and generally 
 right, there are times when an example is needed 
 by brave men — times when the fiery furnace of 
 death's dragon-jaw is not invitiag even to English- 
 men receiving the word that duty bids them advance, 
 and they require a leader of the way. A national 
 coxcombry that pretends to an independence of 
 human sensations, and makes a motto of our dan- 
 diacal courage, is more perilous to the armies of the 
 nation than that of a few heroes. It is this cox- 
 combry which has too often caused disdain of the 
 wise chief's maxim of calculation for winners, 
 namely, to have always the odds on your side, and 
 which has bled, shattered, and occasionally disgraced 
 us. Young Michell's carrying powder-bags to the 
 assault, and when ordered to retire, bearing them on 
 his back, and helping a wounded soldier on the way, 
 did surely well ; nor did Mr. Beauchamp himself 
 behave so badly on an occasion when the sailors of 
 his battery caught him out of a fiire of shell that 
 raised jets of dust and smoke like a range of geysers
 
 70 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 A tremendously bracing epistle, excellent for an 
 access of fever, was dispatched to humanity's curate, 
 and Everard sat expecting a hot rejoinder, or else 
 a black-sealed letter, but neither one nor the other 
 arrived. Suddenly, to his disgust, came rumours 
 of peace between the mighty belligerents. 
 
 The silver trumpets of peace were nowhere heark- 
 ened to with satisfaction by the buU-dogs, though 
 triumph rang sonorously through the music, for 
 they had been severely mangled, as usual at the 
 outset, and they had at last got their grip, and 
 were in high condition for fighting. 
 
 The most expansive panegyrists of our deeds did 
 not dare affirm of the most famous of them that 
 England had embarked her costly cavalry to offer 
 it for a mark ^ of artillery- balls on three sides of a 
 square : and the belief was universal that we could 
 do more business-like deeds and play the great 
 game of blunders with an ability refined by ex- 
 perience. Everard Romfrey was one of those who 
 thought themselves justified in insisting upon the 
 continuation of the war, in contempt of our allies. 
 His favourite saying that constitution beats the 
 world, was being splendidly manifested by our 
 bearing. He was very uneasy ; he would not hear 
 of peace ; and not only that, the imperial gentleman
 
 A GLIMPSE OF NEYIL IN ACTION. 71 
 
 soberly committed the naivete of sending word to 
 Nevil to let him know immediately the opinion of 
 the camp concerning it, as perchance an old Roman 
 knight may have written to some young aquilifer of 
 the Praetorians. 
 
 Allies, however, are of the description of twins 
 joined by a membrane, and supposing that one of 
 them determines to sit down, the other will act 
 wisely in bending his knees at once, and doing the 
 same : he cannot but be extremely uncomfortable 
 left standing. Besides, there was the Ottoman 
 cleverly poised again ; the Muscovite was battered ; 
 fresh gilt was added to the military glory of the 
 Gaul. English grumblers might well be asked 
 what they had fought for, if they were not con- 
 tented. 
 
 Colonel Halkett mentioned a report that Nevil 
 had received a slight thigh-wound of small im- 
 portance. At any rate, something was the matter 
 with him, and it was naturally imagined that he 
 would have double cause to write home ; and still 
 more so for the reason, his tmcle confessed, that he 
 had foreseen the folly of a war conducted by milky 
 cotton- spinners and their adjuncts, in partnership 
 with a throned gambler, who had won his stake, 
 and now snapped his fingers at them. Everard
 
 70 BEATJCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 A tremendously bracing epistle, excellent for an 
 access of fever, was dispatched to humanity's curate, 
 and Everard sat expecting a hot rejoinder, or else 
 a black-sealed letter, but neither one nor the other 
 arrived. Suddenly, to his disgust, came rumours 
 of peace between the mighty belligerents. 
 
 The silver trumpets of peace were nowhere heark- 
 ened to with satisfaction by the bull-dogs, though 
 triumph rang sonorously through the music, for 
 they had been severely mangled, as usual at the 
 outset, and they had at last got their grip, and 
 were in high condition for fighting. 
 
 The most expansive panegyrists of our deeds did 
 not dare affirm of the most famous of them that 
 England had embarked her costly cavalry to offer 
 it for a mark ^ of artillery- balls on three sides of a 
 square : and the belief was universal that we could 
 do more business-like deeds and play the great 
 game of blunders with an ability refined by ex- 
 perience. Everard Eomfrey was one of those who 
 thought themselves justified in insisting upon the 
 continuation of the war, in contempt of our allies. 
 His favourite saying that constitution beats the 
 world, was being splendidly manifested by our 
 bearing. He was very uneasy ; he would not hear 
 of peace ; and not only that, the imperial gentleman
 
 A GLIMPSE OF NEYIL IN ACTION. 71 
 
 soberly committed the naivete of sending word to 
 Nevil to let him know immediately the opinion of 
 the camp concerning it, as perchance an old Roman 
 knight may have written to some young aquilifer of 
 the Praetorians. 
 
 Allies, however, are of the description of twins 
 joined by a membrane, and supposing that one of 
 them determines to sit down, the other will act 
 wisely in bending his knees at once, and doing the 
 same : he cannot but be extremely uncomfortable 
 left standing. Besides, there was the Ottoman 
 cleverly poised again ; the Muscovite was battered ; 
 fresh gilt was added to the military glory of the 
 Gaul. English grumblers might well be asked 
 what they had fought for, if they were not con- 
 tented. 
 
 Colonel Halkett mentioned a report that Nevil 
 had received a slight thigh-wound of small im- 
 portance. At any rate, something was the matter 
 with him, and it was naturally imagined that he 
 would have double cause to write home ; and still 
 more so for the reason, his tmcle confessed, that he 
 had foreseen the folly of a war conducted by milky 
 cotton-spinners and their adjuncts, in partnership 
 with a throned gambler, who had won his stake, 
 and now snapped his fingers at them. Everard
 
 72 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 expected, he had prepared himself for, the young 
 naval politician's crow, and he meant to admit 
 frankly that he had been wrong in wishing to fight 
 anybody without having first crushed the cotton 
 faction. But Nevil continued silent. 
 
 " Dead in hospital, or a Turk hotel ! " sighed 
 Everard ; " and no more to the scoundrels over 
 there than a body to be shovelled into slack lime." 
 
 Rosamund Culling was the only witness of his 
 remarkable betrayal of grief.
 
 GHi^PTEH V. 
 
 HENEE. 
 
 At last, one monung, arrived a letter from a 
 Frencli gentleman signing himself Comte Cresnes 
 de Croisnel, in which Everard was informed that 
 his nephew had accompanied the son of the writer, 
 Captain de Croisnel, on board an Austrian boat out 
 ■ of the East, and was lying in Venice under a return- 
 attack of fever, — not, the count stated pointedly, 
 in the hands of an Italian physician. He had 
 brought his own with him to meet his son, who 
 was likewise disabled. 
 
 Everard was assured by M. de Croisnel that every 
 attention and affectionate care were being rendered 
 to his gallant and adored nephew — " vrai type de 
 tout ce qu'il y a de noble et de chevaleresque dans la 
 vieille Angleterre" — from a family bound to him 
 by the tenderest obKgations, personal and national ; 
 one as dear to every member of it as the brother,
 
 74 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 tlie son, they welcomed with thankful hearts to the 
 Divine interposition restoring him to them. In con- 
 clusion, the, count proposed something like the 
 embrace of a fraternal friendship should Everard 
 think fit to act upon the spontaneous sentiments of 
 a loving relative, and join them in Venice to watch 
 over his nephew's recovery. Already M. Nevil 
 was stronger. The gondola was a medicine in itself, 
 the count said. 
 
 Everard knitted his mouth to intensify a peculiar 
 subdued form of laughter through the nose, in 
 hopeless ridicule of a Frenchman's notions of an 
 Englishman's occupations — presumed across Channel 
 to allow of his breaking loose from shooting engage- 
 ments at a minute's notice, to rush off to a fetid 
 foreign city notorious for mud and mosquitoes, and 
 commence capering and grimacing, pouring forth 
 a jugful of ready-made extravagances, with 7non fils ! 
 mon cher neveu ! Dieii ! and similar fiddlededee. 
 These were matters for women to do, if they chose : 
 women and Frenchmen were much of a pattern. 
 Moreover, he knew the hotel this Comte de Croisnel 
 was staying at. He gasped at the name of it : he 
 had rather encounter a grisly bear than a mosquito 
 any night of his life, for no stretch of cunning 
 outwits a mosquito ; and enlarging on the qualities
 
 RENEE. 75 
 
 of the terrific insect, lie vowed it was damnation 
 without trial or judgment. 
 
 Eventually Mrs. Culling's departure was per- 
 mitted. He argued, " Why go ? the fellow's 
 comfortable, getting himself together, and you say 
 the French are good nurses." But her entreaties 
 to go were vehement, though Venice had no happy 
 place in her recollections, and he withheld his 
 objections to her going. For him, the fields for- 
 bade it. He sent hearty messages to ^evil, and that 
 was enough, considering that the young dog of 
 * humanity ' had clearly been running out of his 
 way to catch a jaundice, and was bereaving his 
 houses of the matronly government, deprived of 
 which they were all of them likely soon to be at 
 sixes and sevens with disorderly lacqueys, peccant 
 maids, and cooks in hysterics. 
 
 Now if the master of his fortimes had come to 
 Venice ! — Nevil started the supposition in his mind 
 often after hope had sunk. — Everard would have 
 seen a young sailor and a soldier the thinner for 
 wear, reclining in a gondola half the day, fanned 
 by a brunette of the fine Hneaments of the good 
 blood of France. She chattered snatches of Vene- 
 tian caught from the gondoliers, she was like a 
 delicate cup of crystal brimming with the beauty
 
 76 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 of the place, and making one of tliem drink in all 
 Ms impressions tkrougli her. Her features had the 
 soft irregularities which run to rarities of beauty, as 
 the ripple rocks the light; mouth, eyes, brows, 
 nostrils, and bloomy cheeks played into one another 
 liquidly ; thought flew, tongue followed, and the 
 flash of meaning quivered over them like night- 
 lightning. Or oftener, to speak truth, tongue flew, 
 thought followed : her age was but newly seventeen, 
 and she was French. 
 
 Her name was Renee. She was the only 
 daughter of the Comte de Croisnel. Her brother 
 Roland owed his life to Nevil, this Englishman 
 proud of a French name — Nevil Beauchamp. If 
 there was any warm feeling below the unruffled 
 surface of the girl's deliberate eyes while gazing 
 on him, it was that he who had saved her brother 
 must be nearly brother himself, yet was not quite, 
 yet must be loved, yet not approached. He was her 
 brother's brother-in-arms, brother-in-heart, not hers, 
 yet hers through her brother. His French name 
 rescued him from foreignness. He spoke her 
 language with a piquant accent, unlike the piti- 
 able English. Unlike them, he was gracious, and 
 could be soft and quick. The battle -scarlet, battle- 
 black, Roland's tales of him threw round him in
 
 her imagination, made his gentleness a surprise. 
 If, then, he was hers through her hrother, what 
 was she to him ? The question did not spring 
 clearly within her, though she was alive to every 
 gradual change of manner towards the convalescent 
 necessitated hy the laws overawing her sex. 
 
 Venice was the French girl's dream. She was 
 realizing it hungrily, revelling in it, anatomizing it, 
 picking it to pieces, reviewing it, comparing her 
 work with the original, and the original with her 
 first conception, until beautiful sad Venice threat- 
 ened to be no more her dream, and in dread of 
 disenchantment she tried to take impressions 
 humbly, really tasked herself not to analyze, not 
 to dictate from a French footing, not to scorn. 
 Not to be petulant with objects disappointing her, 
 was an impossible task. She could not consent to a 
 compromise with the people, the merchandise, the 
 odours of the city. Gliding in the gondola through 
 the narrow canals at low tide, she leaned back 
 simulating stupor, with one word — Venezia ! Her 
 brother was commanded to smoke : " Fumez, fumez, 
 Koland ! " As soon as the steel-crested prow had 
 pushed into her Paradise of the Canal Grande, she 
 quietly shrouded her hair from tobacco, and called 
 upon rapture to recompense her for her sufferings
 
 78 
 
 The black gondola was unendurable to lier. She 
 had accompanied her father to the Accademia, and 
 mused on the golden Yenetian streets of Carpaccio : 
 she must have an open gondola to decorate in his 
 manner, gaily, splendidly, and mock at her efforts — 
 a warning to all that might hope to improve the 
 prevailing gloom and squalor by levying contri- 
 butions upon the Mercer ia ! Her most constant 
 admiration was for the English lord who used once 
 to ride on the Lido sands and visit the Armenian 
 convent — a lord and a poet. 
 
 This was to be infinitely more than a naval 
 lieutenant. But ISTevil claimed her as little person- 
 ally as he allowed her to be claimed by another. 
 The graces of her freaks of petulance and airy 
 whims, her sprightly jets of wilfulness, fleeting 
 frowns of contempt, imperious decisions, were all 
 beautiful, like silver-shifting waves, in this lustrous 
 planet of her pure freedom ; and if you will seize 
 the divine conception of Artemis, and own the 
 goddess French, you will understand his feelings. 
 
 But though he admired fervently, and danced 
 obediently to her tunes, Nevil could not hear 
 injustice done to a people or historic poetic city 
 without trying hard to right the mind guilty of it. 
 A newspaper correspondent, a Mr. John Holies,
 
 BEXEE. 79 
 
 lingering on liis road home from the army, put him 
 on the track of an Englishman's books touching the 
 spirit as well as the stones of Venice, and Nevil 
 thanked him when he had turned some of the 
 leaves. 
 
 The study of the books to school Renee was 
 pursued, like the Bianchina's sleep, in gondoletta, 
 and was not unlike it at intervals. A translated 
 sentence was the key to a reverie. Renee leaned 
 back, meditating ; he forward, the book on his 
 knee ; Roland left them to themselves, and spied 
 for the Bianchina behind the window-bars. The 
 count was in the churches or the Galleries. Renee 
 thought she began to comprehend the spirit of 
 Venice, and chid her rebelliousness. 
 
 " But our Venice was the Venice of the deca- 
 dence, then ! " she said, complaining. Nevil read 
 on, distrustful of the perspicuity of his own ideas. 
 
 "Ah, but,'' said she, *'when these Venetians 
 were rough men chanting Kke our Huguenots, how 
 cold it must have been here ! " 
 
 She hoped she was not very wrong in preferring 
 the times of the great Venetian painters and 
 martial doges to that period of faith and stone- 
 cutting. What was done then might be beautiful, 
 but the life was monotonous ; she insisted that it
 
 80 
 
 was Huguenot ; harsh, nasal, sombre, insolent, 
 self-sufficient. Her eyes lightened for the flashing 
 colours and pageantries, and the threads of desperate 
 adventure crossing the rii to this and that palace- 
 door and balcony, like faint blood- streaks ; the 
 times of Yenice in full flower. She reasoned 
 against the hard eloquent Englishman of the 
 books. " But we are known by our fruits, are we 
 not ? and the Venice I admire was surely the fruit 
 of these stonecutters chanting hymns of faith ; it 
 could not but be : and if it deserved, as he says, 
 to die disgraced, I think we should go back to 
 them and ask them whether their minds were as 
 pure and holy as he supposes." Her French wits 
 would not be subdued. Nevil pointed to the palaces. 
 *' Pride," said she. He argued that the original 
 Venetians were not responsible for their ofispring. 
 " You say it ? " she cried, " you, of an old race ? 
 Oh, no; you do not feel it ! " and the trembling 
 fervour of her voice convinced him that he did not, 
 could not. 
 
 Renee said : ^' I know my ancestors are bound 
 up in me, by my sentiments towards them ; and 
 so do you, M. Nevil. We shame them if we fail 
 in courage and honour. Is it not so ? If we break 
 a single pledged word we cast shame on them.
 
 EENJEE. 81 
 
 Why, tliat makes us wliat we are ; tliat is our 
 distinction : we |^dare not be weak if we would. 
 And therefore when Yenice is reproached with 
 avarice and luxury, I choose to say — what do we 
 hear of the children of misers ? and I say I am 
 certain that those old cold Huguenot stonecutters 
 were proud and grasping. I am sure they were, 
 and they shall share the blame/* 
 
 Nevil plunged into his volume. 
 
 He called on Eoland for an opinion. 
 
 " Friend," said Roland, " opinions may differ : 
 mine is, considering the defences of the windows, 
 that the only way into these houses or out of them 
 bodily was the doorway." 
 
 Roland complimented his sister and friend on 
 the prosecution of their studies : he could not imder- 
 stand a word of the subject, and yawning, he begged 
 permission to be allowed to land and join the 
 gondola at a distant quarter. The gallant officer 
 was in haste to go. 
 
 Renee stared at her brother. He saw nothing ; 
 he said a word to the gondoliers, and quitted the 
 boat. Mars was in pursuit. She resigned herself, 
 and ceased then to be a girl. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 LOVE IN VENICE. 
 
 The air flashed like heaven descending for Nevil 
 alone with Eenee. They had never been alone 
 before. Such happiness belonged to the avenue of 
 wishes leading to golden mists beyond imagination, 
 and seemed, coming on him suddenly, miraculous. 
 He leaned towards her like one who has broken 
 a current of speech, and waits to resume it. She 
 was all unsuspecting indolence, with gravely 
 shadowed eyes. 
 
 *' I throw the book down," he said. 
 
 She objected. *'No ; continue : I like it." 
 
 Both of them divined that the book was there to 
 do duty for Roland. 
 
 He closed it, keeping a finger among the leaves ; 
 a kind of anchorage in case of indiscretion. 
 
 "Permit me to tell you, M. Nevil, you are inclined 
 to play truant to-day."
 
 LOYE IN VENICE. 83 
 
 "lam." 
 
 "jN'ow is the yery time to read; for my poor 
 Eoland is at sea when we discuss our questions, and 
 the book has driven him away." 
 
 "But we have plenty of time to read. We miss 
 the scenes." 
 
 " The scenes are green shutters, wet steps, bar- 
 caroli, brown women, striped posts, a scarlet night- 
 cap, a sick fig-tree, an old shawl, faded spots of 
 colour, peeling walls. They might be figured by a 
 trodden melon. They all resemble one another, and 
 so do the days here." 
 
 " That's the charm. I wish I could look on you 
 and think the same. You, as you are, for ever." 
 
 *' Would you not let me live my life ? " 
 
 " I would not have you alter." 
 
 "Please to be pathetic on that subject after I 
 am wrinkled, monsieur." 
 
 " You want commanding, mademoiselle." 
 
 Renee nestled her chin, and gazed forward 
 through her eyelashes. 
 
 " Venice is like a melancholy face of a former 
 beauty who has ceased to rouge, or wipe away 
 traces of her old arts," she said, straining for 
 common talk, and showing the strain. 
 
 " Wait ; now we are rounding," said he ; " now
 
 84 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 you have three of what you call your theatre- 
 bridges in sight. The people mount and drop, 
 mount and drop ; I see them laugh. They are full 
 of fun and good-temper. Look on living Venice." 
 
 " Provided that my papa is not crossing when we 
 go under.'* 
 
 '' Would he not trust you to me ? '' 
 
 - Yes." 
 
 ''He would? And you?" 
 
 " I do believe they are improvising an operetta 
 on the second bridge." 
 
 " You trust yourself willingly ? " 
 
 ''As to my second brother. You hear them ? 
 How delightfully quick and spontaneous they are ! 
 Ah, silly creatures ! they have stopped. They might 
 have held it on for us while we were passing." 
 
 *' Where would the naturalness have been then ?" 
 
 "Perhaps, M. Nevil, I do want commanding. I 
 am wilful. Half my days will be spent in fits of 
 remorse, I begin to think." 
 
 " Come to me to be forgiven." 
 
 " Shall I ? I should be forgiven too readily." 
 
 *' I am not so sure of that." 
 
 " Can you be harsh ? No, not even with enemies. 
 Least of all with .... with us." 
 
 Oh for the black gondola ! — the little gliding
 
 LOYE IX YENICE. 85 
 
 dusky chamber for two ; instead of this open, 
 flaunting, gold and crimson cotton-work, which 
 exacted discretion on his part and that of the 
 mannerly gondoliers, and exposed him to window, 
 balcony, bridge, and borderway. 
 
 They slipped on beneath a red balcony where a 
 girl leaned on her folded arms, and eyed them 
 coming and going by with Egyptian gravity. 
 
 "How strange a power of looking these people 
 have,'* said Renee, whose vivacity was fascinated to 
 a steady sparkle by the girl. " Tell me, is she 
 glancing round at us ?" 
 
 Nevil turned and reported that she was not. 
 She had exhausted them while they were in transit ; 
 she had no minor curiosity. 
 
 " Let us fancy she is looking for her lover," he 
 said. 
 
 Eenee added : " Let us hope she will not escape 
 being seen." 
 
 " I give her my benediction," said Nevil. 
 
 "And I," said Renee ; "and adieu to her, if you 
 please. Look for Roland." 
 
 " You remind me ; I have but a few instants." 
 
 " M. Nevil, you are a preux of the times of my 
 brother's patronymic. And there is my Roland 
 awaiting us. Is he not handsome ? "
 
 86 
 
 " How glad you are to have ^him to relieve 
 guard ! " 
 
 Renee bent on Nevil one of her singular looks 
 of raillery. She had hitherto been fencing at a 
 serious disadvantage. 
 
 "Not so very glad," she said, *'if that deprived 
 me of the presence of his friend." 
 
 Koland was her tower. But Eoland was not yet 
 on board. She had peeped from her citadel too 
 rashly. ^N'evil had time to spring the flood of 
 crimson in her cheeks, bright as the awning she 
 reclined under. 
 
 " Would you ha\'e me with you always ? '^ 
 
 " Assuredly," said she, feeling the hawk in him, 
 and trying to baffle him by fluttering. 
 
 " Always ? for ever ? and — listen — give me a 
 title P " 
 
 Benee sang out to Roland like a bird in distress, 
 and had some trouble not to appear too providentially 
 rescued. Roland on board, she resumed the attack. 
 
 " M. Nevil vows he is a better brother to me 
 than you, who dart away on an impulse and leave 
 us threading all Venice till we do not know where 
 we are, naughty brother ! " 
 
 *' My little sister, the spot where you are," rejoined 
 Roland, ** is precisely the spot where I left you, and
 
 LOVE IX VENICE. 87 
 
 I defy you to say you have gone on without me. 
 This is the identical riva I stepped out on to buy 
 you a packet of Venetian ballads." 
 
 They recognised the spot, and for a confirmation 
 of the surprising statement, Eoland unrolled several 
 sheets of printed blotting-paper, and rapidly read 
 part of a Canzonetta concerning Una Giovine who 
 reproved her lover for his extreme addiction to 
 wine : 
 
 ' Ma se, ma se, ' 
 
 Cotanto beve, 
 
 Mi no, mi no, 
 
 No ve sposero.' 
 
 " This astounding vagabond preferred Nostrani 
 to his heart's mistress. I tasted some of their 
 Nostrani to see if it could be possible for a French- 
 man to exonerate him." 
 
 Eoland' s wry face at the mention of Nostrani 
 brought out the chief gondolier, who delivered 
 himself : — 
 
 " Signore, there be hereditary qualifications. One 
 must be bom Italian to appreciate the merits of 
 Nostrani ! " 
 
 Eoland laughed. He had covered his delinquency 
 in leaving his sister, and was full of an adventure 
 to relate to Nevil, a story promising well for him.
 
 CHAPTEE YII. 
 
 AN AWAKENING FOR BOTH. 
 
 ItENEE was downcast. Had slie not coquetted? 
 The dear young Englishman had reduced her to 
 defend herself, which fair ladies, like besieged 
 garrisons, cannot always do successfully without an 
 attack at times, which, when the pursuer is ardent, 
 is followed by a retreat, which is a provocation ; and 
 these things are coquettry. Her still fresh convent- 
 conscience accused her of it pitilessly. She could 
 not forgive her brother, and yet she dared not 
 reproach him, for that would have inculpated 
 Nevil. She stepped on to the Piazzetta thought- 
 fully. Her father was at Florian's, perusing letters 
 from France. " We are to have the marquis here 
 in a week, my child,'' he said. Penee nodded. 
 Involuntarily she looked at Nevil. He caught the 
 look, with a lover's quick sense of misfortune in it. 
 She heard her brother reply to him: ""Who?
 
 AN AWAKEXiyg FOR BOTH. 89 
 
 the Marquis de Eouaillout ? It is a jolly gaillard 
 of fifty "wlio spoils no fun." 
 
 " You mistake his age, Eoland," she said. 
 
 " Forty-nine, then, my sister." 
 
 " He is not that." 
 
 "He looks it." 
 
 " You have been absent." 
 
 " Probably, my arithmetical sister, he has em- 
 ployed the interval to grow younger. They say it 
 is the way with green gentlemen of a certain age. 
 They advance and they retire. They perform the 
 first steps of a quadrille ceremoniously, and we 
 admire them." 
 
 " What's that ? " exclaimed the Comte de Croisnel. 
 " You talk nonsense, Eoland. M. le marquis is 
 hardly past forty. He is in his prime." 
 
 "Without question, mon pere. For me, I was 
 merely offering proof that he can preserve his prime 
 unHmitedly." 
 
 " He is not a subject for mockery, Roland." 
 
 " Quite the contrary ; — for reverence ! " 
 
 " Another than you, my boy, and he would march 
 you out." 
 
 " I am to imagine, then, that his hand continues 
 firm?" 
 
 " Imagine to the extent of your capacity ; but
 
 90 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 remember that respect is always owing to your 
 own family, and deliberate before you draw on 
 yourself such a cbastisement as mercy from an 
 accepted member of it." 
 
 Roland bowed and drummed on bis knee. 
 
 Tbe conversation bad been originated by Renee 
 for tbe enlightenment of Nevil and as a future 
 protection to herself. Now that it had disclosed 
 its burden she could look at him no more, and 
 when her father addressed her significantly : 
 *' Marquise, you did me the honour to consent to 
 accompany me to the Church of the Frari this 
 afternoon ? " she felt her self-accusation of coquettry 
 biting under her bosom like a thing alive. 
 
 Roland explained the situation to Nevil. 
 
 " It is the mania with us, my dear Nevil, to 
 marry our girls young to established men. Your 
 established man carries usually all the signs, visible 
 to the multitude or not, of the stages leading to 
 that eminence. We cannot, I believe, unless we 
 have the good fortune to boast the paternity of 
 Hercules, disconnect ourselves from the steps we 
 have mounted ; not even, the priests inform us, if 
 we are ascending to heaven ; we carry them beyond 
 the grave. However, it seems that our excellent 
 marquis contrives to keep them concealed, and he
 
 A.^ AWAKENING FOR BOTH. 91 
 
 is ready to face marriage — the Grandest Inquisitor, 
 next to Death. Two furious matchmakers — our 
 country, beautiful France, abounds in them — met 
 one day ; they were a comtesse and a baronne, 
 and they settled the alliance. The bell was rung, 
 and Eenee came out of school. There is this to 
 be said : she has no mother ; the sooner a girl with- 
 out a mother has a husband the better. That we 
 are all agreed upon. I have no personal objection 
 to the marquis ; he has never been in any great 
 scandals. He is !N^orman, and has estates in Xor- 
 mandy, Dauphiny, Touraine ; he is hospitable, 
 luxurious. Eenee wiU have a fine hotel in Paris. 
 But I am eccentric : I have read in our old Fabliaux 
 of December and May. Say the marquis is Novem- 
 ber, say October ; he is stiU some distance removed 
 from the plump Spring month. And we in our 
 family have wits and passions. In fine, a bud of a 
 rose in an old gentleman's button-hole ! it is a 
 challenge to the whole world of youth ; and if the 
 bud should leap ? Enough of this matter, friend 
 Nevil; but sometimes a friend must allow himself 
 to be bothered. I have perfect confidence in my 
 sister, you see ; I simply protest against her being 
 exposed to . . . You know men. I protest, that is, 
 in the privacy of my cigar-case, for I have no chance
 
 92 BEATJCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 elsewhere. The affair is on wheels. The very 
 respectable matchmakers have kindled the marquis 
 on the one hand, and my father on the other, and 
 Renee passes obediently from the latter to the 
 former. In India they sacrifice the widows, in 
 France the virgins." 
 
 Holand proceeded to relate his adventure. 
 Nevil's inattention piqued him to salt and salt it 
 wonderfully, until the old story of He and She had 
 an exciting savour in its introductory chapter ; but 
 his friend was flying through the circles of the 
 Inferno, and the babble of an ephemeral upper 
 world simply affected him by its contrast with the 
 overpowering horrors, repugnances, despairs, pities, 
 rushing at him, surcharging his senses. Those that 
 live much by the heart in their youth have sharp 
 foretastes of the issues imaged for the soul. St. 
 Mark's was in a minute struck black for him. 
 He neither felt the sunlight nor understood why 
 column and campanile rose, nor why the islands 
 basked, and boats and people moved. All were as 
 remote little bits of mechanism. 
 
 JSTevil escaped, and walked in the direction of the 
 Frari down calle and campiello. Only to see her — 
 to compare her with the Eenee of the past hour ! 
 But tJiat Renee had been all the while a feast of
 
 AX AWAKENING FOR BOTH. 93 
 
 delusion; slie could never be resuscitated in the 
 shape he had known, not even clearly visioned. 
 !N'ot a day of her, not an hour, not a single look 
 had been his own. She had been sold when he 
 first beheld her, and should, he muttered austerely, 
 have been ticketed the property of a middle-aged 
 man, a worn-out French marquis, whom she had 
 agreed to marry, unwooed, without love — the 
 creature of a transaction. But she was innocent, 
 she was unaware of the sin residing in a loveless 
 marriage ; and this restored her to him somewhat 
 as a drowned body is given back to mourners. 
 
 After aimless walking he found himself on the 
 Zattere, where the lonely Giudecca lies in front, 
 covering mud and marsh and lagune-flames of later 
 afternoon, and you have sight of the high mainland 
 hills which seem to fling forth one over other to a 
 golden sea-cape. 
 
 Midway on this unadorned Zattere, with its young 
 trees and spots of shade, he was met by Renee and 
 her father. Their gondola was below, close to the 
 riva, and the count said, ** She is tired of standing 
 gazing at pictures. There is a Veronese in one of 
 the churches of the Giudecca opposite. Will you, 
 M. Nevil, act as parade-escort to her here for half 
 an hour, while I go over ? Renee complains that
 
 94 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 she loses the vulgar art of walking in her complai- 
 sant attention to the fine arts. I weary my poor 
 child." 
 
 E-enee protested in a rapid chatter. 
 
 " Must I avow it ? " said the count ; " she damps 
 my enthusiasm a little." 
 
 Nevil mutely accepted the ofiice. 
 
 Twice that day was she surrendered to him : once 
 in his ignorance, when time appeared an expanse of 
 many sunny fields. On this occasion it pufied steam ; 
 yet, after seeing the count embark, he commenced 
 the parade in silence. 
 
 " This is a- nice walk," said Eenee ; " we have not 
 the steps of the Riva dei Schiavoni. It is rather 
 melancholy though. How did you discover it ? I 
 persuaded my papa to send the gondola round, 
 and walk till we came to water. Tell me about the 
 Giudecca." 
 
 " The Giudecca was a place kept apart for the 
 Jews, I believe. You have seen their burial-ground 
 on the Lido. Those are, I think, the Euganean hills. 
 You are fond of Petrarch." 
 
 " M. Nevil, omitting the allusion to the poet, you 
 have, permit me to remark, the brevity without the 
 precision of an accredited guide to notabilities." 
 
 " I tell you what I know," said Nevil, brooding
 
 AN AWAKENING FOE BOTH. 95 
 
 on tiie finished tone and womanly aplomb of her 
 language. It made kim forget that she was a girl 
 entrusted to his guardianship. His heart came 
 out. 
 
 " Eenee, if you loved him, I, on my honour^ 
 would not utter a word for myself. Your heart's 
 inclinations are sacred for me. I woidd stand by, 
 and be your friend and his. If he were young, that 
 I might see a chance of it ! " 
 
 She murmured, '' You should not have listened to 
 Roland." 
 
 " Eoland should have warned me. How could I 
 be near you and not . . . But I am nothing. 
 Forget me ; do not think I speak interestedly, 
 except to save the dearest I have ever known from 
 certain wretchedness. To yield yourself hand and 
 foot for life ! I warn you that it must end miserably. 
 Your countrywomen . . . You have the habit in 
 France ; but like what are you treated ? You ! 
 none like you in the whole world ! You consent to 
 be extinguished. And I have to look on ! Listen 
 to me now." 
 
 Renee glanced at the gondola conveying her 
 father. And he has not yet landed ! she thought, 
 and said, " Do you pretend to judge of my welfare 
 better than my papa ? '*
 
 96 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 " Yes ; in tliis. He follows a fasliion. You 
 submit to it. His anxiety is to provide for you. 
 But I know tlie system is cursed by nature, and 
 that means by beaven." 
 
 " Because it is not English ? " 
 
 " Eenee, my beloved for ever ! "VYell, then, tell 
 me, tell me you can say with pride and happiness 
 that the Marquis de Rouaillout is to be your — 
 there's the word — husband ! '' 
 
 Renee looked across the water. 
 
 "Friend, if my father knew you were asking 
 me!'' 
 
 " I will speak to him." 
 
 " Useless." 
 
 "He is generous, he loves you." 
 
 "He cannot break an engagement binding his 
 honour." 
 
 "Would you, Renee, would you — it must be 
 said — consent to have it known to him — I beg for 
 more than life — that you are not averse . . . that 
 you support me ? " 
 
 His failing breath softened the bluntness. 
 
 She replied, "I would not have him ever break 
 an engagement binding his honour." 
 
 " You stretch the point of honour." 
 
 "It is our way. Dear friend, we are French.
 
 AN AWAKENING FOR BOTH. 97 
 
 And I presume to think that our French system is 
 not always wrong, for if my father had not broken 
 it by treating you as one of us and leaving me with 
 you, should I have heard . . . ?" 
 
 " I have displeased you." 
 
 *'Do not suppose that. But, I mean, a mother 
 would not have left me." 
 
 '' You wished to avoid it." 
 
 **Do not blame me. I had some instinct; you 
 were very pale." 
 
 " You knew I loved you." 
 
 -No." 
 
 *' Yes ; for this morning ..." 
 
 " This morning it seemed to me, and I regretted 
 my fancy, that you were inclined to trifle, as, they 
 say, young men do." 
 
 '' With Eenee ? " 
 
 "With your friend Eenee. And those are the 
 hills of Petrarch's tomb ? They are moimtains." 
 
 They were purple beneath a large brooding 
 cloud that hung against the sun, waiting for him 
 to enfold him, and Xevil thought that a tomb there 
 would be a welcome end, if he might lift Eenee in 
 one wild flight over the chasm gaping for her. He 
 had no language for thoughts of such a kind, only 
 tumultuous feeling. 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 She was immovable, in perfect armour. 
 
 He said despairingly, " Can you have realised 
 what you are consenting to ? " 
 
 She answered, " It is my duty." 
 
 " Your duty ! it's like taking up a dice-box, and 
 flinging once, to certain ruin ! *' 
 
 ''I must oppose my father to you, friend. Do 
 you not understand duty to parents ? They say the 
 English are full of the idea of duty.'' 
 
 " Duty to country, duty to oaths and obligations ; 
 but with us the heart is free to choose." 
 
 " Free to choose, and when it is most ignorant ? " 
 
 " The heart ? ask it. Nothing is surer." 
 
 "That is not what we are taught. We are 
 taught that the heart deceives itself. The heart 
 throws your dice-box; not prudent parents." 
 
 She talked like a woman, to plead the cause 
 of her obedience as a girl, and now silenced in 
 the same manner that she had previously excited 
 him. 
 
 " Then you are lost to me," he said. 
 
 They saw the gondola returning. 
 
 " How swiftly it comes home ; it loitered when it 
 went," said Renee. " There sits my father, brim- 
 ming with his picture ; he has seen one more ! We 
 will congratulate him. This little boulevard is not
 
 AN AWAKEXIXa FOE BOTH. 99 
 
 much to speak of. The hills are lovely. Friend," 
 she dropped her voice on the gondola's approach, 
 "we have conversed on common subjects." 
 
 Nevil had her hand in his, to place her in the 
 gondola. 
 
 She seemed thankful that he should prefer to go 
 round on foot, x^t least, she did not join in her 
 father's invitation to him. She leaned back, nest- 
 ling her chin and half closing her eyes, suffering 
 herself to be divided from him, borne away by forces 
 she acquiesced in. 
 
 Eoland was not visible till near midnight on the 
 Piazza. The promenaders, chiefly military of the 
 garnson, were few at that period of social protesta- 
 tion, and he could declare his disappointment aloud, 
 ringingly, as he strolled up to Xevil, looking as if 
 the cigar in his mouth and the fists entrenched in his 
 wide trowsers-pockets were mortally at feud. His 
 adventure had not pursued its course luminously. 
 He had expected romance, and had met mer- 
 chandise, and his vanity was offended. To pacify 
 him, Xevil related how he had heard that since 
 the Venetian rising of '49, Venetian ladies had 
 issued from the ordeal of fire and famine of an- 
 other pattern than the famous old Benzon one, 
 in which they touched earthiest earth. He praised
 
 100 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 Republicanism for that. The spirit of the new 
 and short-lived Republic wrought that change in 
 Venice. 
 
 "Oh, if they're republican as well as utterly- 
 decayed/' said Roland, *' I give them up ; let them 
 die virtuous/' 
 
 JSTevil told Roland that he had spoken to Renee. 
 He won sympathy, but Roland could not give him 
 encouragement. They crossed and recrossed the 
 shadow of the great campanile, on the warm- white 
 stones of the square, Nevil admitting the weight 
 of whatsoever Roland pointed to him in favour of 
 the arrangement according to French notions, and 
 indeed, of aristocratic notions everywhere, saving 
 that it was imperative for Renee to be disposed 
 of in marriage early. Why rob her of her young 
 springtime ! 
 
 "French girls," replied Roland, confused by the 
 nature of the explication in his head — " well, they're 
 not English ; they want a hand to shape them, other- 
 wise they grow all awry. My father will not have 
 one of her aunts to live with him, so there she is. 
 But, my dear Nevil, I owe my life to you, and I 
 was no party to this affair. I would do anything 
 to help you. What says Renee ? " 
 
 "She obeys."
 
 AN AWAKENING FOR BOTH. 101 
 
 " Exactly. You see ! Our girls are chess- 
 pieces until they're married. Then they have lite 
 and character : sometimes too much." 
 
 " She is not like them, Koland ; she is like none. 
 "WTien I spoke to her first, she affected no astonish- 
 ment ; never was there a creature so nobly sincere. 
 She's a girl in heart, not in mind. Think of her 
 sacrificed to this man thrice her age ! " 
 
 " She differs from other girls only on the surface, 
 Nevil. As for the man, I wish she were going tu 
 marry a younger. I wish, yes, my friend," Eoland 
 squeezed Xeyil's hand, " I wish ! I'm afraid it's 
 hopeless. She did not tell you to hope ? " 
 
 "Not by one single sign," said Nevil. 
 
 " You see, my friend ! " 
 
 " For that reason," Nevil rejoined, with the calm 
 fanaticism of the passion of love, " I hope all the 
 more . . . because I will not believe that she, so 
 pure and good, can be sacrificed. Put me aside — I 
 am nothing. I hope to save her from that." 
 
 *'We have now," said Roland, *•' struck the 
 current of duplicity. You are really in love, my 
 poor fellow." 
 
 Lover and friend came to no conclusion, except 
 that so lovely a night was not given for slumber. 
 A small round brilliant moon hung almost globed
 
 102 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 in tlie depths of heaven, and the image of it fell 
 deep between San Griorgio and the Dogana. 
 
 E,enee had the scene from her window, like a 
 dream given out of sleep. She lay with both arms 
 thrown up beneath her head on the pillow, her 
 eyelids wide open, and her visage set and stern. 
 Her bosom rose and sank regularly but heavily. 
 The fluctuations of a night stormy for her, hitherto 
 unknown, had sunk her to this trance, in which she 
 lay like a creature flung on shore by the waves. 
 She heard her brother's voice and NeviFs, and the 
 pacing of their feet. She saw the long shaft of 
 moonlight broken to zigzags of mellow lightning, 
 and wavering back to steadiness ; dark San 
 Giorgio, and the sheen of the Dogana' s front. 
 But the visible beauty belonged to a night that 
 had shivered repose, humiliated and wounded her, 
 destroyed her confident happy half- infancy of 
 heart, and she had flo\^^l for a refuge to hard 
 feelings. Her predominant sentiment was anger; 
 an anger that touched all and enveloped none, for 
 it was quite fictitious, though she felt it, and sufiered 
 from it. She turned it on Nevil as against an enemy, 
 and became the victim in his place. Tears for him 
 filled in her eyes, and ran over ; she disdained to 
 notice them, and bhnked offendedly to have her
 
 AX AWAKENING FOE BOTH. 103 
 
 sight clear of the weakness ; but these interceding 
 tears would flow ; it was dangerous to blame him 
 harshly. She let them roll down, figuring to herself 
 with quiet simplicity of mind that her spirit was 
 independent of them so long as she restrained her 
 hands from being accomplices by brushing them 
 away, as weeping girls do that cry for comfort. 
 Nevil had saved her brother's life, and had 
 succoured her countrymen ; he loved her, and was 
 a hero. He should not have said he loved her ; 
 that was wrong ; and it was shameful that he 
 should have urged her to disobey her father. 
 But this hero's love bf her might plead excuses 
 she did not know of; and if he was to be excused, 
 he, unhappy that he was, had a claim on her for 
 more than tears. She wept resentfully. Forces 
 above her owtl swayed and hurried her like a life- 
 less body dragged by flying wheels : they could not 
 unnerve her will, or rather, what it really was, her 
 sense of submission to a destiny. Looked at from 
 the height of the palm-waving cherubs over the 
 fallen martyr in the picture, she seemed as nerveless 
 as a dreamy girl. The raised arms and bent elbows 
 were an illusion of indifference. Her shape was 
 rigid from hands to feet, as if to keep in a knot the 
 resolution of her mind ; for the second and in that
 
 104 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 young season the stronger nature grafted by her 
 education fixed her to the religious duty of obeying 
 and pleasing her father in contempt, almost in 
 abhorrence, of personal inclinations tending to 
 thwart him and imperil his pledged word. She 
 knew she had inclinations to be tender. Her 
 hands released, how promptly might she not have 
 been confiding her innumerable perplexities of 
 sentiment and emotion to paper, undermining self- 
 governance ; self-respect, perhaps ! Further than 
 that, she did not understand the feelings she 
 struggled with ; nor had she any impulse to gaze 
 on him, the cause of her trouble, who walked beside 
 her brother below, talking betweenwhiles in the 
 night's grave undertones. Her trouble was too 
 overmastering ; it had seized her too mysteriously, 
 coming on her solitariness without warning in the 
 first watch of the night, like a spark crackling 
 serpentine along dry leaves to sudden flame. A 
 thought of Nevil and a regret had done it.
 
 CHAPTEE YIII. 
 
 A NIGHT ON THE ADRIATIC. 
 
 The lovers met after Roland had spoken to his 
 sister — not exactly to advocate the cause of Xevil, 
 though he was under the influence of that grave 
 night's walk with him, but to sound her and see 
 whether she at all shared Nevil's view of her 
 situation. Eoland felt the awfulness of a French 
 family arrangement of a marriage, and the imperti- 
 nence of a foreign Cupid's intrusion, too keenly to 
 plead for his friend : at the same time he loved his 
 friend and his sister, and would have been very 
 ready to smile blessings on them if favourable cir- 
 cumstances had raised a signal ; if, for example, 
 apoplexy or any other cordial ex machina interven- 
 tion had removed the middle-aged marquis ; and, 
 perhaps, if Eenee had shown the repugnance to 
 her engagement which Nevil declared she must 
 have in her heart, he would have done more than
 
 106 BEATJCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 smile ; lie would have laid tlie case deferentially 
 before his father. His own opinion was that 
 young unmarried women were incapable of the 
 passion of love, being, as it were, but half- feathered 
 in that state, and unable to fly ; and Renee confirmed 
 it. The suspicion of an advocacy on Nevil's behalf 
 steeled her. His tentative observations were checked 
 at the outset. 
 
 " Can such things be spoken of to me, Roland ? 
 I am plighted. You know it." 
 
 He shrugged, said a word of pity for Nevil, and 
 went forth to let his friend know that it was as he 
 had predicted : Benee was obedience in person, like 
 a rightly educated French girl. He strongly advised 
 his friend to banish all hope of her from his mind. 
 But the mind he addressed was of a curious order ; 
 far- shooting, tough, persistent, and when acted on 
 by the spell of devotion, indomitable. Nevil put 
 hope aside, or rather, he clad it in other garments, 
 in which it was hardly to be recognised by himself, 
 and said to E/oland: "You must bear this from 
 me ; you must let me follow you to the end, and if 
 she wavers she will find me near," 
 
 Roland could not avoid asking the use of it,' 
 considering that Renee, however much she admired 
 and liked, was not in love with him.
 
 A J^IGHT OX THE ADRIATIC. 107 
 
 ■ N'evil resigned himself to admit that she was 
 not : " and therefore," said he, " you won't object 
 to mv remainino:." 
 
 Renee greeted Nevil with as clear a conventional 
 air as a woman could assume. 
 
 She was going, she said, to attend High Mass 
 in the church of S. Moise, and she waved her de- 
 voutest Homan Catholicism to show the breadth of 
 the division between them. He proposed to go 
 likewise. She was mute. After some discourse 
 she contrived to say inoffensively that people who 
 strolled into her churches for the music, or out of 
 curiosity, played the barbarian. 
 
 " Well, I will not go," said Xevil. 
 
 " But I do not wish to number you among them,'* 
 she said. 
 
 ** Then," said Xevil, " I will go, for it cannot be 
 barbarous to try to be with you." 
 
 " Xo, that is wickedness," said Eenee. 
 
 She was sensible that conversation betrayed her, 
 and Xevil's apparently deliberate pursuit signified 
 to her that he must be aware of his mastery, and 
 she resented it, and stumbled into pitfalls whenever 
 she opened her lips. It seemed to be denied to them 
 to utter what she meant, if indeed she had a meaning 
 in speaking, save to hurt herself cruelly by wounding
 
 108 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 the man who had caught her in the toils : and so long 
 as she could imagine that she was the only one hurt, 
 she was the braver and the harsher for it ; but at the 
 sight of Nevil in pain her heart relented and shifted, 
 and discovering it to be so weak as to be almost at 
 his mercy, she defended it with an aggressive unkind- 
 ness, for which, in charity to her sweeter nature, she 
 had to ask his pardon, and then had to fib to give 
 reasons for her conduct, and then to pretend to her- 
 self that her pride was humbled by him ; a most 
 humiliating round, constantly recurring ; the worse 
 for the reflection that she created it. She attempted 
 silence. Nevil spoke, and was like the magical piper : 
 she was compelled to follow him and dance the round 
 again, with the wretched thought that it must 
 resemble coquettry. IN^evil did not think so, but a 
 very attentive observer now upon the scene, and 
 possessed of his half of the secret, did, and warned 
 him. Rosamund Culling added that the French 
 girl might be only an unconscious coquette, for she 
 was young. The critic would not undertake to 
 pronounce on her own suggestion, whether the 
 candour apparent in merely coquettish instincts was 
 not more dangerous than a battery of the arts of the 
 sex. She had heard Nevil's frank confession, and 
 seen Renee twice, when she tried in his service,
 
 A NIGHT OX THE ADEIATIC. J 09 
 
 though not greatly wishing for success, to stir the 
 sensitive girl for an answer to his attachment. 
 Probably she went to work transparently, after the 
 insular fashion of opening a spiritual mystery with 
 the lancet. Renee suffered herself to be probed 
 here and there, and revealed nothing of the pain 
 of the operation. She said to ^N'evil, in Rosamund's 
 hearing : 
 
 "Have you the sense of honour acute in your 
 country ? " 
 
 Z^evil inquired for the apropos. 
 
 " None," said she. 
 
 Such pointed insolence disposed Bosamund to 
 an irritable antagonism, without reminding her 
 that she had given some cause for it. 
 
 Renee said to her presently : " He saved my 
 brother's life ; " the apropos being as little per- 
 ceptible as before. 
 
 Her voice dropped to her sweetest deep tones, and 
 there was a supplicating beam in her eyes, unintel- 
 ligible to the direct EngKshwoman, except imder 
 the heading of a power of witchery fearful to think 
 of in one so young, and loved by Nevil. 
 
 The look was turned upon her, not upon her hero, 
 and Rosamund thought, "Does she want to en- 
 tangle me as well ? "
 
 110 BEATJCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 It was, in truth, a look of entreaty from woman 
 to woman, signifying need of womanly help. Eenee 
 would have made a confidante of her, if she had 
 not known her to be Nevil's, and devoted to him. 
 " I would speak to you, but that I feel you would 
 betray me," her eyes had said. The strong sin- 
 cerity dwelling amid multiform complexities might 
 have made itself comprehensible to the English lady 
 for a moment or so, had Renee spoken words to her 
 ears ; but belief in it would hardly have survived 
 the girl's next convolutions. 'SShe is intensely 
 French," Rosamund said to Nevil — a volume of 
 insular criticism in a sentence. 
 
 *' You do not know her, ma'am," said Nevil. 
 " You think her older than she is, and that is the 
 error I fell into. She is a child." 
 
 " A serpent in the egg is none the less a serpent, 
 Nevil. Forgive me ; but when she tells you the case 
 is hopeless ! " 
 
 " No case is hopeless till a man consents to think 
 it is ; and I shall stay." 
 
 *' But then again, Nevil, you have not consulted 
 your uncle." 
 
 *' Let him see her ! let him only see her ! " 
 
 Rosamund Culling reserved her opinion compas- 
 sionately. His uncle would soon be calling to have
 
 A NIGHT ON THE ADRIATIC. Ill 
 
 him home : society panted for him to make much 
 of him : and here he was, cursed by one of his notions 
 of duty, in attendance on a captious young French 
 beauty, who was the less to be excused for not dis- 
 missing him peremptorily, if she cared for him at 
 all. His career, which promised to be so brilliant, 
 was spoiling at the outset. Eosamund thought of 
 Renee almost with detestation, as a species of sorceress 
 that had dug a trench in her hero's road, and un- 
 horsed and fast fettered him. 
 
 The marquis was expected immediately. Renee 
 sent up a little note to Mrs. Culling's chamber 
 early in the morning, and it was with an air of 
 one-day-more-to-ourselves, that, meeting her, she 
 entreated the English lady to join the expedition 
 mentioned in her note. Roland had hired a big 
 Chioggian fishing-boat to sail into the gulf at night, 
 and return at dawn, and have sight of Venice rising 
 from the sea. Her father had declined ; but M. 
 Nevil -wished to be one of the party, and in that 
 case ..?.... Renee threw herself beseechingly 
 into the mute interrogation, keeping both of Rosa- 
 mund's hands. They could slip away only by 
 deciding to, and this rare Englishwoman had no 
 taste for the petty overt hostilities. " If I can be 
 of use to you," she said.
 
 112 
 
 " If you can bear sea-pitcliing and tossing for the 
 sake of the loveliest sight in the whole world," said 
 Renee. 
 
 "I know it well," Rosamund replied. 
 
 Renee rippled her eyebrows. She divined a 
 something behind that remark, and as she was 
 aware of the grief of Rosamund's life, her quick 
 intuition whispered that it might be connected with 
 the gallant officer dead on the battle-field. 
 
 '' Madame, if you know it too well . . . '' she said. 
 
 " No ; it is always worth seeing," said Rosamund, 
 " and I think, mademoiselle, with your permission, 
 I should accompany you.*' 
 
 " It is only a whim of mine, madame. I can stay 
 on shore." 
 
 " Not when it is unnecessary to forego a 
 pleasure." 
 
 " Say, my last day of freedom." 
 
 Renee kissed her hand. 
 
 "She is terribly winning," Rosamund avowed. 
 Renee was in debate whether the woman devoted 
 to Nevil would hear her and help. 
 
 Just then Roland and Nevil returned from their 
 boat, where they had left carpenters and uphol- 
 sterers at work, and the delicate chance for an 
 understanding between the ladies passed by.
 
 A NIGHT ON THE ADRIATIC. 113 
 
 The young men were like waves of ocean 
 overwhelTniTig it, they were so full of their boat, 
 and the scouring and cleaning out of it, and 
 provisioning, and making it worthy of its freight, 
 Nevil was surprised that Mrs. Culling should have 
 consented to come, and asked her if she really 
 wished it — really ; and " Eeally," said Rosamund ; 
 " certainly." 
 
 " Without dubitation," cried Eoland. ^' And now 
 my little Eenee has no more shore-qualms ; she is 
 smoothly chaperoned, and madame will present us 
 tea on board. All the etceteras of life are there, 
 and a mariner's eye in me spies a breeze at sunset 
 to waft us out of Malamocco." 
 
 The count listened to the recital of their 
 preparations with his usual absent interest in every- 
 thing not turning upon art, politics, or social 
 intrigue. He said, " Yes, good, good," at the 
 proper intervals, and walked down the riva to look 
 at the busy boat, said to Nevil, " You are a sailor ; 
 I confide my family to you," and prudently coun- 
 selled Renee to put on the dresses she could toss to 
 the deep without regrets. Mrs. Culling he thanked 
 fervently for a wonderful stretch of generosity in 
 lending her presence to the madcaps. 
 
 Altogether the day was a reanimation of external 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 114 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 Venice. But there was a thunderbolt in it; for 
 about an hour before sunset, when the ladies were 
 superintending and trying not to criticise the inge- 
 nious efforts to produce a make-believe of comfort on 
 board for them, word was brought down to the boat 
 by the count's valet that the Marquis de Rouaillout 
 had arrived. Renee turned her face to her brother 
 superciliously. Roland shrugged. " IN'ote this, my 
 sister," he said ; '' an anticipation of dates in paying 
 visits precludes the ripeness of the sentiment of 
 welcome. It is, however, true that the marquis has 
 less time to spare than others.*' 
 
 ''We have started; we are on the open sea. 
 How can we put back ? '* said Renee. 
 
 '' You hear, Francois ; we are on the open sea," 
 Roland addressed the valet. 
 
 " Monsieur has cut loose his communications with 
 land," Francois responded, and bowed from the 
 landing. 
 
 Nevil hastened to make this a true report; but 
 they had to wait for tide as well as breeze, and pilot 
 through intricate mud- channels before they could 
 see the outside of the Lido, and meanwhile the 
 sun lay like a golden altar-platter on mud-banks 
 made bare by the ebb, and curled in drowsy yellow 
 links along the currents. AU they could do was
 
 A NIGHT OX THE ADEIATIC. 115 
 
 to piisli off and hang loose, bumping to right and 
 left in the midst of Yollevs and countervolleys of 
 fishy Venetian, Chioggian, and Dalmatian, quite as 
 strong as anything ever heard down the Canalaggio. 
 The representatives of these dialects trotted the 
 decks and hung their bodies half over the sides of 
 the vessels to deliver fire, flashed eyes and snapped 
 fingers, not a whit less fierce than hostile crews in 
 the old wars hurling an interchange of stink-pots, 
 and then resumed the trot, apparently in search of 
 fresh ammunition. An Austrian sentinel looked on 
 passively, and a police inspector peeringly. They 
 were used to it. Happily, the combustible import 
 of the language was unknown to the ladies, and 
 Nevil's attempts to keep his crew quiet, contrasting 
 with E-oland's phlegm, which a Frenchman can 
 assume so philosophically when his tongue is tied, 
 amused them. During the clamour, Renee saw her 
 father beckoning from the riva. She signified that 
 she was no longer in command of circumstances; 
 the vessel was off. But the count stamped his foot, 
 and nodded imperatively. Thereupon Roland re- 
 peated the eloquent demonstrations of Renee, and 
 the count lost patience, and Roland shouted, " For 
 the love of heaven, don't join this Babel; we're 
 nearly bursting." The rage of the Babel was
 
 116 
 
 allayed by degrees, though not appeased, for the 
 boat was behaving wantonly, as the police officer 
 pointed out to the count. 
 
 Kenee stood up to bend her head. It was in 
 reply to a salute from the Marquis de Rouaillout, 
 and Nevil beheld his rival. 
 
 " M. le marquis, seeing it is out of the question 
 that we can come to you, will you come to us ? '* 
 cried Boland. 
 
 The marquis gesticulated "■ With alacrity " in 
 every limb. 
 
 "We will bring you back on to-morrow mid- 
 night's tide, safe, we promise you." 
 
 The marquis advanced a foot, and withdrew it. 
 Could he have heard correctly ? They were to be 
 out a whole night at sea ! The count dejectedly 
 confessed his incapability to restrain them. The 
 young desperadoes were ready for anything. He 
 had tried the voice of authority, and was laughed at. 
 As to E-enee, an English lady was with her. 
 
 " The English lady must be as mad as the rest," 
 said the marquis. 
 
 " The English are mad," said the count ; " but 
 their women are strict upon the proprieties." 
 
 *' Possibly, my dear count ; but what room is 
 there for the proprieties on board a fishing-boat ? "
 
 A NIGHT ON THE ADRIATIC. 117 
 
 "It is even as you say, my dear marquis." 
 
 "YouaUowit?'' 
 
 " Can I help myself? Look at them. They tell 
 me they have given the boat the fittings of a yacht." 
 
 " And the young man ? " 
 
 "That is the M. Beauchamp of whom I have 
 spoken to you, the very pick of his country, fresh, 
 lively, original; and he can converse. You wiU 
 Hke him." 
 
 " I hope so," said the marquis, and roused a 
 doleful laugh. "It would seem that one does not 
 arrive by hastening ! " 
 
 " Oh ! but my dear marquis, you have paid the 
 compliment ; you are like spring thrusting in a 
 bunch of lilac while the winds of winter blow. If 
 you were not expected, your expeditiousness is 
 appreciated, be sure." 
 
 Roland fortunately did not hear the marquis 
 compared to spring. He was saying: "I wonder 
 what those two elderly gentlemen are talking 
 about ; " and Nevil confused his senses by trying 
 to realise that one of them was destined to be the 
 husband of his now speechless Eenee. The marquis 
 was clad in a white silken suit, and a dash of red 
 round the neck set ofi" his black beard ; but when 
 he lifted his broad straw hat, a baldness of sconce
 
 118 
 
 shone. There was elegance in his gestures; he 
 looked a gentleman, though an ultra- Gallican one, 
 that is, too scrupulously finished for our taste, 
 smelling of the valet. He had the habit of 
 balancing his body on the hips, as if to emphasize 
 a juvenile vigour, and his general attitude suggested 
 an idea that he had an oration for you. Seen from 
 a distance, his baldness and strong nasal projection 
 were not winning features ; the youthful standard 
 he had evidently prescribed to himself in his dress 
 and his ready jerks of acquiescence and delivery 
 might lead a forlorn rival to conceive him something 
 of an Ogre straining at an Adonis. It could not 
 be disputed that he bore his disappointment remark- 
 ably well ; the more laudably, because his position 
 was within a step of the ridiculous, for he had shot 
 himself to the mark, despising sleep, heat, dust, dirt, 
 diet, and lo, that charming object was deliberately 
 slipping out of reach, proving his headlong journey 
 an absurdity. As he stood decKning to participate 
 in the lunatic voyage, and bidding them perforce 
 good speed off the tips of his fingers, Renee turned 
 her ej^es on him, and away. She felt a little smart 
 of pity, arising partly from her antagonism to 
 Roland's covert laughter; but it was the colder 
 kind of feminine pity, which is nearer to contempt
 
 A NIGHT ON THE ADRIATIC. 119 
 
 than to tenderness. She sat still, placid outwardly, 
 in fear of herseK, so strange she found it to be borne 
 out to sea by her sailor lover under the eyes of her 
 betrothed. She was conscious of a tumultuous rush 
 of sensations, none of them of a very healthy kind, 
 coming as it were from an unlocked chamber of 
 her bosom, hitherto of unimagined contents; and 
 the marquis being now on the spot to defend his 
 own, she no longer blamed Nevil : it was otherT\dse 
 utterly. All the sweeter side of pity was for him. 
 He was at first amazed by the sudden exquisite 
 transition. Tenderness breathed from her, in voice, 
 in look, in touch ; for she accepted his help that he 
 might lead her to the stern of the vessel, to gaze well 
 on setting "Venice, and sent lightnings up his veins ; 
 she leaned beside him over the vessel's rails, not 
 separated from him by the breadth of a fluttering 
 riband. Like him, she scarcely heard her brother 
 when for an instant he intervened, and with Nevil 
 she said adieu to Venice, where the faint red Doge's 
 palace was like the fading of another sunset north- 
 westward of the glory along the hills. Venice 
 dropped lower and lower, breasting the waters, imtil 
 it was a thin line in air. The line was broken, and 
 ran in dots, with here and there a pillar standing 
 on opal sky. At last the topmost campanile sank.
 
 120 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 Ren^e looked up at the sails, and back for the 
 submerged city. 
 
 "It is gone ! *' she said, as though a marvel had 
 been worked ; and swiftly : " we have one night ! " 
 
 She breathed it half like a question, like a petition, 
 catching her breath. The adieu to Yenice was her 
 assurance of liberty, but Venice hidden rolled on 
 her the sense of the return and plucked shrewdly 
 at her tether of bondage. 
 
 They set their eyes towards the dark guK ahead. 
 The night was growing starry. The softly ruffled 
 Adriatic tossed no foam. 
 
 " One night ? " said Nevil ; " one ? Why only 
 one ? '' 
 
 Eenee shuddered. " Oh ! do not speak." 
 
 " Then, give me your hand." 
 
 '' There, my friend." 
 
 He pressed a hand that was like a quivering chord. 
 She gave it as though it had been his own to claim. 
 But that it n^eant no more than a hand he knew by 
 the very frankness of her compliance, in the manner 
 natural to her; and this was the charm, it filled 
 him with her peculiar image and spirit, and while 
 he held it he was subdued. 
 
 Lying on the deck at midnight, wrapt in his 
 cloak and a coil of rope for a pillow, considerably
 
 A NIGHT OS THE ADRIATIC. 121 
 
 apart from jesting Roland, the recollection of that 
 little sanguine spot of time when Renee's life-blood 
 ran with his, began to heave under him like a 
 swelling sea. For Nevil the starred black night 
 was Renee. Half his heart was in it ; but the 
 combative division flew to the morning and the deadly- 
 iniquity of the marriage, from which he resolved 
 to save her ; in pure devotedness, he beKeved. And 
 so he* closed his eyes. She, a girl, with a heart 
 fluttering open and fearing, felt only that she had 
 lost herself somewhere, and she had neither sleep nor 
 symbols, nothing but a sense of infinite strangeness, 
 as though she were borne superhumanly through 
 space.
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 MORNING AT SEA UNDER THE ALPS. 
 
 The breeze blew steadily, enough to swell the sails 
 and sweep the vessel on smoothly. The night air 
 dropped no moisture on deck. 
 
 Nevil Beauchamp dozed for an hour. He was 
 awakened by light on his eyelids, and starting up 
 beheld the many pinnacles of grey and red rocks and 
 shadowy high white regions at the head of the gulf 
 waiting for the sun ; and the sun struck them. One 
 by one they came out in crimson j&ame, till the vivid 
 host appeared to have stepped forward. The shadows 
 on the snow-fields deepened to purple below an irra- 
 diation of rose and pink and dazzling silver. There 
 of all the world you might imagine gods to sit. 
 A crown of mountains endless in range, erect, or 
 flowing, shattered and arid, or leaning in smooth 
 lustre, hangs above the gulf. The mountains are 
 sovereign Alps, and the sea is beneath them. The
 
 MORNIXa AT SEA TIN'DER THE ALPS. 123 
 
 whole gigantic body keeps the sea, as with a hand, 
 to right and left. 
 
 Nevil's personal rapture craved for Eenee with 
 the second long breath he drew ; and now the 
 curtain of her tent-cabin parted, and greeting him 
 with half a smile, she looked out. The Adriatic 
 was dark, the Alps had heayen to themselves. 
 Crescents and hollows, rosy mounds, white shelves, 
 shining ledges, domes and peaks, all the towering 
 heights were in illumination from Friuli into 
 farthest Tyrol ; beyond earth to the stricken senses 
 of the gazers. Colour was stedfast on the massive 
 front ranks : it wavered in the remoteness, and was 
 quick and dim. as though it fell on beating wiags ; 
 but there too divine colour seized and shaped forth 
 soKd forms, and thence away to others in uttermost 
 distances where the incredible flickering gleam of 
 new heights arose, that soared, or stretched their 
 white uncertain curves in sky like wings traversing 
 infinity. 
 
 It seemed unlike morning to the lovers, but as if 
 night had broken with a revelation of the kingdom 
 in the heart of nig^ht. "While the broad smooth 
 waters rolled unlighted beneath that transfigured 
 upper sphere, it was possible to think the scene 
 might vanish like a view caught out of darkness
 
 124 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 by lightning. Alp over burning Alp, and around 
 them a hueless dawn ! The two exulted ; they 
 threw off the load of wonderment, and in looking 
 they had the delicious sensation of flight in their 
 veins. 
 
 E-enee stole towards Nevil. She was mystically 
 shaken and at his mercy ; and had he said then, 
 '' Over to the other land, away from Venice ! " she 
 would have bent her head. 
 
 She asked his permission to rouse her brother 
 and madame, so that they should not miss the 
 scene. 
 
 Eoland lay in the folds of his military greatcoat, 
 too completely happy to be disturbed, Nevil Beau- 
 champ chose to think ; and E-osamund Culling, he 
 told Eenee, had been separated from her husband 
 last on these waters. 
 
 " Ah ! to be unhappy here,'' sighed Eenee. *' I 
 fancied it when I begged her to join us. It was in 
 her voice." 
 
 The impressionable girl trembled. He knew he 
 was dear to her, and for that reason, judging of 
 her by himself, he forbore to urge his advantage, 
 conceiving it base to fear that loving him she could 
 yield her hand to another ; and it was the critical 
 instant. She was almost in his grasp. A word of
 
 MOENING AT SEA UNDER THE ALPS. 125 
 
 sharp entreaty would have swung lier round to see 
 her situation with his eyes, and detest and shrink 
 from it. He committed the capital fault of treating 
 her as his equal in passion and courage, not as metal 
 ready to run into the mould under temporary stress 
 of fire. 
 
 Even later in the morning, when she was cooler 
 and he had come to speak, more than her own 
 strength was needed to resist him. The struggle 
 was hard. The boat's head had been put about for 
 Venice, and they were among the dusky-red Chiog- 
 gian sails in fishing quarters, expecting momently 
 a campanile to signal the sea-city over the level. 
 B-enee waited for it in suspense. To her it stood for 
 the implacable key of a close and stifling chamber, 
 so difierent from this brilKant boundless region of 
 air, that she sickened with the apprehension ; but 
 she knew it must appear, and soon, and therewith 
 the contraction and the gloom it indicated to her 
 mind. He talked of the beauty. She fretted at it, 
 and was her petulant self again in an epigrammatic 
 note of discord. 
 
 He let that pass. 
 
 " Last night you said ' one night,' " he whispered. 
 " We will have another sail before we leave Yenice." 
 
 " One night, and in a little time one hour !
 
 126 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 and next one minute ! and there's the end," said 
 Renee. 
 
 Her tone alarmed him. "Have you forgotten 
 that you gave me your hand ? " 
 
 " I gave my hand to my friend." 
 
 " You gave it to me for good." 
 
 " No ; I dared not ; it is not mine." 
 
 "It is mine," said Beauchamp. 
 
 Renee pointed to the dots and severed lines and 
 isolated columns of the rising city, black over bright 
 sea. 
 
 " Mine there as well as here," said Beauchamp, 
 and looked at her with the fiery zeal of eyes intent 
 on minutest signs for a confirmation, to shake that 
 sad negation of her face. 
 
 " Renee, you cannot break the pledge of the hand 
 you gave me last night." 
 
 " You tell me how weak a creature I am." 
 
 " You are me, myself ; more, better than me. 
 And say, would you not rather coast here and keep 
 the city under water ? " 
 
 She could not refrain from confessing that she 
 would be glad never to land there. 
 
 " So, when you land, go straight to your father," 
 said Beauchamp, to whose conception it was a simple 
 act resulting from the avowal.
 
 IklORNING AT SEA UNDER THE ALPS. 127 
 
 "Oh ! you torture me/' she cried. Her eyelashes 
 were heavy with tears. " I cannot do it. Think 
 what you will of me ! And, my friend, help me. 
 Should you not help me ? I have not once actually 
 disobeyed my father, and he has indulged me, but 
 he has been sure of me as a dutiful girl. That is my 
 source of self-respect. My friend can always be my 
 friend." 
 
 " Yes, while it's not too late," said Beauchamp. 
 
 She observed a sudden stringing of his features. 
 He called to the chief boatman, made his com- 
 mand intelligible to that portly capitano, and went 
 on to Eoland, who was pufl&ng his after-breakfast 
 cigarette in conversation with the tolerant English 
 lady. 
 
 " You condescend to notice us, signor ? " said 
 Roland. *' The vessel is up to some manoeuvre ? " 
 
 '' We have decided not to land," repKed Beau- 
 champ. " And Eoland," he checked the French- 
 man's shout of laughter, '' I think of making for 
 Trieste. Let me speak to you, to both. Renee is 
 in misery. She must not go back." 
 
 Roland sprang to his feet, stared, and walked over 
 to Renee. 
 
 " Nevil," said Rosamund Culling, ** do you know 
 what you are doing ? "
 
 128 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 *' Perfectly," said he. " Come to her. She is a 
 girl, and I must think and act for her.'* 
 
 Eoland met them. 
 
 " My dear Nevil, are you in a state of delusion ? 
 E-enee denies . . . *' 
 
 " There's no delusion, Roland. I am determined 
 to stop a catastrophe. I see it as plainly as those 
 Alps. There is only one way, and that's the one I 
 have chosen." 
 
 " Chosen ! my friend. But allow me to remind 
 you that you have others to consult. And Renee 
 herself ..." 
 
 " She is a girl. She loves me, and I speak for 
 her." 
 
 " She has said it ?" 
 
 ** She has more than said it." 
 
 " You strike me to the deck, Nevil. Either you 
 are downright mad — which seems the likeliest, or 
 we are all in a nightmare. Can you suppose I will 
 let my sister be carried away the deuce knows where, 
 while her father is expecting her, and to fulfil an 
 engagement affecting his pledged word ? " 
 
 Beauchamp simply replied : 
 
 " Come to her."
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 A SINGULAR COINXIL. 
 
 The four sat together under tlie shadow of the 
 helmsman, by whom they were regarded as voyagers 
 in debate upon the question of some hours further 
 on salt water. '' Xo bora," he threw in at intervals, 
 to assure them that the obnoxious wind of the 
 Adriatic need not disturb their calculations. 
 
 It was an extraordinary sitting, but none of the 
 parties to it thought of it so when Xevil Beauchamp 
 had plimged them into it. He compelled them, 
 even Renee — and she would have flown had there 
 been wings on her shoulders — to feel something of 
 the life and death issues present to his soul, and 
 submit to the discussion, in plain language of the 
 market-place, of the most delicate of human subjects 
 for her, for him, and hardly less for the other two. 
 An overmastering fervour can do this. It upsets 
 the vessel we float in, and we have to swim our way 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 130 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 out of deep waters by tlie directest use of the 
 natural fiiculties, witliout much reflection on the 
 change in our habits. To others not under such an 
 influence the position seems impossible. This dis- 
 cussion occurred. Beauchamp opened the case in a 
 couple of sentences, and when the turn came for 
 Kenee to speak, and she shrank from the task in 
 manifest pain, he spoke for her, and no one heard 
 her contradiction. She would have wished the fear- 
 ful impetuous youth to succeed if she could have 
 slept through the storm he was rousing. 
 
 Roland appealed to her. " You ! my sister, it is 
 you that consent to this wild freak, enough to break 
 your father's heart ? " 
 
 He had really forgotten his knowledge of her 
 character — what much he knew — in the dust of the 
 desperation flung about her by Nevil Beauchamp. 
 
 She shook her head ; she had not consented. 
 
 '' The man she loves is her voice and her will," 
 said Beauchamp. " She gives me her hand and I 
 lead her." 
 
 Koland questioned her. It could not be denied 
 that she had given her hand, and her bewildered 
 senses made her think that it had been with an 
 entire abandonment ; and in the heat of her conflict 
 of feelings, the deliciousness of yielding to him
 
 A SINGULAR COUXCIL. 131 
 
 curled round and enclosed her, as in a cool humming 
 sea-shell. 
 
 " Eenee ! " said Eoland. 
 
 " Brother ! " she cried. 
 
 *' You see that I cannot suffer you to be borne 
 away." 
 
 "JN'o; do not!" 
 
 But the boat was flying fast from Venice, and 
 she could have fallen at his feet and kissed them for 
 not countermanding it. 
 
 " You are in my charge, my sister." 
 
 ''Yes." 
 
 " And now, ]S'eYil, between us two," said 
 Eoland. 
 
 Beauchamp required no challenge. He seemed, 
 to Eosamund Gulling, twice older than he was, 
 strangely adept, yet more strangely wise of worldly 
 matters, and eloquent too. But it was the eloquence 
 of frenzy, madness, in Eoland's ear. The arrogation 
 of a terrible foresight that harped on present and 
 future to persuade him of the righteousness of this 
 headlong proceeding advocated by his friend, vexed 
 his natural equanimity. The argument was out of 
 the domain of logic. He could hardly sit to listen, 
 and tore at his moustache at each end. Nevertheless 
 his sister listened. The mad Englishman accom-
 
 132 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 plished tlie miracle of making Iter listen, and appear 
 to consent. 
 
 Eoland laughed scornfully. " Why Trieste ? I 
 ask you, why Trieste ? You can't have a Catholic 
 priest at your bidding, without her father's sanc- 
 tion." 
 
 "We leave Renee at Trieste, under the care of 
 madame," said Beauchamp, *'and we return to 
 Venice, and I go to your father. This method pro- 
 tects Eenee from annoyance." 
 
 "It strikes me that if she arrives at any deter- 
 mination she must take the consequences." 
 
 " She does. She is brave enough for that. But 
 she is a girl ; she has to fight the battle of her life 
 in a day, and I am her lover, and she leaves it to 
 me." 
 
 " Is my sister such a coward ? " said Eoland. 
 
 Eenee could only call out his name. 
 
 " It will never do, my dear Nevil ; " Eoland tried 
 to deal with his unreasonable friend affectionately. 
 " I am responsible for her. It's your own fault — if 
 you had not saved my life I should not have been 
 in your way. Here I am, and j^our proposition can't 
 be heard of. Do as you will, both of you, when you 
 step ashore in Yenice." 
 
 " If she goes back she is lost ! " said Beauchamp,
 
 A SIXGULAR COrXCIL. 133 
 
 and lie attacked Eoland on tlie side of his love for 
 Renee, and for him. 
 
 Roland was inflexible. Seeing which, Renee said, 
 " To Venice, quickly, my brother I " and now she 
 almost sighed with relief to think that she was 
 escaping from this hurricane of a youth, who swept 
 her off her feet and wrapt her whole being in a 
 delirium. 
 
 " We were in sight of the city just now I " cried 
 Roland, staring and frowning. " TThat's this ? " 
 
 Beauchamp answered him calmly, "The boat's 
 under my orders.'' 
 
 "Talk madness, but don't act it," said Roland. 
 " Round with the boat at once. Hundred devils ! 
 you haven't your wits." 
 
 To his amazement, Beauchamp refused to alter the 
 boat's present course. 
 
 " You heard my sister ? " said Roland. 
 
 "You frighten her," said Beauchamp. 
 
 " You heard her wish to return to Venice, I say." 
 
 "She has no wish that is not mine." 
 
 It came to Roland's shouting his command to the 
 men, while Beauchamp pointed the course on for 
 them. 
 
 " You will make this a ghastly pleasantry," said 
 Roland.
 
 134 
 
 " I do what I know to be right/' said Beaucliamp. 
 
 " You want an altercation before these fellows ? ". 
 
 " There won't be one ; they obey me." 
 
 Roland blinked rapidly in wrath and doubt of 
 mind. 
 
 *' Madame," he stooped to Eosamund Culling, 
 with a happy inspiration, " convince him ; you have 
 known him longer than I, and I desire not to lose 
 my friend. And tell me, madame — I can trust you 
 to be truth itself, and you can see it is actually the 
 time for truth to be spoken — is he justified in taking 
 my sister's hand ? You perceive that I am obliged 
 to appeal to you. Is he not dependent on his uncle ? 
 And is he not, therefore, in your opinion, bound in 
 reason as well as in honour to wait for his uncle's 
 approbation before he undertakes to speak for my 
 sister ? And, since the occasion is urgent, let me 
 ask you one thing more : whether, by your know- 
 ledge of his position, you think him entitled to pre- 
 sume to decide upon my sister's destiny ? She, you 
 are aware, is not so yoimg but that she can speak 
 for herself ..." 
 
 " There you are wrong, Roland," said Beauchamp ; 
 "she can neither speak nor think for herself : you 
 lead her blindfolded." 
 
 *' And you, my friend, suppose that you are wiser
 
 » A SIXGULAR CO^^X•IL. 135 
 
 than any of us. It is understood. I venture to 
 appeal to madame on the point in question." 
 
 The poor lady's heart beat dismally. She was 
 constrained to answer, and said, '^His uncle is one 
 who must be consulted.'' 
 
 "You hear that, Nevil," said Roland. 
 
 Beauchamp looked at her sharply, angrily, Rosa- 
 mund feared. She had struck his hot brain with the 
 vision of Everard Romfrey as with a bar of iron. 
 If Rosamund had inclined to the view that he was 
 sure of his uncle's support, it would have seemed 
 to him a simple confirmation of his sentiments, but 
 he was not of the same temper now as when he 
 exclaimed, "Let him see her ! " and could imagine, 
 give him only Renee's love, the world of men sub- 
 servient to his wishes. 
 
 Then he was dreaming ; he was now in fiery 
 earnest, for that reason accessible to facts presented 
 to him ; and Rosamund's reluctantly spoken words 
 brought his stubborn uncle before his eyes, inflicting 
 a sense of helplessness of the bitterest kind. 
 
 Thej were all silent. Beauchamp stared at the 
 lines of the deck-planks. 
 
 His scheme to rescue Renee was right and good ; 
 but was he the man that should do it ? And was 
 she, moreover, he thought, speculating on her bent
 
 136 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 head, the woman to be forced to brave the world 
 with him, and poverty ? She gave him no sign. 
 He was assuredly not the man to pretend to powers 
 he did not feel himself to possess, and though from 
 a personal, and still more from a lover's, inability 
 to see all round him at one time and accurately to 
 weigh the forces at his disposal, he had gone far, he 
 was not a wilful dreamer nor so verj^ selfish a lover. 
 The instant his consciousness of a superior strength 
 fiiiled him he acknowledged it. 
 
 Eenee did not look up. She had none of those 
 lightnings of primitive energy, nor the noble rash- 
 ness and reliance on her lover, which his imagina- 
 tion had filled her with ; none. That was plain. She 
 could not even venture to second him. Had she 
 done so he would have held out. He walked to the 
 head of the boat without replying. 
 
 Soon after this the boat was set for Venice again. 
 
 When he rejoined his companions he kissed Rosa- 
 mund's hand, and Renee, despite a confused feeling 
 of humiliation and anger, loved him for it. 
 
 Glittering Yenice was now in sight. The dome 
 of Sta. Maria Salute shining like a globe of salt. 
 
 Koland flung his arm round his friend's neck, 
 and said, " Forgive me." 
 
 **You do what you think right," said Beauchamp.
 
 A SINGULAR COUXCIL. 137 
 
 " You are a perfect man of honour, my friend, 
 and a woman would adore you. Girls are straws. 
 It's part of Eenee's reKgion to obey her father. 
 That's why I was astonished ! . . . I owe you my 
 life, and I would willingly give you my sister in 
 part payment, if I had the giving of her ; most 
 willingly. The case is, that she's a child, and 
 you?" . . . 
 
 " Yes, I'm dependent," Beauchamp assented. " I 
 can't act, I see it. That scheme wants two to carry 
 it out : she has no courage. I feel that I could 
 carry the day with my uncle, but I can't subject 
 her to the risks, since she dreads them ; I see it. 
 Yes, I see that ! I should have done well, I behevc ; 
 I should have saved her." 
 
 "Run to England, get your uncle's consent, and 
 then try." 
 
 " Xo ; I shall go to her father." 
 
 *' My dear Xevil, and supposing you have Renee 
 to back you — supposing it, I say — won't you be 
 falling on exactly the same bayonet-point." 
 
 " If I leave her ! " Beauchamp interjected. He 
 perceived the quality of Kenee's unformed character 
 which he could not express. 
 
 " But we are to suppose that she loves you ? " 
 
 *' She is a girl."
 
 138 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 " You return, my friend, to tlie place you started 
 from, as you did on the canal without knowing it. 
 In my opinion, frankly, she is best married. And 
 I think so all the more after this morning's lesson. 
 You understand plainly that if you leave her she 
 will soon be pliant to the legitimate authorities ; and 
 why not?" 
 
 " Listen to me, Roland. I tell you she loves 
 me. I am bound to her, and when — if ever I 
 see her unhappy, I will not stand by and look 
 on quietly.'' 
 
 Eoland shrugged. " The future not being born, 
 my friend, we will abstain from baptizing it. For 
 me, less privileged than my fellows, I have never 
 seen the future. Consequently I am not in love with 
 it, and to declare myself candidly I do not care for 
 it one snap of the fingers. Let us follow our usages, 
 and attend to the future at the hour of its delivery. 
 I prefer the sage-femme to the prophet. From my 
 heart, Nevil, I wish I could help you. "We have 
 charged great guns together, but a family arrange- 
 ment is something different from a hostile battery. 
 There's Venice ! and, as soon as you land, my 
 responsibility's ended. Reflect, I pray you, on 
 what I have said about girls. Upon my word, I 
 discover myself talking wisdom to you. Girls are
 
 A SmGULAR COUXCIL. 139 
 
 precious fragilities. Marriage is the mould for 
 them ; they get shape, substance, solidity : that 
 is to say, sense, passion, a will of their own : and 
 grace and tenderness, delicacy ; all out of the rude, 
 raw, quaking creatures we call girls. Paris! my 
 dear Nevil. Paris ! It's the book of women." 
 
 The grandeur of the decayed sea-city, where 
 folly had danced Parisianly of old, spread brooding 
 along the waters in morning light ; beautiful ; but 
 with that inner light of history seen through the 
 beauty Venice was like a lowered banner. The 
 great while dome and the campaniK watching above 
 her were still brave emblems. Would Paris leave 
 signs of an ancient vigour standing to vindicate 
 dignity when her fall came ? I^e^il thought of 
 Renee in Paris. 
 
 She avoided him. She had retired behind her 
 tent-curtains, and reappeared only when her father's 
 voice hailed the boat from a gondola. The count 
 and the marquis were sitting together, and there 
 was a spare gondola for the voyagers, so that they 
 should not have to encounter another Babel of the 
 riva. Salutes were performed with lifted hats, nods, 
 and bows. 
 
 *' Well, my dear child, it has all been very wonder- 
 ful and uncomfortable ? " said the count.
 
 140 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 " Wonderful, papa ; splendid." 
 
 " No qualms of any kind ? " 
 
 *' None, I assure you." 
 
 " And madame ? " 
 
 " Madame will confirm it, if you find a seat for 
 her." 
 
 Rosamund Culling was received in tlie count's 
 gondola, cordially thanked, and placed beside the 
 marquis. 
 
 *' I stay oh board and pay these fellows," said 
 E-oland. 
 
 Renee was told by her father to follow madame. 
 He had jumped into the spare gondola and offered a 
 seat to Beauchamp. 
 
 " No," cried Renee, arresting Beauchamp, " it is 
 I who mean to sit with papa." 
 
 Up sprang the marquis with an entreating, 
 " Mademoiselle ! " 
 
 "M. Beauchamp will entertain you, M. le mar- 
 quis." 
 
 " I want him here," said the count ; and Beau- 
 champ showed that his wish was to enter the count's 
 gondola, but Renee had recovered her aplomb, 
 and decisively said "No," and Beauchamp had to 
 yield. 
 
 That would have been an opportunity of speaking
 
 A SIXGULAR COUXCIL. 141 
 
 to her father without a formal asking of leave. She 
 knew it as well as Nevil Beauchamp. 
 
 Eenee took his hand to be assisted in the step 
 down to her father's arms, murmuring : 
 
 " Do nothing — nothing ! until you hear from
 
 CHAPTEE XI. 
 
 CAPTAIN BASKELETT. 
 
 Our England, meanwhile, was bustling over the 
 extinguished war, counting the cost of it, with a 
 rather rueful eye on Manchester, and soothing the 
 taxed by an exhibition of heroes at brilliant feasts. 
 Of course, the first to come home had the cream of 
 the praises. She hugged them in a manner some- 
 what suiffocating to modest men, but heroism must 
 be brought to bear upon these excesses of maternal 
 admiration ; modesty, too, when it accepts the place 
 of honour at a public banquet, should not protest 
 overmuch. To be just, the earliest arrivals, which 
 were such as reached the shores of Albion before 
 her war was at an end, did cordially reciprocate 
 the hug. They were taught, and they believed 
 most naturally, that it was quite as well to repose 
 upon her bosom as to have stuck to their posts. 
 Surely there was a conscious weakness in the Spar-
 
 CAPTAIN BASKELETT. 143 
 
 tans, who were always at pains to discipline tlieir 
 men in heroical conduct, and rewarded none save 
 the standfasts. A system of that sort seems to 
 betray the sense of poverty in the article. Our 
 England does nothing like it. All are welcortte 
 home to her so long as she is in want of them. 
 Besides, she has to please the taxpayer. You may 
 track a shadowy line or crazy zigzag of policy in 
 almost every stroke of her domestic history : either 
 it is the forethought finding it necessary to stir up 
 an impulse, or else dashing impulse gives a Kvely 
 pull to the afterthought : policy becomes evident 
 somehow, clumsily very possibly. How can she 
 manage an enormous middle-class, to keep it happy, 
 other than a little clumsily ? The managing of it at 
 all is the wonder. And not only has she to stupify 
 the taxpayer by a timely display of f eastings and 
 fireworks, she has to stop all that nonsense (to 
 quote a satiated man lightened in his purse) at the 
 right moment, about the hour when the old stand- 
 fasts, who have simply been doing duty, return, 
 poor jog-trot fellows, and a complimentary motto or 
 two is the utmost she can present to them. On the 
 other hand, it is true she gives her first loves, those 
 early birds, fully to understand that a change has 
 come in their island mother's mind. If there is a
 
 144 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 balance to be rigbted, sbe leaves tbat business to 
 society, and if it be tbe season for the gathering 
 of society, it will be rigbted more or less ; and 
 if no rigbting is done at all, perbaps tbe Press 
 will incidentally toss a leaf of laurel on a name 
 or two : tbus in tbe exercise of grumbKng doing 
 good. 
 
 Witb few exceptions, Nevil Beaucbamp's beroes 
 received tbe motto instead of tbe sweetmeat. Eng- 
 land expected tbem to do tbeir duty ; tbey did it, 
 and sbe was not dissatisfied, — nor sbould tbey be. 
 Beaucbamp, at a distance from tbe scene, cbafed 
 witb customary vebemence concerning tbe unjust 
 measure dealt to bis favourites : Captain Hardist, 
 of tbe Biomed, twenty years a captain, still a 
 captain ! Young Micbell denied tbe Cross ! Colonel 
 Evans Cuff, on tbe bcigbts from first to last, and not 
 advanced a step ! But Prancer, and Plunger, and 
 Lammakin were tborougbly well tahen care of, tbis 
 critic of tbe war wrote savagely, reviving an ecbo 
 of a queer small circumstance occurring in tbe midst 
 of tbe bigb dolour and anxiety of tbe wbole nation, 
 and wbicb a politic country preferred to forget, as 
 we will do, for it was but an instance of strong 
 family feeling in bigb quarters ; and is not tbe 
 unity of tbe country founded on tbe integrity of
 
 CAPTAIN BASKELETT. 145 
 
 the family sentiment ? Is it not certain, Tvliich 
 tlie master tells us, that a line is but a continuation 
 of a niunber of dots? Xevil Beauchamp was for 
 insisting that great Government officers had paid 
 more attention to a dot or two than to the line. 
 He appeared to be at war with his country after 
 the peace. So far he had a lively ally in his uncle 
 Everard ; but these remarks of his were a portion 
 of a letter, whose chief burden was the request that 
 Everard Romfrey would back him in proposing for 
 the hand of a young French lady, she being, Beau- 
 champ smoothly acknowledged, engaged to a wealthy 
 French marquis, under the approbation of her family. 
 Could mortal folly outstrip a petition of that sort ? 
 And apparently, according to the wording and 
 emphasis of the letter, it was the mature age of 
 the marquis which made Mr. Beauchamp so particu- 
 larly desirous to stop the projected marriage and 
 take the girl himself. He appealed to his uncle on 
 the subject in a ' really-really ' remonstrative tone, 
 quite overwhelming to read. — " It ought not to be 
 permitted : by all the laws of chivalry, I should 
 write to the girl's father to interdict it : I really am 
 particeps criminis in a sin against nature if I 
 don't ! " Mr. Komfrey rater jected in burlesque of 
 his ridiculous nephew, with collapsing laughter. 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 
 
 But lie expressed an indignant surprise at Nevil for 
 allowing Eosamund to travel alone. 
 
 "I can take very good care of myself," Rosamund 
 protested. 
 
 " You can do hundreds of things you should never 
 be obliged to do while he's at hand, or I, ma'am," 
 said Mr. Romfrey. " The fellow's insane. He for- 
 ^gets a gentleman's duty. Here's his * humanity ' 
 dogging a French frock, and pooh ! — the age of 
 the marquis ! Fifty ? A man's beginning his 
 prime at fifty, or there never was much man in 
 him. It's the mark of a fool to take everybody 
 for a bigger fool than himself — or he wouldn't have 
 written this letter to me. He can't come home yet, 
 not yet, and he doesn't know when he can ! Has 
 he thrown up the service ? I am to preserve the 
 alliance between England and France by getting 
 this French girl for him in the teeth of her marquis, 
 at my peril if I refuse ! " 
 
 Rosamund asked, " Will you let me see where 
 Nevil says that, sir ? " 
 
 Mr. Romfrey tore the letter to strips. ** He's one 
 of your fellows who cock their eyes when they mean 
 to be cunning. He sends you to do the wheedling, 
 that's plain. I don't say he has hit on a bad advo- 
 cate ; but tell him I back him in no mortal marriage
 
 CAPTAIN BASKELETT. 147 
 
 till lie shows a pair of epaulettes on his shoulders. 
 Tell him lieutenauts are fledglings — he's not mar- 
 riageable at present. It's a very pretty sacrifice 
 of himself he intends for the sake of the alliance, 
 tell him that, but a lieutenant's not quite big 
 enough to establish it. You will know what to tell 
 him, ma'am. And say, it's the fellow's best friend 
 that adyises him to be out of it and home quick. 
 If he makes one of a French trio, he's dished. He's 
 too late for his luck in England. Have him out of 
 that mire, we can't hope for more now." 
 
 Rosamund postponed her mission to plead. Her 
 heart was with Neyil ; her understanding was easily 
 led to side against him, and for better reasons than 
 Mr. Romfrey could be aware of : so she was assured 
 by her experience of the character of Mademoiselle 
 de Croisnel. A certain belief in her personal arts 
 of persuasion had stopped her from writing on her 
 homeward journey to inform him that Nevil was 
 not accompanying her, and when she drove over 
 Steynham Common, triumphal arches and the odour 
 of a roasting ox richly browning to celebrate the 
 hero's return afflicted her mind with all the solid 
 arguments of a common-sense country in contra- 
 vention of a wild lover's vaporous extravagances. 
 Why had he not come with her ? The disappointed
 
 148 BEAUCHAMP'S CAEEER. 
 
 OX put the question in a wavering drop of the 
 cheers of the villagers at the sight of the carriage 
 without their bleeding hero. Mr. Romfrey, at his 
 hall- doors, merely screwed his eyebrows ; for it was 
 the quality of this gentleman to foresee most human 
 events, and his capacity to stifle astonishment when 
 they trifled with his prognostics. Eosamund had 
 left Nevil fast bound in the meshes of the young 
 French sorceress, no longer leading, but submis- 
 sively following, expecting blindly, seeing strange 
 new virtues in the lurid indication of what appeared 
 to border on the reverse. How could she plead 
 for her infatuated darling to one who was common 
 sense in person? Everard's pointed interrogations 
 reduced her to speak defensively, instead of attack- 
 ing and claiming his aid for the poor enamoured 
 young man. She dared not say that Nevil continued 
 to be absent because he was now encouraged by thfe 
 girl to remain in attendance on her, and was more 
 than half inspired to hope, and too artfully assisted 
 to deceive the count and the marquis under the 
 guise of simple friendship. Letters passed between 
 them in books given into one another's hands with 
 an audacious openness of the saddest augury for 
 the future of the pair, and Nevil could be so lost to 
 reason as to glory in Renee's intrepidity, which he
 
 CAPTAIN BASKELETT. 149 
 
 justified by their mutual situation, and cherished for 
 a proof that she was getting courage. In fine, 
 Rosamund abandoned her task of pleading. Xevil's 
 communications gave the case a worse and worse 
 aspect : Renee was prepared to speak to her father ; 
 she delayed it ; then the two were to part ; they 
 were unable to perform the terrible sacrifice and 
 slay their last hope ; and then Xevil wrote of 
 destiny — lano:uao:e hitherto unknown to him, e\i- 
 dently the tongue of Renee. He slipped on 
 from Italy to France. His uncle was besieged 
 by a series of letters, and his cousin, Cecil Baskelett, 
 a captain in England's grand reserye force — her 
 Horse Guards, of the Blue division — helped Everard 
 Romfrey to laugh oyer them. It was not difficult, 
 alack I Letters of a lover in an extremity of love, 
 crying for help, are as curious to cool strong men 
 as the contortions of the proved heterodox tied to 
 a stake must have been to their chastening clerical 
 judges. Why go to the fire when a recantation wiU 
 save you from it ? Why not break the excruciating 
 faggot-bands, and escape, when you have only to 
 decide to do it? We naturally ask why. Those 
 martyrs of love or religion are madmen. Altogether, 
 Nevil's adjurations and supplications, his threats of 
 wrath and appeals to reason, were an odd mixture.
 
 150 
 
 '' He won't lose a chance while there's breath in his 
 bodj^," Everard said, quite good-humouredly, though 
 he deplored that the chance for the fellow to make 
 his hero-parade in society, and haply catch an 
 heiress, was waning. There was an heiress at 
 Steynham, on her way with her father to Italj^, 
 very anxious to see her old friend Nevil — Cecilia 
 Halkett: and very inquisitive this young lady of 
 sixteen was to know the cause of his absence. She 
 heard of it from Cecil. 
 
 *' And one morning last week mademoiselle was 
 running away with him, and the next morning she 
 was married to her marquis ! " 
 
 Cecil was able to tell her that. 
 
 " I used to be so fond of him," said the ingenuous 
 young lady. She had to thank Nevil for a Cir- 
 cassian dress and pearls, which he had sent to her 
 by the hands of Mrs. Culling — a pretty present to 
 a girl in the nursery, she thought, and in fact she 
 chose to be a little wounded by the cause of his 
 absence. 
 
 ''He's a good creature— r really," Cecil spoke on 
 his cousin's behalf. " Mad ; he always will be mad. 
 A dear old savage ; always amuses me. He does ! 
 I get half my entertainment from him." 
 
 Captain Baskelett was gifted with the art, which
 
 CAPTAIN BASKELETT. 151 
 
 is a fine and a precious one, of priceless value in 
 society, and not wanting a benediction upon it in 
 our elegant literature, namely, the art of stripping 
 his fellow-man and so posturing him as to make 
 every movement of the comical wretch puppet- 
 like, constrained, stiff, and foolish. He could 
 present you heroical actions in that fashion ; for 
 example : 
 
 " A long-shanked trooper, bearing the name of 
 John Thomas Drew, was crawling along under fire 
 of the batteries. Out pops old Xevil, tries to get 
 the man on his back. It won't do. Xevil insists 
 that it's exactly one of the cases that ought to be, 
 and they remain arguing about it like a pair of 
 nine-pins while the Muscovites are at work with 
 the bowls. Very well. Let me tell you my story. 
 It's perfectly true, I give you my word. So Xevil 
 tries to hol-se Drew, and Drew proposes to horse 
 Nevil, as at school. Then Drew offers a compromise. 
 He would much rather have crawled on, you know, 
 and allowed the shot to pass over his head ; but 
 he's a Biiton, old Nevil the same ; but old Nevirs 
 peculiarity is that, as you are aware, he hates a com- 
 promise — won't have it — retro Sathanas ! and Drew's 
 proposal to take his arm instead of being carried 
 pickaback disgusts old Xevil. Still it won't do to
 
 152 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 stop wtere they are, like tlie cocoa-nut and the pin- 
 cushion of our friends, the gipsies, on the downs : so 
 they take arms and commence the journey home, 
 resembling the best of friends on the evening of a 
 holiday in our native clime — two steps to the right, 
 half-a-dozen to the left, etcetera." 
 
 Thus, with scarce a variation from the facts, vdth. 
 but a flowery chaplet cast on a truthful narrative, 
 as it were. Captain Baskelett could render ludicrous 
 that which in other quarters had obtained honourable 
 mention. Nevil and Drew being knocked down by 
 the wind of a ball near the battery, *' Confound it ! '* 
 cries Nevil, jumping on his feet, '* it's because I 
 consented to a compromise ! " — a transparent piece 
 of fiction this, but so in harmony w4th the character 
 stripped naked for us that it is accepted. Imagine 
 Nevil's love-afiair in such hands ! Recovering from 
 a fever, Ne^dl sees a pretty French girl in a gondola, 
 and immediately thinks, ''By jingo, I'm mar- 
 riageable." He hears she is engaged. " By jingo, 
 she's marriageable too." He goes through a sum 
 in addition, and the total is a couple ; so he deter- 
 mines on a marriage. ' " You can't get it out of his 
 head; he must be married instantly, and to her, 
 because she is going to marry somebody else. Sticks 
 to her, follows her, will have her, in sj)ite of her
 
 CAPTAIN BASKELETT. 153 
 
 father, her marquis, her brother, aunts, cousins, 
 religion, country, and the young woman herself. 
 I assure you, a perfect model of male fidelity ! 
 She is married. He is on her track. He knows 
 his time will come ; he has only to be handy. You 
 see, old 'NevU. believes in Providence, is perfectly 
 sure he will one day hear it cry out, ' Where's Beau- 
 champ ? ' ' Here I am ! ' ' And here's your mar- 
 quise ! ' * I knew I should have her at last,' says 
 Nevil, calm as Mont Blanc on a reduced scale." 
 
 The secret of Captain Baskelett's art would seem 
 to be to show the automatic human creature at log- 
 gerheads with a necessity that winks at remarkable 
 pretentions, while condemning it perpetually to 
 doll-like action. You look on men from your own 
 elevation as upon a quantity of our little wooden 
 images, unto whom you affix puny characteristics, 
 under restrictions from which they shall not escape, 
 though they attempt it with the enterprising vigour 
 of an extended leg, or a pair of raised arms, or a 
 head awry, or a trick of jumping ; and some of them 
 are extraordinarily addicted to these feats ; but for 
 all they do the end is the same, for necessity rules 
 that exactly so, under stress of activity must the 
 doll Nevil, the doll Everard, or the dolliest of doUs, 
 fair woman, behave. The automatic creature is
 
 154 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 eubject to tlie laws of its construction, you perceive. 
 It can this, it can that, but it cannot leap out of its 
 mechanism. One definition of the art is, humour 
 made easy, and that may be why Cecil Baskelett 
 indulged in it, and why it is popular with those 
 whose humour consists of a readiness to laugh. 
 
 The fun between Cecil Baskelett and Mr. Eom- 
 frey over the doll Nevil threatened an intimacy and 
 community of sentiment that alarmed Rosamund 
 on behalf of her darling's material prospects. She 
 wrote to him, entreating him to come to Steynham. 
 Nevil Beauchamp replied to her both frankly and 
 shrewdly : " I shall not pretend that I forgive my 
 uncle Everard, and therefore it is best for me to 
 keep away. Have no fear. The baron likes a man 
 of his own tastes : they may laugh together, if it 
 suits them ; he never could be guiltj^ of treachery, 
 and to disinherit me would be that. If I were to 
 become his open enemy to-morrow, I should look on 
 the estates as mine — unless I did anything to make 
 him disrespect me. You will not suppose it likely. 
 I foresee I shall want money. As for Cecil, I give 
 him as much rope as he cares to have. I know very 
 well Everard Romfrey will see where the point of 
 likeness between them stops. I apply for a ship 
 the moment I land."
 
 CAPTAIN BASKELETT. 155 
 
 To test Nevil's judgment of his uncle, Rosamund 
 ventured on showing this letter to Mr, Romfrey. 
 He read it, and said nothing, but subsequently- 
 asked, from time to time, "Has he got his ship 
 yet ? " It assured her that Nevil was not wrong, 
 and dispelled her notion of the vulgar imbroglio 
 of a rich uncle and two thirsty nephews. She 
 was hardly less relieved in reflecting that he could 
 read men so soberly and accurately. The despera- 
 tion of the youth in love had rendered her one 
 little bit doubtful of the orderliness of his wits. 
 After this she smiled on Cecil's assiduities. Nevil 
 obtained his aj)pointment to a ship bound for the 
 coast of Africa to spy for slavers. He called on his 
 uncle in London, and spent the greater part of the 
 hour's visit with Rosamund ; seemed cured of his 
 passion, devoid of rancour, glad of the prospect of 
 a run among the slaving hulls. He and his uncle 
 shook hands manfully, at the full outstretch of 
 their arms, in a way so like them, to Rosamund's 
 thinking — that is, in a way so unlike any other 
 possible couple of men so situated — that the humour 
 of the. sight eclipsed all the pleasantries of Captain 
 Baskelett. "Good bye, sir," Nevil said heartily; 
 and Everard Romfrey was not behindhand with the 
 cordial ring of his " Good bye, Nevil ; " and upon
 
 156 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 that they separated. Kosamund would have been 
 willing to speak to her beloved of his false Renee 
 — the Frenchwoman, she termed her, i.e. generi- 
 cally false, needless to name ; and one question 
 quivered on her tongue's tip : " How, when she had 
 promised to fly with you, hoiv could she the very 
 next day step to the altar with him now her hus- 
 band ? " And, if she had spoken it, she would 
 have added, " Your uncle could not have set his 
 face against you, had you brought her to England." 
 She felt strongly the mastery Nevil Beauchamp 
 could exercise even over his uncle Everard. But 
 when he was gone, unquestioned, merely caressed, 
 it came to her mind that he had all through insisted 
 on his possession of this particular power, and she 
 accused herself of having wantonl}^ helped to ruin 
 his hope — a matter to be rejoiced at in the abstract ; 
 but what suffering she had inflicted on him ! To 
 quiet her heart, she persuaded herself that for the 
 future she would never fail to believe in him and 
 second him blindly, as true love should ; and con- 
 templating one so brave, far-sighted, and self- 
 assured, her determination seemed to impose the 
 lightest of tasks. 
 
 Practically humane though he was, and especially 
 towards cattle and all kinds of beasts, Mr. Eomfrey
 
 CAPTAIX BASKELETT. 157 
 
 entertained no profound fellow-feeling for the negro, 
 and, except as the representative of a certain 
 amount of working power commonly requiring the 
 whip to wind it up, he inclined to despise that black 
 spot in the creation, with which our civilisation 
 should never have had anything to do. So he 
 pronounced his mind, and the long habit of 
 listening to oracles might grow us ears to hear 
 and discover a meaning in it. Nevil's captures and 
 releases of the grinning freights amused him for 
 awhile. He compared them to strings of bananas, 
 and presently put the vision of the whole business 
 aside by talking of Xevil's banana-wreath. He 
 desired to have Xevil out of it. He and Cecil 
 handed JS^evil in his banana-wreath about to their 
 friends. Nevil, in his banana-wreath, was set 
 preaching ' humanitomtity.' At any rate, they con- 
 trived to keep the remembrance of Xevil Beauchamp 
 alive during the period of his disappearance from 
 the world, and in so doing they did him a service. 
 
 There is a pause between the descent of a diver 
 and his return to the surface, when those who 
 would not have him forgotten by the better world 
 above him do rightly to relate anecdotes of him, 
 if they can, and to provoke laughter at him. The
 
 158 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 encouragement of the humane sense of superiority 
 over an object of interest, which laughter gives, 
 is good for the object; and besides, if you begin to 
 tell sly stories of one in the deeps who is holding 
 his breath to fetch a pearl or two for you all, you 
 divert a particular sympathetic oppression of the 
 chest, that the extremely sensitive are apt to suffer 
 from, and you dispose the larger number to keep in 
 mind a person they no longer see. Otherwise it is 
 likely that he will, very shortly after he has made 
 his plunge, fatigue the contemplative brains above, 
 and be shuffled off them, even as great ocean 
 smoothes away the dear vanished man's immediate 
 circle of foam, and rapidly confounds the rippling 
 memory of him with its other agitations. And in 
 such a case the apparition of his head upon our 
 common level once more will almost certainly cause 
 a disagreeable shock ; nor is it improbable that his 
 first natural snorts in his native element, though 
 they be simply to obtain his share of the breath of 
 life, will draw down on him condemnation for eccen- 
 tric behaviour and unmannerly ; and this in spite 
 of the jewel he brings, unless it be an exceedingly 
 splendid one. The reason is, that our brave world 
 cannot pardon a breach of continuity for any petty 
 bribe.
 
 capi;ain baskelett. 159 
 
 Thus it chanced, owing to the prolonged efforts 
 of Mr. Romfrey and Cecil Baskelett to get fiin out 
 of him, at the cost of considerable inventivenes-s, 
 that the electoral Address of the candidate, signing 
 himself " E. C. S. Nevil Beauchamp," to the borough 
 of Bevisham, did not issue from an altogether un- 
 remembered man. 
 
 He had been cruising in the Mediterranean, com- 
 manding the Ariadne, the smartest corvette in the 
 service. He had, it was widely made known, met 
 his marquise in Palermo. It was presumed that he 
 was dancing the round with her still, when this 
 amazing Address appeared on Bevisham's walls, 
 in anticipation of the general election. The Ad- 
 dress, moreover, was ultra-Radical : museums to be 
 opened on Simdays ; ominous references to the Land 
 question, &c. ; no smooth passing mention of Re- 
 form, such as the Liberal, become stately, adopts 
 in speaking of that property of his, but swinging 
 blows on the heads of many a denounced iniquity. 
 
 Cecil forwarded the Address to Everard Romfrey 
 without comment. 
 
 Next day the following letter, dated from Itchin- 
 cope, the house of Mr. Grancey Lespel, on the bor- 
 ders of Bevisham, arrived at Steynham : — 
 
 " I have dispatched you the proclamation, folded
 
 ICO BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 neatly. The electors of Bevisham are summoned, 
 like a town at the sword's point, to yield him their 
 votes. Proclamation is the word. I am your born 
 representative ! I have completed my political 
 education on salt water, and I tackle you on the 
 Land question. I am the heir of your votes, gentle- 
 men ! — I forgot, and I apologize ; he calls them 
 fellow-men. Fraternal, and not so risky. Here at 
 Lespel's we read the thing with shouts. It hangs 
 in the smoking-room. We throw open the curacoa 
 to the intelligence and industry of the assembled 
 guests ; we carry the right of the multitude to our 
 host's cigars by a majority. C'est un farceur que 
 notre bon petit cousin. Lespel says it is sailor-like 
 to do something of this sort after a cruise. Nevil's 
 Eadicalism would have been clever anywhere out of 
 Bevisham. Of all boroughs ! Grancey Lespel knows 
 it. He and his family were Bevisham's Whig 
 M.P.'s before the day of Manchester. In Bevisham 
 an election is an arrangement made by Provi- 
 dence to square the accounts of the voters, and 
 settle arrears. They reckon up the health of their 
 two members and the chances of an appeal to the 
 country when they fix the rents and leases. You 
 have them pointed out to you in the street, with their 
 figures attached to them like titles. Mr. Tomkins,
 
 CAPTAIN BASKELETT. 161 
 
 the twenty-pound man; an elector of uncommon 
 purity. I saw the ruffian yesterday. He has an 
 extra breadth to his hat. He has never been known 
 to listen to a member under £20, and is respected 
 enormously — like the lady of the mythology, who 
 was an intolerable Tartar of virtue, because her price 
 was nothing lees than a god, and money down. 
 Nevil will have to come down on Bevisham in the 
 Jupiter style. Bevisham is downright the dearest 
 of boroughs — ' vaulting-boards,' as Stukely Culbrett 
 calls them — in the kingdom. I assume we still say 
 ' kingdom.' 
 
 " He dashed into the Radical trap exactly two 
 hours after landing. I believe he was on his way 
 to the Halketts at Mount Laurels. A notorious old 
 rascal revolutionist, retired from his licensed business 
 of slaughterer — one of your gratis doctors — met him 
 on the high road, and told him he was the man. 
 Up went Nevil's enthusiasm like a bottle rid of the 
 cork. You wiU see a great deal about faith in the 
 proclamation; * faith in the future,' and 'my faith 
 in you.' When you become a Radical you have 
 faith in any quantity, just as an alderman gets 
 turtle soup. It is your badge, like a livery-servant's 
 cockade or a corporal's sleeve-stripes — yoMv badge 
 and your bellyful. Calculations were gone through 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 at the Liberal newspaper- office, old Nevil adding up 
 hard, and lie was informed that he was elected b}^ 
 something like a topping eight or nine hundred 
 and some fractions. I am sure that a fellow who 
 can let himself be gulled by a pile of figures 
 trumped up in a Eadical newspaper- office must 
 have great faith in the fractions. Out came 
 Nevirs proclamation. 
 
 " I have not met him, and I would rather not. 
 I shall not pretend to offer you advice, for I have 
 the habit of thinking your judgment can stand by 
 itself. We shall all find this affair a nuisance. 
 Nevil will pay through the nose. We shall have 
 the ridicule spattered on the family. It would be a 
 safer thing for him to invest his money on the Turf, 
 and I shall advise his doing it if I come across him. 
 
 " Perhaps the best course would be to telegraph 
 for the marquise ! " 
 
 This was from Cecil Baskelett. He added a post- 
 script — 
 
 " Seriously, the ' mad commander ' has not an ace 
 of a chance. Grancey and I saw some Working 
 Men (you have to write them in capitals, king and 
 queen small) ; they were reading the Address on a 
 board carried by a red-nosed man, and shrugging. 
 They are not such fools.
 
 CAPTAIN BASKELETT. 163 
 
 "By the way, I am informed Shrapnel has a 
 young female relative living with him, said to be a 
 sparkler. I bet you, sir, she is not a Radical. Do 
 you take me? " 
 
 Rosamund Culling drove to the railway station 
 on her way to Bevisham within an hour after Mr. 
 Romfrey's eyebrows had made acute play over this 
 communication.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 AN INTERVIEW WITH THE INFAMOUS DR. SHRAPNEL. 
 
 In the High street of the ancient and famous town 
 and port of Bevisham, Eosamund met the military- 
 governor of a neighbouring fortress, General Sher- 
 win, once colonel of her husband's regiment in 
 India ; and by him, as it happened, she was assisted 
 in finding the whereabout of the young Liberal 
 candidate, without the degrading resource of an 
 application at the newspaper-office of his party. The 
 general was leisurely walking to a place of appoint- 
 ment to fetch his daughter home from a visit to an 
 old school-friend, a Miss Jenny Denham, no other 
 than a ward, or a niece, or an adoption of Dr. Shrap- 
 nel* s : " A nice girl ; a great favourite of mine," the 
 general said. Shrapnel he knew by reputation only 
 as a wrong-headed politician ; but he spoke of Miss 
 Denham pleasantly two or three times, praising her 
 accomplishments and her winning manners. His
 
 INTERVIEW WITH DR. SHRAPNEL. 165 
 
 hearer suspected that it might be done to dissociate 
 the idea of her from the ruffling agitator. '' Is she 
 pretty?" was a question that sprang from Rosa- 
 mund's intimate reflections. The answer was, " Yes." 
 
 " Very pretty ? " 
 
 " I think very pretty," said the general. 
 
 "Captivatingly?'' 
 
 " Clara thinks she is perfect ; she is tall and slim, 
 and dresses well. The girls were with a French 
 Madam in Paris. But, if you are interested about 
 her, you can come on with me, and we shall meet 
 them somewhere near the head of the street. I 
 don't," the general hesitated and hummed — "I 
 don't call at Shrapnel's." 
 
 *'I have never heard her name before to-day," 
 said Rosamund. 
 
 *' Exactly," said the general, crowing at the aim- 
 lessness of a woman's curiosity. 
 
 The young ladies were seen approaching, and 
 Rosamimd had to ask herself whether the first sight 
 of a person like Miss Denham would be of a kind 
 to exercise a Kvely influence over the poKtical and 
 other sentiments of a di-eamy sailor just released 
 from ship-service. In an ordinary case she would 
 have said no, for Nevil enjoyed a range of society 
 where faces charming as Miss Denham' s were
 
 166 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 plentiful as roses in the rose-garden. But, supposing 
 him free of his bondage to the foreign woman, there 
 was, she thought and feared, a possibility that a girl 
 of this description might capture a young man's 
 vacant heart sighing for a new mistress. And if 
 so, further observation assured her Miss Denham 
 was likely to be dangerous far more than pro- 
 fessedly attractive persons, enchantresses and the 
 rest. Rosamund watchfully gathered all the super- 
 ficial indications which incite women to judge of 
 character profoundly. This new object of alarm was, 
 as the general had said of her, tall and slim, a friend 
 of neatness, plainly dressed, but exquisitely fitted, 
 in the manner of Frenchwomen. She spoke very 
 readily, not too much, and had the rare gift of being 
 able to speak fluently with a smile on the mouth. 
 Vulvar archness imitates it. She won and retained 
 the eyes of her hearer sympathetically, it seemed. 
 Rosamund thought her as little conscious as a 
 woman could be. She coloured at times quickly, 
 but without confusion. When that name, the key 
 of Rosamund's meditations, chanced to be men- 
 tioned, a flush swept over Miss Denham's face. The 
 candour of it was unchanged as she gazed at Rosa- 
 mund, with a look that asked, "Do you know 
 him?"
 
 INTERVIEW WITH DR. SHRAPXEL. 167 
 
 Eosamund said, " I am an old friend of his." 
 
 " He is here now, in this town." 
 
 " I wish to see him very much." 
 
 General Sherwin interposed : '' We won't talk 
 about poKtical characters just for the present." 
 
 " I wish you knew him, papa, and would advise 
 him," his daughter said. 
 
 The general nodded hastily. "By-and-by, by- 
 and-by." 
 
 They had in fact taken seats at a table of mutton 
 pies in a pastrycook's shop, where dashing military 
 men were restrained solely by their presence from a 
 too noisy display of fascinations before the fashion- 
 able waiting- women. 
 
 Rosamund looked at Miss Denham. As soon as 
 they were in the street the latter said, " If you will 
 be good enough to come with me, madam ? . . ." 
 
 Rosamund bowed, thankful to have been compre- 
 hended. The two young ladies kissed cheeks and 
 parted. General Sherwin raised his hat, and was 
 astonished to see Mrs. Culling join Miss Denham 
 in accepting the salute, for they had not been intro- 
 duced, and what could they have in common ? It 
 was another of the oddities of female nature. 
 
 "My name is Mrs. Culling, and I will tell 
 you how it is that I am interested in Captain
 
 168 
 
 Beaucliamp/' Rosamund addressed her companion. 
 " I am his uncle's housekeeper. I have known him 
 and loved him since he was a boy. I am in great 
 fear that he is acting rashly." 
 
 " You honour me, madam, by speaking to me so 
 frankly," Miss Denham answered. 
 
 "He is quite bent upon this election?" 
 
 " Yes, madam. I am not, as j^ou can suppose, 
 in his confidence, but I hear of him from Dr. 
 Shrapnel." 
 
 ''Your uncle?" 
 
 " I call him uncle : he is my guardian, madam." 
 
 It is perhaps excusable that this communication 
 did not cause the doctor to shine with added lustre 
 in Rosamund's thoughts, or ennoble the young lady. 
 
 " You are not relatives, then ? " she said. 
 
 " No, unless love can make us so." 
 
 " Not blood-relatives ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Is he not very . . . extreme ? " 
 
 " He is very sincere." 
 
 " I presume you are a politician ? " 
 
 Miss Denham smiled. "Could you pardon me, 
 madam, if I said that I was ?" 
 
 The counterquestion was a fair retort enfolding 
 a gentler irony. Rosamund felt that she had to
 
 INTERVIEW WITH DE. SHRAPXEL. 169 
 
 do with wits as well as with ^ivid feminine intui- 
 tions in the person of this Miss Denham. 
 
 She said, "I really am of opinion that our sex 
 might abstain from politics/' 
 
 "We find it difficult to do justice to both parties/' 
 Miss Denham followed. '' It seems to be a kind of 
 clanship with women ; hardly even that." 
 
 Rosamund was inattentive to the conversational 
 slipshod, and launched one of the heavy affirmatives 
 which are in dialogue full stops. She could not 
 have said why she was sensible of anger, but the 
 sentiment of anger, or spite (if that be a lesser 
 degree of the same affliction), became stirred in her 
 bosom when she listened to the ward of Dr. Shrapnel. 
 A silly pretty puss of a girl would not have excited 
 it, nor an avowed blood-relative of the demagogue. 
 
 Nevil's hotel was pointed out to E-osamund, and 
 she left her card there. He had been absent since 
 eight in the morning. There was the probability 
 that he might be at Dr. Shrapnel's, so Rosamund 
 walked on. 
 
 " Captain Beauchamp gives himself no rest," 
 Miss Denham said. 
 
 " Oh ! I know him, when once his mind is set on 
 anything," said Rosamund. " Is it not too early 
 to begin to — canvass, I think, is the word ? "
 
 170 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREEE. 
 
 " He is studjdng whatever tlie town can teach 
 him of its wants ; that is, how he may serve it." 
 
 *' Indeed ! But if the town will not have him to 
 serve it?" 
 
 "He imagines that he cannot do better, until 
 that has been decided, than to fit himself for the 
 post." 
 
 " Acting upon your advice ? I mean, of course, 
 your uncle's; that is, Dr. Shrapnel's." 
 
 " Dr. Shrapnel thinks it will not be loss of time 
 for Captain Beauchamp to grow familiar with the 
 place, and observe as well as read." 
 
 " It sounds almost as if Captain Beauchamp had 
 submitted to be Dr. Shrapnel's pupil." 
 
 " It is natural, madam, that Dr. Shrapnel should 
 know more of political ways at present than Ca^^tain 
 Beauchamp." 
 
 " To Captain Beauchamp' s friends and relatives 
 it appears very strange that he should have decided 
 to contest this election so suddenly. May I inquire 
 whether he and Dr. Shrapnel are old acquaint- 
 ances ? " 
 
 " No, madam, they are not. They had never met 
 before Captain Beauchamp landed, the other day." 
 
 "I am surprised, I confess. I caunot understand 
 the nature of an influence that induces him to
 
 INTERVIEW WITH DR. SHRAPXEL. 171 
 
 abandon a profession he loves and shines in, for 
 politics, at a moment's notice." 
 
 Miss Denham was silent, and then said : 
 
 " I will tell yon, madam, how it occurred, as far 
 as circumstances explain it. Dr. Shrapnel is accus- 
 tomed to give a little country feast to the children I 
 teach, and their parents if they choose to come, 
 and they generally do. They are driven to North- 
 eden Heath, where we set up a booth for them, and 
 try with cakes and tea and games to make them 
 spend one of their happy afternoons and evenings. 
 "We succeed, I know, for the little creatures talk of 
 it and look forward to the day. When they are 
 at. their last romp, Dr. Shrapnel speaks to the 
 parents." 
 
 " Can he obtain a hearing ? " Rosamund asked. 
 
 " He has not so very large a crowd to address, 
 madam, and he is much beloved by those that 
 come," 
 
 " He speaks to them of poKtics on those occa- 
 sions ? " 
 
 " Adouci a leur intention, bien entendu. It is 
 not a political speech, but Dr. Shrapnel thinks that, 
 in a so-called free country seeking to be really free, 
 men of the lowest class should be educated in form- 
 ing a political judgment."
 
 172 
 
 " And women too ? " 
 
 " And women, yes. Indeed, madam, we notice 
 that the women listen very creditably." 
 
 " They can put on the air." 
 
 " I am afraid, not more than the men do. To get 
 them to listen is something. They suffer like the 
 men, and must depend on their intelligence to win 
 their way out of it." 
 
 E-osamund's meditation was exclamatory: What 
 can be the age of this pretentious girl ? 
 
 An afterthought turned her more conciliatorily 
 towards the person, but less towards the subject. 
 She was sure that she was lending ear to the echo 
 of the dangerous doctor, and rather pitied Miss 
 Denham for awhile, reflecting that a young woman 
 stuffed with such ideas would find it hard to get 
 a husband. Mention of Nevil revived her feeling 
 of hostility. 
 
 "We had seen a gentleman standing near and 
 listening attentively," Miss Denham resumed, " and 
 when Dr. Shrapnel concluded a card was handed to 
 him. lie read it and gave it to me, and said, 
 * You know that name.' It was a name we had 
 often talked about durinsr the war. lie went to 
 
 o 
 
 Captain Beauchamp and shook his hand. He does 
 not pay many compliments, and he does not like
 
 INTERVIEW WITH DR. SHRAPNEL. 173 
 
 to receive them, but it was impossible for bim not 
 to be moved by Captain Beauchamp's warmth in 
 thanking him for the words he had spoken. I saw 
 that Dr. Shrapnel became interested in Captain 
 Beauchamp the longer they conversed. We walked 
 home together. Captain Beauchamp supped with 
 us. I left them at half-past eleven at night, and in 
 the morning I found them walking in the garden. 
 They had not gone to bed at aU. Captain Beau- 
 champ has remained in Be^-isham ever since. He 
 soon came to the decision to be a candidate for the 
 borough.'* 
 
 Rosamund checked her lips from uttering : To be 
 a puppet of Dr. Shrapners ! 
 
 She remarked, " He is very eloquent — Dr. 
 Shrapnel ? " 
 
 Miss Denham held some debate with herself upon 
 the term. 
 
 " Perhaps it is not eloquence ; he often ... no, he 
 is not an orator." 
 
 Rosamund suggested that he was persuasive, pos- 
 sibly. 
 
 Again the young lady deliberately weighed the 
 word, as though the nicest measure of her uncle or 
 adoptor's quality in this or that direction were in 
 requisition and of importance — an instance of a
 
 174 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 want of delicacy of perception Rosamund was not 
 sorry to detect. For good-looking, refined-looking, 
 quick-witted girls can be grown ; but the nimble 
 sense of fitness, ineffable lightning-footed tact, comes 
 of race and breeding, and she was sure Nevil was a 
 man soon to feel the absence of that. 
 
 "Dr. Shrapnel is persuasive to those who go 
 partly with him, or whose condition of mind calls 
 on him for great patience,^' Miss Denham said at 
 last. 
 
 " I am only trying to comprehend how it was 
 that he should so rapidly have won Captain Beau- 
 champ to his views," Rosamund explained ; and the 
 young lady did not reply. 
 
 Dr. Shrapnel's house was about a mile beyond 
 the town, on a common of thorn and gorse, through 
 which the fir-bordered highway ran. A fence waist- 
 high enclosed its plot of meadow and garden, so 
 that the doctor, while protecting his own, might see 
 and be seen of the world, as was the case when 
 Rosamund approached. He was pacing at long slow 
 strides along the gravel walk, with his head bent 
 and bare, and his hands behind his back, accom- 
 panied by a gentleman who could be no other than 
 Nevil, Rosamund presumed to think ; but drawing 
 nearer she found she was mistaken.
 
 INTERVIEW WITH DE. SHEAPNEL. 175 
 
 " That is not Captain Beauchamp's figure," she 
 said. 
 
 " ^o, it is not he," said Miss Denham. 
 
 Eosamund saw that her companion was pale. She 
 warmed to her at once ; by no means on accoimt of 
 the pallor in itself. 
 
 " I have walked too fast for you, I fear." 
 
 " Oh no ; I am accused of being a fast walker." 
 
 Eosamund was unwilKng to pass through the 
 demagogue's gate. On second thoughts, she re- 
 flected that she could hardly stipulate to have news 
 of Xevil tossed to her oyer the spikes, and she 
 entered. 
 
 While receiving Dr. Shrapnel's welcome to a 
 friend of Captain Beauchamp, she observed the 
 greeting between Miss Denham and the younger 
 gentleman. It reassured her. They met like two 
 that have a secret. 
 
 The dreaded doctor was an immoderately tall 
 man, lean and wiry, carelessly clad in a long loose 
 coat of no colour, loose trowsers, and huge shoes. 
 
 He stooped from his height to speak, or rather 
 swing the stiff upper half of his body down to his 
 hearer's level and back again, like a ship's mast on 
 a billowy sea. He was neither rough nor abrupt, 
 nor did he roar bull-mouthedly as demagogues are
 
 176 
 
 expected to do, though his voice was deep. He was 
 actually, after his fashion, courteous, it could be 
 said of him, except that his mind was too visibly- 
 possessed by distant matters for Rosamund's taste, 
 she being accustomed to drawing-room and hunting 
 and military gentlemen, who can be all in the words 
 they utter. Nevertheless he came out of his lizard- 
 like look with the down-dropped eyelids quick at 
 a resumption of the dialogue ; sometimes gesturing, 
 sweeping his arm round. A stubborn tuft of iron- 
 grey hair fell across his forehead, and it was appa- 
 rently one of his life's labours to get it to lie amid 
 the mass, for his hand rarely ceased to be in motion 
 without an impulsive stroke at the refractory fore- 
 lock. He peered through his eyelashes ordinarily, 
 but from no infirmity of sight. The truth was that 
 the man's nature counteracted his spirit's intenser 
 eagerness and restlessness by alternating a state 
 of repose that resembled dormancy, and so pre- 
 served him. Rosamund was obliged to give him 
 credit for straightforward eyes when they did look 
 out and flash. Their filmy blue, half overflown with 
 grey by age, was poignant while the fire in them 
 lasted. Her antipathy attributed something elec- 
 trical to the light they shot. 
 
 Dr. Shrapnel's account of Nevil stated him to
 
 INTERVIEW WITH DE. SHEAPXEL. 177 
 
 have o:one to call on Colonel Halkett, a new resi- 
 dent at Mount Laurels, on tlie Otley river. He 
 offered the welcome of His house to the lady who 
 was Captain Beauchamp's friend, saying, with ex- 
 traordinary fatuity (so it sounded in Eosamund's 
 ears), that Captain Beauchamp would certainly not 
 let an evening pass without coming to him. Rosa- 
 mund suggested that he might stay late at Mount 
 Laurels. 
 
 "Then he will arrive here after nightfall," said 
 the doctor. "A bed is at your service, ma'am." 
 
 The offer was declined. " I should like to have 
 seen him to-day ; but he will be home shortly." 
 
 " He will not quit Bevisham till this election's 
 decided, unless to hunt a stray borough vote, 
 ma'am." 
 
 " He goes to Mount Laurels." 
 
 " For that purpose." 
 
 *' I do not think he will persuade Colonel Halkett 
 to vote in the Radical interest." 
 
 " That is the probability with a landed proprietor, 
 ma'am. "VYe must knock, whether the door opens 
 or not. Like," the doctor laughed to himself up 
 aloft, "Kke a watchman in the night to say that he 
 smeUs smoke on the premises." 
 
 "Surely we may expect Captain Beauchamp to 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 consult his family about so serious a step as this be 
 is taking," Rosamund said, with an effort to be civil. 
 
 "Why should he ? " asked the impending doctor. 
 
 His head continued in the interrogative position 
 when it had resumed its elevation. The challenge 
 for a definite reply to so outrageous a question 
 irritated Roeamund's nerves, and, loth though she 
 was to admit him to the subject, she could not 
 forbear from saying, ''Why? Surely his family 
 have the first claim on him I " 
 
 " Surely not, ma'am. There is no first claim. A 
 man's wife and children have a claim on him for 
 bread. A man's parents have a claim on him for 
 obedience while he is a child. A man's uncles, 
 aunts, and cousins have no claim on him at all, 
 except for help in necessity, which he can grant 
 and they require. None — wife, children, parents, 
 relatives — none have a claim to bar his judgment 
 and his actions. Sound the conscience, and sink the 
 family ! With a clear conscience, it is best to leave 
 the family to its own debates. No man ever did 
 brave work who held counsel with his family. The 
 family view of a man's fit conduct is the weak point 
 of the country. It is no other view than, ' Better 
 thy condition for our sakes.' Ha ! In this way we 
 breed sheep, fatten oxen : men are dying ofi*.
 
 INTERYIEW WITH DR. SHRAPXEL. 179 
 
 Resolution taken, consult the family means — waste 
 your time ! Those who go to it want an excuse 
 for altering their minds. The family view is ever- 
 lastingly the shopkeeper's ! Purse, pence, ease, 
 increase of worldly goods, personal importance — 
 the round, the English round ! Dare do tJiaf, and 
 you forfeit your share of port wine in this world ; 
 you won't be dubbed with a title ; you'll be fingered 
 at ! Lord, Lord ! is it the region inside a man, 
 or out, that gives him peace ? Out, they say ; for 
 they have lost faith in the existence of an inner. 
 They haven't it. Air-sucker, blood-pump, cooking 
 machinery, and a battery of trained instincts, apti- 
 tudes, fill up their vacuum. I repeat, ma'am, why 
 should young Captain Beau champ spend an hour 
 consulting his family ? They won't approve him ; 
 he knows it. They may annoy him; and what is 
 the gain of that ? They can't move him ; on that I 
 let my right hand burn. So it would be useless on 
 both sides. He thints so. So do I. He is one of 
 the men to serve his country on the best field we 
 can choose for him. In a ship's cabin he is thrown 
 away. Ay, ay, War, and he msij go aboard. But 
 now we must have him ashore. Too few of such as 
 he!" 
 
 "It is matter of opinion," said Rosamund, very
 
 180 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 tightly compressed; scarcely knowing what she 
 said- 
 How strange, besides hateful, it was to her to 
 hear her darling spoken of by a stranger who not 
 only pretended to appreciate but to possess him ! 
 A stranger, a man of evil, with monstrous ideas ! 
 A terribly strong inexhaustible man of a magical 
 power too ; or would he otherwise have won such a 
 mastery over Nevil ? 
 
 Of course she could have shot a rejoinder to con- 
 fute him with all the force of her indignation, save 
 that the words were tumbling about in her head 
 like a world in disruption, which made her feel a 
 weakness at the same time that she gloated on her 
 capacity, as though she had an enormous army, 
 quite overwhelming if it could but be got to move 
 in advance. This very common condition of the 
 silent-stricken, unused in dialectics, heightened 
 Eosamimd's disgust by causing her to suppose that 
 Nevil had been similarly silenced, in his case van- 
 quished, captured, ruined ; and he dwindled in her 
 estimation for a moment or two. She felt that 
 among a sisterhood of gossips she would soon have 
 fouud her voice, and struck down the demagogue's 
 audacious sophisms ; not that they affected her in 
 the slightest degree for her own sake : Shrapnel
 
 mXERVIEW WITH DE. SHRAPNEL. 181 
 
 miglit think what lie liked, and say what he liked, 
 as far as she was concerned, apart from the man she 
 loved. Rosamund went through these emotions 
 altogether on Nevil's behalf, and longed for her 
 affirmatising inspiring sisterhood until the thought 
 of them threw another shade on him. 
 
 What champion was she to look to? To whom 
 but to Mr. Everard Romfrey ? 
 
 It was with a spasm of delighted reflection that 
 she hit on Mr. Romfrey. He was like a discovery 
 to her. With his strength and skill, his robust 
 common sense and rough shrewd wit, his prompt 
 comparisons, his chivalry, his love of combat, his old 
 knightly blood, was not he a match, and an over- 
 match, for the ramping Radical who had tangled 
 Nevil in his rough snares ? She ran her mind over 
 Mr. Romfrey' s virtues, down even to his towering 
 height and breadth. Could she but once draw these 
 two giants into collision in Nevil's presence, she 
 was sure it would save him. The method of doing 
 it she did not stop to consider : she enjoyed her 
 triumph in the idea. 
 
 Meantime she had passed from Dr. Shrapnel to 
 Miss Denham, and carried on a conversation be- 
 comingly. Tea had been made in the garden, and 
 she had politely sipped half a cup, which involved
 
 182 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 no step inside the guilty "house, and therefore no 
 distress to her antagonism. The sun descended. 
 She heard the doctor reciting. Could it be poetry ? 
 In her imagination the sombre hues surrounding an 
 incendiary opposed that bright spirit. She listened, 
 smiling incredulously. Miss Denham could interpret 
 looks, and said, " Dr. Shrapnel is very fond of those 
 verses." 
 
 Kosamund's astonishment caused her to say, " Are 
 they his own?" — a piece of satiric innocency at 
 which Miss Denham laughed softly as she answered, 
 "No." 
 
 Rosamund pleaded that she had not heard them 
 with any distinctness. 
 
 "Are they written by the gentleman at his side?" 
 
 " Mr. Lydiard ? No. He writes, but the verses 
 are not his." 
 
 "Does he know — has he met Captain Beau- 
 champ ? " 
 
 " Yes, once. Captain Beauchamp has taken a 
 great liking to his works." 
 
 Rosamund closed her eyes, feeling that she was in 
 a nest that had determined to appropriate Nevil. 
 But at any rate there was the hope and the pro- 
 bability that this Mr. Lydiard of the pen had taken 
 a long start of Nevil in the heart of Miss Denham ;
 
 IXTEEYIEW WITH DR. SHRAPXEL. 183 
 
 and struoro^lino: to be candid, to ensure some medi- 
 co O ' 
 
 tative satisfaction, Rosamund admitted to herself 
 that the girl did not appear to be one of the wanton 
 giddy-pated pusses who play two gentlemen or more 
 on their line. Appearances, however, could be de- 
 ceptive : never pretend to know a girl by her face, 
 was one of Eosamund's maxims. 
 
 She was next informed of Dr. Shrapnel's par- 
 tiality for music towards the hour of sunset. Miss 
 Denham mentioned it, and the doctor, presently 
 sauntering up, invited Itosamund to a seat on a 
 bench near the open window of the drawing-room. 
 .He nodded to his ward to go in. 
 
 " I am a fire- worshipper, ma'am," he said. " The 
 god of day is the father of poetry, medicine, music : 
 our best friend. See him there ! My Jenny will 
 spin a thread from us to him over the millions 
 of miles, with one touch of the chords, as quick as 
 he shoots a beam on us. Ay I on her wretched 
 tinkler called a piano, which tries at the whole 
 orchestra and murders every instrument in the 
 attempt. But it's convenient, like our modern civi- 
 lisation — a taming and a diminishing of individuals 
 for an insipid harmony I " 
 
 " You surely do not object to the organ ? — I fear 
 I cannot wait, though," said Itosamund.
 
 184 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 Miss Denham entreated her. " Oli ! do, madam. 
 Not to tear me — I am not so perfect a player that 
 I should wish it — but to see him. Captain Beau- 
 champ may now be coming at any instant.'' 
 
 Mr. Lydiard added, " I have an appointment with 
 him here for this evening." 
 
 " You build a cathedral of sound in the organ," 
 said Dr. Shrapnel, casting out a league of leg as he 
 sat beside his only half-persuaded fretful guest. 
 *' You subject the winds to serve you ; that's a 
 gain. You do actually accomplish a resonant imita- 
 tion of the various instruments ; they sing out as 
 your two hands command them — trumpet, flute,, 
 dulcimer, hautboy, drum, storm, earthquake, ethe- 
 real quire ; you have them at your option. But tell 
 me of an organ in the open air ? The sublimity 
 would vanish, ma'am, both from the notes and from 
 the structure, because accessories and circumstances 
 produce its chief effects. Say that an organ is a 
 despotism, just as your piano is the Constitutional 
 bourgeois. Match them with the trained orchestral 
 band of skilled individual performers, indoors or 
 out, where each grasps his instrument, and each 
 relies on his fellow with confidence, and an unri- 
 valled concord comes of it. That is our republic : 
 each one to his work ; all in union ! There's the
 
 INTERVIEW WITH DR. SHRAPXEL. 185 
 
 motto for us ! Then you have music, harmony, the 
 idghest, fullest, finest ! Educate your men to form 
 a band, you shame dexterous trickery, and imitation 
 sounds. Then for the difierence of real instruments 
 from clever shams ! Oh, ay, one will set your organ 
 going ; that is, one in front, -vrith his couple of 
 panting air-pumpers behind — his ministers I " Dr. 
 Shrapnel laughed at some undefined mental image, 
 apparently careless of any laughing companionship. 
 " One will do it for you, especially if he's born to do 
 it. Born ! " A slap of the knee reported what 
 seemed to be an immensely contemptuous sentiment. 
 ** But free mouths blowing into brass and wood, 
 ma'am, beat your bellows and your whifflers ; your 
 artificial choruses — crash, crash ! your unanimous 
 plebiscitums ! Beat them? There's no contest : 
 we're in another world ; we're in the sun's world, 
 ma'am — yonder ! " 
 
 Miss Denham's opening notes on the despised 
 piano put a curb on the doctor. She began a Mass 
 of Mozart's, without the usual preliminary rattle of 
 the keys, as of a crier announcing a performance, 
 straight to her task, for which Eosamund thanked 
 her, liking that kind of composed simplicity: she 
 thanked her more for cutting short the doctor's 
 fanatical nonsense. It was perceptible to her that
 
 186 
 
 a species of mad metaplior liad been wriggling and 
 tearing its passage through a thorn-bush in his 
 discourse, with the furious urgency of a sheep in a 
 panic ; but where the ostensible subject ended and 
 the metaphor commenced, and which was which at 
 the conclusion, she found it difficult to discern — 
 much as the sheep would be when he had left his 
 fleece behind him. She could now have said, " Silly- 
 old man !" 
 
 Dr. Shrapnel appeared most placable. He was 
 gazing at his Authority in the heavens, tangled 
 among gold clouds and purple ; his head bent 
 acutely on one side, and his eyes upturned in dim 
 speculation. His great feet planted on their heels 
 faced him, suggesting the stocks ; his arms hung 
 loose. Full many a hero of the alehouse, anciently 
 amenable to leg-and-foot imprisonment in the grip 
 of the parish, has presented as respectable an air. 
 His forelock straggled as it willed. 
 
 Rosamund rose abruptly as soon as the termi- 
 nating notes of the Mass had been struck. 
 
 Dr. Shrapnel seemed to be concluding his devo- 
 tions before he followed her example. 
 
 " There, ma'am, you have a telegraphic system 
 for the •soul," he said. " It is harder work to travel 
 from this place to this" (he pointed at ear and
 
 E^TERYIEW WITH DR. SHRAPKEL. 187 
 
 breast) " tlian from here to yonder" (a similar 
 indication traversed the distance between earth and 
 sun). '* Man's aim has hitherto been to keep men 
 from having a soul for this world: he takes it for 
 something infernal. He ? — I mean, they that hold 
 power. They shudder to think the conservatism of 
 the earth will be shaken by a change ; they dread 
 they won't get men with souls to fetch and carry, 
 dig, root, mine, for them. Eight ! — what then ? 
 Digging and mining will be done ; so will harping 
 and singing. But then we have a natural optimacy ! 
 Then, on the one hand, we whip the man-beast and 
 the man-sloth ; on the other, we seize that old fatted 
 iniquity — that tyrant ! that tempter ! that legiti- 
 mated swindler cursed of Christ ! that palpable 
 Satan whose name is Capital ! — by the neck, and 
 have him disgorging within three gasps of his life. 
 He is the villain ! Let him live, for he too comes 
 of blood and bone. He shall not grind the faces 
 of the poor and helpless — that's all." 
 
 The comicality of her having such remarks ad- 
 dressed to her provoked a smile on Eosamund's lips. 
 
 "• Don't go at him like Samson blind," said Mr. 
 Lydiard ; and Miss Denham, who had returned, 
 begged her guardian to entreat the guest to 
 stay.
 
 188 BEAIJCHAMP'S CAEEER. 
 
 She said in an undertone, " I am very anxious 
 you should see Captain Beauchamp, madam." 
 
 " I too ; but lie will write, and I really can wait 
 no longer," Rosamund replied, in extreme appre- 
 hension lest a certain degree of pressure should 
 overbear her repugnance to the doctor's dinner- 
 table. Miss Denham's look was fixed on her ; but, 
 whatever it might mean, Rosamund's endurance was 
 at an end. She was invited to dine ; she refused. 
 She was exceedingly glad to find herself on the 
 high road again, with a prospect of reaching Steyn- 
 ham that night ; for it was important that she should 
 not have to confess a visit to Bevisham now when 
 she had so little of favourable to tell Mr. Everard 
 Romfrey of his chosen nephew. Whether she had 
 acted quite wisely in not remaining to see Nevil, 
 was an agitating question that had to be silenced by 
 an appeal to her instincts of repulsion, and a further 
 appeal for justification of them to her imaginary 
 sisterhood of gossips. How could she sit and eat, 
 how pass an evening in that house, in the society 
 of that man ? Her tuneful chorus cried, " How 
 indeed ! " Besides, it would have ofiended Mr. 
 Romfrey to hear that she had done so. Still she 
 could not refuse to remember Miss Denham's marked 
 intimations of there being a reason for Nevil's friend
 
 DfTERVIEW WITH DE. SHRAPNEL. 189 
 
 to seize the chance of an immediate interview with 
 him ; and in her distress at the thought, Rosamund 
 reluctantly, but as if compelled by necessity, as- 
 cribed the young lady^s conduct to a strong sense of 
 personal interests. 
 
 " Evidently she has no desire he should run the 
 risk of angering a rich uncle." 
 
 This shameful suspicion was unavoidable : there 
 was no other opiate for Rosamund's blame of herself 
 after letting her instincts gain the ascendancy. 
 
 It will be found a common case, that when we 
 have yielded to our instincts, and then have to 
 soothe conscience, we must slaughter somebody, for 
 a sacrificial offering to our sense of comfort.
 
 CHAPTEE XIII. 
 
 A SUPERFINE CONSCIENCE. 
 
 However mucli Mr. Everard Eomfrey may have 
 laughed at Nevil Beauchamp with his ' banana- 
 wreath/ he liked the fellow for having volunteered 
 for that African coast-service, and the news of his 
 promotion by his admiral to the post of commander 
 through a death vacancy, had given him an exalted 
 satisfaction, for as he could always point to the 
 cause of failures, he strongly appreciated success. 
 The circumstance had offered an occasion for the 
 new commander to hit him hard upon a matter of 
 fact. Beauchamp had sent word of his advance in 
 rank, but requested his uncle not to imagine him 
 wearing an additional- epaulette ; and he corrected 
 the infallible gentleman's error (which had of course 
 been reported to him when he was dreaming of 
 Renee, by Mrs. Culling) concerning a lieutenant's 
 shoulder decorations, most gravely ; informing him
 
 A SUPERFINE COXSCIEXCE. 191 
 
 of the anchor on the lieutenant's j)air of epaulettes, 
 and the anchor and star on a commander's, and the 
 crown on a captain's, with a well-feigned soKci- 
 tousness to save his uncle from blundering further. 
 This was done in the dry neat manner which Mr. 
 Romfrey could feel to he his own turned on him. 
 He began to conceive a vague respect for the fellow 
 who had proved him wrong upon a matter of fact. 
 Beauchamp came from Africa rather worn by the 
 climate, and immediately obtained the command of 
 the Ariadne corvette, which had been some time in 
 commission in the Mediterranean, whither he de- 
 parted, without visiting Ste^-nham ; allowing Eosa- 
 mund to think him tenacious of his wrath as well 
 as of love. Mr. Romfrey considered him to be 
 insatiable for service. Beauchamp, during his 
 absence, had shown himself awake to the affairs 
 of his country once only, in an urgent supplication 
 he had forwarded for all his uncle's influence to be 
 used to get him appointed to the first vacancy in 
 Robert Hall's naval brigade, then forming a part of 
 our handful in insurgent India. The fate of that 
 chivalrous Englishman, that bom sailor- warrior, 
 that truest of heroes, imperishable in the memory 
 of those who knew him, and in our annals, young 
 though he was when death took him, had wi*ung
 
 192 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 from JSFevil Beauchamp such a letter of tears as to 
 make Mr. E-omfrey believe tlie naval crown of glory 
 his highest ambition. Who on earth could have 
 guessed him to be bothering his head about politics 
 all the while ! Or was the whole stupid business 
 a freak of the moment ? 
 
 It became necessary for Mr. Romfrey to contem- 
 plate his eccentric nephew in the light of a man- 
 nikin once more. Consequently he called to mind, 
 and bade Rosamund Culling remember, that he had 
 foreseen and had predicted the mounting of Nevil 
 Beauchamp on his political horse one day or 
 another ; and perhaps the earlier the better. And 
 a donkey could have sworn that when he did mount 
 he would come galloping in among the Radical 
 rough-riders. Letters were pouring upon Steynham 
 from men and women of Romfrey blood and rela- 
 tionship concerning the positive tone of Radicalism 
 in the commander's address. Everard laughed at 
 them. As a practical man, his objection lay against 
 the poor fool's choice of the peccant borough of 
 Bevisham. Still, in view of the needfulness of his 
 learning wisdom, and rapidlj^, the disbursement 
 of a lot of his money, certain to be required by 
 Bevisham's electors, seemed to be the surest method 
 for quickening his wits. Thus would he be acting
 
 A STJPEEFIXE CONSCIEXCE. 193 
 
 as his own chirurgeon, gaily practising phlebotomy 
 on his person to cure him of his fever. Too much 
 money was not the origin of the fever in Xevil's 
 case, but he had too small a sense of the value of 
 what he possessed, and the diminishing stock would 
 be Kkely to cry out shrilly. 
 
 To this effect, never complaining that Xevil Beau- 
 champ had not come to him to take counsel with 
 him, the high-minded old gentleman talked. At 
 the same time, while indulging in so philosophical 
 a picture of himself as was presented by a Romfrey 
 mildly accounting for events and smoothing them 
 imder the infliction of an offence, he could not but 
 feel that Xevil had challenged him : such was the 
 reading of it ; and he waited for some justifiable 
 excitement to fetch him out of the magnanimous 
 mood, rather in the image of an angler, it must be 
 owned. 
 
 " Xevil understands that I am not gaing to pay 
 a farthing of his expenses in Bevisham ? " he said to 
 Mrs. Culling. 
 
 She repHed blandly and with innocence, " I have 
 not seen him, sir." 
 
 He nodded. At the next mention of Nevil be- 
 tween them, he asked, " Where is it he's lying 
 perdu, ma'am ? " 
 
 VOL. I. o
 
 194 
 
 '^ I fancy in that town, in Bevisham." 
 ''At the Liberal, Eaclical, hotel ?" 
 "I dare say ; some place ; I am not certain. ..." 
 " The rascal doctor's house there ? Shrapnel's ? " 
 " Really .... I have not seen him." 
 " Have you heard from him ? " 
 " I have had a letter ; a short one." 
 " Where did he date his letter from ? " 
 "From Bevisham." 
 " From what house ? " 
 
 Kosamund glanced about for a way of escaping 
 the question. There was none but the door. She 
 replied, *' From Dr. Shrapnel's." 
 
 *' That's the Anti-Game-Law agitator." 
 '' You do not imagine, sir, that Nevil subscribes 
 to everything the horrid man agitates for ? " 
 " You don't like the man, ma'am ? " 
 " I detest him." 
 
 " Ha ! So you have seen Shrapnel ? " 
 '' Only for a moment ; a moment or two. I can- 
 not endure him. I am sure I have reason." 
 
 Rosamund flushed exceedingly red. The visit to 
 Dr. Shrapnel's house was her secret, and the worm- 
 ing of it out made her feel guilty, and that feeling 
 revived and heated her antipathy to the Radical 
 doctor.
 
 A STJPERFIXE COXSCIEXCE. 195 
 
 " What reason ? " said ^Mr. Romfrey, freshening 
 at her display of colour. 
 
 She woidd not expose Nevil to the accusation of 
 childishness by confessing her positive reason, so 
 she answered, "The man is a kind of man .... I 
 was not there long ; I was glad to escape. He ..." 
 she hesitated : for in truth it was difficult to shape 
 the charo^e ao:ainst him, and the effort to be reticent 
 concerning jS^evil, and communicative, now that he 
 had been spoken of, as to the detested doctor, 
 reduced her to some confusion. She was also fatally 
 anxious to be in the extreme degree conscientious, 
 and corrected and modified her remarks most sus- 
 piciously. 
 
 " Did he insult you, ma'am ? " Mr. Eomfrey 
 inquii-ed. 
 
 She replied hastily, '' Oh no. He may be a good 
 man in his way. He is one of those men who do 
 not seem to think a woman may have opinions. He 
 does not scruple to outrage those we hold. I am 
 afraid he is an infidel. His ideas of family duties 
 and ties, and his manner of expressing himself, 
 shocked me, that is all. He is absurd. I dare say 
 there is no harm in him, except for those who are 
 so unfortunate as to fall under his influence — and 
 that, I feel sure, cannot be permanent. He could
 
 196 BE AUCH amp's CAREEPw. 
 
 not injure me personally. He could not offend me, 
 I mean. Indeed, I have nothing whatever to say 
 against him, as far as I . . . . " 
 
 *' Did he fail to treat you as a lady, ma'am ? " 
 Uosamund was getting frightened by the signi- 
 ficant pertinacity of her lord. 
 
 " I am sure, sir, he meant no harm." 
 ""Was the man uncivil to you, ma'am?'' came 
 the emphatic interrogation. 
 
 She asked herself, had Dr. Shrapnel been imcivil 
 toward her ? And so conscientious was she, that 
 she allowed the question to be debated in her mind 
 for half a minute, answering then, " No, not uncivil. 
 I cannot exactly explain .... He certainly did 
 not intend to be uncivil. He is only an unpolished, 
 vexatious man ; enormously tall." 
 
 Mr. Eomfrey ejaculated, " Ha ! humph ! " 
 His view of Dr. Shrapnel was taken from that 
 instant. It was, that this enormously big blustering 
 agitator against the preservation of birds, had be- 
 haved rudely towards the lady officially the chief 
 of his household, and might be considered in the 
 light of an adversary one would like to meet. The 
 size of the man increased his aspect of villanj^ 
 which in return added largely to his giant size. 
 Everard Romfrey's mental eye could perceive an
 
 A SUPERFI>'E COXSCIEXCE. 197 
 
 attractiTeness about the man little short of mag- 
 netic ; for he thought of him so much that he had 
 to think of what was due to his pacifical dispo- 
 sition (deeply believed in by him) to spare himself 
 the trouble of a visit to Bevisham. 
 
 The young gentleman whom he regarded as the 
 Eadical doctor's dupe, fell in for a share of his view 
 of the doctor, and Mr. Eomfrey became less fitted 
 to observe Xevil Beauchamp's doings with the 
 Olympian gravity he had originally assumed. 
 
 The extreme delicacy of E-osamund^s conscience 
 was fretted by a remorseful doubt of her having 
 conveyed a just impression of Dr. Shrapnel, some- 
 what as though the sleek fine coat of it were 
 brushed the wrong way. Reflection warned her 
 that her deliberative intensely sincere pause before 
 she responded to Mr. Eomfrey' s last demand, might 
 have implied more than her words. She consoled 
 herself with the thought that it was the dainty 
 susceptibility of her conscientiousness which caused 
 these noble qualms, and so deeply does a refined 
 nature esteem the gift, that her pride in it helped 
 her to overlook her moral perturbation. She was 
 consoled, moreover, up to the verge of triumph in 
 her realisation of the image of a rivalling and 
 excelling power presented by Mr. Eomfrey, though
 
 198 BEAUCHAMP'S CAEEER. 
 
 it liad frightened her at the time. Let not Dr. 
 Shrapnel come across him ! She hoped he would 
 not. Ultimately she could say to herself, " Perhaps 
 T need not have been so annoyed with the horrid 
 man." It was on Nevil's account. Shrapnel's con- 
 tempt of the claims of Nevil's family upon him was 
 actually a piece of impudence, impudently expressed, 
 if she remembered correctly. And Shrapnel was a 
 black malignant, the foe of the nation's Constitu- 
 tion, deserving of punishment if ever man was ; 
 with his ridiculous metaphors, and talk of organs 
 and pianos, orchestras and despotisms, and flying 
 to the sun ! How could Nevil listen to the creature ! 
 Shrapnel must be a shameless hypocrite to mask his 
 Avickedness from one so clearsighted as Nevil, and 
 no doubt he indulged in his impudence out of 
 wanton pleasure in it. His business was to catch 
 young gentlemen of family, and to turn them against 
 their families, plainly. That was thinking the best 
 of him. No doubt he had his objects to gain. " He 
 might have been as impudent as he liked to me ; I 
 would have pardoned him ! " Rosamund exclaimed. 
 Personally, you see, she was generous. On the 
 whole, knowing Everard Romfrey as she did, she 
 wished that she had behaved, albeit perfectly dis- 
 creet in her behaviour, and conscientiously just, a 
 shade or two differently. But the evil was done.
 
 CHAPTER XIY. 
 
 THE LEADING ARTICLE AND MR. TIMOTHY TURBOT. 
 
 Xevil declined to come to Steynliam, clearly owing 
 to a dread of hearing Dr. Shrapnel abused, as 
 Rosamund judged by the warmth of his written 
 eulogies of the man, and an ensuing allusion to 
 Game. He said that he had not made up his mind 
 as to the Game Laws. Rosamund mentioned the 
 fact to Mr. Romfrey. "So we may stick by our 
 licenses to shoot to-morrow," he rejoined. Of a 
 letter that he also had received from Xevil, he did 
 not speak. She hinted at it, and he stared. He 
 would have deemed it as vain a subject to discourse 
 of India, or continental affairs, at a period when 
 his house was full for the openiag day of sport, and 
 the expectation of keeping up his renown for great 
 bags on that day so entirely occupied his mind. 
 Good shots were present who had contributed to the 
 fame of Steynham on other opening days. Birds 
 were plentiful and promised not to be too wild.
 
 200 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 He had the range of tlie Steynliam estate in his 
 eye, dotted with covers ; and after Steynham, 
 Holdeshur}^, which had nev^ yielded him the 
 same high celebrity, but both lay mapped out for 
 action under the profound calculations of the stra- 
 tegist, ready to show the skill of the field tactician. 
 He could not attend to Nevil. Even the talk of 
 the forthcoming elections, hardly to be avoided at 
 his table, seemed a puerile distraction. Ware the 
 foe of his partridges and pheasants, be it man or 
 vermin ! The name of Shrapnel was frequently on 
 the tongue of Captain Baskelett. Rosamund heard 
 him, in her room, and his derisive shouts of 
 laughter over it. Cecil was a fine shot, quite as 
 fond of the pastime as his uncle, and always in 
 favour with him while sport stalked the land. He 
 was in gallant spirits, and Rosamund, brooding over 
 Nevil's fortunes, and sitting much alone, as she did 
 when there were guests in the house, gave way to 
 her previous apprehensions. She touched on them 
 to Mr. Stukely Culbrett, her husband's old friend, 
 one of those happy men who enjoy perceptions 
 without opinions, and are not born to administer 
 comfort to other than themselves. As far as she 
 could gather, he fancied Nevil Beauchamp was in 
 danger of something, but he delivered his mind
 
 . THE LEADING ARTICLE. 201 
 
 only upon circumstances and characters : Nevil 
 risked his kick, Cecil knew his game, Everard 
 E-omfrey was the staunchest of mankind : Stukely 
 had nothing further to say regarding the situation. 
 She asked him what he thought, and he smiled. 
 Could a reasonable head venture to think anything 
 in particular? He repeated the amazed, "You don't 
 say so ! " of Colonel Halkett, on hearing the name 
 of the new Liberal candidate for Bevisham at the 
 dinner-table, together with some of Cecil's waggish 
 embroidery upon the theme. 
 
 Eosamund exclaimed angrily, " Oh ! if I had 
 been there he would not have dared." 
 
 "^Vhj not be there?" said Stukely. "You 
 have had your choice for a number of years." 
 
 She shook her head, reddening. 
 
 But supposing that she had greater privileges 
 than were hers now ? The idea flashed. A taint 
 of personal pique, awakened by the fancied neces- 
 sity for putting her devotedness to Xevil to proof, 
 asked her if she would then be the official house- 
 keeper to whom Captain Baskelett bowed low with 
 affected respect and impertinent afiability, ironi- 
 cally praising her abroad as a wonder among 
 women that could at one time have played the 
 deuce in the family, had she chosen to do so.
 
 202 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 " Just as you like," Mr. Culbrett remarked. It 
 was his ironical habit of mind to believe that the 
 wishes of men and women — women as well as men 
 — were expressed by their utterances. 
 
 "But speak of Nevil to Colonel Halkett," said 
 Rosamund, earnestly carrying on what was in her 
 heart. ''Persuade the colonel you do not think 
 Nevil foolish — not more than just a little impetuous. 
 I want that marriage to come off ! Not on account 
 of her wealth. She is to inherit a Welsh mine from 
 her uncle, you know, besides being an only child. 
 Eecall what Nevil was during the war. Miss Hal- 
 kett has not forgotten it, I am sure, and a good 
 word for him from a man of the world would, I am 
 certain, counteract Captain Baskelett's — are they 
 designs? At any rate, you can if you like help 
 Nevil with the colonel. I am convinced they are 
 doing him a mischief. Colonel Halkett has bought 
 an estate — and what a misfortune that is! — close 
 to Bevishata. I fancy he is Toryish. Will you 
 not speak to him ? — at my request ? I am so 
 helpless I could cry." 
 
 " Fancy you have no handkerchief," said Mr. 
 Culbrett : " and give up scheming, pray. One has 
 only to begin to scheme, to shorten life to half-a- 
 dozen hops and jumps. I could say to the colonel,
 
 THE LEADIXG AETICLE. 203 
 
 * Young Beaiicliamp's a political cub : lie ought to 
 have a motherly wife.' " 
 
 " Yes, yes, you are right ; don't speak to him 
 at all," said Eosamund, feeling that there must be 
 a conspiracy to rob her of her proud independence, 
 since not a soul could be won to spare her from 
 taking some energetic step, if she would be useful 
 to him she loved. 
 
 Colonel Halkett was one of the guests at Steyn- 
 ham who knew and respected her, and he paid her 
 a visit and alluded to ]S^evirs candidature, appa- 
 rently not thinking much the worse of him. " We 
 can't allow him to succeed," he said, and looked for 
 a smiling approval of such natural opposition, which 
 Rosamund gave him readily after he had expressed 
 the hope that Nevil Beauchamp would take advan- 
 tage of his proximity to Mount Laurels during the 
 contest to try the hospitality of the house. "He 
 won't mind meeting his uncle ? " The colonel's 
 eyes twinkled. " My daughter has engaged Mr. 
 Romfrey and Captain Baskelett to come to us when 
 they have shot Holdesbury," 
 
 And Captain Baskelett ! thought Eosamimd ; 
 her jealousy whispering that the mention of his 
 name close upon Cecilia Halkett's might have a 
 nuptial signification.
 
 204 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 Slie was a witness from her window — a prisoner's 
 window, lier eager heart could have termed it — of 
 a remarkable ostentation of cordiality between the 
 colonel and Cecil, in the presence of Mr. Homfrey. 
 "Was it his humour to conspire to hand Miss 
 Halkett to Cecil, and then to show Nevil the prize 
 he had forfeited by his folly ? The three were on 
 the lawn a little before Colonel Halkett' s departure. 
 The colonel's arm was linked with Cecil's while 
 they conversed. Presently the latter received his 
 afternoon letters, and a newspaper. He soon had 
 the paper out at a square stretch, and sprightly 
 information for the other two was visible in his 
 crowing throat. Mr. Eomfrey raised the gun from 
 his shoulder-pad, and grounded it. Colonel Halkett 
 wished to peruse the matter with his own eyes, but 
 Cecil could not permit it; he must read it ak)ud for 
 them, and he suited his action to the sentences. 
 Had Bosamund been accustomed to leading articles 
 which are the composition of men of an imposing 
 vocabulary, she would have recognised and as good 
 as read one in Cecil's gestures as he tilted his lofty 
 stature forward and back, marking his commas and 
 semicolons with flapping of his elbows, and all but 
 doubling his body at his periods. Mr. Romfrey 
 had enough of it half-way down the column ; his
 
 THE LEADING AETICLE. xOO 
 
 head went sliarj^ly to left and right. Cecirs peculiar 
 foppish slicing down of his hand pictured him pro- 
 testing that there was more and finer of the inimi- 
 table stuff to follow. The end of the scene exhibited 
 the paper on the turf, and Colonel Halkett's hand 
 on Cecil's shoulder, Mr. Romfrey nodding some sort 
 of acquiescence over the muzzle of his gun, whether 
 reflectiye or positive Rosamund could not decide. 
 She sent out a footman for the paper, and was pre- 
 sently communing with its eloquent large type, 
 quite unable to perceive where the comicality or 
 the impropriety of it lay, for it would have struck 
 her that never were truer things of Xevil Beau- 
 champ better said in the tone befitting them. This 
 perhaps was because she never heard fervid praises 
 of him, or of anybody, delivered from the mouth, 
 and it is not common to hear Englishmen phrasing 
 great eulogies of one another. Still, as a rule, they 
 do not object to have it performed in that region of 
 our national eloquence, the Press, by an Irishman 
 or a Scotchman. And what could there be to war- 
 rant Captain Baskelett's malicious derision, and Mr, 
 Romfrey's nodding assent to it, in an article where 
 all was truth ? 
 
 The truth was mounted on an unusually high 
 wind. It was indeed a leading article of a banner-
 
 206 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 like bravery, and the unrolling of it was designed 
 to stir emotions. Beauchamp was the theme. Nevil 
 had it under his eyes earlier than Cecil. The paper 
 was brought into his room with the beams of day, 
 damp from the presses of the Bevisham Gazette^ 
 exactly opposite to him in the White Hart hotel, 
 and a glance at the paragraphs gave him a lively 
 ardour to spring to his feet. What writing ! He 
 was uplifted as ' The heroical Commander Beau- 
 champ, of the Royal Navy,' and ' Commander 
 Beauchamp, E..N., a gentleman of the highest con- 
 nections ' : he was * that illustrious Commander 
 Beauchamp, of our matchless navy, who proved on 
 every field of the last glorious war of this country 
 that the traditional valour of the- noble and indo- 
 mitable blood transmitted to his veins had lost none 
 of its edge and weight since the battle-axes of the 
 Lords de Romfrey, ever to the fore, clove the skulls 
 of our national enemy on the wide and fertile cham- 
 paigns of France.' This was pageantry. 
 
 There was more of it. Then the serious afflatus 
 of the article condescended, as it were, to blow a 
 shrill and well-known whistle: — the study of tlie 
 science of navigation made by Commander Beau- 
 champ, B.N., was cited for a jocose warranty of a 
 seaman's aptness to assist in steering the Vessel of
 
 THE LEADING AETICLE. 207 
 
 the State. After thus heeling over, to tip a familiar 
 wink to the multitude, the leader tone resumed its 
 fit deportment. Commander Beauchamp, in re- 
 sponding to the inyitation of the great and united 
 Liberal party of the borough of Bevisham, obeyed 
 the inspirations of genius, the dictates of humanity, 
 and what he rightly considered the paramoimt duty, 
 as it is the proudest ambition, of the citizen of a 
 free country. 
 
 But for an occasional drop and bump of the sail- 
 ing gas-bag upon catch- words of enthusiasm, which 
 are the rhetoric of the merely windy, and a col- 
 lapse on a poetic line, which too often signalizes 
 the rhetorician's emptiness of his wind, the article 
 was eminent for flight, sweep, and dash, and sailed 
 along far more grandly than ordinary provincial 
 organs for the promoting or seconding of public 
 opinion, that are as little to be compared with the 
 mighty metropolitan as are the fife and bugle boys 
 practising on their instruments round melancholy 
 outskirts of garrison towns with the regimental 
 marching full band under the presidency of its 
 drum-major. No signature to the article was needed 
 for Bevisham to know who had returned to the town 
 to pen it. Those long-stretching sentences, com- 
 parable to the very ship Leviathan, spanning two
 
 208 
 
 Atlantic billows, appertained to none but tbe re- 
 nowned Mr. Timothy Turbot, of the Corn Law 
 campaigns, Reform agitations, and all manifestly- 
 popular movements requiring the heaven- endowed 
 man of speech, an interpreter of multitudes, and a 
 prompter. Like most men who have little to say, 
 he was an orator in print, but that was a poor 
 medium for him — his body without his fire. Mr. 
 Timothy's place was the platform. A wise discern- 
 ment, or else a lucky accident (for he came hur- 
 riedly from the soil of his native isle, needing 
 occupation), set him on that side in politics which 
 happened to be making an established current and 
 strong headway. Oratory will not work against the 
 stream, or on languid tides.. Driblets of movements 
 that allowed the w^orld to doubt whether they were 
 so much movements as illusions of the optics, did 
 not suit his genius. Thus he was a Liberal, no 
 Radical, fountain. Liberalism had the attraction 
 for the orator of being the active force in politics, 
 between two passive opposing bodies, the aspect of 
 either of which it can assume for a menace to the 
 other, Toryish as against Radicals ; a trifle red in 
 the ej'-es of the Tory. It can seem to lean back on 
 the Past ; it can seem to be amorous of the Future. 
 It is actually the thing of the Present and its
 
 THE LEADING ARTICLE. 209 
 
 urgencies, therefore popular, pouring forth the pure 
 waters of moderation, strong in their copiousness. 
 Delicious and rapturous effects are to be produced 
 in the flood of a Liberal oration by a chance infa- 
 sion of the fierier spirit, a flavour of Eadicalism. 
 That is the thing to set an audience bounding and 
 quirking. Whereas if you commence by tilting a 
 Triton pitcher full of the neat liquor upon them, 
 you have to resort to the natural element for the 
 orator's art of variation, you are diluted — and that's 
 bathos, to quote Mr. Timothy. It was a fine piece 
 of discernment in him. Let Liberalism be your 
 feast, Radicalism your spice. And now and then, 
 off and on, for a change, for diversion, for a new 
 emotion, just for half an hour or so — now and 
 then the Sunday coat of Toryism will give you 
 an air. You have only to complain of the fit, to 
 release your shoulders in a trice. Mr. Timothy felt 
 for his art as poets do for theirs, and considered 
 what was best adapted to speaking, purely to speak- 
 ing. Upon no creature did he look with such con- 
 tempt as upon Dr. Shrapnel, whose loose disjunct 
 audiences he was conscious he could, giving the 
 doctor any start he liked, whirl away from him 
 and have compact, enchained, at his first flourish ; 
 yea, though they were ' the poor man,' with a 
 
 VOL. I. p
 
 210 
 
 stomach, for the political distillery fit to drain 
 relishingly every private bog-side or mountain-side 
 tap in old Ireland in its best days — the illicit, you 
 understand. 
 
 Further, to quote Mr. Timothy's points of ^dew, 
 the Radical orator has but two notes, and one is 
 the drawling pathetic, and the other is the ultra- 
 furious ; and the effect of the former we liken to 
 the English working man's wife's hob-set queasy 
 brew of well-meant villany, that she calls by the 
 innocent name of tea ; and the latter is to be blown, 
 asks to be blown, and never should be blown without 
 at least seeming to be blown, with an accompani- 
 ment of a house on fire. Sir, we must adapt our- 
 selves to our times. Perhaps a spark or two does 
 lurk about our house, but we have vigilant watch- 
 men in plenty, and the house has been pretty fairly 
 insured. Shrieking in it is an annoyance to the 
 inmates, nonsensical ; weeping is a sickly business. 
 The times are pgainst Radicalism to the full as 
 much as great oratory is opposed to extremes. 
 These drag the orator too near to the matter. So 
 it is that one Radical speech is amazingly Hke 
 another — they all have the earth-spots. They 
 smell, too; they smell of brimstone. Soaring is 
 impossible among that faction ; but this they can
 
 THE LEADING AETICLE. 211 
 
 do, they can furnisli the Tory his opportunity to 
 soar. When hear you a thrilling Tory speech that 
 carries the country with it, save when the incen- 
 diary Radical has shrieked ? If there was envy in 
 the soul of Timothy, it was addressed to the fine 
 occasions offered to the Tory speaker for vindicating 
 our ancient principles and our sacred homes. He 
 admired the tone to be assumed for that purpose : 
 it was a good note. Then could the Tory, deli- 
 vering at the right season the Shakespearian — 
 " This England . . . . " and Byronic — " The inviolate 
 
 Island " shake the frame, as though smiting 
 
 it with the tail of the gymnotus electricus. Ah 
 and then could he thump out his Horace, the Tory's 
 mentor and his cordial, with other great ancient 
 comic and satiric poets, his old port of the classical 
 cellarage, reflecting veneration upon him who did 
 but name them to an audience of good dispositions. 
 The Tory possessed also an innate inimitably easy 
 style of humour, that had the long reach, the jolly 
 lordly indifference, the comfortable masterfulness, 
 of the whip of a four-in-hand driver, capable of 
 flicking and stinging, and of being ironically 
 caressing. Timothy appreciated it, for he had 
 winced under it. No professor of Liberalism could 
 venture on it, unless it were in the remote district
 
 212 BEAUCHAMP'S CAEEER. 
 
 of a back parlour, in the society of a cherisliing 
 friend or two, and with a slice of lemon requiring 
 to be re-floated in the glass. 
 
 But gifts of tbis description were of a minor 
 order. Liberalism gave the beading cry, devoid of 
 wbicb parties are dogs without a scent, orators mere 
 pump-handles. The Tory's cry was but a whistle 
 to his pack, the Radical howled to the moon like 
 any chained hound. And no wonder, for these 
 parties had no established current, they were as 
 hard-bound waters; the Radical being diked and 
 dammed most soundly, the Tory resembling a placid 
 lake of the plains, fed by springs and no confluents. 
 For such good reasons, Mr. Timothy rejoiced in the 
 happy circumstances which had expelled him from 
 tne shores of his native isle to find a refuge and a 
 vocation in Manchester at a period when an orator 
 happened to be in request because dozens were 
 wanted. That centre of convulsions and source of 
 streams possessed the statistical orator, the reason- 
 ing orator, and the inspired ; with 'others of quality ; 
 and yet it had need of an ever-ready spontaneous 
 imperturbable speaker, whose bubbling generaliza- 
 tions and ability to beat the drum humorous could 
 swing halls of meeting from the grasp of an enemy, 
 and then ascend on incalescent adjectives to the
 
 THE LEADING ARTICLE. 213 
 
 popular idea of the sublime. He was tlie artistic 
 orator of Com Law Repeal, the Manchester flood, 
 before which time Whigs were, since which they 
 have walked like spectral antediluvians, or floated 
 as dead canine bodies that are sucked away on the 
 ebb of tides and flung back on the flow, ignorant 
 whether they be progressive or retrograde. Timothy 
 Turbot assisted in that vast effort. It should have 
 elevated him beyond the editorship of a country 
 newspaper. Why it did not do so his antagonists 
 pretended to know, and his friends would smile to 
 hear. The report was that he worshipped the nymph 
 Whisky. 
 
 Timothy's article had plucked Beauchamp out of 
 bed ; Beauchamp's card in return did the same for him. 
 
 " Commander Beauchamp ? I am heartily glad 
 to make your acquaintance, sir; IVe been absent, 
 at work, on the big business we have in common, 
 I rejoice to say, and am behind my fellow townsmen 
 in this pleasure : and lucky I slept here in my room 
 above, where I don't often sleep, for the row of the 
 machinery — it's like a steamer that won't go, 
 though it's always starting ye," Mr. Timothy said 
 in a single breath, upon entering the back office 
 of the Gazette, like unto those accomplished vio- 
 linists who can hold on the bow to finger an incre-
 
 214 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 dible number of notes, and may be imaged as repre- 
 senting slow paternal Time, that rolls bis capering 
 dot-beaded generation of mortals over tbe wbeel, 
 hundreds to tbe minute. "You'll excuse my not 
 sbaving, sir, to come down to your summons with- 
 out an extra toucb to tbe neck-band." 
 
 Beaucbamp bebeld a middle-sized round man, 
 witb loose lips and pendant indigo jowl, wbose 
 eyes twinkled watery, like pebbles under tbe sbore- 
 wasb, and wbose neck-band needed an extra toucb 
 from fingers otber than bis own. 
 
 " I am sorry to bave disturbed you so early," he 
 replied. 
 
 "Not a bit, Commander Beaucbamp, not a bit, 
 sir. , Early or late, and ay ready — witb tbe Napiers. 
 —Ill wash, I'll wash." 
 
 " I came to speak to you of this article of yours 
 on me. They tell me in the office that you are 
 the writer. Pray don't ' Commander ' me so much. 
 — It's not customary, and I object to it." 
 
 " Certainly, certainly," Timothy acquiesced. 
 
 " And for the future, Mr. Turbot, please to be 
 good enough not to allude in print to any of my 
 performances here and there. Your intentions are 
 complimentary, but it happens that I don't like 
 a public patting on the back."
 
 THE LEADING ARTICLE. 215 
 
 *' No, and that's true," said Timotliy. 
 
 His appreciative and sympathetic agreement with 
 these sharp strictures on the article brought Beau- 
 champ to a stop. 
 
 Timothy "waited for him ; then, smoothing his 
 prickly cheek remarked : ** If I'd guessed your 
 errand. Commander Beauchamp, I'd have called in 
 the barber before I came down, just to make 
 myself decent for a first introduction." 
 
 Beauchamp was not insensible to the slyness of 
 the poke at him. *' You see, I come to the borough 
 unknown to it, and as quietly as possible, and I 
 want to be taken as a politician," he continued, for 
 the sake of showing that he had sufficient to say 
 to account for his hasty and peremptory summons 
 of the writer of that article to his presence. " It's 
 excessively disagreeable to have one's family lugged 
 into notice in a newspaper— especially if they are of 
 different politics. / feel it." 
 
 " All would, sir," said Timothy. 
 
 " Then why the deuce did you do it ? " 
 
 Timothy drew a lading of air into his lungs. 
 " Politics, Commander Beauchamp, involves the 
 doing of lots of disagreeable things to ourselves and 
 our relations ; it's positive. I'm a soldier of the 
 Great Campaign : and who knows it better than
 
 216 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 I, sir ? It's climbing the greasy pole for the leg 
 o' mutton, that makes the mother's heart ache for 
 the jacket and the nether garments she mended 
 neatly, if she didn't make them. Mutton or no 
 mutton, there's grease for certain ! Since it's sure 
 we can't be disconnected from the family, the trick 
 is to turn the misfortune to a profit ; and allow me 
 the observation that an old family, sir, and a high 
 and titled family, is not to be despised for a back- 
 ground of a portrait in naval uniform, with medal 
 and clasps, and some small smoke of powder clearing 
 off over there : — that's if we're to act sagaciously 
 in introducing an unknown candidate to a borough 
 that has a sneaking liking for the kind of person, 
 more honour to it. I'm a political veteran, sir ; I 
 speak from experience. We must employ our 
 weapons, every one of them, and all off the grind- 
 stone." 
 
 "Very well," said Beauchamp. "Now under- 
 stand ; you are not in future to employ the weapons, 
 as you call them, that I have objected to." 
 
 Timothy gaped slightly. 
 
 " Whatever you will, but no puffery," Beauchamp 
 added. " Can I by any means arrest — purchase — 
 is it possible, tell me, to lay an embargo — stop to- 
 day's issue of the Gazette ? "
 
 THE LEADING ARTICLE. 217 
 
 " No more than the bite of a mad dog," Timotliy 
 replied, before be had considered upon the monstrous 
 nature of the proposal. 
 
 Beauehamp humphed, and tossed his head. The 
 simile of the dog struck him with intense effect. 
 
 ''There'd be a second edition," said Timothy, 
 "and you might buy up that. But there'll be a 
 third, and you may buy up that ; but there'll be 
 a fourth, and a fifth, and so on ad infinitum, with 
 the advertisement of the sale of the foregoing cre- 
 ating a demand like a raging thirst in a shipwreck, 
 in Bligh's boat, in the tropics. I'm afraid. Com — 
 Captain Beauehamp, sir, there's no stopping the 
 Press while the people haye an appetite for it — and 
 a Company's at the back of it.'^ 
 
 " Pooh, don't talk to me in that way ; all I com- 
 plain of is the figure you have made of me," said 
 Beauehamp, fetching him smartly out of his non- 
 sense ; '' and all I ask of you is not to be at it 
 again. 'Wlio would suppose from reading an article 
 like that, that I am a candidate with a single 
 political idea ! " 
 
 " An article like that," said Timothy, winking, 
 and a little surer of his man now that he sug- 
 gested his possession of ideas, *^an article like that 
 is the best cloak you can put on a candidate with
 
 218 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 too many of 'em, Captain Beauchamp. I'll tell 
 you, sir ; I came, I heard of your candidature, 
 I had your sketch, the pattern of ye, before me, 
 and I was told that Dr. Shrapnel fathered you 
 politically. There was my brief! I had to per- 
 suade our constituents that you. Commander Beau- 
 champ of the Royal Navy, and the great family of 
 the Earls of Eomfrey, one of the heroes of the war, 
 and the recipient of a Eoyal Humane Society's 
 medal for saving life in Bevisham waters, were 
 something more than the Radical doctor's political 
 son; and, sir, it was to this end, aim, and object, 
 that I wrote the article I am not ashamed to avow 
 as mine, and I do so, sir, because of the solitary 
 merit it has of serving your political interests as the 
 Liberal candidate for Bevisham by counteracting 
 the unpopularity of Dr. Shrapnel's name, on the 
 one part, and of reviving the credit due to your 
 valour and high bearing on the field of battle in 
 defence of your country, on the other, so that 
 Bevisham may apprehend, in spite of party dis- 
 tinctions, that it has the option, and had better 
 seize upon the honour, of making a M.P. of a 
 hero." 
 
 Beauchamp interposed hastily : " Thank you, 
 thank vou for the best of intentions. But let me
 
 THE LEADING ARTICLE. 219 
 
 tell you I am prepared to stand or fall with Dr. 
 Shrapnel, and be hanged to all that humbug." 
 
 Timothy rubbed his hands with an abstracted air 
 of washing. '' Well, commander, well, sir, they say 
 a candidate's to be humoured in his infancy, for he 
 has to do all the humouring before he's many weeks 
 old at it ; only there's the fact ! — he soon finds out 
 he has to pay for his first fling, like the son of a 
 family sowing his oats to reap his Jews. Credit me, 
 sir, I thought it prudent to counteract a bit of an 
 apothecary's shop odour in the junior Liberal can- 
 didate's address. I found the town sniffing, they 
 scented Shrapnel in the composition." 
 
 " Every line of it was mine," said Beauchamp. 
 
 " Of course it was, and the address was admirably 
 worded, sir, I make bold to say it to your face ; 
 but most indubitably it threatened powerful drugs 
 for weak stomachs, and it blew cold on votes, 
 which are sensitive plants like nothing else in 
 botany." 
 
 ^* If they are only to be got by abandoning prin- 
 ciples, and by anything but honesty in stating them, 
 they may go," said Beauchamp. 
 
 " I repeat, my dear sir, I repeat, the infant can- 
 didate delights in his honesty, like the babe in its 
 nakedness, the beautiful virgin in her innocence.
 
 220 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 So lie does ; but lie discovers it's time for him to 
 wear clotlies in a contested election. And what's 
 that but to preserve the outlines pretty correctly, 
 whilst he doesn't shock and horrify the sight ? A 
 dash of conventionalism makes the whole civilised 
 world kin, ye know. That's the truth. You must 
 appear to be one of them, for them to choose you. 
 After all, there's no harm in a dyer's hand; and 
 sir, a candidate looking at his own, when he has 
 won the election . . . ." 
 
 "Ah, well," said Beauchamp, swinging on his 
 heel, "and now I'll take my leave of you, and I 
 apologise for bringing you down here so early. 
 Please attend to what I have said ; it's peremptory. 
 You will give me great pleasure by dining with me 
 to-night, at the hotel opposite. Will you ? I don't 
 know what kind of wine I shall be able to offer 
 you. Perhaps you know the cellar, and may help 
 me in that." 
 
 Timothy grasped his hand, ""With pleasure. Com- 
 mander Beauchamp. They have a bucellas over 
 there that's old, and a tolerable claret, and a port to 
 be inquired for under the breath, in a mysteriously 
 intimate tone of voice, as one says, * I know of your 
 treasure, and the corner under ground where it lies.' 
 Avoid the champagne: 'tis the banqueting wine.
 
 THE LEADDsG ARTICLE. 221 
 
 Ditto the sherry. One can drink them, one can 
 drink them." 
 
 ''At a quarter to eight this evening, then/' said 
 NevH. 
 
 *' I'll be there at the stroke of the clock, sure as 
 the date of a bill," said Timothy. 
 
 "And it's early to guess whether you'll catch 
 Bevisham or you won't," he reflected, as he gazed 
 at the young gentleman crossing the road ; " but 
 female Bevisham's with you, if that counts for 
 much." Timothy confessed that, without the em- 
 ployment of any weapon save arrogance and a look 
 of candour, the commander had gone some way 
 toward catching the feminine side of himself.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 CECILIA HALKETT. 
 
 Beauchamp walked down to the pier, where lie 
 took a boat for H.M.S. Isis, to see Jack Wilmore, 
 whom he had not met since his return from his last 
 cruise, and first he tried the efficacy of a dive in 
 salt water, as a specific for irritation. It gave the 
 edge to a fine appetite that he continued to satisfy 
 while Wilmore talked of those famous dogs to 
 which the navy has ever been going. 
 
 " We want another panic, Beauchamp,'' said 
 Lieutenant Wilmore. " No one knows better than 
 you what a naval man has to complain of, so I hope 
 you'll get your ielection, if only that we may 
 reckon on a good look-out for the interests of the 
 service. A regular Board with a permanent Lord 
 High Admiral, and a regular vote of money to keep 
 it up to the mark. Stick to that. Hardist has a 
 vote in Bevisham. I think 1 can sret one or two
 
 CECILIA HALKETT. 223 
 
 more. Why aren't you a Tory? No "WTiigs nor 
 Liberals look after us talf so well as tlie Tories. 
 It's enough to break a man's heart to see the troops 
 of dockyard workmen marching out as soon as ever 
 a Liberal Government marches in. Then it's one of 
 our infernal panics again, and patch here, patch 
 there ; every inch of it make-believe ! I'll prove to 
 you from examples that the humbug of government 
 causes exactly the same _ humbugging workmanship. 
 It seems as if it were a game of ' rascals all.' Let 
 them sink us ! but, by heaven ! one can't help 
 feeling for the country. And I do say it's the doing 
 of those Liberals. Skilled workmen, mind you, not 
 to be netted again so easily. America reaps the 
 
 benefit of our folly That was a lucky run 
 
 of yours up the Xiger ; the admiral was friendly, 
 but you deserved your luck. For God's sake, don't 
 forget the state of our service when you're one of 
 our cherubs up aloft, Beauchamp. This I'll say, 
 I've never heard a man talk about it as you used 
 to in old midshipmite days, whole watches through 
 — don't you remember ? on the North American 
 station, and in the Black Sea, and the Mediter- 
 ranean. And that girl at Malta ! I wonder what 
 has become of her? What a beauty she was! I 
 dare say she wasn't so fine a girl as the Armenian
 
 224 BEATJCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 you unearthed on the Bosphorus, but she had some- 
 thing about her a fellow can't forget. That was 
 a lovely creature coming down the hills over 
 Granada on her mule. Ay, we've seen handsome 
 women, Nevil Beauchamp. But you always were 
 lucky, invariably, and I should bet on you for the 
 election." 
 
 " Canvass for me. Jack,'* said Beauchamp, smiling 
 at his friend's unconscious double-skeining of sub- 
 jects. " If I turn out as good a politician as you 
 are a seaman, I shall do. Pounce on Hardist's vote 
 without losing a day. I would go to him, but I've 
 missed the Halketts twice. They're on the Otley 
 river, at a place called Mount Laurels, and I par- 
 ticularly want to see the colonel. Can you give 
 me a boat there, and come ? " 
 
 "Certainly," said Wilmore. ''I've danced there 
 with the lady, the handsomest girl, English style, 
 of her time. And come, come, our English style's 
 the best. It wears best, it looks best. Foreign 
 women .... they're capital to flirt with. But a 
 girl like CeciHa Halkett — one can't call her a girl, 
 and it won't do to say goddess, and queen and 
 charmer are out of the question, though she's both, 
 and angel into the bargain ; but, by George ! what 
 a woman to call wife, you say ; and a man attached
 
 CECILIA HALKETT. 225 
 
 to a woman like that never can let himself look 
 small. No such luck for me ; only I swear if I 
 stood between a good and a bad action, the thought 
 of that girl would keep me straight, and I've only 
 danced with her once I " 
 
 Not long after sketching this rough presentation 
 of the lady, with a masculine hand, Wilmore was 
 able to point to her in person on the deck of her 
 father's yacht, the Espemnza^ standing out of Otley 
 river. There was a gallant splendour in the vessel 
 that threw a touch of glory on its mistress in the 
 minds of the two young naval officers,' as they 
 pulled towards her in the ship's gig. 
 
 Wilmore sung out, " Give way, men ! " 
 
 The sailors bent to their oars, and presently the 
 schooner's head was put to the wind. 
 
 " She sees we're giving chase," Wilmore said. 
 " She can't be expecting me^ so it must be you. 
 No, the colonel doesn't race her. They've only 
 been back from Italy six months : I mean the 
 schooner. I remember she talked of you when I 
 had her for a partner. Yes, now I mean Miss 
 Halkett. Blest if I think she talked of anything 
 else. She sees us. I'll teU you what she likes : 
 she likes yachting, she likes Italy, she likes paint- 
 ing, likes things old English, awfully fond of 
 
 VOL. 1. Q
 
 226 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 heroes. I told her a tale of one of our men 
 saving life. * Oh ! ' said she, * didn't your friend 
 Nevil Beauchamp save a man from drowning, off 
 the guardship, in exactly the same place ? ' And 
 next day she sent me a cheque for three pounds 
 for the fellow. Steady, men ! I keep her letter." 
 
 The boat went smoothly alongside the schooner. 
 Miss Halkett had come to the side. The oars 
 swung fore and aft, and Beauchamp sprang on 
 deck. 
 
 Wilmore had to decline Miss Halkett's invitation 
 to him As well as his friend, and returned in his 
 boat. He left the pair with a ruffling breeze, and 
 a sky all sail, prepared, it seemed to him, to enjoy 
 the most delicious you-and-I on salt water that a 
 sailor could dream of; and placidly envying, devoid 
 of jealousy, there was just enough of fancy 
 quickened in Lieutenant Wilmore to give him 
 pictures of them without disturbance of his feelings 
 — one of the conditions of the singular visitation 
 we call happiness, if he could have known it. 
 
 For a time his visionary eye followed them pretty 
 correctly. So long since they had parted last ! such 
 changes in the interval ! and great animation in 
 Beauchamp's gaze, and a blush on Miss Halkett's 
 cheeks.
 
 CECILIA HALKETT. 227 
 
 She said once, " Captain Beauchamp." He 
 retorted with a solemn formality. They smiled, 
 and immediately took footing on their previous 
 intimacy. ♦ 
 
 ^' How good it was of you to come twice to 
 Mount Laurels," said she. '' I have not missed you 
 to-day. !N^o address was on your card. Where are 
 you staying in the neighbourhood ? At Mr. 
 Lespel's?" 
 
 , '' I'm staying at a Bevisham hotel/' said Beau- 
 champ. 
 
 " You have not been to Steynham yet ? Papa 
 comes home from Steynham to-night." 
 
 " Does he ? Well, the Ariadne is only just paid 
 
 off, and I can't well go to Steynham yet. I " 
 
 Beauchamp was astonished at the hesitation he 
 found in himself to name it : "I have business in 
 Bevisham." 
 
 " Naval business ? " she remarked. 
 '' No," said he. 
 
 The sensitive prescience we have' of a critical 
 distaste of our proceedings is, the world is aware, 
 keener than our intuition of contrary opinions ; and 
 for the sake of preserving the sweet outward forms 
 of friendliness, Beauchamp was anxious not to speak 
 of the business in Bevisham just then, but she
 
 228 BE AUCH amp's career. 
 
 looked and he had hesitated, so he said flatly, " I 
 am one of the candidates for the borough." 
 
 -Indeed!" 
 
 *' And I want the colonel to give me his vote." 
 
 The young lady breathed a melodious " Oh ! " 
 not condemnatory or reproachful — a sound to fill 
 a pause. But she was beginning to reflect. 
 
 " Italy and our English Channel are my two 
 poles," she said. "1 am constantly swaying 
 between them. I have told papa we will not lay up 
 the yacht while the weather holds fair. Except 
 for the absence of deep colour and bright colour, 
 what can be more beautiful than these green waves 
 and that dark forest's edge, and the garden of an 
 island ! The yachting- water here is an unrivalled 
 lake ; and if I miss colour, which I love, I remind 
 myself that we have temperate air here, not a sun 
 that sends you under cover. We can have our 
 fruits too, you see." One of the yachtsmen was 
 handing her a basket of hothouse grapes, reclining 
 beside crisp home-made leaflets. " This is my 
 luncheon. Will you share it, Nevil ? " 
 
 His Christian name was pleasant to hear from her 
 lips. She held out a bunch to him. 
 
 " Grapes take one back to the South," said he. 
 "How do you bear compliments ? You have been
 
 CECILIA HALKETT. 229 
 
 in Italy some years, and it must be tlie South that 
 has worked the miracle." 
 
 " In my growth ? " said CeciKa, smiling. " I 
 have grown out of my Circassian dress, Nevil." 
 
 •' You received it, then ?" 
 
 " I wrote you a letter of thanks — and abuse, for 
 your not coming to Steynham. You may recognise 
 these pearls." 
 
 The pearls were round her right wrist. He 
 looked at the blue veins. 
 
 " They're not pearls of price," he said. 
 
 "I do not wear them to fascinate the jewellers," 
 rejoined Miss Halkett. " So you are a candidate 
 at an election. You still have a tinge of Africa, do 
 you know ? But you have not abandoned the navy ? " 
 
 " Not altogether." 
 
 " Oh ! no, no : I hope not. I have heard of you, 
 . . . but who has not ? We cannot spare officers 
 like you. Papa was delighted to hear of your pro- 
 motion . Parliament ! ' ' 
 
 The exclamation was contemptuous. 
 
 " It's the highest we can aim at," Beauchamp 
 observed meekly. 
 
 " I think I recollect you used to talk politics 
 when you were a midshipman," she said. " You 
 headed the aristocracy, did you not ? "
 
 230 
 
 " The aristocracy wants a head/' said Beauchamp. 
 
 " Parliament, in my opinion, is the best of occu- 
 pations for idle men," said she. 
 
 " It shows that it is a little too full of them." 
 
 " Surely the country can go on very well without 
 so much speech-making ?" 
 
 " It can go on very well for the rich." 
 
 Miss Halkett tapped with her foot. 
 
 " I should expect a Eadical to talk in that way, 
 Nevil." 
 
 " Take me for one." 
 
 " I would not even imagine it." 
 
 " Say Liberal, then." 
 
 "Are you not" — her eyes opened on him 
 largely, and narrowed from surprise to reproach, 
 and then to pain — " are you not one of us ? Have 
 you gone over to the enemy, Nevil ?" 
 
 " I have taken my side, Cecilia ; but we, on our 
 side, don't talk of an enemy." 
 
 " Most unfortunate ! We are Tories, you know, 
 Nevil. Papa is a thorough Tory. He cannot vote 
 for you. Indeed I have heard him say he is anxious 
 to defeat the plots of an old Republican in Bevis- 
 ham — some doctor there ; and I believe he went to 
 London to look out for a second Tory candidate to 
 oppose to the Liberals. Our present member is
 
 CECILIA HALKETT. 231 
 
 quite safe, of course. Nevil, this makes me un- 
 happy. Do you not feel that it is playing traitor to 
 one's class to join those men ?" 
 
 Such was the Tory way of thinking, Nevil Beau- 
 champ said : the Tories upheld their Toryism in the 
 place of patriotism. 
 
 " But do we not owe the grandeur of the country 
 to the Tories ?" she said, with a lovely air of con- 
 viction. " Papa has told me how false the Whigs 
 played the Duke in the Peninsula : ruining his 
 supplies, writing him down, declaring, all the time 
 he was fighting his first hard battles, that his cause 
 was hopeless — -that resistance to IS'apoleon was im- 
 possible. The Duke never, never had loyal support 
 hut from the Tory Government. The Whigs, papa 
 says, absolutely preached submission to Napoleon ! 
 The Whigs, I hear, were the Liberals of those days. 
 The two Pitts were Tories. The greatness of 
 England has been built up by the Tories. I do 
 and will defend them : it is the fashion to decry 
 them now. They have the honour and safety of 
 the country at heart. They do not play disgrace- 
 fully at reductions of taxes, as the Liberals do. 
 They have given us all our heroes. Non fu mai 
 gloria senza invidia. They have done service 
 enough to despise the envious mob. They never
 
 2-32 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 condescend to supplicate brute force for aid to crush 
 their opponents. You feel in all they do that the 
 instincts of gentlemen are active." 
 
 Beauchamp bowed. 
 
 " Do I speak too warmly ?'* she asked. "Papa 
 and I have talked over it often, and especially of 
 late. You will find him your delighted host and 
 your inveterate opponent." 
 
 " And you ? " 
 
 ** Just the same. You will have to pardon me ; I 
 am a terrible foe." 
 
 " I declare to you, Cecilia, I would prefer having 
 you against me to having you indifferent." 
 
 " I wish I had not to think it right that you 
 should be beaten. And now — can you throw off 
 political Nevil, and be sailor Nevil ? I distinguish 
 between my old friend, and my . . . our ..." 
 
 " Dreadful antagonist ? " 
 
 '' Not so dreadful, except in the shock he gives 
 us to find him in the opposite ranks. I am grieved. 
 But we will finish our sail in peace. I detest con- 
 troversy. I suppose, Nevil, you would have no 
 such things as yachts ? they are the enjoyments of 
 the rich ! " 
 
 He reminded her that she wished to finish her 
 sail in peace ; and he had to remind her of it more
 
 CECILIA HALKETT. 233 
 
 than once. Her scattered resources for argumen- 
 tation sprang up from various suggestions, sucli as 
 the flight of yachts, mention of the shooting season, 
 sight of a royal palace ; and adopted a continually 
 heightened satirical form, oddly intermixed with an 
 undisguised afiectionate friendliness. Apparently 
 she thought it possible to worry him out of his 
 adhesion to the wrong side in politics. She cer- 
 tainly had no conception of the nature of his 
 political views, for one or two extreme propositions 
 flung to him in jest, he swallowed with every sign 
 of a perfect facihty, as if the Radical had come to 
 regard stupendous questions as morsels barely suffi- 
 cient for his daily sustenance. Cecilia reflected 
 that he must be playing, and as it was not a 
 subject for play she tacitly reproved him by letting 
 him be the last to speak of it. He may not have 
 been susceptible to the delicate chastisement, pro- 
 bably was not, for when he ceased it was to look 
 on the beauty of her lowered eyelids, rather with 
 an idea that the weight of his argument lay on 
 them. It breathed from him ; both in the depart- 
 ment of logic and of feeling, in his plea for the poor 
 man and his exposition of the poor man's rightful 
 claims, he evidently imagined that he had spoken 
 overwhelmingly ; and to undeceive him in this
 
 234 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREEE. 
 
 respect, for his own good, Cecilia calmly awaited 
 the occasion wlien slie might show the vanity of 
 arguments in their effort to overcome con^dctions. 
 He stood up to take his leave of her on their return 
 to the mouth of the Otley river unexpectedly, so 
 that the occasion did not arrive ; but on his men- 
 tioning an engagement he had to give a dinner to a 
 journalist and a tradesman of the town of Bevisham, 
 by way of excuse for not complying with her gentle 
 entreaty that he would go on to Mount Laurels and 
 wait to see the colonel that evening, " Oh ! then 
 your choice must be made irrevocably, I am sure," 
 Miss Halkett said, relying upon intonation and 
 manner to convey a great deal more, and not with- 
 out a minor touch of resentment for his having 
 dragged her into the discussion of politics, which 
 she considered as a slime wherein men hustled and 
 tussled, no doubt worthily enough, and as became 
 them ; not however to impose the strife upon the 
 elect ladies of earth. What gentleman ever did 
 talk to a young lady upon the dreary topic 
 seriously? Least of all should Nevil Beauchamp 
 have done it. That object of her high imagina- 
 tion belonged to the exquisite sphere of the 
 feminine vision of the pure poetic, and she was 
 vexed by the discord he threw between her long-
 
 CECILIA HALKETT. 235 
 
 clierislied dream and her unanticipated realisation 
 of him : if indeed it was he presenting himself 
 to her in his own character, and not trifling, 
 or not passing through a phase of young man's 
 madness. 
 
 Possibly he might be the victim of the latter in- 
 fliction and more pardonable state, and so thinking 
 she gave him her hand. 
 
 " Good-bye, Nevil. I may tell papa to expect 
 you to-morrow ? " 
 
 " Do, and tell him to prepare for a field-day." 
 She smiled. " A sham fight that will not win 
 you a vote ! I hope you will find your guests this 
 evening agreeable companions." 
 
 Beauchamp half-shrugged involuntarily. He 
 obliterated the piece of treason towards them by 
 saying that he hoped so ; as though the meeting 
 them, instead of slipping on to Mount Laurels with 
 her, were an enjoyable prospect. 
 
 He was dropped by the Esperanza's boat near 
 Otley ferry, to walk along the beach to Bevisham, 
 and he kept eye on the elegant vessel as she glided 
 swan-like to her moorings ofi" Mount Laurels park 
 through dusky merchant craft, colliers, and trawlers, 
 loosely shaking her towering snow-white sails, un- 
 challenged in her scornful supremacy ; an image of
 
 236 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 a refinement of beauty, and of a beautiful service- 
 lessness. 
 
 As the yacht, so the mistress : things of wealth, 
 owing their graces to wealth, devoting them to 
 wealth — splendid achievements of art both ! and 
 dedicated to the gratification of the superior senses. 
 
 Say that they were precious examples of an 
 accomplished civilisation; and perhaps they did 
 offer a visible ideal of grace for the rough world 
 to aim at. They might in the abstract address a 
 bit of a monition to the uncultivated, and encourage 
 the soul to strive towards perfection in beauty : 
 and there is no contesting the value of beauty when 
 the soul is taken into account. But were they not 
 in too great a profusion in proportion to their 
 utility? That was the question for Nevil Beau- 
 champ. The democratic spirit inhabiting him, tem- 
 porarily or permanently, asked whether they were 
 not increasing to numbers which were oppressive ? 
 And further, whether it was good for the country, 
 the race, ay, the species, that they should be so 
 distinctly removed from the thousands who fought 
 the grand, and the grisly, old battle with nature for 
 bread of life. Those grimy sails of the colliers and 
 fishing-smacks, set them in a great sea, would have 
 beauty for eyes and soul beyond that of elegance
 
 CECILIA HALKETT. 237 
 
 and refinement. And do but look on them 
 thoughtfully, the poor are everlastingly, unrelie- 
 
 vedly, in the abysses of the great sea 
 
 One cannot pursue to conclusions a line of medi- 
 tation that is half-built on the sensations as well as 
 on the mind. Did Beauchamp at all desire to have 
 those idly lovely adornments of riches, the Yacht 
 and the Lady, swept away ? Oh, dear, no. He 
 admired them, he was at home with them. They 
 were much to his taste. Standing on a point of the 
 beach for a last look at them before he set his face 
 towards the town, he prolonged the look in a 
 manner to indicate that the place where business 
 called him was not in comparison at all so pleasing : 
 and just as little enjoyable were his meditations 
 opposed to predilections. Beauty plucked the heart 
 from his breast. But he "had taken up arms ; he 
 had drunk of the questioning cup, that which denieth 
 peace to us, and which projects us upon the 
 missionary search of the How, the Wherefore, and 
 the Why not, ever afterwards. He questioned his 
 justification, and yours, for gratifying tastes in an 
 ill-regulated world of wrong-doing, suffering, sin, 
 and bounties unrighteously dispensed — not suflQ.- 
 ciently dispersed. He said by-and-by to pleasure, 
 battle to-day. From his point of observation, and
 
 238 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 with the store of ideas and images his fiery yet 
 reflective youth had gathered, he presented himself 
 as it were saddled to that hard-riding force known 
 as the logical impetus, which spying its quarry over 
 precipices, across oceans and deserts, and through 
 systems and webs, and into shops and cabinets of 
 costliest china, will come at it, will not be refused, 
 let the distances and the breakages be what they 
 may. He went like the meteoric man with the 
 mechanical legs in the song, too quick for a cry of 
 protestation, and reached results amazing to his 
 instincts, his tastes, and his training, not less 
 rapidly and naturally than tremendous Ergo is shot 
 forth from the clash of a syllogism.
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 A PARTIAL DISPLAY OF BEArCHLS.MP IN HIS COLOURS. 
 
 Beauchamp presented himself at Blount Laurels 
 next day, and formally asked Colonel Halkett for 
 his Yote, in the presence of Cecilia, 
 
 She took it for a playful glance at his new profes- 
 sion of poKtician : he spoke half-play fully . Was it 
 possible to speak in earnest ? 
 
 "I'm of the opposite party," said the colonel; as 
 conclusiye a reply as could be : but he at once fell 
 upon the rotten nayy of a Liberal Goyemment. 
 How could a true sailor think of joining those 
 Liberals ! The question referred to the country, 
 not to a section of it, Beauchamp protested with 
 impending emphasis : Tories and Liberals were 
 much the same in regard to the care of the nayy. 
 " Xevil ! " exclaimed Cecilia. He cited beneficial 
 Liberal bills recently passed, which she accepted 
 for a concession of the nay}^ to the Tories, and she
 
 240 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 smiled. In spite of lier dislike of politics, she had 
 only to listen a few minutes to be drawn into the 
 contest : and thus it is that one hot politician makes 
 many among women and men of a people that have 
 the genius of strife, or else in this case the young 
 lady did unconsciously feel a deep interest in re- 
 futing and overcoming Nevil Beauchamp. Colonel 
 Halkett denied the benefits of those bills. "Look," 
 said he, ''at the scarecrow plight of the army under 
 a Liberal Government ! " This laid him open to the 
 charge that he was for backing Administrations 
 instead of principles. 
 
 "I do," said the colonel. "I would rather have 
 a good Administration than all your talk of prin- 
 ciples : one's a fact, but principles ? principles ? " 
 He languished for a phrase to describe the hazy 
 things. " I have mine, and you have yours. It's 
 like a dispute between religions. There's no set- 
 tling it except by main force. That's what prin- 
 ciples lead you to." 
 
 Principles may be hazy, but heavy artillery is 
 disposable in defence of them, and Beauchamp fired 
 some reverberating guns for the eternal against the 
 transitory ; — with less of the gentlemanly fine taste, 
 the light and easy social semi-irony, tha^ Cecilia 
 liked and would have expected from him. How-
 
 BEAUCHAMP IX HIS COLOURS. 241 
 
 ever, as to principles, no doubt Nevil was right, and 
 Cecilia drew her father to another position. "Are 
 not we Tories to have principles as well as the 
 Liberals, Nevil?" 
 
 " They may have what they call principles," he 
 admitted, intent on pursuing his advantage over the 
 colonel, who said, to shorten the controversy : " It's 
 a question of my vote, and my liking. I like a 
 Tory Government, and I don't like the Liberals. I 
 like gentlemen; I don't like a party that attacks 
 everything, and beats up the mob for power, and 
 repays it with sops, and is dragging us down from 
 all we were proud of." 
 
 *' But the country is growing, the country wants 
 expansion," said Beauchamp ; " and if your gentle- 
 men by birth are not up to the mark, you must 
 have leaders that are." 
 
 ^' Leaders who cut down expenditure, to create a 
 panic that doubles the outlay ! I know them," 
 
 "A panic, Nevil." Cecilia threw stress on the 
 memorable word. 
 
 He would hear no reminder in it. The internal 
 condition of the country was now the point for- 
 seriously-minded Englishmen. 
 
 *' My dear boy, what have you seen of the 
 country ? " Colonel Halkett inquired. 
 
 VOL. I. u
 
 242, 
 
 " Every time I have landed, colonel, I have gone 
 to the mining and the manufacturing districts, the 
 centres of industry ; wherever there was dissatis- 
 faction. I have attended meetings, to see and hear 
 for myself. I have read the papers. ..." 
 
 "The papers!'' 
 
 "Well, they're the mirror of the country." 
 
 " Does one see everything in a mirror, Nevil ? " 
 said Cecilia : " even in the smoothest ? " 
 
 He retorted softly : "I should be glad to see 
 what you see," and felled her with a blush. 
 
 For an example of the mirror offered by the 
 Press, Colonel Halkett touched on Mr. Timothy 
 Turbot's article in eulogy of the great Commander 
 Beauchamp. " Did you like it ? " he asked. " Ah, 
 but if you meddle with politics, you must submit to 
 be held up on the prongs of a fork, my boy ; soaped 
 by your backers and shaved by the foe ; and there's 
 a figure for a gentleman ! as your uncle Romfrey 
 says." 
 
 Cecilia did not join this discussion, though she 
 had heard from her father that something grotesque 
 had been written of Nevil. Her foolishness in 
 blushing vexed body and mind. She was incensed 
 by a silly compliment that struck at her feminine 
 nature when her intellect stood in arms. Yet more
 
 BEAUCHAMP IX HIS COLOURS. 243 
 
 hurt was she by the reflection that a too lively 
 sensibility might have conjured up the idea of the 
 compliment. And again, she wondered at herself 
 for not resenting so rare a presumption as it im- 
 plied, and not disdaining so outworn a foim of 
 flattery. She wondered at herself too for thinking 
 of resentment and disdain in relation to the familiar 
 commonplaces of licensed impertinence. Over all 
 which hung a darkened image of her spirit of inde- 
 pendence, like a moon in eclipse. 
 
 Where lay liis weakness ? Evidently in the 
 belief that he had thought profoundly. But what 
 minor item of insufficiency or feebleness was dis- 
 cernible? She discovered that he could be easily 
 fretted by similes and metaphors : they set him 
 staggering and groping like an ancient knight of 
 faery in a forest bewitched. 
 
 ''Your specific for the country is, then, Radi- 
 calism," she said, after listening to an attack on the 
 Tories for their want of a policy and indifference to 
 the union of classes. 
 
 " I would prescribe a course of it, Cecilia ; yes," 
 he turned to her. 
 
 " The Dr. Dulcamara of a single drug ?" 
 
 "Now you have a name for me! Tory argu- 
 ments always come to epithets."
 
 244 
 
 '* It should not be objectionable. Is it not honest 
 to pretend to have only one cure for mortal mala- 
 dies ? There can hardly be two panaceas, can 
 there be ? '* 
 
 " So you call me quack ? " 
 
 *'No, Nevil, no," she breathed a rich contralto 
 note of denial : *' but if the country is the patient, 
 and you will have it swallow your prescription. . ." 
 
 " There's nothing like a metaphor for an evasion," 
 said Nevil, blinking over it. 
 
 She drew him another analogy, longer than was 
 at all necessary ; so tedious that her father struck 
 through it with the remark : 
 
 " Concerning that quack — that's one in the back- 
 ground, though ! " 
 
 " I know of none," said Beauchamp, well-advised 
 enough to forbear mention of the name of Shrapnel. 
 
 Cecilia petitioned that her stumbling ignorance, 
 which sought the road of wisdom, might be heard 
 out. She had a reserve entanglement for her argu- 
 mentative friend. '* You were saying, Nevil, that 
 you were for principles rather than for individuals, 
 and you instanced Mr. Cougham, the senior Liberal 
 candidate of Bevisham, as one whom you would 
 prefer to see in Parliament instead of Seymour 
 Austin, though you confess to Mr. Austin's far
 
 BEAUCHAMP IN HIS COLOUES. 245 
 
 superior merits as a politician and servant of his 
 country : but Mr. Cougham supports Liberalism 
 while Mr. Austin is a Tory. You are for the prin- 
 ciple." 
 
 " I am," said be, bowing. 
 
 Sbe asked : ''Is not that equivalent to the 
 doctrine of election by Grace ? " 
 
 Beaucbamp interjected : " Grace ! election ?" 
 
 Cecilia was tender to bis inability to follow her 
 allusion. 
 
 " Tbou art a Liberal — tben rise to membership," 
 she said. ''Accept my creed, and thou art of the 
 chosen. Yes, Nevil, you cannot escape from it. 
 Papa, he preaches Calvinism in politics." 
 
 " We stick to men, and good men," the colonel 
 flourished. " Old English for me ! " 
 
 " You might' as well say, old timber vessels, when 
 Iron's afloat, colonel." 
 
 " I suspect you have the worst of it there, papa," 
 said Cecilia, taken by the unexpectedness and smart- 
 ness of the comparison coming from wits that she 
 had been undervaluing. 
 
 " I shall not own I'm worsted until I surrender 
 my vote," the colonel rejoined. 
 
 "I won't despair of it," said Beaucbamp. 
 
 Colonel Halkett bade him come for it as often
 
 246 
 
 as he liked. "You'll be beaten in Bevisham, I 
 warn you. Tory reckonings are safest ; it's an 
 admitted fact : and we know you can't win. Ac- 
 cording to my judgment a man owes a duty to his 
 class." 
 
 " A man owes a duty to bis class as long as he 
 sees his class doing its duty towards the country," 
 said Beauchamp ; and he added, rather prettily in 
 contrast with the sententious commencement, Cecilia 
 thought, that the apathy of his class was proved 
 when such as he deemed it an obligation on them 
 to come forward and do what little they could. 
 The deduction of the proof was not clearly con- 
 sequent, but a meaning was expressed ; and in that 
 form it brought him nearer to her abstract idea of 
 Nevil Beauchamp than when he raged and was 
 precise. 
 
 After his departure she talked of him with her 
 father, to be charitably satirical over him, it seemed. 
 
 The critic in her ear had pounced on his repe- 
 tition of certain words that betrayed a dialectical 
 stiffness and hinted a narrow vocabulary : his use 
 of emphasis, rather reminding her of his uncle 
 Everard, was, in a young mkn, a little distressing. 
 " The apathy of the country, papa ; the apathy of 
 the rich ; a state of universal apathy. Will you
 
 BEAUCHAMP IX HIS COLOURS. 247 
 
 inform me, papa, what the Tories are doing ? Do 
 we really give our consciences to the keeping of the 
 parsons once a week, and let them dogmatise for us 
 to save us from exertion P "\Ye must attach our- 
 selves to principles ; nothing is permanent but prin- 
 ciples. Poor Nevil ! And still I am sure you have, 
 as I have, the feeling that one must respect him. 
 I am quite convinced that he supposes he is doing 
 his best to serve his country by trying for Parlia- 
 ment, fancying himself a Radical. I forgot to ask 
 him whether he had visited his great aunt, Mrs. 
 Beauchamp. They say the dear old lady has in- 
 fluence with him." 
 
 " I don't think he's been anywhere," Colonel 
 Halkett half laughed at the quaint fellow. " I wish 
 the other great-nephew of hers were in England, 
 for us to run him against Xevil Beauchamp. He's 
 touring the world. I'm told he's orthodox, and a 
 tough debater. TVe have to take what we can get." 
 
 " My best wishes for your success, and you and I 
 will not talk of poKtics any more, papa. I hope 
 Nevil will come often, for his own good ; he will 
 meet his own set of people here. And if he should 
 dogmatise so much as to rouse our apathy to 
 denounce his principles, we will remember that we 
 are British, and can be sweet-blooded in opposition.
 
 248 
 
 Perhaps he may change, even tra le tre ore e le 
 quattro : eleotioneering should be a lesson. From 
 my recollection of Blackburn Tuckham, he was a 
 boisterous boy." 
 
 " He writes uncommonly clever letters home to 
 his Aunt Beauchamp. She has handed them to me 
 to read," said the colonel. "I do like to see 
 tolerably solid young fellows : they give one some 
 hope of the stability of the country." 
 
 *' They are not so interesting to study, and not 
 half so amusing," said Cecilia. 
 
 Colonel Halkett muttered his objections to the 
 sort of amusement furnished by firebrands. 
 
 " Firebrand is too strong a word for poor Nevil," 
 she remonstrated. 
 
 In that estimate of the character of Nevil Beau- 
 champ, Cecilia soon had to confess that she had 
 been deceived, though not by him.
 
 CHAPTEE XVII. 
 
 HIS FRIEND AND FOE. 
 
 Looking from her window very early on a Sunday 
 morning, Miss Halkett saw Beauchamp strolling 
 across the grass of the park. She dressed hurriedly 
 and went out to greet him, smiling and thanking 
 him for his friendliness in coming. 
 
 He said he was delighted, and appeared so, but 
 dashed the sweetness. " You know I can't canvass 
 on Sundays." 
 
 " I suppose not," she replied. '' Have you walked 
 up from Bevisham ? You must be tired." 
 
 " Nothing tires me,*' said he. 
 
 With that they stepped on together. 
 
 Mount Laurels, a fair broad house backed by a 
 wood of beeches and firs, lay open to view on the 
 higher grassed knoll of a series of descending turfy 
 mounds dotted with gorse-clumps, and faced south- 
 westerly along the run of the Otley river to the
 
 250 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 gleaming broad water and its opposite border of 
 forest, beyond wbicb the downs of tbe island threw 
 long interlopping curves. Great ships passed on 
 the line of the water to and fro ; and a little mist of 
 masts of the fishing and coasting craft by Otley 
 village, near the river's mouth, was like a web in 
 air. Cecilia led him to her dusky wood of firs, 
 where she had raised a bower for a place of poetical 
 contemplation and reading when the clear lapping 
 salt river beneath her was at high tide. She could 
 hail the Esperanza from that cover ; she could step 
 from her drawing-room window, over the flower- 
 beds, down the gravel walk to the hard, and be on 
 board her yacht within seven minutes, out on her 
 salt-water lake within twenty, closing her wings 
 in a French harbour by nightfall of a summer's 
 day, whenever she had the whim to fly abroad. Of 
 these enviable privileges she boasted with some 
 happy pride. 
 
 " It's the finest yachting- station in England," 
 said Beauchamp. 
 
 She expressed herself very glad that he should 
 like it so much. Unfortunately she added, " I hope 
 you will find it pleasanter to be here than can- 
 vassing." 
 
 " I have no pleasure in canvassing," said he. " I
 
 HIS FRIEND AND FOE. 251 
 
 canvass poor men accustomed to be paid for their 
 votes, and who get nothing from me but what the 
 baron would call a parsonical exhortation. I'm in 
 the thick of the most spiritless crew in the king- 
 dom. Our southern men will not compare with the 
 men of the north. But still, even among these 
 fellows, I see danger for the country if our com- 
 merce were to fail, if distress came on them. 
 There's always danger in disunion. That's what 
 the rich won't see. They see simply nothing out of 
 their own circle ; and they won't take a thought of 
 the overpowering contrast between their luxury and 
 the way of living, that's half starving, of the poor. 
 They understand it when fever comes up from back 
 alleys and cottages, and then they join their efforts 
 to sweep the poor out of the district. The poor are 
 to get to their work anyhow, after a long morning's 
 walk over the proscribed space ; for we must have 
 poor, you know. The wife of a parson I canvassed 
 yesterday, said to me, * Who is to work for us, 
 if you do away with the poor. Captain Beau- 
 champ?'" 
 
 Cecilia quitted her bower and traversed the wood 
 silently. 
 
 " So you would blow up my poor Mount Laurels 
 for a peace-offering to the lower classes ?"
 
 262 BEATJCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 " I should hope to put it on a stronger foundation, 
 Cecilia/^ 
 
 " By means of some convulsion ? '* 
 
 " By forestalling one." 
 
 " That must be one of the new ironclads/' 
 observed Cecilia, gazing at the black smoke-pennon 
 of a tower that slipped along the water-line. " Yes ? 
 You were saying ? Put us on a stronger ?" 
 
 " It's, I think, the Hastings : she broke down the 
 other day on her trial trip,'' said Beauchamp, 
 watching the ship's progress animatedly. " Peppel 
 commands her — a capital officer. I suppose we 
 must have these costly big floating barracks. I 
 don't like to hear of everything being done for the 
 defensive. The defensive is perilous policy in war. 
 It's true, the English don't wake up to their work 
 under half a year. But no ; defending and looking 
 to defences is bad for the fighting power ; and 
 there's half a million gone on that ship. Hff/f a 
 niilUon ! Do you know how many poor taxpayers it 
 takes to make up that sum, Cecilia ?" 
 
 '' A great many," she slurred over them ; " but 
 we must have big ships, and the best that are to be 
 had." 
 
 " Powerful fast rams, sea-worthy and fit for run- 
 ning over shallows, carrying one big gun ; swarms
 
 HIS FRIEXD AND FOE. 253 
 
 of harryers and worriers known to be kept ready for 
 immediate service ; readiness for the offensive in 
 case of war — there's the best defence against a 
 declaration of war by a foreign State." 
 
 '* I like to hear you, Nevil," said Cecilia, beam- 
 ing : " Papa thinks we have a miserable army — in 
 numbers. He says, the wealthier we become the 
 more difficult it is to recruit able-bodied men on the 
 volunteering system. Yet the wealthier we are the 
 more an army is wanted, both to defend our wealth 
 and to preserve order. I fancy he half inclines to 
 compulsory enlistment. Do speak to him on that 
 subject." 
 
 Cecilia must have been innocent of a design to 
 awaken the fire-flash in Xevil's eyes. She had no 
 design, but hostility was latent, and hence perhaps 
 the ofiending phrase. 
 
 He nodded and spoke coolly. " An army to 
 preserve order '} So, then, an army to threaten civil 
 war!'* 
 
 '' To crush revolutionists." 
 
 " Agitators, you mean. My dear good old colonel 
 — I have always loved him I — must not have more 
 troops at his command.'' 
 
 " Do you object to the di'illing of the whole of 
 the people ? "
 
 254 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 "Does not the colonel, Cecilia? I am sure lie 
 does in his heart, and, for different reasons, I do. 
 He won't trust the working-classes, nor I the 
 middle." 
 
 " Does Dr. Shrapnel hate the middle- class ? " 
 
 '' Dr. Shrapnel cannot hate. He and I are of 
 opinion that, as the middle-class are the party in 
 power, they would not, if they knew the use of 
 arms, move an inch farther in Reform, for they 
 would no longer he in fear of the class helow them." 
 
 '* But what horrible notions of your country have 
 you, Nevil ! It is dreadful to hear. Oh ! do let 
 us avoid politics for ever. Fear ! " 
 
 " All concessions to the people have been won 
 from fear." 
 
 " I have not heard so." 
 
 " I will read it to you in the History of 
 England." 
 
 " You paint us in a condition of Revolution." 
 
 " Happily it's not a condition unnatural to us. 
 The danger would be in not letting it be progres- 
 sive, and there's a little danger too at times in our 
 slowness. We change oui' blood or we perish." 
 
 " Dr. Shrapnel ? " 
 
 " Yes, I have heard Dr. Shrapnel say that. And 
 by the way, Cecilia — will you ? can you ? — take
 
 HIS FRIEND AKD FOE. 255 
 
 me for the witness to his character. He is the 
 most guileless of men, and he's the most unguarded. 
 My good Rosamund saw him. She is easily pre- 
 judiced when she is a trifle jealous, and you may 
 hear from her that he rambles, talks wildly. It 
 may seem so. I maintain there is wisdom in him 
 when conventional minds would think him at his 
 wildest. Believe me, he is the humanest, the best 
 of men, tender-hearted as^ a child : the most bene- 
 volent, simple-minded, admirable old man — the 
 man I am proudest to think of as an Englishman 
 and a man living in my time, of all men existing. 
 I can't overprcdse him." 
 
 " He has a bad reputation." 
 
 " Only with the class that will not meet him and 
 answer him." 
 
 " Must we invite him to our houses ? " 
 
 " It would be difficult to get him to come, if you 
 did. I mean, meet him in debate and answer his 
 arguments. Try the question by brains." 
 
 " Before mobs ? " 
 
 " Not before mobs. I punish you by answering 
 you seriously." 
 
 '*I am sensible of the flattery." 
 
 " Before mobs ! " Nevil ejaculated. " It's the 
 Tories that mob together and cry down every man
 
 256 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 who appears to them to threaten their privileges. 
 Can you guess what Dr. Shrapnel compares them 
 to?" 
 
 " Indeed, Nevil, I have not an idea. I only wish 
 your patriotism were large enough to embrace 
 them." 
 
 " He compares them to geese claiming possession 
 of the whole common, and hissing at every foot of 
 ground they have to yield. They're always having 
 to retire and always hissing. *E,etreat and menace,' 
 that's the motto for them." 
 
 "Yery well, Nevil, I am a goose upon a com- 
 mon." 
 
 So saying Cecilia swam forward like a swan on 
 water to give the morning kiss to her papa, by 
 the open window of the breakfast-room. 
 
 Never did bird of Michaelmas fling off water 
 from her feathers more thoroughly than this fair 
 young lady the false title she pretended to assume. 
 
 " I hear you're of the dinner-party at Grancey 
 Lespel's on Wednesday," the colonel said to Beau- 
 champ. *' You'll have to stand fire." 
 
 " They will, papa," murmured Cecilia. *' Will 
 Mr. Austin be there ? " 
 
 '*I particularly wish to meet Mr. Austin," said 
 Beauchamp.
 
 HIS FRIEND AND FOE. 257 
 
 *' Listen to him, if you do meet him," she replied. 
 
 His look was rather grave. 
 
 " LespeFs a Whig," he said. 
 
 The colonel answered. "Lespel tva^s a "Whig. 
 Once a Tory always a Tory, — but court the people 
 and you're on quicksands, and that's where the 
 Whigs are. What he is now I don't think he 
 knows himself. You won't get a vote." 
 
 Cecilia watched her friend I^evil recovering from 
 his short fit of gloom. He dismissed politics at 
 breakfast and grew companionable, with the charm 
 of his earlier^ day. He was willing to accompany 
 her to church too. 
 
 "You will hear a long sermon," she warned him. 
 
 " Forty minutes." Colonel Halkett smothered a 
 yawn that was both retro and prospective. 
 
 ** It has been fifty, papa." 
 
 " It has been an hour, my dear," 
 
 It was good discipline nevertheless, the colonel 
 affirmed, and Cecilia praised the Rev. Mr. Brisk of 
 Urplesdon vicarage as one of our few remaining 
 Protestant clergjTuen. 
 
 " Then he ought to be supported," said Beau- 
 champ. " In the dissensions of religious bodies it 
 is wise to pat the weaker party on the back. — I 
 quote Stukely Culbrett," 
 
 VOL. I. S
 
 258 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 "IVe heard him/' sighed the colonel. "He 
 calls the Protestant clergy the social police of the 
 English middle-class. Those are the things he lets 
 fly. I have heard that man say that the Church 
 stands to show the passion of the human race for 
 the drama. He said it in my presence. And 
 there's a man who calls himself a Tory ! You 
 have rather too much of that playing at grudges 
 and dislikes at Steynham, with squibs, nicknames, 
 and jests at things that — well, that our stability is 
 bound up in. I hate squibs." 
 
 " And I," said Beauchamp. Some shadow of a 
 frovni crossed him ; but Stukely Culbrett's humour 
 seemed to be a refuge. " Protestant parson — not 
 clergy," he corrected the colonel. " Can't you hear 
 Mr. Culbrett, Cecilia ? The Protestant parson is 
 the policeman set to watch over the respectability of 
 the middle-class. He has sharp eyes for the sins 
 of the poor. As for the rich, they support his 
 church ; they listen to his sermon — to set an 
 example : discipline, colonel. You discipline the 
 tradesman, who's afraid of losing your custom, and 
 the labourer, who might be deprived of his bread. 
 But the people ? It's put down to the wickedness 
 of human nature that the parson has not got hold of 
 the people. The parsons have lost them by sense-
 
 HIS FRIEXD AND FOE. 259 
 
 less Conservatism, because they look to the Tories 
 for the support of their Church, and let the religion 
 run down the gutters. And how many thousands 
 have you at work in the pulpit every Sunday ? 
 I'm told the Dissenting ministers have some 
 vitality." 
 
 Colonel Halkett shrugged with disgust at the 
 mention of Dissenters. 
 
 '' And those thirty or forty thousand, colonel, 
 call the men that do the work they ought to he 
 doing demagogues. The parsonry are a power 
 absolutely to be counted for waste, as to progress." 
 
 Cecilia perceived that her father was beginning 
 to be fretted. 
 
 She said, with a tact that effected its object : "I 
 am one who hear Mr. Culbrett Tvithout admiring hie 
 wit." 
 
 " No, and I see no good in this kind of Steyn- 
 ham talk,'' Colonel Halkett said, rising. " We're 
 none of us perfect. Heaven save us from political 
 parsons I " 
 
 Beauchamp was heard to utter : '* Humanity." 
 
 The colonel left the room with Cecilia, muttering 
 the Steynham tail to that word : " tomtity " for the 
 solace of an aside repartee. 
 
 She was on her way to dress for church. He
 
 260 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 drew her into the library, and there threw open a 
 vast placard lying on the table. It was printed in 
 blue characters and red. '* This is what I got by 
 the post this morning. I suppose !Nevil knows 
 about it. He wants tickling, but I don't like this 
 kind of thing. It's not fair war. It's as bad as 
 using explosive bullets in my old game." 
 
 " Can he expect his adversaries to be tender with 
 him ? " CeciKa simulated vehemence in an under- 
 breath. She glanced down the page. 
 
 " French Marquees " caught her eye. 
 
 It was a page of verse. And, oh ! could it have 
 issued from a Tory Committee ? 
 
 '* The Liberals are as bad, and worse," her father 
 said. 
 
 She became more and more distressed. *' It 
 seems so very mean, papa ; so base. Ungenerous 
 is no word for it. And how vulgar ! Now I re- 
 member, Nevil said he wished to see Mr. Austin." 
 
 *^ Seymour Austin would not sanction it." 
 
 " No, but Nevil might hold him responsible 
 for it." 
 
 " I suspect Mr. Stukely Culbrett, whom he 
 quotes, and that smoking-room lot at Lespel's. I 
 distinctly discountenance it. So I shall tell them 
 on Wednesday night. Can you keep a secret ? "
 
 HIS FRIEND AND FOE. 261 
 
 " And after all Neyil Beaucliainp is very young^ 
 papa ! — of course I can keep a secret." 
 
 The colonel exacted no word of honour, feeling 
 quite sure of her. 
 
 He whispered the secret in six words, and her 
 cheeks glowed vermilion. 
 
 "But they will meet on Wednesday after thUy" 
 she said, and her sight went dancing down the 
 column of verse, of which the following trotting 
 couplet is a specimen : — 
 
 *• did you ever, hot in love, a little British middy see, 
 
 Like Orpheus ashing luhat the deuce to do without Eurydice t " 
 
 The middy is jilted by his French Marquees, 
 whom he ' did adore,' and in his wrath he recom- 
 mends himself to the wealthy widow Bevisham, 
 concerning whose choice of her suitors there is a 
 doubt : but the middy is encouraged to persevere : — 
 
 " Up, up, my pretty middy ; take a draught of foaming Sillery ; 
 Oo in and win the widdy with your Radical artillery.''' 
 
 And if Sillery will not do, he is advised, he being 
 for superlatives, to try the sparkling SiUiery of the 
 Radical vintage, selected grapes. 
 
 This was but impudent nonsense. But the 
 reiterated apostrophe to "My French Marquees" 
 was considered by Cecilia to be a brutal offence.
 
 262 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 She was shocked that her party should have been 
 guilty of it. Nevil certainly provoked, and he 
 required, hard blows ; and his uncle Everard might 
 be right in telling her father that they were the 
 best means of teaching him to come to his imder- 
 standing. Still a foul and stupid squib did appear 
 to her a debasing weapon to use. 
 
 ^* I cannot congratulate you on your choice of a 
 second candidate, papa," she said scornfully. 
 
 " I don't much congratulate myself," said the 
 colonel. " Here's a letter from Mrs. Beauchamp 
 informing me that her boy Blackburn will be home 
 in a month. There would have been plenty of time 
 for him. However, we must make up our minds 
 to it. Those two'U be meeting on Wednesday, 
 so keep your secret. It will be out to-morrow 
 week." 
 
 " But Nevil will be accusing Mr. Austin." 
 
 "Austin won't be at Lespel's. And he must 
 bear it, for the sake of peace." 
 
 " Is Nevil ruined with his uncle, papa ? " 
 
 '* Not a bit, I should imagine. It's Romfrey's 
 fun." 
 
 "And this disgraceful squib is a part of the 
 fun?" 
 
 "That I know nothing about, my dear. I'm
 
 HIS FRIEND AND FOE. 26^^ 
 
 sorry, but there's pitcli and tar in politics as well as 
 on ship-board." 
 
 " I do not see that there should be," said Cecilia 
 resolutely. 
 
 " We can't hope to have what should be." 
 
 " Why not ? I would have it : I would do my 
 utmost to have it," she flamed out. 
 
 "Your utmost?" Her father was glancing at 
 her foregone mimicry of Beauchamp's occasional 
 strokes of emphasis. " Do your utmost to have 
 your bonnet on in time for us to walk to church. I 
 can't bear driving there." 
 
 Cecilia went to her room with the curious reflec- 
 tion, awakened by what her father had chanced to 
 suggest to her mind, that she likewise could be 
 fervid, positive, uncompromising — who knows ? 
 Radicalish, perhaps, when she looked eye to eye 
 on an evil. For a moment or so she espied within 
 herself a gulf of possibilities, wherein black night- 
 birds, known as queries, roused by shot of light, 
 do flap their wings. — Her utmost to have be what 
 should be ! And why not ? 
 
 But the intemperate feeling subsided while she 
 was doing duty before her mirror, and the visionary 
 gulf closed immediately. 
 
 She had merely been very angry on Nevil Beau-
 
 264 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREEE. 
 
 champ's behalf, and had dimly seen that a woman 
 can feel insurgent, almost revolutionary, for a 
 personal cause, Tory though her instinct of safety 
 and love of smoothness make her. 
 
 No reflection upon this casual piece of self or sex 
 revelation troubled her head. She did, however, 
 think of her position as the friend of Nevil in utter 
 antagonism to him. It beset her with contradic- 
 tions that blew rough on her cherished serenity ; for 
 she was of the order of ladies who, by virtue of their 
 pride and spirit, their port and their beauty, decree 
 unto themselves the rank of princesses among 
 women, before our world has tried their claim to it. 
 She had lived hitherto in upper air, high above the 
 clouds of earth. Her ideal of a man was of one 
 similarly disengaged and lofty — loftier. Nevil, she 
 could honestly say, was not her ideal ; he was only 
 her old friend, and she was opposed to him in his 
 present adventure. The striking at him to cure 
 him of his mental errors and excesses was an 
 obligation ; she could descend upon him calmly with 
 the chastening rod, pointing to the better way ; but 
 the shielding of him was a different thing ; it 
 dragged her down so low, that in her condemnation 
 of the Tory squib she found herself asking herself 
 whether haply Nevil had flung ofi" the yoke of the
 
 HIS FEIEIO) AXD FOE. 265 
 
 French lady ; Tvdtli the fooKsh excuse for the ques- 
 tion, that if he had not, he must be bitterly sensi- 
 tive to the slightest public allusion to her. Had 
 he ? And if not, how desperately faithftd he was ! 
 or else how marvellously seductive she ! 
 
 Perhaps it was a lover's despair that had precipi- 
 tated him into the mire of politics. She conceived 
 the impression that it must be so, and throughout 
 the day she had an inexplicable unsweet pleasure in 
 inciting him to argumentation and combating him, 
 though she was compelled to admit that he had been 
 colloquially charming antecedent to her naughty 
 provocation ; and though she was indebted to him 
 for his patient decorum imder the weary wave of 
 the Reverend Mr. Brisk. Now what does it matter 
 what a woman thinks in politics ? But he deemed 
 it of great moment. Politically, he deemed that 
 women have souls, a certain fire of Hfe for exercise 
 on earth. He appealed to reason in them ; he 
 would not hear of convictions. He quoted the 
 Bevisham doctor : 'Convictions are generally first 
 impressions that are sealed with later prejudices/ 
 and insisted there was wisdom in it. Nothing tired 
 him, as he had said, and addressing woman or 
 man, no prospect of fatigue or of hopeless effort 
 daunted him in the endeavour to correct an error
 
 266 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 of judgment in politics — his notion of an error. 
 The value he put upon speaking, urging his views, 
 was really fanatical. It appeared that he canvassed 
 the borough from early morning till near midnight, 
 and nothing would persuade him that his chance 
 was poor ; nothing that an entrenched Tory like her 
 father, was not to be won even by an assault of all 
 the reserve forces of Radical pathos, prognostication, 
 and statistics. 
 
 Only conceive Nevil Beauchamp knocking at 
 doors late at night, the sturdy beggar of a vote ! or 
 waylaying workmen, as he confessed without shame 
 that he had done, on their way trooping to their 
 midday meal ; penetrating malodoriferous rooms of 
 dismal ten-pound cottagers, to exhort bedraggled 
 mothers and babes, and besotted husbands ; and 
 exposed to rebuffs from impertinent tradesmen ; and 
 lampooned and travestied, shouting speeches to 
 roaring men, pushed from shoulder to shoulder of 
 the mob ! . . . 
 
 Cecilia dropped a curtain on her mind's picture 
 of him. But the blinding curtain rekindled the 
 thought that the line he had taken could not but be 
 the desperation of a lover abandoned. She feared 
 it was, she feared it was not. Nevil Beauchamp's 
 foe persisted in fearing that it was not ; his friend
 
 HIS FRIEND AND FOE. 267 
 
 feared that it was. Yet whj ? For if it was, then 
 he could not be quite in earnest, and might be 
 cured. Nay, but earnestness works out its own cure 
 more surely than frenzy, and it should be preferable 
 to think him sound of heart, sincere though mis- 
 taken. Cecilia could not decide upon what she 
 dared wish for his health^s good. Friend and foe 
 were not further separable within her bosom than 
 one tick from another of a clock ; they changed 
 places, and next his friend was fearing what his foe 
 had feared : they were inextricable. 
 
 Why had he not sprung up on a radiant aquiline 
 ambition, whither one might have followed him, 
 with eyes and prayers for him, if it was not possible 
 to do so companionably ? At present, in the shape 
 of a canyassing candidate, it was hardly honourable 
 to let imagination dwell on him, saye compas- 
 sionately. 
 
 When he rose to take his leaye, Cecilia said, 
 '* Must you go to Itchincope on Wednesday, 
 Neyil ? " 
 
 Colonel Halkett added : ** I don't think I would 
 go to Lespel's if I were you. I rather suspect 
 Seymour Austin will be coming on Wednesday, and 
 that'll detain me here, and you might join us and 
 lend him an ear for an eyening."
 
 268 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 " I have particular reasons for going to LespePs ; 
 I hear lie wavers towards a Tory conspiracy of some 
 sort," said Beauchamp. 
 
 The colonel held his tongue. 
 
 The untiring young candidate chose to walk down 
 to Bevisham at eleven o'clock at night, that he 
 might be the readier to continue his canvass of the 
 borough on Monday morning early. He was 
 offered a bed or a conveyance, and he declined 
 both ; the dog-cart he declined out of consideration 
 for horse and groom, which an owner of stables 
 could not but approve. 
 
 Colonel Halkett broke into exclamations of pity 
 for so good a young fellow so misguided. 
 
 The night was moonless, and Cecilia, looking 
 through the window, said whimsically, *' He has 
 gone out into the darkness, and is no light in 
 it!" 
 
 Certainly none shone. She however carried a 
 lamp that revealed him footing on with a wonderful 
 air of confidence, and she was rather surprised to 
 hear her father regret that Nevil Beauchamp should 
 be losing his good looks already, owing to that 
 miserable business of his in Bevisham. She would 
 have thought the contrary, that he was looking as 
 well as ever.
 
 HIS TRIEXD AND FOE. 269 
 
 "He dresses just as he used to dress," she 
 observed. 
 
 The individual style of a naval officer of breeding, 
 in which you see neatness trifling with disorder, or 
 disorder plucking at neatness, like the breeze a trim 
 vessel, had been caught to perfection by Nevil 
 Beauchamp, according to Cecilia. It presented him 
 to her mind in a cheerful and a very undemocratic 
 aspect, but in realising it, the thought, like some- 
 thing flashing black, crossed her — how attractive 
 such a style must be to a Frenchwoman ! 
 
 " He may look a little worn," she acquiesced.
 
 CHAPTER XTIIL 
 
 CONCERNING THE ACT OF CANVASSING. 
 
 Tories dread the restlessness of Radicals, and 
 Radicals are in awe of the organization of Tories. 
 Beauchamp thought anxiously of the high degree of 
 confidence existing in the Tory camp, whose chief 
 could afford to keep aloof, while he slaved all day 
 and half the night to thump ideas into heads, like 
 a cooper on a cask : — an impassioned cooper on an 
 empty cask ! if such an image is presentable. Even 
 so enviously sometimes the writer and the barrister, 
 men dependent on their active wits, regard the man 
 with a business fixed in an office managed by clerks. 
 That man seems by comparison celestially seated. 
 But he has his fits of trepidation ; for new tastes 
 prevail and new habits are formed, and the structure 
 of his business will not allow him to adapt himself 
 to them in a minute. The secure and comfortable 
 have to pay in occasional panics for the serenity
 
 CONCERNING THE ACT OF CANVASSING. 271 
 
 they enjoy. Mr. Seymour Austin candidly avowed 
 to Colonel Halkett, on his arrival at Mount Laurels, 
 that he was advised to take up his quarters in the 
 neighbourhood of Bevisham by a recent report of 
 his committee, describing the young Radical's 
 canvass as redoubtable. Cougham he did not fear : 
 he could make a sort of calculation of the votes for 
 the Liberal thumping on the old drum of Reform ; 
 but the number for him who appealed to feelings 
 and quickened the romantic sentiments of the 
 common people now huddled within our electoral 
 penf old, was not calculable. Tory and Radical have 
 an eye for one another, which overlooks the Liberal 
 at all times except when he is, as they imagine, 
 playing the game of either of them. 
 
 " Now we shall see the passions worked," 
 Mr. Austin said, deploring the extension of the 
 franchise. 
 
 He asked whether Beauchamp spoke well. 
 
 Cecilia left it to her father to reply ; but the 
 colonel appealed to her, saying, " Inclined to 
 dragoon one, isn't he ? " 
 
 She did ' not think that. " He speaks .... he 
 speaks well in conversation. I fancy he would be 
 liked by the poor. I should doubt his being a good 
 public speaker. He certainly has command of his
 
 272 
 
 temper : that is one thing. I cannot say whether it 
 favours oratory. He is indefatigable. One may be 
 sure he will not faint by the way. He quite believes 
 in himself. But, Mr. Austin, do you really regard 
 him as a serious rival ? '* 
 
 Mr. Austin could not tell. No one could teU 
 the effect of an extended franchise. The untried 
 venture of it depressed him. " Men have come 
 suddenly on a borough before now and carried 
 it," he said. 
 
 " Not a borough like Bevisham ? " 
 
 He shook his head. *' A fluid borough, I'm 
 afraid." 
 
 Colonel Halkett interposed : " But Ferbrass is 
 quite sure of his district." 
 
 Cecilia wished to know who the man was, of 
 the mediaevally sounding name. 
 
 " Ferbrass is an old lawyer, my dear. He 
 comes of &ve generations of lawyers, and he's as 
 old in the county as Grancey Lespel. Hitherto he 
 has always been to be counted on for marching his 
 district to the poll like a regiment. That's our 
 strength — the professions, especially lawyers." 
 
 " Are not a great many lawyers Liberals, 
 papa ? " 
 
 " A great many barristers are, my dear. "
 
 CONCERNING THE ACT OF CANVASSING. 273 
 
 Thereat tlie colonel and Mr. Austin smiled 
 together. 
 
 It was a new idea to Cecilia that Nevil Beau- 
 champ should be considered by a man of the world 
 anything but a well-meaning, moderately ridiculous 
 young candidate ; and the fact that one so expe- 
 rienced as Seymour Austin deemed him an adversary 
 to be grappled with in earnest, created a small 
 revolution in her mind, entirely altering her view 
 of the probable pKabiKty of his Radicalism under 
 pressure of time and circumstances. Many of his 
 remarks, that she had previously half smiled at, 
 came across her memory hard as metal. She began 
 to feel some terror of him, and said, to reassure 
 herself : *' Captain Beauchamp is not likely to be a 
 champion with a very large following. He is too 
 much of a political mystic, I think." 
 
 " Many young men are, before they have written 
 out a fair copy of their meaning," said Mr. 
 Austin. 
 
 Cecilia laughed to herself at the vision of the 
 fiery Nevil engaged in writing out a fair copy of 
 his meaning. How many erasures ! what foot- 
 notes ! 
 
 The arrangement was for Cecilia to proceed to 
 Itchincope alone for a couple of days, and bring a 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 274 
 
 party to Mount Laurels through Bevisham by the 
 yacht on Thursday, to meet Mr. Seymour Austin 
 and Mr. Everard Romfrey. An early day of the 
 next week had been agreed on for the unmasking 
 of the second Tory candidate. She promised that 
 in case Nevil Beauchamp should have the hardihood 
 to enter the enemy's nest at Itchincope on Wednes- 
 day, at the great dinner and ball there, she would 
 do her best to bring him back to Mount Laurels, 
 that he might meet his uncle Everard, who was 
 expected there. " At least he may consent to 
 come for an evening,'' she said. " Nothing will 
 take him from that canvassing. It seems to me it 
 must be not merely distasteful ....?" 
 
 Mr. Austin replied: '^ It's disagreeable, but it's 
 the practice. I would gladly be bound by a 
 common undertaking to abstain." 
 
 " Captain Beauchamp argues that it would be 
 all to your advantage. He sajs that a personal 
 visit is the only chance for an unknown candi- 
 date to make the people acquainted with him." 
 
 " It's a very good opportunity for making him 
 acquainted with them; and I hope he may profit 
 by it." 
 
 '' Ah ! pah ! ' To beg the vote and wink the 
 bribe,' " Colonel Halkett subjoined abhorrently : —
 
 CONCERNING THE ACT OF CANVASSING. 275 " 
 
 " * It well becomes the WLiggisli tribe 
 To beg tbe vote and wink the bribe.' 
 
 Canvassing means intimidation or corruption/' 
 
 "Or the mixture of the two, called cajolery," 
 said Mr. Austin ; " and that was the principal art 
 of the Whigs.'' 
 
 Thus did these gentlemen converse upon can 
 vassing. 
 
 It has never that I know been possible to gather 
 up in one volume of sound the rattle of the knocks 
 at Englishmen's castle-gates during election days ; 
 80, with the thunder of it unheard, the majesty of 
 the act of canvassing can be but barely appre- 
 ciable, and he, therefore, who would celebrate 
 it must follow the candidate obsequiously from 
 door to door, where, like a cross between a 
 postman delivering a bill and a beggar craving 
 an alms, patiently he attempts the extraction 
 of the vote, as little boys pick periwinkles with 
 a pin. 
 
 " This is your duty, which I most abjectly 
 entreat you to do," is pretty nearly the form of the 
 supplication. 
 
 How if, instead of the solicitation of the thou- 
 sands by the unit, the meritorious unit were 
 besought by rushing thousands ? — as a mound of
 
 276 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 the plains that is circumvented by floods, and to 
 which the waters cry, Be thou our island. Let it 
 be answered the questioner, with no discourteous 
 adjectives. Thou fool ! To come to such heights 
 of popular discrimination and political ardour the 
 people would have to be vivified to a pitch little 
 short of eruptive : it would be Boreas blowing 
 ^tna inside them ; and we should have impulse at 
 work in the country, and immense importance 
 attaching to a man's whether he will or he won't 
 — enough to womanise him. We should be all 
 but having Parliament for a sample of our choicest 
 rather than our likest : and see you not a peril in 
 that? 
 
 Conceive, for the fleeting instants permitted to 
 such insufferable flights of fancy, our picked men 
 ruling! So despotic an oligarchy as would be 
 there, is not a happy subject of contemplation. It 
 is not too mi^ph to say that a domination of the 
 Intellect in England would at once and entirely 
 alter the face of the country. We should be 
 governed by the head with a vengeance ; all the 
 rest of the country being base members indeed ; 
 Spartans, helots. Criticism, now so helpful to us, 
 would wither to the root : fun would die out of 
 Parliament, and outside of it : we could never
 
 CONCERNDfG THE ACT OF CiJTVASSING. 277 
 
 laugh at our masters, or command them : and that 
 good old-fashioned shouldering of separate interests, 
 which, if it stops progress, like a block in the pit- 
 entrance to a theatre, proves us equal before the 
 law, puts an end to the pretence of higher merit 
 in the one or the other, and renders a stout build 
 the safest assurance for coming through ultimately, 
 would be transformed to a painful orderliness, Kke 
 a City procession under the conduct of the police, 
 and to classifications of things according to their 
 pubKc value : decidedly no benefit to burly freedom. 
 None, if there were no shouldering and hustling, 
 could tell whether actually the fittest survived ; as 
 is now the case among survivors delighting in a 
 broad-chested fitness. 
 
 Banish the thought of change I A kind of police- 
 man would be sitting above us ; leaving nothing 
 to nature, nothing to chance. Parliament would be 
 a close club, with a Saturn's ring of black balls. 
 
 And consider the freezing isolation of a body 
 of our quintessential elect, seeing below them 
 none to resemble them ! Do you not hear in 
 imagination the land's regrets for that amiable 
 nobility whose pretensions were comically built on 
 birth, acres, tailoring, style, and an air. Ah, that 
 these unchallengeable new lords could be exchanged
 
 278 
 
 for those old ones ! These, with the traditions of 
 how great people should look in our country, these 
 would pass among us like bergs of ice — a pure polar 
 aristocracy, inflicting the woes of wintriness upon 
 us ; colds incessant, coughs, chills, unaccountable 
 sneezes. Keep them from concentrating ! It would 
 be to make Pagan gods of them ; and heaven knows 
 how ready some of them are to fill that lofty station. 
 Some of them this very day are walking in the 
 complete accoutrements of those immortals. They 
 only want the fellowship of a dozen or so to pull 
 the ladder up after them, and send the rest of us 
 back howling and butting among the brainless. At 
 present, mercifully, they are a scattered fire, sparks 
 here, sparks there, in our midst, animating the 
 lump dispersedly. They think they are much, 
 but they are not yet joined in thinking it ; they 
 prefer to lead free divisions, in the Press, or in 
 society ; and I believe it to be their honest opinion, 
 their wise opinion, and the sole opinion common 
 to a majority of them, that it is more salutary, 
 besides more diverting, to have the fools of the 
 kingdom represented than not. As professors of 
 the sarcastic art they can easily take the dignity 
 out of the fools' representative at their pleasure, 
 showing him at antics while he supposes he is
 
 CONCEENING THE ACT OF CAl^VASSING. '279 
 
 exhibiting an honourable and a decent series of 
 movements. Generally, too, their archery can 
 check him when he is for any of his measures ; 
 and if it does not check, there appears to be such 
 a property in simple sneering, that it consoles 
 even when it fails to right the balance of power. 
 Sarcasm, we well know, confers a title of aristocracy 
 straightway and sharp on the sconce of the man 
 who does but imagine that he is using it. "What, 
 then, must be the elevation of these princes of the 
 intellect in their own minds ! Hardly worth 
 bartering for worldly com m ander ships, it is evi- 
 dent. 
 
 Briefly, then, we have a system, not planned but 
 grown, the outcome and image of our genius, and 
 all are dissatisfied with parts of it ; but, as each 
 would preserve his own, the surest guarantee is 
 obtained for the integrity of the whole by a happy 
 adjustment of the energies of opposition, which — 
 you have only to look to see — goes far beyond 
 concord in the promotion of harmony. This is our 
 English system ; like our English pudding, a for- 
 tuitous concourse of all the sweets in the grocer's 
 shop, but an excellent thing for all that, and let 
 none threaten it. Canvassing appears to be mixed 
 up in the system ; at least I hope I have shown
 
 280 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 that it will not do to reverse the process, for fear 
 of changes leading to a sovereignty of the austere 
 and antipathetic intellect in our England, that 
 would be an inaccessible tyranny, necessarily fol- 
 lowed by tremendous convulsions.
 
 CHAPTEH XIX. 
 
 LORD PALMET, AND CERTAIN ELECTORS OF 
 BEVISHAM. 
 
 Meantime the candidates raised knockers, rang 
 bells, bowed, expounded their yiews, praised their 
 virtues, begged for votes, and greatly and 
 strangely did the youngest of them enlarge his 
 knowledge of his countrj^men. But he had an 
 insatiable appetite, and except in relation to Mr. 
 6ougham, considerable tolerance. With Cougham, 
 he was like a young hound in the leash. They 
 had to run as twins ; but Beauchamp's conjunct 
 would not run, he would walk. He imposed his 
 experience on Beauchamp, with an assumption that 
 it must necessarily be taken for the law of Beau- 
 champ's reason in electoral and in political affairs, 
 and this was hard on Beauchamp, who had faith 
 in his reason. Beauchamp's early canvassing 
 brought Cougham down to Bevisham earlier than
 
 282 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 usual in the days when lie and Seymour Austin 
 divided the borough, and he inclined to administer 
 correction to the radically-disposed youngster. 
 **Yes, I have gone over all that/* he said, in 
 speech sometimes, in manner perpetually, upon the 
 intrusion of an idea by his junior. Cougham also, 
 Cougham had passed through his Eadical phase, 
 as one does on the road to wisdom. So the frog 
 telleth tadpoles: he too has wriggled most pre- 
 posterous of tails ; and he has shoved a circular flat 
 head into corners unadapted to its shape ; and that 
 the undeveloped one should dutifully listen to 
 experience and accept guidance, is devoutly to be 
 hoped. Alas ! Beauchamp would not be taught 
 that though they were yoked they stood at the 
 opposite ends of the process of evolution. 
 
 The oddly coupled pair deplored, among their 
 respective friends, the disastrous Siamese twinship 
 created by a haphazard improvident Liberal camp. 
 Look at us ! they said : — Beauchamp is a young 
 demagogue ; Cougham is chrysalis Tory. Such 
 Liberals are the ruin of Liberalism; but of such 
 must it be composed when there is no new cry to 
 loosen floods. It was too late to think of an opera- 
 tion to divide them. They held the heart of the 
 cause between them, were bound fast together, and
 
 LORD PALMET. 283 
 
 had to go on. Beauchamp, with a furious tug of 
 Radicalism, spoken or performed, pulled Cougham 
 on his beam-ends. Cougham, to right himself, 
 defined his Liberalism sharply from the politics of 
 the pit, pointed to France and her Revolutions, 
 washed his hands of excesses, and entirely overset 
 Beauchamp. Seeing that he stood in the Liberal 
 interest, the junior could not abandon the Liberal 
 flag ; so he seized it and bore it ahead of the time, 
 there where Radicals trip their phantom dances 
 like shadows on a fog, and waved it as the very flag 
 of our perfectible race. So great was the impetus 
 that Cougham had no choice but to step out with 
 him briskly — voluntarily as a man propelled by a 
 hand on his coat-collar. A word saved him : the 
 word practical. " Are we practical ? " he in- 
 quired, and shivered Beauchamp's galloping frame 
 with a violent application of the stop abrupt ; for 
 that question, '' Are we practical ? '^ penetrates the 
 bosom of an English audience, and will surely 
 elicit a response if not plaudits. Practical or not, 
 the good people affectingly wish to be thought 
 practical. It has been asked by them : If we're 
 not practical, what are we ? — Beauchamp, talk- 
 ing to Cougham apart, would argue that the 
 daring and the far-sighted course was often the
 
 284 BEATJCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 most practical. Cougham extended a deprecating 
 hand: "Yes, I have gone over all that." Occa- 
 sionally he was maddening. 
 
 The melancholy position of the senior and 
 junior Liberals was known abroad and matter of 
 derision. 
 
 It happened that the gay and good-humoured 
 young Lord Palmet, heir to the earldom of Elsea, 
 walking up the High Street of Bevisham, met 
 Beauchamp on Tuesday morning as he sallied out 
 of his hotel to canvass. Lord Palmet was one of 
 the numerous half-friends of Cecil Baskelett, and 
 it may be a revelation of his character to you, 
 that he owned to liking Beauchamp because of 
 his having always been a favourite with the women. 
 He began chattering, with Beauchamp's hand in 
 his : " I've hit on you, have I ? My dear fellow. 
 Miss Halkett was talking of you last night. I 
 slept at Mount Laurels ; went on purpose to have 
 a peep. I'm bound for Itchincope. They've some 
 grand procession in view there; Lespel wrote for 
 my team; I suspect he's for starting some new 
 October races. He talks of half-a-dozen drags. 
 He must have lots of women there. I sayy what 
 a splendid creature Cissy Halkett has shot up ! 
 She topped the season this year, and will next.
 
 LORD PALMET. 285 
 
 You're for the darkies, Beauchamp. So am I, 
 when I don't see a blonde ; just as a fellow admires 
 a girl when there's no married woman or widow 
 in sight. And, I say, it can't be true you've gone 
 in for that crazy Radicalism ? There's nothing 
 to be gained by it, you know ; the women hate it ! 
 A married blonde of five-and-twenty's the Yenus 
 of them all. Mind you, I don't forget that Mrs. 
 Wardour-Devereux is a thorough-paced brunette ; 
 but, upon my honour, I'd bet on Cissy Halkett at 
 forty. ' A dark eye in woman,' if you like, but 
 blue and auburn drive it into a corner." 
 
 Lord Palmet concluded by asking Beauchamp 
 what he was doing and whither going. 
 
 Beauchamp proposed to him maliciously, as one 
 of our hereditary legislators, to come and see some- 
 thing of canvassing. Lord Palmet had no objection. 
 " Capital opportunity for a review of their women," 
 he remarked. " I map the places for pretty 
 women in England ; some parts of Norfolk, and a 
 spot or two in Cumberland and AYales, and the 
 island over there, I know thoroughly. Those 
 Jutes have turned out some splendid fair women. 
 Devonshire's worth a tour. My man Davis is in 
 charge of my team, and he drives to Itchincope 
 from Washwater station. I'm independent; I'll
 
 286 BEAUCHAMP'S CAEEER. 
 
 have an hour with you. Do you think much of 
 the women here ? " 
 
 Beauchamp had not noticed them. 
 
 Pahnet observed that he should not have noticed 
 anything else. 
 
 " But you are qualifying for the Upper House/* 
 Beauchamp said in the tone of an encomium. 
 
 Palmet accepted the statement. " Though I 
 shall never care to figure before peeresses/' he said. 
 " I can't tell you why. There's a heavy sprinkling 
 of the old bird among them. It isn't that. There's 
 too much plumage; I think it must be that. A 
 cloud of millinery shoots me off a mile from a 
 woman. In my opinion, witches are the only ones 
 for wearing jewels without chilling the feminine 
 atmosphere about them. Fellows think differently." 
 Lord Palmet waved a hand expressive of purely 
 amiable tolerance, for this question upon the most 
 important topic of human affairs was deep, and no 
 judgment should be hasty in settling it. "I'm 
 peculiar," he resumed. " A rose and a string of 
 pearls : a woman who goes beyond that's in danger 
 of petrifying herself and her fellow man. Two 
 women in Paris, last winter, set us on fire with 
 pale thin gold ornaments — neck, wrists, ears, 
 ruche, skirts, all in a flutter, and so were you.
 
 LORD PALMET. 287 
 
 But you felt witchcraft. ' The magical Orient/ 
 Yivian Ducie called the blonde, and the dark 
 beauty, * Young Endor.' " 
 
 " Her name ?" said Beauchamp. 
 
 " A marquise ; I forget her name. The other 
 was Countess Bastaglione ; you must haye heard 
 of her ; a towering witch, an empress, Helen of 
 Troy ; though Ducie would have it the brunette 
 was Queen of Paris. For French taste, if you 
 Kke." 
 
 Countess Rastaglione was a lady enamelled on 
 the scroll of Fame. " Did you see them together?" 
 said Beauchamp. " They weren't together ?" 
 
 Palmet looked at him and laughed. '' You're 
 yourseK again, are you ? Go to Paris in January, 
 and cut out the Frenchmen." 
 
 " Answer me, Palmet : they weren't in couples ?" 
 
 " I fancy not. It was luck to meet them, so they 
 couldn't have been." 
 
 " Did you dance with either of them ?" 
 
 Unable to state accurately that he had, Palmet 
 cried, " Oh ! for dancing, the Frenchwoman beat 
 the Italian." 
 
 '' Did you see her often — more than once ?" 
 
 " My dear fellow, I went everywhere to see her : 
 balls, theatres, promenades, rides, churches."
 
 288 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 '* And you say she dressed up to the Italian, 
 to challenge her, rival her ? " 
 
 " Only one night ; simple accident. Everybody 
 noticed it, for they stood for Night and Day, — ^both 
 hung with gold ; the brunette Etruscan, and the 
 blonde Asiatic ; and every Frenchman present was 
 epigramising up and down the rooms like mad." 
 
 " Her husband's Legitimist ; he wouldn't be at 
 the Tuileries?" Beauchamp spoke half to himself 
 
 "What, then, what?" Palmet stared and 
 chuckled. ** Her husband must have taken the 
 Tuileries' bait, if we mean the same woman. My 
 dear old Beauchamp, have I seen her, then ? She's 
 a darling ! The Eastaglione was nothing to her. 
 When you do light on a grand smoky pearl, the 
 milky ones may go and decorate plaster. That's 
 what I say of the loveliest brunettes. It must be 
 the same : there can't be a couple of dark beauties 
 in Paris without a noise about them. Marquise 
 ? I shall recollect her name presently." 
 
 " Here's one of the houses I stop at," said Beau- 
 champ, " and drop that subject." 
 
 A scared servant- girl brought out her wizened 
 mistress to confront the candidate, and to this 
 representative of the sex he addressed his arts of 
 persuasion, requesting her to repeat his words to her
 
 LORD PALMET. 289 
 
 husband. The contrast between Beauchamp palpably 
 canvassing and the Beauchamp who was the lover 
 of the Marquise of the forgotten name, struck too 
 powerfully on Palmet for his gravity : he retreated. 
 
 Beauchamp found him sauntering on the pave- 
 ment, and would have dismissed him but for an 
 agreeable diversion that occurred at that moment. 
 A suavely smiling unctuous old gentleman advanced 
 towards them, bowing, and presuming thus far, 
 he said, under the supposition that he was accost- 
 ing the junior Liberal candidate for the borough. 
 He announced his name and his principles : 
 Tomlinson, progressive Liberal. 
 
 " A true distinction from some Liberals I know," 
 said Beauchamp. 
 
 Mr. Tomlinson hoped so. Never, he said, did 
 he leave it to the man of his choice at an election 
 to knock at his door for the vote. 
 
 Beauchamp looked as if he had swallowed a 
 cordial. Yotes falling into his lap are heavenly 
 gifts to the candidate sick of the knocker and the 
 bell. Mr. Tomlinson eulogised the manly candour 
 of the junior Liberal candidate's address, in which 
 he professed to see ideas that distinguished it from 
 the address of the sound but otherwise con- 
 ventional Liberal, Mr. Cougham. He muttered of 
 
 VOL. I. u
 
 290 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 plumping for Beaucliamp. '* Don*t plump,'* Beau- 
 champ said ; and a candidate, if he would be an 
 honourable twin, must say it. Cougham had 
 cautioned him against the heresy of plumping. 
 
 They discoursed of the poor and their beverages, 
 of pothouses, of the anti-liquorites, and of the 
 duties of parsons, and the value of a robust and 
 right-minded body of the poor to the country. 
 Palmet found himself following them into a 
 tolerably spacious house that he took to be the 
 old gentleman's, until some of the apparatus of an 
 institute for literary and scientific instruction 
 revealed itself to him, and he heard Mr. Tomlinson 
 exalt the memory of one Wingham for the blessing 
 bequeathed by him to the town of Bevisham. 
 " For,'* said Mr. Tomlinson, " it is open to both 
 sexes, to all respectable classes, from ten in the 
 morning up to ten at night. Such a place affords 
 us, I would venture to say, the advantages without 
 the seductions of a club. I rank it next — at a 
 far remove, but next — the chui'ch." 
 
 Lord Palmet brought his eyes down from the 
 busts of certain worthies ranged along the top of 
 the book-shelves to the cushioned chairs, and 
 murmured, " Capital place for an appointment with 
 a woman."
 
 LORD PALMET. 291 
 
 Mr. Tomlinson gazed up at him mildly, with a 
 fallen countenance. He turned sadly agape in 
 silence to the busts, the books, and the range of 
 scientific instruments, and directed a gaze under 
 his eyebrows at Beauchamp. *' Does your friend 
 canvass with you ?'' he inquired. 
 
 " I want him to taste it," Beauchamp replied, 
 and immediately introduced the afiable young lord 
 — a proceeding marked by some of the dexterity 
 he had once been famous for, as was shown by a 
 subsequent observation of Mr. Tomlinson's : 
 
 " Yes," he said, on the question of classes, " yes, 
 I fear we have classes in this country whose habitual 
 levity sharp experience will have to correct. I very 
 much fear it." 
 
 " But if you have classes that are not to face 
 realities — classes that look on them from the box- 
 seats of a theatre," said Beauchamp, '* how can you 
 expect perfect seriousness, or any good service 
 whatever ? " 
 
 " Gently, sir, gently. No ; we can, I feel con- 
 fident, expand within the limits of our most 
 excellent and approved Constitution. I could wish 
 that socially .... that is all." 
 
 *' Socially and politically mean one thing in the 
 end," said Beauchamp. " If you have a nation
 
 292 BEATJCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 politically corrupt, you won't have a good state of 
 morals in it, and the laws that keep society together 
 bear upon the politics of a country." 
 
 "True; yes," Mr. Tomlinson hesitated assent. 
 He dissociated Beauchamp from Lord Palmet, but 
 felt keenly that the latter's presence desecrated 
 Wingham's Institute, and he informed the candi- 
 date that he thought he would no longer detain 
 him from his labours. 
 
 " Just the sort of place wanted in every provincial 
 town," Palmet remarked by way of a parting 
 compliment. 
 
 Mr. Tomlinson bowed a civil acknowledgment 
 of his having again spoken. 
 
 No further mention was made of the miraculous 
 vote which had risen responsive to the candidate's 
 address of its own inspired motion ; so Beauchamp 
 said, '*I beg you to bear in mind that I request 
 you not to plump." 
 
 *'You maybe right. Captain Beauchamp. Good 
 day, sir." 
 
 Palmet strode after Beauchamp into the street. 
 
 " Why did you set me bowing to that old boy ? " 
 he asked. 
 
 '*Why did you talk about women?" was the 
 rejoinder.
 
 LORD PALMET. 293 
 
 "Oh, aha?'' Palmet sung to himself. " You'rr 
 a Romfrey, Beauchamp. A blow for a blow ! But 
 I only said what would strike every fellow first 
 off. It is the place; the very place. Pastry- 
 cooks' shops won't stand comparison with it. Don't 
 tell me you're the man not to see how much a 
 woman prefers to be under the vring of science 
 and literature, in a good- sized, well- warmed room, 
 with a book, instead of making believe, with a red 
 face, over a tart." 
 
 He received a smart lecture from Beauchamp, 
 and began to think he had enough of canvassing. 
 But he was not suffered to escape. For his 
 instruction, for his positive and extreme good, 
 Beauchamp determined that the heir to an earldom 
 should have a day's lesson. We will hope there 
 was no intention to punish him for having frozen 
 the genial current of Mr. Tomlinson's vote and 
 interest ; and it may be that he clung to one who 
 had, as he imagined, seen Eenee. Accompanied 
 by a Mr. Oggler, a tradesman of the town, on the 
 Liberal committee, dressed in a pea-jacket and 
 proudly nautical, they applied for the vote, and 
 found it oftener than beauty. Palmet contrasted 
 his repeated disappoiutments with the scoring of 
 two, three, four and more in the candidate's list,
 
 294 
 
 and informed him that he would certainly get the 
 election. " I tbink you're sure of it," he said. 
 " There's not a pretty woman to be seen ; not 
 one." 
 
 One came up to them, the sight of whom 
 counselled Lord Palmet to reconsider his verdict. 
 She was addressed by Beauchamp as Miss Denham, 
 and soon passed on. 
 
 Palmet was guilty of staring at her, and of 
 lingering behind the others for a last look at her. 
 
 They were on the steps of a voter's house, 
 calmly enduring a rebuff from him in person, 
 when Palmet returned to them, exclaiming 
 effusively, "What luck you have, Beauchamp!" 
 He stopped till the applicants descended the steps, 
 with the voice of the voter ringing contempt as 
 well as refusal in their ears ; then continued : 
 **You introduced me neck and heels to that 
 undertakerly old Tomlinson, of Wingham's In- 
 stitute ; you might have given me a chance with 
 that Miss — Miss Denham, was it ? She has a 
 style ! " 
 
 "She has a head," said Beauchamp. 
 
 " A girl like that may have what she likes. I 
 don't care what she has — there's woman in her. 
 You might take her for a younger sister of Mrs.
 
 LORD PALMET. 295 
 
 Wardour-Devereux. Who's the uncle she speaks 
 of? She ought not to be allowed to walk out by 
 herseK." 
 
 " She can take care of herself," said Beauchamp. 
 
 Palmet denied it. '* No woman can. Upon 
 my honour, it's a shame that she should be out 
 alone. What are her people ? I'll run — from 
 you, you know — and see her safe home. There's 
 such an infernal lot of fellows about ; and a girl 
 simply bewitching, and unprotected ! I ought to 
 be after her." 
 
 Beauchamp held him firmly to the task of 
 canvassing. 
 
 "Then will you tell me where she lives?" 
 Palmet stipulated. He reproached Beauchamp for 
 a notorious Grand Turk exclusivene*ss and greedi- 
 ness in regard to women, as well as a disposition 
 to run hard races for them out of a spirit of pure 
 rivahy. 
 
 ''It's no use contradicting, it's universally 
 known of you," reiterated Palmet. " I could name 
 a dozen women, and dozens of fellows you de- 
 liberately set yourself to cut out, for the honour of 
 it. What's that story they tell of you in one of 
 the American cities or watering-places. North or 
 South ? You would dance at a ball a dozen times
 
 296 BEAUCHAMP'S CAEEEE. 
 
 with a girl engaged to a man — who drenched you 
 with a tumbler at the hotel bar, and off you all 
 marched to the sands and exchanged shots from 
 revolvers ; and both of you, they say, saw the 
 body of a drowned sailor in the water, in the moon- 
 light, heaving nearer and nearer, and you stretched 
 your man just as the body was flung up by a wave 
 between you. Picturesque, if you like ! " 
 
 " Dramatic, certainly. And I ran away with 
 the bride next morning ? " 
 
 ''No!'' roared Palmet ; "you didn't. There's 
 the cruelty of the whole affair." 
 
 Beauchamp laughed. " An old messmate of 
 mine. Lieutenant Jack Wilmore, can give you a 
 different version of the story. I never have 
 fought a duel, and never will. Here we are at the 
 shop of a tough voter, Mr. Oggler. So it says in 
 my note-book. Shall we put Lord Palmet to speak 
 to him first ? " 
 
 " If his lordship will put his heart into what he 
 says," Mr. Oggler bowed. "Are you for giving 
 the people recreation on a Sunday, my lord ? " 
 
 " Trap-bat and ball, cricket, dancing, military 
 bands, puppet-shows, theatres, merry-go-rounds, 
 bosky dells — anything to make them happy," said 
 Palmet.
 
 LORD PALMET. 297 
 
 " Oh, dear ! then I'm afraid we cannot ask you 
 speak to this Mr. Carpendike." Oggler shook his 
 head. 
 
 "Does the fellow want the people to be 
 miserable ? '' 
 
 " I'm afraid, my lord, he would rather see them 
 miserable." 
 
 They introduced themselves to Mr. Carpendike 
 in his shop. He was a flat-chested, sallow young 
 shoemaker, with a shelving forehead, who seeing 
 three gentlemen enter to him recognised at once 
 with a practised resignation that they had not come 
 to order shoe-leather, though he would fain have 
 shod them, being needy ; but it was not the design 
 of Providence that they should so come as he in 
 his blindness would have had them. Admitting 
 this he wished for nothing. 
 
 The battle with Carpendike lasted three-quarters 
 of an hour, during which he was chiefly and most 
 efiectively silent. Carpendike would not vote for 
 a man that proposed to open museums on the 
 Sabbath day. The striking simile of the thin end 
 of the wedge was recurred to by him for a damning 
 illustration. Captain Beauchamp might be honest 
 in putting his mind on most questions in his 
 address, when there was no demand upon him
 
 298 BE AUCH amp's CAREER. 
 
 to do it ; but honesty was no antidote to impiety. 
 Thus Carpendike. 
 
 As to Sunday museuming being an antidote to 
 the pothouse — no. For the people knew the fre- 
 quenting of the pothouse to be a vice; it was a 
 temptation of Satan that often in overcoming 
 them was the cause of their flying back to grace : 
 whereas museums and picture galleries were 
 insidious attractions cloaked by the name of 
 virtue, whereby they were allured to abandon 
 worship. 
 
 Beauchamp flew at this young monster of un- 
 reason : " But the people are not worshipping ; 
 they are idling and sotting, and if you carry your 
 despotism farther still, and shut them out of every 
 shop on Sundays, do you suppose you promote the 
 spirit of worship? If you don't revolt them you 
 unman them, and I warn you we can't afford to 
 destroy what manhood remains to us in England. 
 Look at the facts." 
 
 He flung the facts at Carpendike with the natural 
 exaggeration of them which eloquence produces, 
 rather, as a rule, to assure itself in passing of the 
 overwhelming justice of the cause it pleads than to 
 deceive the adversary. Brewers' beer and publicans* 
 beer, wife-beatings, the homes and the blood of
 
 LORD PALMET. 299 
 
 the people, were matters reviewed to the confusion 
 of Sabbatarians. 
 
 Carpendike listened with a bent head, upraised 
 eyes, and brows wrinkling far on to his poll: a 
 picture of a mind entrenched beyond the potenti- 
 alities of mortal assault. He signified that he 
 had. spoken. Indeed Beauchamp's reply was vain 
 to one whose argument was that he considered the 
 people nearer to holiness in the indulging of an evil 
 propensity than in satisfying a harmless curiosity 
 and getting a recreation. The Sabbath claimed 
 them ; if they were disobedient. Sin ultimately 
 might scourge them back to the fold, but never if 
 they were permitted to regard themselves as innocent 
 in their backsliding and rebelliousness. 
 
 Such language was quite new to Beauchamp. The 
 parsons he had spoken to were of one voice in 
 objecting to the pothouse. He appealed to Car- 
 pendike' s humanity. Carpendike smote him with a 
 text from Scripture. 
 
 " Devilish cold in this shop," muttered Palmet. 
 
 Two not flourishing little children of the ema- 
 ciated Puritan burst into the shop, followed by their 
 mother, carrying a child in her arms. She had a 
 sad look, upon traces of a past fairness, vaguely 
 like a snow landscape in the thaw. Palmet stooped
 
 300 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 to toss shillings with her young ones, that he might 
 avoid the woman's face. It cramped his heart. 
 
 "Don't you see, Mr. Carpendike," said fat Mr. 
 Oggler, " it's the happiness of the people we want ; 
 that's what Captain Beauchamp works for — their 
 happiness; that's the aim of life for all of us. Look 
 at me ! I'm as happy as the day. I pray every 
 night, and I go to church every Sunday, and I 
 never know what it is to be unhappy. The Lord 
 has blessed me with a good digestion, healthy, 
 pious children, and a prosperous shop that's a com- 
 petency — a modest one, but I make it satisfy me, 
 because I know it's the Lord's gift. Well, now, 
 and I hate Sabbath-breakers ; I would punish them ; 
 and I'm against the public-houses on a Sunday; 
 but aboard my little yacht, say on a Sunday morn- 
 ing in the Channel, I don't forget I owe it to the 
 Lord that he has been good enough to put me in 
 the way of keeping a yacht ; no ; I read prayers to 
 my crew, and a chapter in the Bible — Genesis, 
 Deuteronomy, Kings, Acts, Paul, just as it comes. 
 All's good that's there. Then we're free for the 
 day ! man, boy, and me ; we cook our victuals, and 
 we must look to the yacht, do you see. But we've 
 made our peace with the Almighty. We know 
 that. He don't mind the working of the vessel
 
 LORD PALMET. 301 
 
 80 long as we've remembered him. He put us in 
 that situation, exactly there, latitude and longitude, 
 do you see, and work the vessel we must. And 
 a glass of grog and a pipe after dinner, can't be 
 any offence. And I tell you, honestly and sin- 
 cerely, I'm sure my conscience is good, and I really 
 and truly don't know what it is not to know 
 happiness." 
 
 "Then you don't know God," said Carpendike, 
 like a voice from a cave. 
 
 ^' Or nature : or the state of the world," said 
 Beauchamp, singularly impressed to find himself 
 between two men, of whom — each perforce of his 
 tenuity and the evident leaning of his appetites — 
 one was for the barren black ^riew of existence, the 
 other for the fantastically bright. As to the men 
 personally, he chose Carpendike, for all his obstinacy 
 and sourness. Oggler's genial piety made him shrink 
 with nausea. 
 
 But Lord Palmet paid Mr. Oggler a memorable 
 compliment, by assuring him that he was altogether 
 of his way of thinking about happiness. 
 
 The frank young nobleman did not withhold a 
 reference to the two or three things essential to 
 his happiness ; otherwise Mr. Oggler might have 
 been pleased and flattered.
 
 302 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 Before quitting tlie shop, Beaucliamp warned 
 Carpendike tliat lie should come again. "Vote 
 or no vote, you're worth the trial. Texts as 
 many as you like. Ill make your faith active, if it's 
 alive at all. You speak of the Lord loving his 
 own ; you make out the Lord to be your own, 
 and use your religion like a drug. So it appears 
 to me. That Sunday tyranny of yours has to be 
 defended. Remember that ; for I for one shall 
 combat it and expose it. Good day." 
 
 Beauchamp continued, in the street : " Tyrannies 
 like this fellow's have made the English the dullest 
 and wretchedest people in Europe." 
 
 Palmet animadverted on Carpendike : *' The dog 
 looks like a deadly fungus that has poisoned the 
 woman." 
 
 '*I'd trust him with a post of danger, though," 
 said Beauchamp. 
 
 Before the candidate had opened his mouth to 
 the next elector he was beamed on. M'Gilliper, 
 baker, a floured brick face, leaned on folded 
 arms across his counter and said, in Scotch : 
 " My vote ? and he that asks me for my vote 
 is the man who, when he was a midshipman, 
 saved the life of a relative of mine from 
 death by drowning ! — my wife's first cousin, Johnny
 
 LORD PALMET. 303 
 
 Brownson — and held him up four to five minutes 
 in the water, and never left him till he was 
 out of danger ! There's my hand on it, I will, 
 and a score of householders in Bevisham the same." 
 He dictated precious names and addresses to Beau- 
 champ, and was curtly thanked for his pains. 
 
 Such treatment of a favourable voter seemed odd 
 to Palmet. 
 
 " Oh, a vote given for reasons of sentiment ! " 
 Beauchamp interjected. 
 
 Palmet reflected and said: *' Well, perhaps that's 
 how it is women don't care uncommonly for the 
 men who love them, though they like precious well 
 to be loved. Opposition does it." 
 
 '^You have discovered my likeness to women," 
 said Beauchamp, eyeing him critically, and then 
 thinking, with a sudden warmth, that he had seen 
 Renee : " Look here, Palmet, you're too late for 
 Itchincope, to-day ; come and eat fish and meat 
 with me at my hotel, and come to a meeting after- 
 wards. You can run by rail to Itchincope to 
 breakfast in the morning, and I may come with 
 you. You'll hear one or two men speak well to- 
 night." 
 
 " I suppose I shall have to be at this business 
 myself some day," sighed Palmet. "Any women
 
 304 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 on the platform ? Oh, but political women ! And 
 the Tories get the pick of the women. No, I don't 
 think I'll stay. Yes, I will ; I'll go through with 
 it. I like to be learning something. You wouldn't 
 think it of me, Beauchamp, but I envy fellows at 
 work." 
 
 " You might make a speech for me, Palmet." 
 
 "No man better, my dear fellow, if it were 
 proposing a toast to the poor devils and asking them 
 to drink it. But a dry speech, like leading them 
 over the desert without a well to cheer them — 
 no oasis, as we used to call a five-pound note and 
 a holiday — I haven't the heart for that. Is your 
 Miss Denham a Eadical ? " 
 
 Beauchamp asserted that he had not yet met 
 a woman at all inclining in the direction of 
 Radicalism. " I don't call furies Radicals. There 
 may be women who think as well as feel ; I don't 
 know them." 
 
 " Lots of them, Beauchamp. Take my word for 
 it. I do know women. They haven't a shift, nor 
 a trick, I don't know. They're as clear to me as 
 glass. I'll wager your Miss Denham goes to the 
 meetings. Now, doesn't she ? Of course she 
 does. And there couldn't be a gallanter way of 
 spending an evening, so I'll try it. Nothing to
 
 LORD PALMET. 305 
 
 repent of next morning ! That's to be said for 
 politics, Beauchamp, and I confess I'm rather jealous 
 of you. A thoroughly good-looking girl who takes 
 to a fellow for what he's doing in the world, must 
 have ideas of him precious different from the 
 adoration of six feet three and a fine seat in the 
 saddle. I see that. There's Baskelett in the Blues ; 
 and if I were he I should detest my cuirass and 
 helmet, for if he's half as successful as he boasts 
 — it's the uniform." 
 
 Two notorious Eadicals, Peter Molyneux and 
 Samuel Killick, were called on. The first saw 
 Beauchamp and refused him ; the second declined 
 to see him. He was amazed and staggered, but said 
 little. 
 
 Among the remainder of the electors of Bevisham, 
 roused that day to a sense of their independence by 
 the summons of the candidates, only one man made 
 himself conspicuous, by premising that he had two 
 important questions to ask, and he trusted Com- 
 mander Beauchamp to answer them unreservedly. 
 They were : first. What is a Frexch Marquees 't 
 and second : "Wlio was Eurydicey ? 
 
 Beauchamp referred him to the Tory camp, 
 whence the placard alluding to those ladies had 
 issued. 
 
 VOL. I. X
 
 306 
 
 "Both of them's ladies ! I guessed it," said the 
 elector. 
 
 " Did you guess that one of them is a mythologi- 
 cal lady ? " 
 
 ** I'm not far wrong in guessing tother's not 
 much better, I reckon. Now, sir, may I ask you, 
 is there any tale concerning your morals ? " 
 
 " No : you may not ask ; you take a liberty." 
 
 "Then I'll take the liberty to postpone talking 
 about my vote. Look here, Mr. Commander ; if 
 the upper classes want anj^thing of me and come to 
 me for it, I'll know what sort of an example they're 
 setting ; now that's me." 
 
 "You pay attention to a stupid Tory squib ? " 
 
 " Where there's smoke there's fire, sir." 
 
 Beauchamp glanced at his note-book for the 
 name of this man, who was a ragman and dust- 
 man. 
 
 " My private character has nothing whatever 
 to do with my politics," he said, and had barely 
 said it when he remembered having spoken some- 
 what difi*erently, upon the abstract consideration of 
 the case, to Mr. Tomlinson. " You're quite welcome 
 to examine my character for yourself, only I 
 don't consent to be catechised. Understand that." 
 
 " You quite understand that, Mr. Tripehallow,"
 
 LORD PAL MET. 3J7 
 
 said Oggler, bolder in taking up the strange name 
 than Beauchamp had been. 
 
 '' I understand that. But you understand, there's 
 never been a word against the morals of Mr. 
 Cougham. Here's the point : Do we mean to 
 be a moral country ? Very well, then so let our 
 representatives be, I say. And if I hear nothing 
 against your morals, Mr. Commander, I don't say 
 you shan't have my vote. I mean to deliberate. 
 You young nobs capering over our heads — I 
 nail you down to morals. Politics secondary. 
 Adew, as the dying spirit remarked to weeping 
 friends." 
 
 *' Au revoir — would have been kinder," said 
 Palmet. 
 
 Mr. Tripehallow smiled roguishly, to betoken 
 comprehension. 
 
 Beauchamp asked Mr. Oggler whether that 
 fellow was to be taken for a humourist or a five- 
 pound-note man. 
 
 " It maybe both, sir. I know he's called Morality 
 Joseph." 
 
 An all but acknowledged five-pound-note man 
 was the last they visited. He cut short the pre- 
 liminaries of the interview by saying that he was 
 a four-o'clock man ; i.e. the man who waited for
 
 t08 
 
 the final bids to him upon the closing hour of the 
 election day. 
 
 " Not one farthing ! " said Beauchamp, having 
 been warned beforehand of the signification of the 
 phrase by his canvassing lieutenant. 
 
 '' Then you're nowhere,'* the honest fellow replied 
 in the mystic tongue of prophecy. 
 
 Palmet and Beauchamp went to their fish and 
 meat ; smoked a cigarette or two afterwards, con- 
 jured away the smell of ^obacco from their persons 
 as well as they could, and betook themselves to 
 the assembly-room of the Liberal party, where 
 the young lord had an opportunity^ of beholding 
 Mr. Cougham, and of listening to him for an 
 hour and forty minutes. He heard Mr. Timothy 
 Turbot likewise. And Miss Denham was present. 
 Ijord Palmet applauded when she smiled. "When 
 she looked attentive he was dcej)ly studious. Her 
 expression of fatigue under the sonorous ring of 
 statistics poured out from Cougham was translated 
 by Palmet into yawns and sighs of a profoundly 
 fraternal sympathy. Her face quickened on the 
 rising of Beauchamp to speak. She kept eye on 
 him all the while, as Palmet, with the skill of 
 an adept in disguising his petty larceny of the 
 optics, did on her. Twice or thrice she looked
 
 LORD PALMET. 309 
 
 pained : Beauchamp was hesitating for the word. 
 Once she looked startled and shut her eves : a hiss 
 had sounded ; Beauchamp sprang on it as if 
 enlivened by hostility, and dominated the factious 
 note. Thereat she turned to a gentleman sitting 
 beside her; apparently they agreed that some 
 incident had occurred characteristic of Xevil Beau- 
 champ ; for whom, however, it was not a brilliant 
 evening. He was very well able to account for it, 
 and did so, after he had walked a few steps with 
 Miss Denham on her homeward way. 
 
 " You heard Cougham, Palmet ! He's my senior, 
 and I'm obliged to come second to him, and how 
 am I to have a chance when he has drenched the 
 audience for close upon a couple of hours !" 
 
 Palmet mimicked the manner of Cougham. 
 
 " They cr\^ for Turbot naturally ; they want a 
 relief," Beauchamp groaned. 
 
 Palmet gave an imitation of Timothy Turbot. 
 
 He was an admirable mimic, perfectly spon- 
 taneous, without stressing any points, and Beau- 
 champ was provoked to laugh his discontentment 
 with the evening out of recollection. 
 
 But a grave matter troubled Palmet's head. 
 
 "Who was that fellow who walked off with Miss 
 Denham?"
 
 310 EEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 " A married man," said Beaucliamp : " badly 
 married ; more's tlie pity ; he Las a wife in the 
 madhouse. His name is Lydiard." 
 
 " Not her brother ! Where's her uncle ? " 
 
 " She won't let him come to these meetings. It's 
 her idea ; well intended, but wrong, I think. She's 
 afraid that Dr. Shrapnel will alarm the moderate 
 Liberals and damage Radical me." 
 
 Palmet muttered between his teeth, " What queer 
 things they let their women do ! " He felt compelled 
 to say, " Odd for her to be walking home at night 
 with a fellow like that." 
 
 It chimed too consonantly with a feeling of 
 Beauchamp's, to repress which he replied, " Your 
 ideas about women are simply barbarous, Palmet. 
 Why shouldn't she ? Her uncle places his . con- 
 fidence in the man, and in her. Isn't that better — 
 ten times more likely to call out the sense of 
 honour and loyalty, than the distrust and the scandal 
 going on in your class ? " 
 
 ** Please to say yours too." 
 
 "I've no class. I say that the education for 
 women is to teach them to rely on themselves." 
 
 " Ah ! well, I don't object, if I'm the man." 
 
 " Because you and your set are absolutely un- 
 civilised in your views of women."
 
 LOED PALilET. 311 
 
 " Common sense, Beauchamp ! " 
 
 " Prey. You eye them as prey. And it comes 
 of an idle aristocracy. You have no faith in them, 
 and they repay you for your suspicion." 
 
 " All the same, Beauchamp, she ought not to be 
 allowed to go about at night with that fellow. 
 ' Rich and rare were the gems she wore : ^ but that 
 was in Erin's isle, and if we knew the whole history, 
 she'd better have stopped at home. She's mar- 
 vellously pretty, to my mind. She looks a high-bred 
 wench. Odd it is, Beauchamp, to see a lady's-maid 
 now and then catch the style of my lady. Xo, by 
 jingo ! I've known one or two — you couldn't tell 
 the difference ! Not till you were intimate. I 
 know one would walk a minuet with a duchess. Of 
 course — all the worse for her. If you see that 
 uncle of Miss Denham's — upon my honour, I should 
 advise him : I mean, counsel him not to trust her 
 with any fellow but you." 
 
 Beauchamp asked Lord Palmet how old he 
 was. 
 
 Palmet gave his age ; correcting the figures from 
 six-and- twenty to one year more. '' And never did 
 a stroke of work in my life," he said, speaking 
 genially out of an acute guess at the sentiments of 
 the man he walked with.
 
 312 BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER. 
 
 It seemed a farcical state of things. 
 
 There was a kind of contrition in Palmet*s voice, 
 and to put him at his ease, as well as to stamp 
 something in his own mind, Beauchamp said : " It's 
 common enough.'' 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 PaiNTED BY VniTDE AND CO., LIMITED, CITY BOAD, LONDON.