Beauchamps Career, v3

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Now sounded Captain Baskelett's trumpet.

Angry though he was, Beauchamp laughed. 'Isn't it exactly like the baron
to spring a mine of this kind?'

There was decidedly humour in the plot, and it was a lusty quarterstaff
blow into the bargain. Beauchamp's head rang with it. He could not
conceal the stunning effect it had on him. Gratitude and tenderness
toward Cecilia for saving him, at the cost of a partial breach of faith
that he quite understood, from the scandal of the public entry into
Bevisham on the Tory coach-box, alternated with his interjections
regarding his uncle Everard.

At eleven, Cecilia sat in her pony-carriage giving final directions to
Mrs. Devereux where to look out for the Esperanza and the schooner's
boat. 'Then I drive down alone,' Mrs. Devereux said.

The gentlemen were all off, and every available maid with them on the
coach-boxes, a brilliant sight that had been missed by Nevil and Cecilia.

'Why, here's Lydiard!' said Nevil, supposing that Lydiard must be
approaching him with tidings of the second Tory candidate. But Lydiard
knew nothing of it. He was the bearer of a letter on foreign paper--
marked urgent, in Rosamund's hand--and similarly worded in the well-known
hand which had inscribed the original address of the letter to Steynham.

Beauchamp opened it and read:

Chateau Tourdestelle
'(Eure).

'Come. I give you three days--no more.

'RENEE.'

The brevity was horrible. Did it spring from childish imperiousness or
tragic peril?

Beauchamp could imagine it to be this or that. In moments of excited
speculation we do not dwell on the possibility that there may be a
mixture of motives.

'I fear I must cross over to France this evening,' he said to Cecilia.

She replied, 'It is likely to be stormy to-night. The steamboat may not
run.'

'If there's a doubt of it, I shall find a French lugger. You are tired,
from not sleeping last night.'

'No,' she answered, and nodded to Mrs. Devereux, beside whom Mr. Lydiard
stood: 'You will not drive down alone, you see.'

For a young lady threatened with a tempest in her heart, as disturbing to
her as the one gathering in the West for ships at sea, Miss Halkett bore
herself well.

CHAPTER XXII

THE DRIVE INTO BEVISHAM

Beauchamp was requested by Cecilia to hold the reins. His fair companion
in the pony-carriage preferred to lean back musing, and he had leisure to
think over the blow dealt him by his uncle Everard with so sure an aim so
ringingly on the head. And in the first place he made no attempt to
disdain it because it was nothing but artful and heavy-handed, after the
mediaeval pattern. Of old he himself had delighted in artfulness as well
as boldness and the unmistakeable hit. Highly to prize generalship was
in his blood, though latterly the very forces propelling him to his
political warfare had forbidden the use of it to him. He saw the patient
veteran laying his gun for a long shot--to give as good as he had
received; and in realizing Everard Romfrey's perfectly placid bearing
under provocation, such as he certainly would have maintained while
preparing his reply to it, the raw fighting humour of the plot touched
the sense of justice in Beauchamp enough to make him own that he had been
the first to offend.

He could reflect also on the likelihood that other offended men of his
uncle's age and position would have sulked or stormed, threatening the
Parthian shot of the vindictive testator. If there was godlessness in
turning to politics for a weapon to strike a domestic blow, manfulness in
some degree signalized it. Beauchamp could fancy his uncle crying out,
Who set the example? and he was not at that instant inclined to dwell on
the occult virtues of the example he had set. To be honest, this
elevation of a political puppet like Cecil Baskelett, and the starting
him, out of the same family which Turbot, the journalist, had magnified,
into Bevisham with such pomp and flourish in opposition to the serious
young champion of popular rights and the Puritan style, was ludicrously
effective. Conscienceless of course. But that was the way of the Old
School.

Beauchamp broke the silence by thanking Cecilia once more for saving him
from the absurd exhibition of the Radical candidate on the Tory coach-
box, and laughing at the grimmish slyness of his uncle Everard's
conspiracy a something in it that was half-smile half-sneer; not exactly
malignant, and by no means innocent; something made up of the simplicity
of a lighted match, and its proximity to powder, yet neither deadly, in
spite of a wicked twinkle, nor at all pretending to be harmless: in
short, a specimen of old English practical humour.

He laboured to express these or corresponding views of it, with tolerably
natural laughter, and Cecilia rallied her spirits at his pleasant manner
of taking his blow.

'I shall compliment the baron when I meet him tonight,' he said. 'What
can we compare him to?'

She suggested the Commander of the Faithful, the Lord Haroun, who
likewise had a turn for buffooneries to serve a purpose, and could direct
them loftily and sovereignty.

'No: Everard Romfrey's a Northerner from the feet up,' said Beauchamp.

Cecilia compliantly offered him a sketch of the Scandinavian Troll: much
nearer the mark, he thought, and exclaimed: 'Baron Troll! I'm afraid,
Cecilia, you have robbed him of the best part of his fun. And you will
owe it entirely to him if you should be represented in Parliament by my
cousin Basketett.'

'Promise me, Nevit, that you will, when you meet Captain Baskelett, not
forget I did you some service, and that I wish, I shall be so glad if you
do not resent certain things . . . .Very objectionable, we all think.'

He released her from the embarrassing petition: 'Oh! now I know my man,
you may be sure I won't waste a word on him. The fact is, he would not
understand a word, and would require more--and that I don't do. When I
fancied Mr. Austin was the responsible person, I meant to speak to him.'

Cecilia smiled gratefully.

The sweetness of a love-speech would not have been sweeter to her than
this proof of civilized chivalry in Nevil.

They came to the fir-heights overlooking Bevisham. Here the breezy
beginning of a South-western autumnal gale tossed the ponies' manes and
made threads of Cecilia's shorter locks of beautiful auburn by the
temples and the neck, blustering the curls that streamed in a thick
involution from the silken band gathering them off her uncovered clear-
swept ears.

Beauchamp took an impression of her side face. It seemed to offer him
everything the world could offer of cultivated purity, intelligent beauty
and attractiveness; and 'Wilt thou?' said the winged minute. Peace, a
good repute in the mouths of men, home, and a trustworthy woman for mate,
an ideal English lady, the rarest growth of our country, and friends and
fair esteem, were offered. Last night he had waltzed with her, and the
manner of this tall graceful girl in submitting to the union of the
measure and reserving her individual distinction, had exquisitely
flattered his taste, giving him an auspicious image of her in
partnership, through the uses of life.

He looked ahead at the low dead-blue cloud swinging from across channel.
What could be the riddle of Renee's letter! It chained him completely.

'At all events, I shall not be away longer than three days,' he said;
paused, eyed Cecilia's profile, and added, 'Do we differ so much?'

'It may not be so much as we think,' said she.

'But if we do!'

'Then, Nevil, there is a difference between us.'

'But if we keep our lips closed?'

'We should have to shut our eyes as well!'

A lovely melting image of her stole over him; all the warmer for her
unwittingness in producing it: and it awakened a tenderness toward the
simple speaker.

Cecilia's delicate breeding saved her from running on figuratively. She
continued: 'Intellectual differences do not cause wounds, except when
very unintellectual sentiments are behind them:--my conceit, or your
impatience, Nevil? "Noi veggiam come quei, che ha mala luce." . . .
I can confess my sight to be imperfect: but will you ever do so?'

Her musical voice in Italian charmed his hearing.

'What poet was that you quoted?'

'The wisest: Dante.'

'Dr. Shrapnel's favourite! I must try to read him.'

'He reads Dante?' Cecilia threw a stress on the august name; and it was
manifest that she cared not for the answer.

Contemptuous exclusiveness could not go farther.

'He is a man of cultivation,' Beauchamp said cursorily, trying to avoid
dissension, but in vain. 'I wish I were half as well instructed, and the
world half as charitable as he!--You ask me if I shall admit my sight to
be imperfect. Yes; when you prove to me that priests and landlords are
willing to do their duty by the people in preference to their churches
and their property: but will you ever shake off prejudice?'

Here was opposition sounding again. Cecilia mentally reproached Dr.
Shrapnel for it.

'Indeed, Nevil, really, must not--may I not ask you this?--must not every
one feel the evil spell of some associations? And Dante and Dr.
Shrapnel!'

'You don't know him, Cecilia.'

'I saw him yesterday.'

'You thought him too tall?'

'I thought of his character.'

'How angry I should be with you if you were not so beautiful!'

'I am immensely indebted to my unconscious advocate.'

'You are clad in steel; you flash back; you won't answer me out of the
heart. I 'm convinced it is pure wilfulness that makes you oppose me.'

'I fancy you must be convinced because you cannot imagine women to have
any share of public spirit, Nevil.'

A grain of truth in that remark set Nevil reflecting.

'I want them to have it,' he remarked, and glanced at a Tory placard,
probably the puppet's fresh-printed address to the electors, on one of
the wayside fir-trees. 'Bevisham looks well from here. We might make a
North-western Venice of it, if we liked.'

'Papa told you it would be money sunk in mud.'

'Did I mention it to him?--Thoroughly Conservative!--So he would leave
the mud as it is. They insist on our not venturing anything--those
Tories! exactly as though we had gained the best of human conditions,
instead of counting crops of rogues, malefactors, egoists, noxious and
lumbersome creatures that deaden the country. Your town down there is
one of the ugliest and dirtiest in the kingdom: it might be the fairest.'

'I have often thought that of Bevisham, Nevil.'

He drew a visionary sketch of quays, embankments, bridged islands, public
buildings, magical emanations of patriotic architecture, with a practical
air, an absence of that enthusiasm which struck her with suspicion when
it was not applied to landscape or the Arts; and she accepted it, and
warmed, and even allowed herself to appear hesitating when he returned to
the similarity of the state of mud-begirt Bevisham and our great sluggish
England.

Was he not perhaps to be pitied in his bondage to the Frenchwoman, who
could have no ideas in common with him?

The rare circumstance that she and Nevil Beauchamp had found a subject of
agreement, partially overcame the sentiment Cecilia entertained for the
foreign lady; and having now one idea in common with him, she conceived
the possibility that there might be more. There must be many, for he
loved England, and she no less. She clung, however, to the topic of
Bevisham, preferring to dream of the many more, rather than run risks.
Undoubtedly the town was of an ignoble aspect; and it was declining in
prosperity; and it was consequently over-populated. And undoubtedly (so
she was induced to coincide for the moment) a Government, acting to any
extent like a supervising head, should aid and direct the energies of
towns and ports and trades, and not leave everything everywhere to
chance: schools for the people, public morality, should be the charge of
Government. Cecilia had surrendered the lead to him, and was forced to
subscribe to an equivalent of 'undoubtedly' the Tories just as little as
the Liberals had done these good offices. Party against party, neither
of them had a forethoughtful head for the land at large. They waited for
the Press to spur a great imperial country to be but defensively armed,
and they accepted the so-called volunteers, with a nominal one-month's
drill per annum, as a guarantee of defence!

Beauchamp startled her, actually kindled her mind to an activity of
wonder and regret, with the statement of how much Government, acting with
some degree of farsightedness, might have won to pay the public debt and
remit taxation, by originally retaining the lines of railway, and
fastening on the valuable land adjoining stations. Hundreds of millions
of pounds!

She dropped a sigh at the prodigious amount, but inquired, 'Who has
calculated it?'

For though perfectly aware that this kind of conversation was a special
compliment paid to her by her friend Nevil, and dimly perceiving that it
implied something beyond a compliment-in fact, that it was his manner of
probing her for sympathy, as other men would have conducted the process
preliminary to deadly flattery or to wooing, her wits fenced her heart
about; the exercise of shrewdness was an instinct of self-preservation.
She had nothing but her poor wits, daily growing fainter, to resist him
with. And he seemed to know it, and therefore assailed them, never
trying at the heart.

That vast army of figures might be but a phantom army conjured out of the
Radical mists, might it not? she hinted. And besides, we cannot surely
require a Government to speculate in the future, can we?

Possibly not, as Governments go, Beauchamp said.

But what think you of a Government of landowners decreeing the enclosure
of millions of acres of common land amongst themselves; taking the
property of the people to add to their own! Say, is not that plunder?
Public property, observe; decreed to them by their own law-making, under
the pretence that it was being reclaimed for cultivation, when in reality
it has been but an addition to their pleasure-grounds: a flat robbery of
pasture from the poor man's cow and goose, and his right of cutting furze
for firing. Consider that! Beauchamp's eyes flashed democratic in
reciting this injury to the objects of his warm solicitude--the man, the
cow, and the goose. But so must he have looked when fronting England's
enemies, and his aspect of fervour subdued Cecilia. She confessed her
inability to form an estimate of such conduct.

'Are they doing it still?' she asked.

'We owe it to Dr. Shrapnel foremost that there is now a watch over them
to stop them. But for him, Grancey Lespel would have enclosed half of
Northeden Heath. As it is, he has filched bits here and there, and he
will have to put back his palings.'

However, now let Cecilia understand that we English, calling ourselves
free, are under morally lawless rule. Government is what we require, and
our means of getting it must be through universal suffrage. At present
we have no Government; only shifting Party Ministries, which are the
tools of divers interests, wealthy factions, to the sacrifice of the
Commonwealth.

She listened, like Rosamund Culling overborne by Dr. Shrapnel, inwardly
praying that she might discover a man to reply to him.

'A Despotism, Nevil?'

He hoped not, declined the despot, was English enough to stand against
the best of men in that character; but he cast it on Tory, Whig, and
Liberal, otherwise the Constitutionalists, if we were to come upon the
despot.

'They see we are close on universal suffrage; they've been bidding each
in turn for "the people," and that has brought them to it, and now
they're alarmed, and accuse one another of treason to the Constitution,
and they don't accept the situation: and there's a fear, that to carry on
their present system, they will be thwarting the people or corrupting
them: and in that case we shall have our despot in some shape or other,
and we shall suffer.'

'Nevil,' said Cecilia, 'I am out of my depth.'

'I'll support you; I can swim for two,' said he.

'You are very self-confident, but I find I am not fit for battle; at
least not in the front ranks.'

'Nerve me, then: will you? Try to comprehend once for all what the
battle is.'

'I am afraid I am too indifferent; I am too luxurious. That reminds me:
you want to meet your uncle Everard and if you will sleep at Mount
Laurels to-night, the Esperanza shall take you to France to-morrow
morning, and can wait to bring you back.'

As she spoke she perceived a flush mounting over Nevil's face. Soon it
was communicated to hers.

The strange secret of the blood electrified them both, and revealed the
burning undercurrent running between them from the hearts of each. The
light that showed how near they were to one another was kindled at the
barrier dividing them. It remained as good as a secret, unchallenged
until they had separated, and after midnight Cecilia looked through her.
chamber windows at the driving moon of a hurricane scud, and read clearly
his honourable reluctance to be wafted over to his French love by her
assistance; and Beauchamp on board the tossing steamboat perceived in her
sympathetic reddening that she had divined him.

This auroral light eclipsed the other events of the day. He drove into a
town royally decorated, and still humming with the ravishment of the Tory
entrance. He sailed in the schooner to Mount Laurels, in the society of
Captain Baskelett and his friends, who, finding him tamer than they
expected, bantered him in the cheerfullest fashion. He waited for his
uncle Everard several hours at Mount Laurels, perused the junior Tory's
address to the Electors, throughout which there was not an idea--safest
of addresses to canvass upon! perused likewise, at Captain Baskelett's
request, a broad sheet of an article introducing the new candidate to
Bevisham with the battle-axe Romfreys to back him, in high burlesque of
Timothy Turbot upon Beauchamp: and Cecil hoped his cousin would not
object to his borrowing a Romfrey or two for so pressing an occasion.
All very funny, and no doubt the presence of Mr. Everard Romfrey would
have heightened the fun from the fountain-head; but he happened to be
delayed, and Beauchamp had to leave directions behind him in the town,
besides the discussion of a whole plan of conduct with Dr. Shrapnel, so
he was under the necessity of departing without seeing his uncle, really
to his regret. He left word to that effect.

Taking leave of Cecilia, he talked of his return 'home' within three or
four days as a certainty.

She said: 'Canvassing should not be neglected now.'

Her hostility was confused by what she had done to save him from
annoyance, while his behaviour to his cousin Cecil increased her respect
for him. She detected a pathetic meaning in his mention of the word
home; she mused on his having called her beautiful: whither was she
hurrying? Forgetful of her horror of his revolutionary ideas, forgetful
of the elevation of her own, she thrilled secretly on hearing it stated
by the jubilant young Tories at Mount Laurels, as a characteristic of
Beauchamp, that he was clever in parrying political thrusts, and slipping
from the theme; he who with her gave out unguardedly the thoughts deepest
in him. And the thoughts!--were they not of generous origin? Where so
true a helpmate for him as the one to whom his mind appealed? It could
not be so with the Frenchwoman. Cecilia divined a generous nature by
generosity, and set herself to believe that in honour he had not yet
dared to speak to her from the heart, not being at heart quite free. She
was at the same time in her remains of pride cool enough to examine and
rebuke the weakness she succumbed to in now clinging to him by that which
yesterday she hardly less than loathed, still deeply disliked.

CHAPTER XXIII

TOURDESTELLE

On the part of Beauchamp, his conversation with Cecilia during the drive
into Bevisham opened out for the first time in his life a prospect of
home; he had felt the word in speaking it, and it signified an end to the
distractions produced by the sex, allegiance to one beloved respected
woman, and also a basis of operations against the world. For she was
evidently conquerable, and once matched with him would be the very woman
to nerve and sustain him. Did she not listen to him? He liked her
resistance. That element of the barbarous which went largely to form his
emotional nature was overjoyed in wresting such a woman from the enemy,
and subduing her personally. She was a prize. She was a splendid prize,
cut out from under the guns of the fort. He rendered all that was due to
his eminently good cause for its part in so signal a success, but
individual satisfaction is not diminished by the thought that the
individual's discernment selected the cause thus beneficent to him.

Beauchamp's meditations were diverted by the sight of the coast of France
dashed in rain-lines across a weed-strewn sea. The 'three days' granted
him by Renee were over, and it scarcely troubled him that he should be
behind the time; he detested mystery, holding it to be a sign of
pretentious feebleness, often of imposture, it might be frivolity.
Punctilious obedience to the mysterious brevity of the summons, and not
to chafe at it, appeared to him as much as could be expected of a
struggling man. This was the state of the case with him, until he stood
on French earth, breathed French air, and chanced to hear the tongue of
France twittered by a lady on the quay. The charm was instantaneous.
He reminded himself that Renee, unlike her countrywomen, had no gift for
writing letters. They had never corresponded since the hour of her
marriage. They had met in Sicily, at Syracuse, in the presence of her
father and her husband, and so inanimate was she that the meeting seemed
like the conclusion of their history. Her brother Roland sent tidings of
her by fits, and sometimes a conventional message from Tourdestelle.
Latterly her husband's name had been cited as among the wildfires of
Parisian quays, in journals more or less devoted to those unreclaimed
spaces of the city. Well, if she was unhappy, was it not the fulfilment
of his prophecy in Venice?

Renee's brevity became luminous. She needed him urgently, and knowing
him faithful to the death, she, because she knew him, dispatched purely
the words which said she needed him. Why, those brief words were the
poetry of noble confidence! But what could her distress be? The lover
was able to read that, 'Come; I give you three days,' addressed to him,
was not language of a woman free of her yoke.

Excited to guess and guess, Beauchamp swept on to speculations of a
madness that seized him bodily at last. Were you loved, Cecilia? He
thought little of politics in relation to Renee; or of home, or of honour
in the world's eye, or of labouring to pay the fee for his share of life.
This at least was one of the forms of love which precipitate men: the
sole thought in him was to be with her. She was Renee, the girl of whom
he had prophetically said that she must come to regrets and tears. His
vision of her was not at Tourdestelle, though he assumed her to be there
awaiting him: she was under the sea-shadowing Alps, looking up to the red
and gold-rosed heights of a realm of morning that was hers inviolably,
and under which Renee was eternally his.

The interval between then and now was but the space of an unquiet sea
traversed in the night, sad in the passage of it, but featureless--and it
had proved him right! It was to Nevil Beauchamp as if the spirit of his
old passion woke up again to glorious hopeful morning when he stood in
Renee's France.

Tourdestelle enjoyed the aristocratic privilege of being twelve miles
from the nearest railway station. Alighting here on an evening of clear
sky, Beauchamp found an English groom ready to dismount for him and bring
on his portmanteau. The man said that his mistress had been twice to the
station, and was now at the neighbouring Chateau Dianet. Thither
Beauchamp betook himself on horseback. He was informed at the gates that
Madame la Marquise had left for Tourdestelle in the saddle only ten
minutes previously. The lodge-keeper had been instructed to invite him
to stay at Chateau Dianet in the event of his arriving late, but it would
be possible to overtake madame by a cut across the heights at a turn of
the valley. Beauchamp pushed along the valley for this visible
projection; a towering mass of woodland, in the midst of which a narrow
roadway, worn like the track of a torrent with heavy rain, wound upward.
On his descent to the farther side, he was to spy directly below in the
flat for Tourdestelle. He crossed the wooded neck above the valley, and
began descending, peering into gulfs of the twilight dusk. Some paces
down he was aided by a brilliant half-moon that divided the whole
underlying country into sharp outlines of dark and fair, and while
endeavouring to distinguish the chateau of Tourdestelle his eyes were
attracted to an angle of the downward zigzag, where a pair of horses
emerged into broad light swiftly; apparently the riders were disputing,
or one had overtaken the other in pursuit. Riding-habit and plumed hat
signalized the sex of one. Beauchamp sung out a gondolier's cry. He
fancied it was answered.

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