Beauchamps Career, v6
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George Meredith >> Beauchamps Career, v6
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Louise replied to the natural inquiry--'Upon what plea?' with a
significant evasiveness. She put her arms round Cecilia's neck: 'I trust
you are not unhappy. You will get no release from him.'
'I am not unhappy,' said Cecilia, musically clear to convince her friend.
She was indeed glad to feel the stout chains of her anchor restraining
her when Lady Romfrey talked of Nevil; they were like the safety of
marriage without the dreaded ceremony, and with solitude to let her weep.
Bound thus to a weaker man than Blackburn Tuckham, though he had been
more warmly esteemed, her fancy would have drifted away over the deeps,
perhaps her cherished loyalty would have drowned in her tears--for Lady
Romfrey tasked it very severely: but he from whom she could hope for no
release, gave her some of the firmness which her nature craved in this
trial.
From saying quietly to her: 'I thought once you loved him,' when alluding
to Nevil, Lady Romfrey passed to mournful exclamations, and by degrees on
to direct entreaties. She related the whole story of Renee in England,
and appeared distressed with a desperate wonderment at Cecilia's mildness
after hearing it. Her hearer would have imagined that she had no moral
sense, if it had not been so perceptible that the poor lady's mind was
distempered on the one subject of Nevil Beauchamp. Cecilia's high
conception of duty, wherein she was a peerless flower of our English
civilization, was incommunicable: she could practise, not explain it.
She bowed to Lady Romfrey's praises of Nevil, suffered her hands to be
wrung, her heart to be touched, all but an avowal of her love of him to
be wrested from her, and not the less did she retain her cold resolution
to marry to please her father and fulfil her pledge. In truth, it was
too late to speak of Renee to her now. It did not beseem Cecilia to
remember that she had ever been a victim of jealousy; and while
confessing to many errors, because she felt them, and gained a necessary
strength from them--in the comfort of the consciousness of pain, for
example, which she sorely needed, that the pain in her own breast might
deaden her to Nevil's jealousy, the meanest of the errors of a lofty
soul, yielded no extract beyond the bare humiliation proper to an
acknowledgement that it had existed: so she discarded the recollection of
the passion which had wrought the mischief. Since we cannot have a
peerless flower of civilization without artificial aid, it may be
understood how it was that Cecilia could extinguish some lights in her
mind and kindle others, and wherefore what it was not natural for her to
do, she did. She had, briefly, a certain control of herself.
Our common readings in the fictitious romances which mark out a plot and
measure their characters to fit into it, had made Rosamund hopeful of the
effect of that story of Renee. A wooden young woman, or a galvanized
(sweet to the writer, either of them, as to the reader--so moveable they
are!) would have seen her business at this point, and have glided melting
to reconciliation and the chamber where romantic fiction ends joyously.
Rosamund had counted on it.
She looked intently at Cecilia. 'He is ruined, wasted, ill, unloved; he
has lost you--I am the cause!' she cried in a convulsion of grief.
'Dear Lady Romfrey!' Cecilia would have consoled her. 'There is nothing
to lead us to suppose that Nevil is unwell, and you are not to blame for
anything: how can you be?'
'I spoke falsely of Dr. Shrapnel; I am the cause. It lies on me! it
pursues me. Let me give to the poor as I may, and feel for the poor, as
I do, to get nearer to Nevil--I cannot have peace! His heart has turned
from me. He despises me. If I had spoken to Lord Romfrey at Steynham,
as he commanded me, you and he--Oh! cowardice: he is right, cowardice is
the chief evil in the world. He is ill; he is desperately ill; he will
die.'
'Have you heard he is very ill, Lady Romfrey?'
'No! no!' Rosamund exclaimed; 'it is by not hearing that I know it!'
With the assistance of Louise Devereux, Cecilia gradually awakened to
what was going on in the house. There had been a correspondence between
Miss Denham and the countess. Letters from Bevisham had suddenly ceased.
Presumably the earl had stopped them: and if so it must have been for a
tragic reason.
Cecilia hinted some blame of Lord Romfrey to her father.
He pressed her hand and said: 'You don't know what that man suffers.
Romfrey is fond of Nevil too, but he must guard his wife; and the fact is
Nevil is down with fever. It 's in the papers now; he may be able to
conceal it, and I hope he will. There'll be a crisis, and then he can
tell her good news--a little illness and all right now! Of course,' the
colonel continued buoyantly, 'Nevil will recover; he's a tough wiry young
fellow, but poor Romfrey's fears are natural enough about the countess.
Her mind seems to be haunted by the doctor there--Shrapnel, I mean; and
she's exciteable to a degree that threatens the worst--in case of any
accident in Bevisham.'
'Is it not a kind of cowardice to conceal it?' Cecilia suggested.
'It saves her from fretting,' said the colonel.
'But she is fretting! If Lord Romfrey would confide in her and trust to
her courage, papa, it would be best.'
Colonel Halkett thought that Lord Romfrey was the judge.
Cecilia wished to leave a place where this visible torture of a human
soul was proceeding, and to no purpose. She pointed out to her father,
by a variety of signs, that Lady Romfrey either knew or suspected the
state of affairs in Bevisham, and repeated her remarks upon Nevil's
illness. But Colonel Halkett was restrained from departing by the earl's
constant request to him to stay. Old friendship demanded it of him.
He began to share his daughter's feelings at the sight of Lady Romfrey.
She was outwardly patient and submissive; by nature she was a strong
healthy woman; and she attended to all her husband's prescriptions for
the regulating of her habits, walked with him, lay down for the
afternoon's rest, appeared amused when he laboured to that effect, and
did her utmost to subdue the worm devouring her heart but the hours of
the delivery of the letter-post were fatal to her. Her woeful: 'No
letter for me!' was piteous. When that was heard no longer, her silence
and famished gaze chilled Cecilia. At night Rosamund eyed her husband
expressionlessly, with her head leaning back in her chair, to the sorrow
of the ladies beholding her. Ultimately the contagion of her settled
misery took hold of Cecilia. Colonel Halkett was induced by his daughter
and Mrs. Devereux to endeavour to combat a system that threatened
consequences worse than those it was planned to avert. He by this time
was aware of the serious character of the malady which had prostrated
Nevil. Lord Romfrey had directed his own medical man to go down to
Bevisham, and Dr. Gannet's report of Nevil was grave. The colonel made
light of it to his daughter, after the fashion he condemned in Lord
Romfrey, to whom however he spoke earnestly of the necessity for
partially taking his wife into his confidence to the extent of letting
her know that a slight fever was running its course with Nevil.
'There will be no slight fever in my wife's blood,' said the earl. 'I
stand to weather the cape or run to wreck, and it won't do to be taking
in reefs on a lee-shore. You don't see what frets her, colonel. For
years she has been bent on Nevil's marriage. It's off: but if you catch
Cecilia by the hand and bring her to us--I swear she loves the fellow!--
that's the medicine for my wife. Say: will you do it? Tell Lady Romfrey
it shall be done. We shall stand upright again!'
'I'm afraid that's impossible, Romfrey,' said the colonel.
'Play at it, then! Let her think it. You're helping me treat an
invalid. Colonel! my old friend! You save my house and name if you do
that. It's a hand round a candle in a burst of wind. There's Nevil
dragged by a woman into one of their reeking hovels--so that Miss Denham
at Shrapnel's writes to Lady Romfrey--because the woman's drunken husband
voted for him at the Election, and was kicked out of employment, and fell
upon the gin-bottle, and the brats of the den died starving, and the man
sickened of a fever; and Nevil goes in and sits with him! Out of that
tangle of folly is my house to be struck down? It looks as if the fellow
with his infernal "humanity," were the bad genius of an old nurse's tale.
He's a good fellow, colonel, he means well. This fever will cure him,
they say it sobers like bloodletting. He's a gallant fellow; you know
that. He fought to the skeleton in our last big war. On my soul, I
believe he's good for a husband. Frenchwoman or not, that affair's over.
He shall have Steynham and Holdesbury. Can I say more? Now, colonel,
you go in to the countess. Grasp my hand. Give me that help, and God
bless you! You light up my old days. She's a noble woman: I would not
change her against the best in the land. She has this craze about Nevil.
I suppose she'll never get over it. But there it is: and we must feed
her with the spoon.'
Colonel Halkett argued stutteringly with the powerful man: 'It's the
truth she ought to hear, Romfrey; indeed it is, if you 'll believe me.
It 's his life she is fearing for. She knows half.'
'She knows positively nothing, colonel. Miss Denham's first letter spoke
of the fellow's having headaches, and staggering. He was out on a
cruise, and saw your schooner pass, and put into some port, and began
falling right and left, and they got him back to Shrapnel's: and here it
is--that if you go to him you'll save him, and if you go to my wife
you'll save her: and there you have it: and I ask my old friend, I beg
him to go to them both.'
'But you can't surely expect me to force my daughter's inclinations, my
dear Romfrey?'
'Cecilia loves the fellow!'
'She is engaged to Mr. Tuckham.'
'I'll see the man Tuckham.'
'Really, my dear lord!'
'Play at it, Halkett, play at it! Tide us over this! Talk to her: hint
it and nod it. We have to round November. I could strangle the world
till that month's past. You'll own,' he added mildly after his thunder,
'I'm not much of the despot Nevil calls me. She has not a wish I don't
supply. I'm at her beck, and everything that's mine. She's a brave good
woman. I don't complain. I run my chance. But if we lose the child--
good night! Boy or girl!--boy!'
Lord Romfrey flung an arm up. The child of his old age lived for him
already: he gave it all the life he had. This miracle, this young son
springing up on an earth decaying and dark, absorbed him. This reviver
of his ancient line must not be lost. Perish every consideration to
avert it! He was ready to fear, love, or hate terribly, according to the
prospects of his child.
Colonel Halkett was obliged to enter into a consultation, of a shadowy
sort, with his daughter, whose only advice was that they should leave the
castle. The penetrable gloom there, and the growing apprehension
concerning the countess and Nevil, tore her to pieces. Even if she could
have conspired with the earl to hoodwink his wife, her strong sense told
her it would be fruitless, besides base. Father and daughter had to make
the stand against Lord Romfrey. He saw their departure from the castle
gates, and kissed his hand to Cecilia, courteously, without a smile.
'He may well praise the countess, papa,' said Cecilia, while they were
looking back at the castle and the moveless flag that hung in folds by
the mast above it. 'She has given me her promise to avoid questioning
him and to accept his view of her duty. She said to me that if Nevil
should die she . . .'
Cecilia herself broke down, and gave way to sobs in her father's arms.
CHAPTER XLIX
A FABRIC OF BARONIAL DESPOTISM CRUMBLE
The earl's precautions did duty night and day in all the avenues leading
to the castle and his wife's apartments; and he could believe that he had
undertaken as good a defence as the mountain guarding the fertile vale
from storms: but him the elements pelted heavily. Letters from
acquaintances of Nevil, from old shipmates and from queer political
admirers and opponents, hailed on him; things not to be frigidly read
were related of the fellow.
Lord Romfrey's faith in the power of constitution to beat disease battled
sturdily with the daily reports of his physician and friends, whom he had
directed to visit the cottage on the common outside Bevisham, and with
Miss Denham's intercepted letters to the countess. Still he had to
calculate on the various injuries Nevil had done to his constitution,
which had made of him another sort of man for a struggle of life and
death than when he stood like a riddled flag through the war. That
latest freak of the fellow's, the abandonment of our natural and
wholesome sustenance in animal food, was to be taken in the reckoning.
Dr. Gannet did not allude to it; the Bevisham doctor did; and the earl
meditated with a fury of wrath on the dismal chance that such a folly as
this of one old vegetable idiot influencing a younger noodle, might
strike his House to the dust.
His watch over his wife had grown mechanical: he failed to observe that
her voice was missing. She rarely spoke. He lost the art of observing
himself: the wrinkling up and dropping of his brows became his habitual
language. So long as he had not to meet inquiries or face tears, he
enjoyed the sense of security. He never quitted his wife save to walk to
the Southern park lodge, where letters and telegrams were piled awaiting
him; and she was forbidden to take the air on the castle terrace without
his being beside her, lest a whisper, some accident of the kind that
donkeys who nod over their drowsy nose-length-ahead precautions call
fatality, should rouse her to suspect, and in a turn of the hand undo his
labour: for the race was getting terrible: Death had not yet stepped out
of that evil chamber in Dr. Shrapnel's cottage to aim his javelin at the
bosom containing the prized young life to come, but, like the smoke of
waxing fire, he shadowed forth his presence in wreaths blacker and
thicker day by day: and Everard Romfrey knew that the hideous beast of
darkness had only to spring up and pass his guard to deal a blow to his
House the direr from all he supposed himself to have gained by masking it
hitherto. The young life he looked to for renewal swallowed him: he
partly lost human feeling for his wife in the tremendous watch and strain
to hurry her as a vessel round the dangerous headland. He was oblivious
that his eyebrows talked, that his head was bent low, that his mouth was
shut, and that where a doubt had been sown, silence and such signs are
like revelations in black night to the spirit of a woman who loves.
One morning after breakfast Rosamund hung on his arm, eyeing him neither
questioningly nor invitingly, but long. He kissed her forehead. She
clung to him and closed her eyes, showing him a face of slumber, like a
mask of the dead.
Mrs. Devereux was present. Cecilia had entreated her to stay with Lady
Romfrey. She stole away, for the time had come which any close observer
of the countess must have expected.
The earl lifted his wife, and carried her to her sitting-room. A sunless
weltering September day whipped the window-panes and brought the roar of
the beaten woods to her ears. He was booted and gaitered for his
customary walk to the park lodge, and as he bent a knee beside her, she
murmured: 'Don't wait; return soon.'
He placed a cord attached to the bellrope within her reach. This utter
love of Nevil Beauchamp was beyond his comprehension, but there it was,
and he had to submit to it and manoeuvre. His letters and telegrams told
the daily tale. 'He's better,' said the earl, preparing himself to
answer what his wife's look had warned him would come.
She was an image of peace, in the same posture on the couch where he had
left her, when he returned. She did not open her eyes, but felt about
for his hand, and touching it, she seemed to weigh the fingers.
At last she said: 'The fever should be at its height.'
'Why, my dear brave girl, what ails you?' said he.
'Ignorance.'
She raised her eyelids. His head was bent down over her, like a raven's
watching, a picture of gravest vigilance.
Her bosom rose and sank. 'What has Miss Denham written to-day?'
'To-day?' he asked her gently.
'I shall bear it,' she answered. 'You were my master before you were my
husband. I bear anything you think is good for my government. Only, my
ignorance is fever; I share Nevil's.'
'Have you been to my desk at all?'
'No. I read your eyes and your hands: I have been living on them. To-
day I find that I have not gained by it, as I hoped I should. Ignorance
kills me. I really have courage to bear to hear just at this moment I
have.'
'There's no bad news, my love,' said the earl.
'High fever, is it?'
'The usual fever. Gannet's with him. I sent for Gannet to go there, to
satisfy you.'
'Nevil is not dead?'
'Lord! ma'am, my dear soul!'
'He is alive?'
'Quite: certainly alive; as much alive as I am; only going a little
faster, as fellows do in the jumps of a fever. The best doctor in
England is by his bed. He 's doing fairly. You should have let me know
you were fretting, my Rosamund.'
'I did not wish to tempt you to lie, my dear lord.'
'Well, there are times when a woman . . . as you are: but you're a
brave woman, a strong heart, and my wife. You want some one to sit with
you, don't you? Louise Devereux is a pleasant person, but you want a man
to amuse you. I'd have sent to Stukely, but you want a serious man, I
fancy.'
So much had the earl been thrown out of his plan for protecting his wife,
that he felt helpless, and hinted at the aids and comforts of religion.
He had not rejected the official Church, and regarding it now as in
alliance with great Houses, he considered that its ministers might also
be useful to the troubled women of noble families. He offered, if she
pleased, to call in the rector to sit with her--the bishop of the
diocese, if she liked.
'But just as you like, my love,' he added. 'You know you have to avoid
fretting. I've heard my sisters talk of the parson doing them good off
and on about the time of their being brought to bed. He elevated their
minds, they said. I'm sure I've no objection. If he can doctor the
minds of women he's got a profession worth something.'
Rosamund smothered an outcry. 'You mean that Nevil is past hope!'
'Not if he's got a fair half of our blood in him. And Richard Beauchamp
gave the fellow good stock. He has about the best blood in England.
That's not saying much when they've taken to breed as they build--stuff
to keep the plasterers at work; devil a thought of posterity!'
'There I see you and Nevil one, my dear lord,' said Rosamund. 'You think
of those that are to follow us. Talk to me of him. Do not say, "the
fellow." Say "Nevil." No, no; call him "the fellow." He was alive and
well when you used to say it. But smile kindly, as if he made you love
him down in your heart, in spite of you. We have both known that love,
and that opposition to him; not liking his ideas, yet liking him so: we
were obliged to laugh--I have seen you! as love does laugh! If I am not
crying over his grave, Everard? Oh!'
The earl smoothed her forehead. All her suspicions were rekindled.
'Truth! truth! give me truth. Let me know what world I am in.'
'My dear, a ship's not lost because she's caught in a squall; nor a man
buffeting the waves for an hour. He's all right: he keeps up.'
'He is delirious? I ask you--I have fancied I heard him.'
Lord Romfrey puffed from his nostrils: but in affecting to blow to the
winds her foolish woman's wildness of fancy, his mind rested on Nevil,
and he said: 'Poor boy! It seems he's chattering hundreds to the
minute.'
His wife's looks alarmed him after he had said it, and he was for toning
it and modifying it, when she gasped to him to help her to her feet; and
standing up, she exclaimed: 'O heaven! now I hear you; now I know he
lives. See how much better it is for me to know the real truth. It
takes me to his bedside. Ignorance and suspense have been poison. I
have been washed about like a dead body. Let me read all my letters now.
Nothing will harm me now. You will do your best for me, my husband, will
you not?' She tore at her dress at her throat for coolness, panting and
smiling. 'For me--us--yours--ours! Give me my letters, lunch with me,
and start for Bevisham. Now you see how good it is for me to hear the
very truth, you will give me your own report, and I shall absolutely
trust in it, and go down with it if it's false! But you see I am
perfectly strong for the truth. It must be you or I to go. I burn to
go; but your going will satisfy me. If you look on him, I look. I feel
as if I had been nailed down in a coffin, and have got fresh air. I
pledge you my word, sir, my honour, my dear husband, that I will think
first of my duty. I know it would be Nevil's wish. He has not quite
forgiven me--he thought me ambitious--ah! stop: he said that the birth
of our child would give him greater happiness than he had known for
years: he begged me to persuade you to call a boy Nevil Beauchamp, and a
girl Renee. He has never believed in his own long living.'
Rosamund refreshed her lord's heart by smiling archly as she said: 'The
boy to be educated to take the side of the people, of course! The girl
is to learn a profession.'
'Ha! bless the fellow!' Lord Romfrey interjected. 'Well, I might go
there for an hour. Promise me, no fretting! You have hollows in your
cheeks, and your underlip hangs: I don't like it. I haven't seen that
before.'
'We do not see clearly when we are trying to deceive,' said Rosamund.
'My letters! my letters!'
Lord Romfrey went to fetch them. They were intact in his desk. His
wife, then, had actually been reading the facts through a wall! For he
was convinced of Mrs. Devereux's fidelity, as well as of the colonel's
and Cecilia's. He was not a man to be disobeyed: nor was his wife the
woman to court or to acquiesce in trifling acts of disobedience to him.
He received the impression, consequently, that this matter of the visit
to Nevil was one in which the poor loving soul might be allowed to guide
him, singular as the intensity of her love of Nevil Beauchamp was,
considering that they were not of kindred blood.
He endeavoured to tone her mind for the sadder items in Miss Denham's
letters.
'Oh!' said Rosamund, 'what if I shed the "screaming eyedrops," as you
call them? They will not hurt me, but relieve. I was sure I should
someday envy that girl! If he dies she will have nursed him and had the
last of him.'
'He's not going to die!' said Everard powerfully.
'We must be prepared. These letters will do that for me. I have written
out the hours of your trains. Stanton will attend on you. I have
directed him to telegraph to the Dolphin in Bevisham for rooms for the
night: that is to-morrow night. To-night you sleep at your hotel in
London, which will be ready to receive you, and is more comfortable than
the empty house. Stanton takes wine, madeira and claret, and other small
necessaries. If Nevil should be very unwell, you will not leave him
immediately. I shall look to the supplies. You will telegraph to me
twice a day, and write once. We lunch at half-past twelve, so that you
may hit the twenty-minutes-to-two o'clock train. And now I go to see
that the packing is done.'
She carried off her letters to her bedroom, where she fell upon the bed,
shutting her eyelids hard before she could suffer her eyes to be the
intermediaries of that fever-chamber in Bevisham and her bursting heart.
But she had not positively deceived her husband in the reassurance she
had given him by her collectedness and by the precise directions she had
issued for his comforts, indicating a mind so much more at ease. She was
firmer to meet the peril of her beloved: and being indeed, when thrown on
her internal resources, one among the brave women of earth, though also
one who required a lift from circumstances to take her stand calmly
fronting a menace to her heart, she saw the evidence of her influence
with Lord Romfrey: the level she could feel that they were on together so
long as she was courageous, inspirited her sovereignly.
He departed at the hour settled for him. Rosamund sat at her boudoir
window, watching the carriage that was conducting him to the railway
station. Neither of them had touched on the necessity of his presenting
himself at the door of Dr. Shrapnel's house. That, and the disgust
belonging to it, was a secondary consideration with Lord Romfrey, after
he had once resolved on it as the right thing to do: and his wife admired
and respected him for so supreme a loftiness. And fervently she prayed
that it might not be her evil fate to disappoint his hopes. Never had
she experienced so strong a sense of devotedness to him as when she saw
the carriage winding past the middle oak-wood of the park, under a wet
sky brightened from the West, and on out of sight.
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