Beauchamp's Career -- Volume 5

ecay with most men; but the prolonged and lusty Autumn of the veteran took new fires from a tangible object to live for. His brother Craven's death had slightly stupefied, and it had grieved him:

have been led to think of the imaginary, where perchance a man may meet his old dogs and a few other favourites, in a dim perpetual twilight. Thither at all

as the touch of the cunning artist's brush on a finished portrait, which will alter the expression without discomposing a feature, so that you cannot say it is another face, yet it is not the former one. His habits were invariable, as were his meditations. He thought less of Romfrey Castle than of his dogs and his d

outhitting. Some sorrowful preoccupation is, however, to be expected in the man who has lost a brother, and some degree of irritability at the intrusion of past disputes. He chose to repeat a similar brief forbidding of the subject before they started together for the scene of the accident and Romfrey Castle.

known his uncle

? It is at once a devouring dragon, and an intractable steamforce; it is a tyrant that has eaten up a senate, and a proph

of whom he demanded a corresponding energy of just indignation and sympathy. The sense that he was left unaided to the task of bending his tough uncle, combined with his appreciation of the righteousn

and right thing to do, was incapable of compelling it to be done. Lay on to his uncle as he wou

ver, and through them, for their good; you plough them. You sow them too. Some of them perceive that it is for their good, and what if they be a minority? Ghastly as a minority is in an Election, in a lifelong struggle it is refreshing and encouraging. The young world and its triumph is with the minority.

ield to account for the accident, after the latter had taken measurements and examined the place in perplexity. His elucidation of the puzzle was referred to by Lord Avonley at Romfrey, and finally accepted as possible and this from a wiseacre who went quacking about the county, expecting to upset the order of things in England! Such a mixing of sense and nonsense in a fellow's noddle was never before met with, Lord Avonley said. Cecil took the hint. He had been unworried by Beauchamp: Dr. Shrapnel had not been mentioned: and it delighted Cecil to let it be known that he thought old Nevil had some good notions, particularly as to the duties of the aristocracy-that first war-cry of his when a midshipman. News of another fatal accident in the hunting-field confirmed Cecil's higher opinion of his cousin. On the day of Craven's funeral they heard at Romfrey that Mr. Wardour-Devereux had been kill

the town-house. Old Nevil, he related, began cross-examining him and entangling him with the cunning of the deuce, in my lord's presence, and having got him to make an admission, old Nevil flung it at the baron, and even crossed him and stood before him when he was walking out of the room. A furious wrangle took place. Nevil and the baron gave it to one another unmercifully. The en

nd. He wrote a letter to Steynh

er darling's lunacy. She in conversation with Stukely Culbret

d been a little more than humorous in the part

ord Avonley had also de

uch

riating that big word Apology, and demanding it from Beauchamp on behalf of the lady ruling his household. What

article he claimed. He had made a point of speaking of the Apology. Lord Avonley did likewise. And each professed to exact it fo

ulling?" says old Nevil: "an apology? what for?"-"F

arned Captain Baskelett. 'Don't let

ceived an intimation that he might as well attend the Prussian cavalry manoeuvres last Autumn on the Lower Rhine or in Silesia-no matter where. He couldn't go: he was engaged to shoot birds! I give you my word. Now there I see old Nevil 's right. It 's as well we should know something about the Prussian and Austrian cavalry, and if our aristocracy won't go abroad to study cavalry, who is to? no class in the kingdo

the inn at midnight. A practical 'tu quoque' is astonishingly laughable, and backed by a high figure and manner it had the flavour of triumphant repartee. Lord Avonley did not speak of it as a retort upon Nevil, though he reiterated the word Apology amusingly. He put

why. Lord Avonley had done wrong, and Nevil had not. It was inconceivable that Nevil should apologize to her. It was horrible to picture the act in her mind. She was a very rational woman, quite a woman of the world, yet such was her situation between these two men that the childish tale of a close and consecutive punishment for sins, down to ou

t scourge Cecil Baskelett. That fine eye for celestially directed consequences is ever haunted by shadows of unfaith likely to obscure it completely when chastise

nham for money, that he could have obtained upon the one condition, which was no sooner mentioned than fiery words flew in the room, and the two separated. The leaden look in Beauchamp, noticed by Cecilia Halkett in their latest interview,

and that you show in your readiness to exhibit them like a monkey. You ought to be turned inside out on your own stage. You've lumped your brains on a point or two about Land, and Commonland, and the Suffrage, and you pound away upon them, as if you had the key of the difficulty. It's the Scotchman's metaphysics; you know nothing clear, and your working-classes know nothing at all; and you blow them with wind like an over-stuffed cow. What you're driving at is to get hob-nail boots to dance on our heads. Stukely says you s

speak I have his knowledge to back my deficiencies. He is too ill to work

ons to see clerks in our churches getting into the pulpit to read the sermon for sick

undered Beauchamp; and droppi

ed. 'I recommend you to ring that

e will hear what

ut of th

ou decline to supp

d

st ha

chain-cable for holdi

d, how I am to car

e it

said Beauchamp, str

of nods diminishing in their depth until his head assumed