Beauchamp's Career. Volume 5. George Meredith
Halkett came to see his daughter, full of anxiety and curiosity. Affairs had been peaceful below, for he was ignorant of the expedition to Bevisham. On hearing of it he frowned, questioned Cecilia as to whether she had set foot on that man's grounds, then said: 'Ah! well, we leave to-morrow: I must go, I have business at home; I can't delay it. I sanctioned no calling there, nothing of the kind. From Steynham to Bevisham? Goodness, it's rank madness. I'm not astonished you're sick and ill.'
He waited till he was assured Cecilia had no special matter to relate, and recommending her to drink the tea Mrs. Culling had made for her, and then go to bed and sleep, he went down to the drawing-room, charged with the worst form of hostility toward Nevil, the partly diplomatic.
Cecilia smiled at her father's mention of sleep. She was in the contest of the two men, however inanimately she might be lying overhead, and the assurance in her mind that neither of them would give ground, so similar were they in their tenacity of will, dissimilar in all else, dragged her this way and that till she swayed lifeless between them. One may be as a weed of the sea while one's fate is being decided. To love is to be on the sea, out of sight of land: to love a man like Nevil Beauchamp is to be on the sea in tempest. Still to persist in loving would be noble, and but for this humiliation of utter helplessness an enviable power. Her thoughts ran thus in shame and yearning and regret, dimly discerning where her heart failed in the strength which was Nevil's, though it was a full heart, faithful and not void of courage. But he never brooded, he never blushed from insufficiency-the faintness of a desire, the callow passion that cannot fly and feed itself: he never tottered; he walked straight to his mark. She set up his image and Renee's, and cowered under the heroical shapes till she felt almost extinct. With her weak limbs and head worthlessly paining, the little infantile I within her ceased to wail, dwindled beyond sensation. Rosamund, waiting on her in the place of her maid, saw two big drops come through her closed eyelids, and thought that if it could be granted to Nevil to look for a moment on this fair and proud young lady's loveliness in abandonment, it would tame, melt, and save him. The Gods presiding over custom do not permit such renovating sights to men.
CHAPTER XXXVI
PURSUIT OF THE APOLOGY OF Mr. ROMFREY TO DR. SHRAPNEL
The contest, which was an alternation of hard hitting and close wrestling, had recommenced when Colonel Halkett stepped into the drawing- room.
'Colonel, I find they've been galloping to Bevisham and back,' said Mr. Romfrey.
'I've heard of it,' the colonel replied. Not perceiving a sign of dissatisfaction on his friend's face, he continued:: 'To that man Shrapnel.'
'Cecilia did not dismount,' said Beauchamp.
'You took her to that man's gate. It was not with my sanction. You know my ideas of the man.'
'If you were to see him now, colonel, I don't think you would speak harshly of him.'
'We 're not obliged to go and look on men who have, had their measure dealt them.'
'Barbarously,' said Beauchamp.
Mr. Romfrey in the most placid manner took a chair. 'Windy talk, that!' he said.
Colonel Halkett seated himself. Stukely Culbrett turned a sheet of manuscript he was reading.
Beauchamp began a caged lion's walk on the rug under the mantelpiece.
'I shall not spare you from hearing what I think of it, sir.'
'We 've had what you think of it twice over,' said Mr. Romfrey. 'I suppose it was the first time for information, the second time for emphasis, and the rest counts to keep it alive in your recollection.'
'This is what you have to take to heart, sir; that Dr. Shrapnel is now seriously ill.'
'I'm sorry for it, and I'll pay the doctor's bill.'
'You make it hard for me to treat you with respect.'
'Fire away. Those Radical friends of yours have to learn a lesson, and it's worth a purse to teach them that a lady, however feeble she may seem to them, is exactly of the strength of the best man of her acquaintance.'
'That's well said!' came from Colonel Halkett.
Beauchamp stared at him, amazed by the commendation of empty language.
'You acted in error; barbarously, but in error,' he addressed his uncle.
'And you have got a fine topic for mouthing,' Mr. Romfrey rejoined.
'You mean to sit still under Dr. Shrapnel's forgiveness?'
'He's taken to copy the Christian religion, has he?'
'You know you were deluded when you struck him.'
'Not a whit.'
'Yes, you know it now: Mrs. Culling—'
'Drag in no woman, Nevil Beauchamp!'
'She has confessed to you that Dr. Shrapnel neither insulted her nor meant to ruffle her.'
'She has done no such nonsense.'
'If she has not!—but I trust her to have done it.'
'You play the trumpeter, you terrorize her.'
'Into opening her lips wider; nothing else. I'll have the truth from her, and no mincing: and from Cecil Baskelett and Palmet.'
'Give Cecil a second licking, if you can, and have him off to Shrapnel.'
'You!' cried Beauchamp.
At this juncture Stukely Culbrett closed the manuscript in his hands, and holding it out to Beauchamp, said:
'Here's your letter, Nevil. It's tolerably hard to decipher. It's mild enough; it's middling good pulpit. I like it.'
'What have you got there?' Colonel Halkett asked him.
'A letter of his friend Dr. Shrapnel on the Country. Read a bit, colonel.'
'I? That letter! Mild, do you call it?' The colonel started back his chair in declining to touch the letter.
'Try it,' said Stukely. 'It's the letter they have been making the noise about. It ought to be printed. There's a hit or two at the middle-class that I should like to see in print. It's really not bad pulpit; and I suspect that what you object to, colonel, is only the dust of a well- thumped cushion. Shrapnel thumps with his fist. He doesn't say much that's new. If the parsons were men they'd be saying it every Sunday. If they did, colonel, I should hear you saying, amen.'
'Wait till they do say it.'
'That's a long stretch. They're turn-cocks of one Water-company—to wash the greasy citizens!'
'You're keeping Nevil on the gape;' said Mr. Romfrey, with a whimsical shrewd cast of the eye at Beauchamp, who stood alert not to be foiled, arrow-like in look and readiness to repeat his home-shot. Mr. Romfrey wanted to hear more of that unintelligible 'You!' of Beauchamp's. But Stukely Culbrett intended that the latter should be foiled, and he continued his diversion from the angry subject.
'We'll drop the sacerdotals,' he said. 'They're behind a veil for us, and so are we for them. I'm with you, colonel; I wouldn't have them persecuted; they sting fearfully when whipped. No one listens to them now except the class that goes to sleep under them, to "set an example" to the class that can't understand them. Shrapnel is like the breeze shaking the turf-grass outside the church-doors; a trifle fresher. He knocks nothing down.'
'He can't!' ejaculated the colonel.
'He sermonizes to shake, that's all. I know the kind of man.'
'Thank heaven, it's not a common species in England!'
'Common enough to be classed.'
Beauchamp struck through the conversation of the pair: 'Can I see you alone to-night, sir, or to-morrow morning?'
'You may catch me where you can,' was Mr. Romfrey's answer.
'Where's that? It's for your sake and mine, not for Dr. Shrapnel's.
I have to speak to you, and must. You have done your worst with him; you can't undo it. You have to think of your honour