Beauchamp's Career -- Volume 7

uld Rosamund reflect on his career unshadowed by her feminine mortificati

ed to think he had; for the woman's heart rejoiced in his portion of our common humanity while she named their prince to men: but where was he to be matched in devotedness and in gallantry? and what man of blood fiery as Nevil's ever fought so to subject it? Rosamund followed him like a migratory bird, hovered over his vessel, perched on deck beside the helm, where her sailor was sure to be stationed, entered his breast, communed with him, and wound him round and round with her love. He has

er hour of peril with t

to illum

previous to the voyage, altogether in the manner of a sailor's bride. She seemed to stipulate for a term of courtship. Nevil frankly told the doctor that he was not equal to it; anything that was kind he was quite ready to say; and anything that was pretty: but nothing particularly kind and pretty occurred to him: he was exactly like a juvenile correspondent facing a blank sheet of letter paper:-he really did not know what to say, further than the uncomplicated exposition of his case, that he wanted a wife and had found the very woman. How, then, fathom J

ething intervening to bring Cecilia and Beauchamp together. It was not a hope; it was with pure suspense that she awaited the issue. Cecilia was pale. B

e swept away, out of sight of Bevisham, and the island, into the Channel, to within view of the coast of F

ooked on Beauchamp, the thought-my husband! palpitated, and destroyed and re-made her. Rapidly she underwent her transformation from doubtfully-minded woman to woman awakening

whom had been hilarious during the gales; but sailing into Summer they began to wear that look which indicated one

on their own feet one step since the primal mother taught them to suckle, are perpetually pulling us backward on the march. Slaves of custom, forms, shows and superstitions, they are slaves of the priests. 'They are so in gratitude perchance, as the matter works,' Dr. Shrapnel admitted. For at one period the priests did cherish and protect the weak from animal man. But we have entered a broader daylight now, when the sun of high heaven has crowned our structure with the flower of brain, like him to scatter mists, and penetrate darkness, and shoot from end to end of earth; and must we still be grinning subserviently to ancient usages and stale forms, because of a baggage that it is, woe to us! to

owed antagonists of his Church, which would put him on his defence, and lead to an argument that would accomplish his overthrow. You parsons, whose cause is good, marshal out the poor of the land, that we may see the sort of army your stewards

ocker: the parson heavily trodden on will turn. 'I suppose we must be hypocrites,' he said in dejection. Dr. Shrapnel wa

l; a Harry Hotspur's wooing. Three clergymen of the Established Church were on the island: 'And where w

e, I won't dispute,' replied the doctor; 'but a non-celibate interwi

mp had shown her a letter of Lady Romfrey's very clearly signifying that she and her lord anticipated tidi

en, fronting her and taking both her hands: 'Now, my darling,' he said: 'you must pledge me your word to this: I have stooped my head to the parson, and I am content to have done that to win you, though I don'

ring what was to come: 'the

s,

educated m

eature of the moneyed class. I look on him as a pretender. I go through his forms, to save my wife from annoyance, but there 's the end of it: and if ever I'm helpless, unable to resist him, I rely on your word not to let him intrude; he's to have

s on her bridal day. Sh

ou do not cha

darling! I have you. I don't mean to bother you. I'm sure you'll see that the en

urselves are using reason ri

ee, my Jenny, we have no in

it just or wise to direct our efforts to over

rdize as much as she liked. While practising this mastery, he assured her he would alway

have quite made up your mind to a to

y things are settled! Cecilia Halkett and Tuckham; you and I! Now, I know for certain that I have brought Cecilia Halkett out of her woman's Toryism, and gi

ict will be seasonable on both side

o those forsaken valleys of his youth, and taught him the joys of colour and sweet companionship, simple delights, a sister mind, with a loveliness of person and nature unimagined by him, Beauchamp drank of a happiness that neither Renee nor Cecilia had promised. His wooing of Jenny Beauchamp was a flattery richer than any the m

e lanterns throw their beams off the mudbanks by the black riverside; when some few E

frey added a brief word: he told Nevil that he would see no one for the present; hoped he would be absent a year, not a day less. To render it the more easily practicable, in the next packet of letters Colonel Halkett and Cecilia begged them not

seen Venice,' Beau

penetrating and gladly joining the

r, but the cities of priests along the coast of Portugal and Spain roused him to a burning sense of that flight of time and the vacuity it told o

ousands! You, Beauchamp, when I met you first, you were for England, England! for a breadth of the palm of my hand comparatively-the round of a copper penny, no wider! And from that you jumped at a bound to the round of this earth: you were for humanity. Ay, we sailed our planet among the icy spheres, and were at blood-heat for its destiny, you and I! And now you hover for a wind to catch you. So it is for a soul rejecting prayer. This wind and that has it: the well-springs within are shut down fast! I pardon my Jenny, my Harry Denham's girl. She is

ually bright,' said Jenny, and cut her husband adrift wit

ually b

parison

ution to eat of good things and stick to them,' said the doctor: 'and we two out o

s. A translation of Plato had become Beauchamp's intellectual world. This philosopher singularly anticipated his ideas. Concerning himself he was beginning to think that he had many years ahead of him for work. He was with Dr. Shrapnel, as to the battle, and with Jenny as to the delay in recommencing it. Both the men laughed at the constant employmen

between grave and playful, between smiling and serious, her clear head, her nobly poised character, seemed to him to have never h

ter would insist on his right to be sprinkled by the parson, to get a legal name and please his mother. At all turns in the history of our healthy relations with women we are confronted by the parson! 'And, upon my word, I believe,' Beauchamp said to Lydiard, 'those parsons-not bad creatures in private life: there was one in Made

t child?' Mrs. Lydiar

that the mothe

eared she

make himself miserable

pped all those absurdities,' he said, glaring angrily, laughing, and then frowning. 'I 've warned him I'll go out of my way to come across him if he carries on his headlong folly. A man should accept

steer a ship in

. 'His wife's a prize. He's hardly worthy of her. If she mana

here we do not succeed in wresting our tem

ineffaceable, and pity for the tender hand lost to him wrought in his blood, but Jenny was a peerless wife; and though not in the music of her tongue, or in subtlety of delicate meaning did she excel Renee, as a sober adviser she did, and as a firm speaker;

choice to go home in the yacht that decided her husband no

sham, with swelling sails. There they parted. Beauchamp made it one of his 'points of honour' to deliver the vessel where he had taken her, at her moorings in the Otley. One of the piermen stood before Beauchamp, and saluting him, said he had been directed to inform him that

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'

el 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

nd his body,' a

Commander Beauchamp?

he said, and plucked a little boy of eight by the hand cl

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 bur

s the great Lord Romfrey. He's been directing the dragging since five

body!' the woman with t

od has played us a trick,' he said. 'We want more drags, or with

scued boy sobbed, 'O

ght of Dr. Shrapne

l bring her and the baby to Mount Laurels. The child will ha

heavily-breathing man whom he had onc

obbed the woman, and

id, drawing his hand away f

my lord,' several

er of

d the urchin to Lord Romfrey's feet,

er Beauchamp drowned

ring were turned on th

d Romfrey's fell on the

h arms to get his fist

have in exchan

r of the two men who loved Beauchamp, after they had examined the insig

ITOR'S B

o it, and death

a woman's lord

amp's

re decently

nd coffee too much t

er lover through

wed t

a paragraph

from first prin

chmen comparable to

d! ay, then we

h of it-a tric

ment I ca

cowards, white-ey

ason to gain the d

uch superero

ything to resent: sh

of the

y only are

out him would

able only to serv

of im

ead men by the

ristian instea

exists ther

intimation that h

one of her sex s