Beauchamps Career, v2
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George Meredith >> Beauchamps Career, v2
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But for an occasional drop and bump of the sailing gasbag upon catch-
words of enthusiasm, which are the rhetoric of the merely windy, and a
collapse 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,
comparable to the very ship Leviathan, spanning two Atlantic billows,
appertained to none but the renowned 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 discernment, or else a
lucky accident (for he came hurriedly 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 world 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 eyes 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 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 infusion of the fierier
spirit, a flavour of Radicalism. That is the thing to set an audience
bounding and quirking. Whereas if you commence by tilling 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
speaking. Upon no creature did he look with such contempt 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 composed
of 'the poor man,' with a stomach for the political distillery fit to
drain relishingly every private bogside or mountain-side tap in old
Ireland in its best days--the illicit, you understand.
Further, to quote Mr. Timothy's points of view, 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 accompaniment of a house on fire. Sir, we must adapt ourselves
to our times. Perhaps a spark or two does lurk about our house, but we
have vigilant watchmen 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 against 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 like another--they all have the earth-spots. They smell, too;
they smell of brimstone. Soaring is impossible among that faction; but
this they can do, they can furnish the Tory his opportunity to soar.
When hear you a thrilling Tory speech that carries the country with it,
save when the incendiary 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, delivering at the right season the Shakesperian
'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 of a back parlour, in the society of a
cherishing friend or two, and with a slice of lemon requiring to be
refloated in the glass.
But gifts of this description were of a minor order. Liberalism gave the
heading cry, devoid of which 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 dyked 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 the 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 reasoning orator,
and the inspired; with others of quality; and yet it had need of an ever-
ready spontaneous imperturbable speaker, whose bubbling generalizations
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
popular idea of the sublime. He was the artistic orator of Corn 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; I've 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 violinists
who can hold on the bow to finger an incredible number of notes, and may
be imaged as representing slow paternal Time, that rolls his capering
dot-headed generation of mortals over the wheel, hundreds to the minute.
'You'll excuse my not shaving, sir, to come down to your summons without
an extra touch to the neck-band.'
Beauchamp beheld a middle-sized round man, with loose lips and pendant
indigo jowl, whose eyes twinkled watery, like pebbles under the shore-
wash, and whose neck-band needed an extra touch from fingers other than
his own.
'I am sorry to have disturbed you so early,' he replied.
'Not a bit, Commander Beauchamp, not a bit, sir. Early or late, and ay
ready--with the Napiers; I'll 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.'
'No, and that's true,' said Timothy.
His appreciative and sympathetic agreement with these sharp strictures on
the article brought Beauchamp 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. I 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 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 background 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 grindstone.'
'Very well,' said Beauchamp. 'Now understand; 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?'
'No more--than the bite of a mad dog,' Timothy replied, before he had
considered upon the monstrous nature of the proposal.
Beauchamp 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 creating a demand like a rageing thirst in a
shipwreck, in Bligh's boat, in the tropics. I'm afraid, Com--Captain
Beauchamp, sir, there's no stopping the Press while the people have an
appetite for it--and a Company's at the back of it.'
'Pooh, don't talk to me in that way; all I complain of is the figure you
have made of me,' said Beauchamp, fetching him smartly out of his
nonsense; 'and all I ask of you is not to be at it again. Who 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 suggested his possession of ideas, 'an article like that
is the best cloak you can put on a candidate with 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 persuade our constituents that you, Commander Beauchamp of the
Royal Navy, and the great family of the Earls of Romfrey, one of the
heroes of the war, and the recipient of a Royal 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 distinctions, 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 you for the best of
intentions. But let me 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 candidate'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 principles, and by anything but
honesty in stating them, they may go,' said Beauchamp.
'I repeat, my dear sir, I repeat, the infant candidate delights in his
honesty, like the babe in its nakedness, the beautiful virgin in her
innocence. So he does; but he discovers it's time for him to wear
clothes in a contested election. And what's that but to preserve the
outlines pretty correctly, whilst he doesn't shock and horrify the
optics? A dash of conventionalism makes the whole civilized 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 apologize 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, Commander 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. Ditto
the sherry. One can drink them, one can drink them.'
'At a quarter to eight this evening, then,' said Nevil.
'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 employment 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 he 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 Election, 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 I can get one or
two more. Why aren't you a Tory? No Whigs nor Liberals look after us
half so well as the 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 Niger; 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
Mediterranean. 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 you unearthed on the Bosphorus, but she had something 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 subjects. '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 particularly 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 Cecilia 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 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!'
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 Esperanza, 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 for
her in the ship's gig.
Wilmore sang 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 tell
you what she likes: she likes yachting, she likes Italy, she likes
painting, likes things old English, awfully fond of 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.
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. No address was on your card. Where are
you staying in the neighbourhood? At Mr. Lespel's?'
'I'm staying at a Bevisham hotel,' said Beauchamp.
'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 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. 'I 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
fiends you under cover. We can have our fruits too, you see.' One of
the yachtsmen was handing her a basket of hot-house grapes, reclining
beside crisp home-made loaflets. 'This is my luncheon. Will you share
it, Nevil?'
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