Beauchamp's Career. Complete

‘He’s a harmless enthusiast,’ said Lydiard. ‘He has been reading the article, and has got excited over it.’

‘I wish I had the fellow’s address.’ Beauchamp looked wistfully at Lydiard, but he did not stimulate the generous offer to obtain it for him. Perhaps it was as well to forget the fellow.

‘You see the effect of those articles,’ he said.

‘You see what I mean by unseasonable times,’ Lydiard retorted.

‘He didn’t talk like a tradesman,’ Beauchamp mused.

‘He may be one, for all that. It’s better to class him as an enthusiast.’

‘An enthusiast!’ Beauchamp stamped: ‘for what?’

‘For the existing order of things; for his beef and ale; for the titles he is accustomed to read in the papers. You don’t study your countrymen.’

‘I’d study that fellow, if I had the chance.’

‘You would probably find him one of the emptiest, with a rather worse temper than most of them.’

Beauchamp shook Lydiard’s hand, saying, ‘The widow?’

‘There’s no woman like her!’

‘Well, now you’re free—why not? I think I put one man out of the field.’

‘Too early! Besides—’

‘Repeat that, and you may have to say too late.’

‘When shall you go down to Bevisham?’

‘When? I can’t tell: when I’ve gone through fire. There never was a home for me like the cottage, and the old man, and the dear good girl—the best of girls! if you hadn’t a little spoilt her with your philosophy of the two sides of the case.’

‘I’ve not given her the brains.’

‘She’s always doubtful of doing, doubtful of action: she has no will. So she is fatalistic, and an argument between us ends in her submitting, as if she must submit to me, because I’m overbearing, instead of accepting the fact.’

‘She feels your influence.’

‘She’s against the publication of THE DAWN—for the present. It’s an “unseasonable time.” I argue with her: I don’t get hold of her mind a bit; but at last she says, “very well.” She has your head.’

And you have her heart, Lydiard could have rejoined.

They said good-bye, neither of them aware of the other’s task of endurance.

As they were parting, Beauchamp perceived his old comrade Jack Wilmore walking past.

‘Jack!’ he called.

Wilmore glanced round. ‘How do you do, Beauchamp?’

‘Where are you off to, Jack?’

‘Down to the Admiralty. I’m rather in a hurry; I have an appointment.’

‘Can’t you stop just a minute?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t. Good morning.’

It was incredible; but this old friend, the simplest heart alive, retreated without a touch of his hand, and with a sorely wounded air.

‘That newspaper article appears to have been generally read,’ Beauchamp said to Lydiard, who answered:

‘The article did not put the idea of you into men’s minds, but gave tongue to it: you may take it for an instance of the sagacity of the Press.’

‘You wouldn’t take that man and me to have been messmates for years! Old Jack Wilmore! Don’t go, Lydiard.’

Lydiard declared that he was bound to go: he was engaged to read Italian for an hour with Mrs. Wardour-Devereux.

‘Then go, by all means,’ Beauchamp dismissed him.

He felt as if he had held a review of his friends and enemies on the door-step, and found them of one colour. If it was an accident befalling him in a London square during a space of a quarter of an hour, what of the sentiments of universal England? Lady Barbara’s elopement with Lord Alfred last year did not rouse much execration; hardly worse than gossip and compassion. Beauchamp drank a great deal of bitterness from his reflections.

They who provoke huge battles, and gain but lame victories over themselves, insensibly harden to the habit of distilling sour thoughts from their mischances and from most occurrences. So does the world they combat win on them.

‘For,’ says Dr. Shrapnel, ‘the world and nature, which are opposed in relation to our vital interests, each agrees to demand of us a perfect victory, on pain otherwise of proving it a stage performance; and the victory over the world, as over nature, is over self: and this victory lies in yielding perpetual service to the world, and none to nature: for the world has to be wrought out, nature to be subdued.’

The interior of the house was like a change of elements to Beauchamp. He had never before said to himself, ‘I have done my best, and I am beaten!’ Outside of it, his native pugnacity had been stimulated; but here, within the walls where Renee lay silently breathing, barely breathing, it might be dying, he was overcome, and left it to circumstance to carry him to a conclusion. He went up-stairs to the drawing-room, where he beheld Madame d’Auffray in conversation with Rosamund.

‘I was assured by Madame la Comtesse that I should see you to-day,’ the French lady said as she swam to meet him; ‘it is a real pleasure’: and pressing his hand she continued, ‘but I fear you will be disappointed of seeing my sister. She would rashly try your climate at its worst period. Believe me, I do not join in decrying it, except on her account: I could have forewarned her of an English Winter and early Spring. You know her impetuosity; suddenly she decided on accepting the invitation of Madame la Comtesse; and though I have no fears of her health, she is at present a victim of the inclement weather.’

‘You have seen her, madame?’ said Beauchamp. So well had the clever lady played the dupe that he forgot there was a part for him to play. Even the acquiescence of Rosamund in the title of countess bewildered him.

‘Madame d’Auffray has been sitting for an hour with Madame de Rouaillout,’ said Rosamund.

He spoke of Roland’s coming.

‘Ah?’ said Madame d’Auffray, and turned to Rosamund: ‘you have determined to surprise us: then you will have a gathering of the whole family in your hospitable house, Madame la Comtesse!

‘If M. la Marquis will do it that honour, madame!

‘My brother is in London,’ Madame d’Auffray said to Beauchamp.

The shattering blow was merited by one who could not rejoice that he had acted rightly.

CHAPTER XLIII. THE EARL OF ROMFREY AND THE COUNTESS

An extraordinary telegraphic message, followed by a still more extraordinary letter the next morning, from Rosamund Culling, all but interdicted the immediate occupation of his house in town to Everard, now Earl of Romfrey. She begged him briefly not to come until after the funeral, and proposed to give him good reasons for her request at their meeting. ‘I repeat, I pledge myself to satisfy you on this point,’ she wrote. Her tone was that of one of your heroic women of history refusing to surrender a fortress.