Red light struck into that round chalk maw, and the green slopes and channels and half-circle hollows were brought a mile-stride higher Steynham by the level beams.
The poor old colonel fell to a more frequent repetition of the 'Well!' with which he had been unconsciously expressing his perplexed mind in the kennels and through the covers during the day. None of the gentlemen went to dress. Mr. Culbrett was indoors conversing with Rosamund Culling.
'What's come to them?' the colonel asked of Mr. Romfrey, who said shrugging, 'Something wrong with one of the horses.' It had happened to him on one occasion to set foot in the hole of a baked hedgehog that had furnished a repast, not without succulence, to some shepherd of the downs. Such a case might have recurred; it was more likely to cause an upset at a walk than at a gallop: or perhaps a shoe had been cast; and young people break no bones at a walking fall; ten to one if they do at their top speed. Horses manage to kill their seniors for them: the young are exempt from accident.
Colonel Halkett nodded and sighed: 'I daresay they're safe. It's that man Shrapnel's letter—that letter, Romfrey! A private letter, I know; but I've not heard Nevil disown the opinions expressed in it. I submit. It's no use resisting. I treat my daughter as a woman capable of judging for herself. I repeat, I submit. I haven't a word against Nevil except on the score of his politics. I like him. All I have to say is, I don't approve of a republican and a sceptic for my son-in-law. I yield to you, and my daughter, if she . . . !'
'I think she does, colonel. Marriage 'll cure the fellow. Nevil will slough his craze. Off! old coat. Cissy will drive him in strings. "My wife!" I hear him.' Mr. Romfrey laughed quietly. 'It's all "my country," now. The dog'll be uxorious. He wants fixing; nothing worse.'
'How he goes on about Shrapnel!'
'I shouldn't think much of him if he didn't.'
'You're one in a thousand, Romfrey. I object to seeing a man worshipped.'
'It's Nevil's green-sickness, and Shrapnel's the god of it.'
'I trust to heaven you're right. It seems to me young fellows ought to be out of it earlier.'
'They generally are.' Mr. Romfrey named some of the processes by which they are relieved of brain-flightiness, adding philosophically, 'This way or that.'
His quick ear caught a sound of hoofs cantering down the avenue on the Northern front of the house.
He consulted his watch. 'Ten minutes to eight. Say a quarter-past for dinner. They're here, colonel.'
Mr. Romfrey met Nevil returning from the stables. Cecilia had disappeared.
'Had a good day?' said Mr. Romfrey.
Beauchamp replied: 'I'll tell you of it after dinner,' and passed by him.
Mr. Romfrey edged round to Colonel Halkett, conjecturing in his mind: They have not hit it; as he remarked: 'Breakfast and luncheon have been omitted in this day's fare,' which appeared to the colonel a confirmation of his worst fears, or rather the extinction of his last spark of hope.
He knocked at his daughter's door in going upstairs to dress.
Cecilia presented herself and kissed him.
'Well?' said he.
'By-and-by, papa,' she answered. 'I have a headache. Beg Mr. Romfrey to excuse me.'
'No news for me?'
She had no news.
Mrs. Culling was with her. The colonel stepped on mystified to his room.
When the door had closed Cecilia turned to Rosamund and burst into tears. Rosamund felt that it must be something grave indeed for the proud young lady so to betray a troubled spirit.
'He is ill—Dr. Shrapnel is very ill,' Cecilia responded to one or two subdued inquiries in as clear a voice as she could command.
'Where have you heard of him?' Rosamund asked.
'We have been there.'
'Bevisham? to Bevisham?' Rosamund was considering the opinion Mr.
Romfrey would form of the matter from the point of view of his horses.
'It was Nevil's wish,' said Cecilia.
'Yes? and you went with him,' Rosamund encouraged her to proceed, gladdened at hearing her speak of Nevil by that name; 'you have not been on the downs at all?'
Cecilia mentioned a junction railway station they had ridden to; and thence, boxing the horses, by train to Bevisham. Rosamund understood that some haunting anxiety had fretted Nevil during the night; in the morning he could not withstand it, and he begged Cecilia to change their destination, apparently with a vehemence of entreaty that had been irresistible, or else it was utter affection for him had reduced her to undertake the distasteful journey. She admitted that she was not the most sympathetic companion Nevil could have had on the way, either going or coming. She had not entered Dr. Shrapnel's cottage. Remaining on horseback she had seen the poor man reclining in his garden chair. Mr. Lydiard was with him, and also his ward Miss Denham, who had been summoned by telegraph by one of the servants from Switzerland. And Cecilia had heard Nevil speak of his uncle to her, and too humbly, she hinted. Nor had the expression of Miss Denham's countenance in listening to him pleased her; but it was true that a heavily burdened heart cannot be expected to look pleasing. On the way home Cecilia had been compelled in some degree to defend Mr. Romfrey. Blushing through her tears at the remembrance of a past emotion that had been mixed with foresight, she confessed to Rosamund she thought it now too late to prevent a rupture between Nevil and his uncle. Had some one whom Nevil trusted and cared for taken counsel with him and advised him before uncle and nephew met to discuss this most unhappy matter, then there might have been hope. As it was, the fate of Dr. Shrapnel had gained entire possession of Nevil. Every retort of his uncle's in reference to it rose up in him: he used language of contempt neighbouring abhorrence: he stipulated for one sole thing to win back his esteem for his uncle; and that was, the apology to Dr. Shrapnel.
'And to-night,' Cecilia concluded, 'he will request Mr. Romfrey to accompany. him to Bevisham to-morrow morning, to make the apology in person. He will not accept the slightest evasion. He thinks Dr. Shrapnel may die, and the honour of the family—what is it he says of it?' Cecilia raised her eyes to the ceiling, while Rosamund blinked in impatience and grief, just apprehending the alien state of the young lady's mind in her absence of recollection, as well as her bondage in the effort to recollect accurately.
'Have you not eaten any food to-day, Miss Halkett?' she said; for it might be the want of food which had broken her and changed her manner.
Cecilia replied that she had ridden for an hour to Mount Laurels.
'Alone? Mr. Romfrey must not hear of that,' said Rosamund.
Cecilia consented to lie down on her bed. She declined the dainties Rosamund pressed on her. She was feverish with a deep and unconcealed affliction, and behaved as if her pride had gone. But if her pride had gone she would have eased her heart by sobbing outright. A similar division harassed her as when her friend Nevil was the candidate for Bevisham. She condemned his extreme wrath with his uncle, yet was attracted and enchained by the fire of passionate attachment which aroused it: and she was conscious that she had but shown obedience to his wishes throughout the day, not sympathy with his feelings. Under cover of a patient desire to please she had nursed irritation and jealousy; the degradation of the sense of jealousy increasing the irritation. Having consented to the ride to Dr. Shrapnel, should she not, to be consistent, have dismounted there? O half heart! A whole one, though it be an erring, like that of the French lady, does at least live, and has a history, and makes music: but the faint and uncertain is jarred in action, jarred in memory, ever behind the day and in the shadow of it! Cecilia reviewed herself: jealous, disappointed, vexed, ashamed, she had been all day a graceless companion, a bad actress: and at the day's close she was loving Nevil the better for what had dissatisfied, distressed, and wounded her. She was loving him in emulation of his devotedness to another person: and that other was a revolutionary common people's doctor! an infidel, a traitor to his country's dearest interests! But Nevil loved him, and it had become impossible for her not to covet the love, or to think of the old offender without the halo cast by Nevil's attachment being upon him. So intensely was she moved by her intertwisting reflections that in an access of bodily fever she stood up and moved before the glass, to behold the image of the woman who could be the victim of these childish emotions: and no wonderful contrast struck her eyes; she appeared to herself as poor and small as they. How could she aspire to a man like Nevil Beauchamp? If he had made her happy by wooing her she would not have adored him as she did now. He likes my hair, she said, smoothing it out, and then pressing her temples, like one insane. Two minutes afterward she was telling Rosamund her head ached less.
'This terrible Dr. Shrapnel!' Rosamund exclaimed, but reported that no loud voices were raised in the dining-room.
Colonel 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 as a gentleman.
I intend to treat you with respect, but wolf is the title now, whether I say it or not.'
'Shrapnel's a rather long-legged sheep?'
'He asks for nothing from you.'
'He would have got nothing, at a cry of peccavi!'
'He was innocent, perfectly blameless; he would not lie to save himself.