Beauchamps Career, v2
G >>
George Meredith >> Beauchamps Career, v2
Pages:
1 | 2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7
'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 judgement 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 postscript:
'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.
'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,
Rosamund met the military governor of a neighbouring fortress, General
Sherwin, 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 recourse of an application at
the newspaper-office of his party. The General was leisurely walking to
a place of appointment 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. Shrapnel'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 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
Rosamund'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 aimlessness of a woman's
curiosity.
The young ladies were seen approaching, and Rosamund had to ask herself
whether the first sight of a person like Miss Denham would be of a kind
to exercise a lively influence over the political and other sentiments of
a dreamy 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 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 professedly attractive persons, enchantresses and
the rest. Rosamund watchfully gathered all the superficial 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. Vulgar
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
mentioned, a flush swept over Miss Denham's face. The candour of it was
unchanged as she gazed at Rosamund, with a look that asked, 'Do you know
him?'
Rosamund 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 political 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 fashionable 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 comprehended. 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 introduced, 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 Beauchamp,' 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 you 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 excuseable 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 counter-question was a fair retort enfolding a gentler irony.
Rosamund felt that she had to do with wits as well as with vivid feminine
intuitions 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 affrmatives 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 Rosamund, 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?'
'He is studying whatever the 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 Captain 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 acquaintances?'
'No, madam, they are not. They had never met before Captain Beauchamp
landed, the other day.'
'I am surprised, I confess. I cannot understand the nature of an
influence that induces him to 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 you, madam, how it occurred, as far as circumstances explain
it. Dr. Shrapnel is accustomed 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 Northeden 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 politics on those occasions?'
'Adouci a leur intention. 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 forming a political judgement.'
'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.'
Rosamund's meditation was exclamatory: What can be the age of this
pretentious girl?
An afterthought turned her more conciliatorily toward the person, but
less to 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. He read it and gave it to me, and said, "You know that name." It
was a name we had often talked about during the war.
He went to Captain Beauchamp and shook his hand. He does not pay many
compliments, and he does not like to receive them, but it was impossible
for him 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 all. Captain Beauchamp has remained in Bevisham 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. Shrapnel's!
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, possibly.
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 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 Beauchamp 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, accompanied by a gentleman who could be no other than Nevil,
Rosamund presumed to think; but drawing nearer she found she was
mistaken.
'That is not Captain Beauchamp's figure,' she said.
'No, it is not he,' said Miss Denham.
Rosamund saw that her companion was pale. She warmed to her at once; by
no means on account of the pallor in itself.
'I have walked too fast for you, I fear.'
'Oh no; I am accused of being a fast walker.'
Rosamund was unwilling to pass through the demagogue's gate. On second
thoughts, she reflected that she could hardly stipulate to have news of
Nevil tossed to her over 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
bullmouthedly as demagogues are 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 apparently 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 forelock. 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 preserved 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 electrical to the light they
shot.
Dr. Shrapnel's account of Nevil stated him to have gone to call on
Colonel Halkett, a new resident at Mount Laurels, on the Otley river. He
offered the welcome of his house to the lady who was Captain Beauchamp's
friend, saying, with extraordinary fatuity (so it sounded in Rosamund's
ears), that Captain Beauchamp would certainly not let an evening pass
without coming to him. Rosamund 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. We must knock,
whether the door opens or not. Like,' the doctor laughed to himself up
aloft, 'like a watchman in the night to say that he smells smoke on the
premises.'
'Surely we may expect Captain Beauchamp to consult his family about so
serious a step as this he 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 Rosamund'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!'
'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 has a
claim to bar his judgement 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 off.
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
everlastingly the shopkeeper's! Purse, pence, ease, increase of worldly
goods, personal importance--the pound, the English pound! Dare do that,
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,
aptitudes, fill up their vacuum. I repeat, ma'am, why should young
Captain Beauchamp 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 thinks 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 may go aboard.
But now we must have him ashore. Too few of such as he!'
'It is matter of opinion,' said Rosamund, very 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 confute 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 Rosamund's disgust by causing her to suppose that Nevil had
been similarly silenced, in his case vanquished, 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 found her voice, and struck
down the demagogue's audacious sophisms: not that they affected her in
the slightest degree for her own sake.
Shrapnel might think what he 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 affirmatizing
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
overmatch, 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 becomingly.
Tea had been made in the garden, and she had politely sipped half a cup,
which involved 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.'
Rosamund'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 Beauchamp?'
'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 probability that this Mr. Lydiard of the pen had taken a long start
of Nevil in the heart of Miss Denham: and struggling to be candid, to
ensure some meditative 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
deceptive: never pretend to know a girl by her face, was one of
Rosamund's maxims.
She was next informed of Dr. Shrapnel's partiality for music toward the
hour of sunset. Miss Denham mentioned it, and the doctor, presently
sauntering up, invited Rosamund 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! 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 civilization--a taming and a diminishing of individuals for an
insipid harmony!'
'You surely do not object to the organ?--I fear I cannot wait, though,'
said Rosamund.
Miss Denham entreated her. 'Oh! do, madam. Not to hear me--I am not so
perfect a player that I should wish it--but to see him. Captain
Beauchamp 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 imitation of the various instruments; they
sing out as your two hands command them--trumpet, flute, dulcimer,
hautboy, drum, storm, earthquake, ethereal 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 unrivalled concord comes of
it. That is our republic each one to his work; all in union! There's
the motto for us! Then you have music, harmony, the highest, fullest,
finest! Educate your men to form a band, you shame dexterous trickery
and imitation sounds. Then for the difference of real instruments from
clever shams! Oh, ay, one will set your organ going; that is, one in
front, with his couple of panting air-pumpers behind--his ministers!'
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,--yonder!'
Pages:
1 | 2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7