Beauchamps Career, v7
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George Meredith >> Beauchamps Career, v7
This is no time to tell of weeping. The dry chronicle is fittest.
Hard on nine o'clock in the December darkness, the night being still and
clear, Jenny's babe was at her breast, and her ears were awake for the
return of her husband. A man rang at the door of the house, and asked
to see Dr. Shrapnel. This man was Killick, the Radical Sam of politics.
He said to the doctor: 'I 'm going to hit you sharp, sir; I've had it
myself: please put on your hat and come out with me; and close the door.
They mustn't hear inside. And here's a fly. I knew you'd be off for the
finding of the body. Commander Beauchamp's drowned.'
Dr. Shrapnel drove round by the shore of the broad water past a great
hospital and ruined abbey to Otley village. Killick had lifted him into
the conveyance, and he lifted him out. Dr. Shrapnel had not spoken a
word. Lights were flaring on the river, illuminating the small craft
sombrely. Men, women, and children crowded the hard and landing-places,
the marshy banks and the decks of colliers and trawlers. Neither Killick
nor Dr. Shrapnel questioned them. The lights were torches and lanterns;
the occupation of the boats moving in couples was the dragging for the
dead.
'O God, let's find his body,' a woman called out.
'Just a word; is it Commander Beauchamp?' Killick said to her.
She was scarcely aware of a question. 'Here, this one,' she said, and
plucked a little boy of eight by the hand close against her side, and
shook him roughly and kissed him.
An old man volunteered information. 'That's the boy. That boy was in
his father's boat out there, with two of his brothers, larking; and he
and another older than him fell overboard; and just then Commander
Beauchamp was rowing by, and I saw him from off here, where I stood, jump
up and dive, and he swam to his boat with one of them, and got him in
safe: that boy: and he dived again after the other, and was down a long
time. Either he burst a vessel or he got cramp, for he'd been rowing
himself from the schooner grounded down at the river-mouth, and must have
been hot when he jumped in: either way, he fetched the second up, and
sank with him. Down he went.'
A fisherman said to Killick: 'Do you hear that voice thundering? That's
the great Lord Romfrey. He's been directing the dragging since five o'
the evening, and will till he drops or drowns, or up comes the body.'
'O God, let's find the body!' the woman with the little boy called out.
A torch lit up Lord Romfrey's face as he stepped ashore. 'The flood has
played us a trick,' he said. 'We want more drags, or with the next ebb
the body may be lost for days in this infernal water.'
The mother of the rescued boy sobbed, 'Oh, my lord, my lord!'
The earl caught sight of Dr. Shrapnel, and went to him.
'My wife has gone down to Mrs. Beauchamp,' he said. 'She will bring her
and the baby to Mount Laurels. The child will have to be hand-fed. I
take you with me. You must not be alone.'
He put his arm within the arm of the heavily-breathing man whom he had
once flung to the ground, to support him.
'My lord! my lord!' sobbed the woman, and dropped on her knees.
'What 's this?' the earl said, drawing his hand away from the woman's
clutch at it.
'She's the mother, my lord,' several explained to him.
'Mother of what?'
'My boy,' the woman cried, and dragged the urchin to Lord Romfrey's feet,
cleaning her boy's face with her apron.
'It's the boy Commander Beauchamp drowned to save,' said a man.
All the lights of the ring were turned on the head of the boy. Dr.
Shrapnel's eyes and Lord Romfrey's fell on the abashed little creature.
The boy struck out both arms to get his fists against his eyelids.
This is what we have in exchange for Beauchamp!
It was not uttered, but it was visible in the blank stare at one
another of the two men who loved Beauchamp, after they had examined the
insignificant bit of mudbank life remaining in this world in the place of
him.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
And life said, Do it, and death said, To what end?
As fair play as a woman's lord could give her
Beauchamp's career
Dogs die more decently than we men
Dreads our climate and coffee too much to attempt the voyage
Had come to be her lover through being her husband
He bowed to facts
He condensed a paragraph into a line
He runs too much from first principles to extremes
I do not think Frenchmen comparable to the women of France
It would be hard! ay, then we do it forthwith
Making too much of it--a trick of the vulgar
More argument I cannot bear
None but fanatics, cowards, white-eyeballed dogmatists
Push indolent unreason to gain the delusion of happiness
Reproof of such supererogatory counsel
She had no longer anything to resent: she was obliged to weep
Slaves of the priests
The healthy only are fit to live
The world without him would be heavy matter
This girl was pliable only to service, not to grief
Virtue of impatience
We women can read men by their power to love
When he's a Christian instead of a Churchman
Where love exists there is goodness
Without a single intimation that he loathed the task
Wonderment that one of her sex should have ideas