Beauchamp's Career -- Volume 4

at Mount Laurels in the evening, and he was five minutes behind military time when he entered the restive drawing-room and stood before the colonel. No sooner

I understand he has had the impudence to serve a notic

Shrapnel's appearance

aid the colonel, consulti

or it. He nodded briefly. A Radical apple had struck him on the left cheekbone as he performed his triumphal drive through the town, and a slight disfigurement remained, to which his hand was applied sympathetically at intervals, for the cheek- bone was prom

, he smiled over Nevil-poor Nevil! 'I give you my word, Miss Halkett, old Nevil was off his head yesterday. I daresay he meant to be civil. I met him; I called out t

h to hear Seymour Austin's opinion of Mr. Tuckham. He condensed it in an interrogative tone: 'The other extreme?' The Tory extreme of Radical Nevil Beauchamp. She assented. Mr. Tuckham was at that moment prophesying the Torification of mankind; not as the trembling venturesome idea which we cast on doubtful winds, but as a ship is launched to ride the waters, with huzzas for a thing accomplished. Mr. Austin raised his shoulders imperceptibly, saying to Miss Halkett: 'The turn will come to us as to others-and go. Nothing earthly can escape that revolution. We have to meet it with a policy, and let it pass with measures carried and our hands washed of some of our party sins. I am, I hope, true to my party, but the ent

sins,' Miss Halket

he redoubtable party wh

uding to the

eading Conservatism for a special thing of our own-a fortification. That would be a party sin. Conservatism is a principle of government; the best because the safest for an old country; and the guarantee that we do not lose

ld not talk down to me, but the use of imagery makes m

ts put an animal for a paragraph. I am incorrigible, you see; but t

me. Did a single hieroglyph

ver deciph

ng to me too long in

wider than the truth. Have you ever c

him who had taught her to listen, and

made another discovery, that should have been infinitely more of a compliment, and it was bewildering, if not repulsive to her:-could it be credited? Mr. Austin was a firm believer in new and higher destinies for women. He went farther than she could concede the right of human speculation to go; he was, in fact, as Radical there as Nevil Beauchamp politically; and would not the latter innovator stare, perchance frown conservatively, at a prospect of woman taking counsel, in council, with men upon public affairs, like the wom

eness between Radicals a

sinship in extre

present at an arg

ly apart as wide as the Po

eet him; and how, then, had she betrayed herself?

s peasant have no clear case of right and wrong to divide them, one being the descendant of strong men, the other of weak ones; and that the former may sink, the latter may rise-there is no artificial obstruction; and if it is difficult to rise, it is easy to sink. Your Radical friend, who would bring them to a level by proclamation, could not adopt a surer method for destroying the manhood of a people: he is for doctoring wooden men, and I

emotions, as by a febrifuge. Could Nevil reply to it? She fancied him replying, with that wild head of his-wildes

the bracing and pointing of her critical powers helped her to forget. She had always preferred the society of men of Mr. Austin's age. How old was he? Her father would know. And why was he unmarried? A light frost had settled on the hair about his temples; his forehead was lightly wrinkled; but his mout

minutes of conversation with Miss Halkett befor

ht in her face, with an elevation of the brows. To these points of interrogation she ans

ravels. He had never listened to a madman running loose who was at all up to Beauchamp. At a loss for words to paint him, he said: 'Beauchamp seems to have a head like a firework manufactory, he's perfectly pyrocephalic.' For an example of Dr. Shrapnel's talk: 'I happened,' said Mr. Tuckham, 'casually, meaning no harm, and not supposing I was throwing a lighted match on powder, to mention the word Providence. I found myself immediately confronted by Shrapnel- overtopped, I should say. He is a lank giant of about seven feet in height; the kind of show man that used to go about in caravans over the country; and he began rocking over me like a poplar in a gale, and cries out: "Stay there! away with that! Providence? Can you

gerous dog,' said

ible proof that Beauchamp is mad-Shrapnel stands for an a

o said: 'Speak out. My daughter has b

d if a lady ceases to love her husband . . . if she sets her fancy elsewhere, she's bound to leave him. The laws are tyrannical, our objections are cowardly. Well, this Dr. Shrapnel

olonel asked, manifestly for his daughter

mp's remarks whether he is much disappointed

y. 'Lydiard must be mad. What he's wasting his time there for I can't guess. He says he's engaged there in writing a prefatory essay to a new publication of Harry Denham's poems-whoever that may be. And why wasting it there? I don't like it. He ought to be earning his bread. He'll be sure to be borrowing money by-and-by. We've got ten thousand too many fellows writing alrea

Halkett grunted

he ought to be put down in some way. My belief is he's a Fire- worshipper. I warr

t Captain Beauchamp is now satisfi

it all his life. One thing he shows common sense in. If I heard him once I heard him say half-a-dozen times, that he must have money:- "I mu

nel Halkett enunciated the military word sar

he must

tand and del

has an eye on my Aunt Beauchamp; and I doubt his luck

onel Halkett

as in the heart

ary men might say or think it inoffensively; Captai

reflected on. They dotted the landscape beneath the unassailable heights, busy after their fashion, somewhat quaint, much like the pigmy husbandmen in the fields were to the giant's daughter, who had more curiosity than Cecilia. But Nevil Beauchamp had compelled her to quit her lofty station, pulled her low as the littlest of women that throb and flush at one man's footstep: and being well able to read the nature and aspirations of Captain Baskelett, it was

of him. Was it not to be supposed that the madness of the p

id; knowing that her defence of him, on her own behalf, against herself, depended now on

wreath of high cloud mixed with touches of washed red upon moist blue, still as the mist, insensibly passing into it. Wet webs crossed the grass, chill in the feeble light. The la

m, and he stood by outside till she saw him. He greeted her through the glass, then went

nishes our noble self-esteem. To attain such a love the martyrs writhed up to the crown of saints. For a while Cecilia revelled in the thought that she could love in this most saint- like manner. How they fled, the sordid ideas of him which accused him of the world's one passion, and were transferred to her own bosom in reproach that she should have imagined them existing in his! He talked simply and sweetly of his defeat, of time wasted away from the canvass, of loss of money: and he had little to spare, he said. The water-c

ts in it than were common. But let me say at a meeting that I respect true aristocracy, I hear a growl and a hiss beginning: why? Don't judge them hastily: because the people have seen the aristocracy opposed to the cause that was weak, and only submitting to it when it commanded them to resist at their peril; clinging to traditions, and not an

carlet maple. 'In this country we were not or

cast no blame on our

might be an outline of

en thinking ove

evanescent suggestiveness of his previous remark, and vexed to fi

don. 'What right have I to bother you? I see it annoys you. The truth

of two persons. She remembered one of his observations: 'Few women seem to have courage'; when his look at her was for an instant one o

questioning whether it would last; like one who is too enamoured of the habitation to object to be a tenant-at-will. If it was cold, it was in recompense immeasurably lofty, a star-girdled place; and dwelling in it she could a

ead certain speeches delivered by Nevil at assemblies of Liberals or Radicals, which were reported in papers in the easy irony of the style of here and there a sentence, here and there a summary: salient quotations interspersed with running abstracts: a style terrible to friends of the speaker so reported, overwhelming if they differ in opinion: yet her charity was a match for it. She w

gry with Nevil,

restless fellow, my dear

eally been unfa

rivately-printed ful

ry carefully corrected b

e. 'Is it possible you read this?- th

to express her pure impartiality. By a toleration of what is d

to you, too?' s

Oh, no; I am no

cted you to read those

ld convert me if he

're not a p

in public, rather than on writing to

e colonel, not carin

d the colonel and his daughter on a day's expedition to Mrs. Beauchamp, on the Upper Thames, and they agreed that he shone to great advantage in her society. Mrs. Beauchamp said she had seen her great- nephew Nevil, but without a comment on his conduct or his person; grave silence. Reflecting on it, Cecilia grew indignant at the thought that Mr. Tuckham might ha

uckham led Miss Halkett over the garden. Cecilia co

and not a bad boon-fellow, and for that matter, the smoking- room is a better test than the drawing-room; all he wants is emphatically school-school-s

ated her to say, 'I hear the mob in

t would be setting the mob

is a wi

sdom coming out of the

he phrase,

who deafen him with their "plaudits"-their roars. Did you see his advertisement of a great-coat, lost at some rapscallion gathering down in the North, ne

ymour Austin?' Miss

at your father

ould like to l

ot listening enough

e of receivin

occasion among the miners in Wales during the first spring month. 'I dare say he can speak effectively to miners,'

he station near Steynham to call on Mrs. Culling, whom she knew to be at the Hall, preparing it for Mr. Romfrey's occupation. In imitation of her father she was Rosamund's fast friend, though she had never

aviour at all could not be accepted; but the news of Mr. Romfrey's having installed Nevil in Holdesbury to manage that property, and of his having mooted to her father the question of an alliance between her and Nevil, was

riginally his, and his address was printed inside. But among these letters was one from Dr. Shrapnel to Nevil: a letter so horrible that Rosamund frowned at the reminiscence of it, holding it to be too horrible for the quotation of a sentence. She owned she had forgotten any three consecutive words. Her known dislike of Captain Baskelett, however, was insufficient to make her see that it was unjustifiable in him to run about London reading it, with comments of the cruellest. Rosamund's greater detestation of Dr. Shrapnel blinded her to the offence committed by the man she would otherwise have been very r

ed the reading. But th

he. 'Mr. Romfr

champ, at about half a yard's distance on the level of his chin,