Beauchamp's Career. Volume 6

'Not if he's got a fair half of our blood in him. And Richard Beauchamp gave the fellow good stock. He has about the best blood in England. That's not saying much when they've taken to breed as they build—stuff to keep the plasterers at work; devil a thought of posterity!'

'There I see you and Nevil one, my dear lord,' said Rosamund. 'You think of those that are to follow us. Talk to me of him. Do not say, "the fellow." Say "Nevil." No, no; call him "the fellow." He was alive and well when you used to say it. But smile kindly, as if he made you love him down in your heart, in spite of you. We have both known that love, and that opposition to him; not liking his ideas, yet liking him so: we were obliged to laugh—I have seen you! as love does laugh! If I am not crying over his grave, Everard? Oh!'

The earl smoothed her forehead. All her suspicions were rekindled.

'Truth! truth! give me truth. Let me know what world I am in.'

'My dear, a ship's not lost because she's caught in a squall; nor a man buffeting the waves for an hour. He's all right: he keeps up.'

'He is delirious? I ask you—I have fancied I heard him.'

Lord Romfrey puffed from his nostrils: but in affecting to blow to the winds her foolish woman's wildness of fancy, his mind rested on Nevil, and he said: 'Poor boy! It seems he's chattering hundreds to the minute.'

His wife's looks alarmed him after he had said it, and he was for toning it and modifying it, when she gasped to him to help her to her feet; and standing up, she exclaimed: 'O heaven! now I hear you; now I know he lives. See how much better it is for me to know the real truth. It takes me to his bedside. Ignorance and suspense have been poison. I have been washed about like a dead body. Let me read all my letters now. Nothing will harm me now. You will do your best for me, my husband, will you not?' She tore at her dress at her throat for coolness, panting and smiling. 'For me—us—yours—ours! Give me my letters, lunch with me, and start for Bevisham. Now you see how good it is for me to hear the very truth, you will give me your own report, and I shall absolutely trust in it, and go down with it if it's false! But you see I am perfectly strong for the truth. It must be you or I to go. I burn to go; but your going will satisfy me. If you look on him, I look. I feel as if I had been nailed down in a coffin, and have got fresh air. I pledge you my word, sir, my honour, my dear husband, that I will think first of my duty. I know it would be Nevil's wish. He has not quite forgiven me—he thought me ambitious—ah! stop: he said that the birth of our child would give him greater happiness than he had known for years: he begged me to persuade you to call a boy Nevil Beauchamp, and a girl Renee. He has never believed in his own long living.'

Rosamund refreshed her lord's heart by smiling archly as she said: 'The boy to be educated to take the side of the people, of course! The girl is to learn a profession.'

'Ha! bless the fellow!' Lord Romfrey interjected. 'Well, I might go there for an hour. Promise me, no fretting! You have hollows in your cheeks, and your underlip hangs: I don't like it. I haven't seen that before.'

'We do not see clearly when we are trying to deceive,' said Rosamund.

'My letters! my letters!'

Lord Romfrey went to fetch them. They were intact in his desk. His wife, then, had actually been reading the facts through a wall! For he was convinced of Mrs. Devereux's fidelity, as well as of the colonel's and Cecilia's. He was not a man to be disobeyed: nor was his wife the woman to court or to acquiesce in trifling acts of disobedience to him. He received the impression, consequently, that this matter of the visit to Nevil was one in which the poor loving soul might be allowed to guide him, singular as the intensity of her love of Nevil Beauchamp was, considering that they were not of kindred blood.

He endeavoured to tone her mind for the sadder items in Miss Denham's letters.

'Oh!' said Rosamund, 'what if I shed the "screaming eyedrops," as you call them? They will not hurt me, but relieve. I was sure I should someday envy that girl! If he dies she will have nursed him and had the last of him.'

'He's not going to die!' said Everard powerfully.

'We must be prepared. These letters will do that for me. I have written out the hours of your trains. Stanton will attend on you. I have directed him to telegraph to the Dolphin in Bevisham for rooms for the night: that is to-morrow night. To-night you sleep at your hotel in London, which will be ready to receive you, and is more comfortable than the empty house. Stanton takes wine, madeira and claret, and other small necessaries. If Nevil should be very unwell, you will not leave him immediately. I shall look to the supplies. You will telegraph to me twice a day, and write once. We lunch at half-past twelve, so that you may hit the twenty-minutes-to-two o'clock train. And now I go to see that the packing is done.'

She carried off her letters to her bedroom, where she fell upon the bed, shutting her eyelids hard before she could suffer her eyes to be the intermediaries of that fever-chamber in Bevisham and her bursting heart. But she had not positively deceived her husband in the reassurance she had given him by her collectedness and by the precise directions she had issued for his comforts, indicating a mind so much more at ease. She was firmer to meet the peril of her beloved: and being indeed, when thrown on her internal resources, one among the brave women of earth, though also one who required a lift from circumstances to take her stand calmly fronting a menace to her heart, she saw the evidence of her influence with Lord Romfrey: the level she could feel that they were on together so long as she was courageous, inspirited her sovereignly.

He departed at the hour settled for him. Rosamund sat at her boudoir window, watching the carriage that was conducting him to the railway station. Neither of them had touched on the necessity of his presenting himself at the door of Dr. Shrapnel's house. That, and the disgust belonging to it, was a secondary consideration with Lord Romfrey, after he had once resolved on it as the right thing to do: and his wife admired and respected him for so supreme a loftiness. And fervently she prayed that it might not be her evil fate to disappoint his hopes. Never had she experienced so strong a sense of devotedness to him as when she saw the carriage winding past the middle oak-wood of the park, under a wet sky brightened from the West, and on out of sight.