Timothy's article had plucked Beauchamp out of bed; Beauchamp's card in return did the same for him.
'Commander Beauchamp? I am heartily glad to make your acquaintance, sir; I've been absent, at work, on the big business we have in common, I rejoice to say, and am behind my fellow townsmen in this pleasure and lucky I slept here in my room above, where I don't often sleep, for the row of the machinery—it 's like a steamer that won't go, though it's always starting ye,' Mr. Timothy said in a single breath, upon entering the back office of the Gazette, like unto those accomplished violinists who can hold on the bow to finger an incredible number of notes, and may be imaged as representing slow paternal Time, that rolls his capering dot-headed generation of mortals over the wheel, hundreds to the minute. 'You'll excuse my not shaving, sir, to come down to your summons without an extra touch to the neck-band.'
Beauchamp beheld a middle-sized round man, with loose lips and pendant indigo jowl, whose eyes twinkled watery, like pebbles under the shore- wash, and whose neck-band needed an extra touch from fingers other than his own.
'I am sorry to have disturbed you so early,' he replied.
'Not a bit, Commander Beauchamp, not a bit, sir. Early or late, and ay ready—with the Napiers; I'll wash, I'll wash.'
'I came to speak to you of this article of yours on me. They tell me in the office that you are the writer. Pray don't "Commander" me so much. —It's not customary, and I object to it.'
'Certainly, certainly,' Timothy acquiesced.
'And for the future, Mr. Turbot, please to be good enough not to allude in print to any of my performances here and there. Your intentions are complimentary, but it happens that I don't like a public patting on the back.'
'No, and that's true,' said Timothy.
His appreciative and sympathetic agreement with these sharp strictures on the article brought Beauchamp to a stop.
Timothy waited for him; then, smoothing his prickly cheek, remarked: 'If I'd guessed your errand, Commander Beauchamp, I'd have called in the barber before I came down, just to make myself decent for a 'first introduction.'
Beauchamp was not insensible to the slyness of the poke at him. 'You see, I come to the borough unknown to it, and as quietly as possible, and I want to be taken as a politician,' he continued, for the sake of showing that he had sufficient to say to account for his hasty and peremptory summons of the writer of that article to his presence. 'It's excessively disagreeable to have one's family lugged into notice in a newspaper—especially if they are of different politics. I feel it.'
All would, sir,' said Timothy.
'Then why the deuce did you do it?'
Timothy drew a lading of air into his lungs. 'Politics, Commander Beauchamp, involves the doing of lots of disagreeable things to ourselves and our relations; it 's positive. I'm a soldier of the Great Campaign: and who knows it better than I, sir? It's climbing the greasy pole for the leg o' mutton, that makes the mother's heart ache for the jacket and the nether garments she mended neatly, if she didn't make them. Mutton or no mutton, there's grease for certain! Since it's sure we can't be disconnected from the family, the trick is to turn the misfortune to a profit; and allow me the observation, that an old family, sir, and a high and titled family, is not to be despised for a background of a portrait in naval uniform, with medal and clasps, and some small smoke of powder clearing off over there:—that's if we're to act sagaciously in introducing an unknown candidate to a borough that has a sneaking liking for the kind of person, more honour to it. I'm a political veteran, sir; I speak from experience. We must employ our weapons, every one of them, and all off the grindstone.'
'Very well,' said Beauchamp. 'Now understand; you are not in future to employ the weapons, as you call them, that I have objected to.'
Timothy gaped slightly.
'Whatever you will, but no puffery,' Beauchamp added. 'Can I by any means arrest—purchase—is it possible, tell me, to lay an embargo—stop to-day's issue of the Gazette?'
'No more—than the bite of a mad dog,' Timothy replied, before he had considered upon the monstrous nature of the proposal.
Beauchamp humphed, and tossed his head. The simile of the dog struck him with intense effect.
'There'd be a second edition,' said Timothy, 'and you might buy up that. But there'll be a third, and you may buy up that; but there'll be a fourth and a fifth, and so on ad infinitum, with the advertisement of the sale of the foregoing creating a demand like a rageing thirst in a shipwreck, in Bligh's boat, in the tropics. I'm afraid, Com—Captain Beauchamp, sir, there's no stopping the Press while the people have an appetite for it—and a Company's at the back of it.'
'Pooh, don't talk to me in that way; all I complain of is the figure you have made of me,' said Beauchamp, fetching him smartly out of his nonsense; 'and all I ask of you is not to be at it again. Who would suppose from reading an article like that, that I am a candidate with a single political idea!'
'An article like that,' said Timothy, winking, and a little surer of his man now that he suggested his possession of ideas, 'an article like that is the best cloak you can put on a candidate with too many of 'em, Captain Beauchamp. I'll tell you, sir; I came, I heard of your candidature, I had your sketch, the pattern of ye, before me, and I was told that Dr. Shrapnel fathered you politically. There was my brief! I had to persuade our constituents that you, Commander Beauchamp of the Royal Navy, and the great family of the Earls of Romfrey, one of the heroes of the war, and the recipient of a Royal Humane Society's medal for saving life in Bevisham waters, were something more than the Radical doctor's political son; and, sir, it was to this end, aim, and object, that I wrote the article I am not ashamed to avow as mine, and I do so, sir, because of the solitary merit it has of serving your political interests as the liberal candidate for Bevisham by counteracting the unpopularity of Dr. Shrapnel's name, on the one part, and of reviving the credit due to your valour and high bearing on the field of battle in defence of your country, on the other, so that Bevisham may apprehend, in spite of party distinctions, that it has the option, and had better seize upon the honour, of making a M.P. of a hero.'
Beauchamp interposed hastily: 'Thank you, thank you for the best of intentions. But let me tell you I am prepared to stand or fall with Dr. Shrapnel, and be hanged to all that humbug.'
Timothy rubbed his hands with an abstracted air of washing. 'Well, commander, well, sir, they say a candidate's to be humoured in his infancy, for he has to do all the humouring before he's many weeks old at it; only there's the fact!—he soon finds out he has to pay for his first fling, like the son of a family sowing his oats to reap his Jews. Credit me, sir, I thought it prudent to counteract a bit of an apothecary's shop odour in the junior Liberal candidate's address. I found the town sniffing, they scented Shrapnel in the composition.'
'Every line of it was mine,' said Beauchamp.
'Of course it was, and the address was admirably worded, sir, I make bold to say it to your face; but most indubitably it threatened powerful drugs for weak stomachs, and it blew cold on votes, which are sensitive plants like nothing else in botany.'
'If they are only to be got by abandoning principles, and by anything but honesty in stating them, they may go,' said Beauchamp.
'I repeat, my dear sir, I repeat, the infant candidate delights in his honesty, like the babe in its nakedness, the beautiful virgin in her innocence. So he does; but he discovers it's time for him to wear clothes in a contested election. And what's that but to preserve the outlines pretty correctly, whilst he doesn't shock and horrify the optics? A dash of conventionalism makes the whole civilized world kin, ye know. That's the truth. You must appear to be one of them, for them to choose you. After all, there's no harm in a dyer's hand; and, sir, a candidate looking at his own, when he has won the Election . . .'
'Ah, well,' said Beauchamp, swinging on his heel, 'and now I'll take my leave of you, and I apologize for bringing you down here so early. Please attend to what I have said; it's peremptory. You will give me great pleasure by dining with me to-night, at the hotel opposite. Will you? I don't know what kind of wine I shall be able to offer you. Perhaps you know the cellar, and may help me in that.'
Timothy grasped his hand, 'With pleasure, Commander Beauchamp. They have a bucellas over there that 's old, and a tolerable claret, and a Port to be inquired for under the breath, in a mysteriously intimate tone of voice, as one says, "I know of your treasure, and the corner under ground where it lies." Avoid the champagne: 'tis the banqueting wine. Ditto the sherry. One can drink them, one can drink them.'
'At a quarter to eight this evening, then,' said Nevil.
'I'll be there at the stroke of the clock, sure as the date of a bill,' said Timothy.
And it's early to guess whether you'll catch Bevisham or you won't, he reflected, as he gazed at the young gentleman crossing the road; but female Bevisham's with you, if that counts for much. Timothy confessed, that without the employment of any weapon save arrogance and a look of candour, the commander had gone some way toward catching the feminine side of himself.
CHAPTER XV
CECILIA HALKETT
Beauchamp walked down to the pier, where he took a boat for H.M.S. Isis, to see Jack Wilmore, whom he had not met since his return from his last cruise, and first he tried the efficacy of a dive in salt water, as a specific for irritation. It gave the edge to a fine appetite that he continued to satisfy while Wilmore talked of those famous dogs to which the navy has ever been going.
'We want another panic, Beauchamp,' said Lieutenant Wilmore. 'No one knows better than you what a naval man has to complain of, so I hope you'll get your Election, if only that we may reckon on a good look-out for the interests of the service. A regular Board with a permanent Lord High Admiral, and a regular vote of money to keep it up to the mark. Stick to that. Hardist has a vote in Bevisham. I think I can get one or two more. Why aren't you a Tory? No Whigs nor Liberals look after us half so well as the Tories. It's enough to break a man's heart to see the troops of dockyard workmen marching out as soon as ever a Liberal Government marches in. Then it's one of our infernal panics again, and patch here, patch there; every inch of it make-believe! I'll prove to you from examples that the humbug of Government causes exactly the same humbugging workmanship. It seems as if it were a game of "rascals all." Let them sink us! but, by heaven! one can't help feeling for the country. And I do say it's the doing of those Liberals. Skilled workmen, mind you, not to be netted again so easily. America reaps the benefit of our folly . . . . That was a lucky run of yours up the Niger; the admiral was friendly, but you deserved your luck. For God's sake, don't forget the state of our service when you're one of our cherubs up aloft, Beauchamp. This I'll say, I've never heard a man talk about it as you used to in old midshipmite days, whole watches through—don't you remember? on the North American station, and in the Black Sea, and the Mediterranean. And that girl at Malta! I wonder what has become of her? What a beauty she was! I dare say she wasn't so fine a girl as the Armenian you unearthed on the Bosphorus, but she had something about her a fellow can't forget. That was a lovely creature coming down the hills over Granada on her mule. Ay, we've seen handsome women, Nevil Beauchamp. But you always were lucky, invariably, and I should bet on you for the Election.'
'Canvass for me, Jack,' said Beauchamp, smiling at his friend's unconscious double-skeining of subjects. 'If I turn out as good a politician as you are a seaman, I shall do. Pounce on Hardist's vote without losing a day. I would go to him, but I've missed the Halketts twice. They 're on the Otley river, at a place called Mount Laurels, and I particularly want to see the colonel. Can you give me a boat there, and come?'
'Certainly,' said Wilmore. 'I've danced there with the lady, the handsomest girl, English style, of her time. And come, come, our English style's the best. It wears best, it looks best. Foreign women . . . they're capital to flirt with. But a girl like Cecilia Halkett—one can't call her a girl, and it won't do to say Goddess, and queen and charmer are out of the question, though she's both, and angel into the bargain; but, by George! what a woman to call wife, you say; and a man attached to a woman like that never can let himself look small. No such luck for me; only I swear if I stood between a good and a bad action, the thought of that girl would keep me straight, and I've only danced with her once!'
Not long after sketching this rough presentation of the lady, with a masculine hand, Wilmore was able to point to her in person on the deck of her father's yacht, the Esperanza, standing out of Otley river. There was a gallant splendour in the vessel that threw a touch of glory on its mistress in the minds of the two young naval officers, as they pulled for her in the ship's gig.
Wilmore sang out, 'Give way, men!'
The sailors bent to their oars, and presently the schooner's head was put to the wind.
'She sees we're giving chase,' Wilmore said. 'She can't be expecting me, so it must be you. No, the colonel doesn't race her. They've only been back from Italy six months: I mean the schooner. I remember she talked of you when I had her for a partner. Yes, now I mean Miss Halkett. Blest if I think she talked of anything else. She sees us. I'll tell you what she likes: she likes yachting, she likes Italy, she likes painting, likes things old English, awfully fond of heroes. I told her a tale of one of our men saving life. "Oh!" said she, "didn't your friend Nevil Beauchamp save a man from drowning, off the guardship, in exactly the same place?" And next day she sent me a cheque for three pounds for the fellow. Steady, men! I keep her letter.'
The boat went smoothly alongside the schooner. Miss Halkett had come to the side. The oars swung fore and aft, and Beauchamp sprang on deck.
Wilmore had to decline Miss Halkett's invitation to him as well as his friend, and returned in his boat. He left the pair with a ruffling breeze, and a sky all sail, prepared, it seemed to him, to enjoy the most delicious you-and-I on salt water that a sailor could dream of; and placidly envying, devoid of jealousy, there was just enough of fancy quickened in Lieutenant Wilmore to give him pictures of them without disturbance of his feelings—one of the conditions of the singular visitation we call happiness, if he could have known it.
For a time his visionary eye followed them pretty correctly. So long since they had parted last! such changes in the interval! and great animation in Beauchamp's gaze, and a blush on Miss Halkett's cheeks.
She said once, 'Captain Beauchamp.' He retorted with a solemn formality.
They smiled, and immediately took footing on their previous intimacy.
'How good it was of you to come twice to Mount Laurels,' said she. 'I have not missed you to-day. No address was on your card. Where are you staying in the neighbourhood? At Mr. Lespel's?'
'I'm staying at a Bevisham hotel,' said Beauchamp.
'You have not been to Steynham yet? Papa comes home from Steynham to- night.'
'Does he? Well, the Ariadne is only just paid off, and I can't well go to Steynham yet. I—' Beauchamp was astonished at the hesitation he found in himself to name it: 'I have business in Bevisham.'
'Naval business?' she remarked.
'No,' said he.
The sensitive prescience we have of a critical distaste of our proceedings is, the world is aware, keener than our intuition of contrary opinions; and for the sake of preserving the sweet outward forms of friendliness, Beauchamp was anxious not to speak of the business in Bevisham just then, but she looked and he had hesitated, so he said flatly, 'I am one of the candidates for the borough.'
'Indeed!'
'And I want the colonel to give me his vote.'
The young lady breathed a melodious 'Oh!' not condemnatory or reproachful—a sound to fill a pause. But she was beginning to reflect.
'Italy and our English Channel are my two Poles,' she said. 'I am constantly swaying between them. I have told papa we will not lay up the yacht while the weather holds fair. Except for the absence of deep colour and bright colour, what can be more beautiful than these green waves and that dark forest's edge, and the garden of an island! The yachting-water here is an unrivalled lake; and if I miss colour, which I love, I remind myself that we have temperate air here, not a sun that fiends you under cover. We can have our fruits too, you see.' One of the yachtsmen was handing her a basket of hot-house grapes, reclining beside crisp home-made loaflets. 'This is my luncheon. Will you share it, Nevil?'
His Christian name was pleasant to hear from her lips. She held out a bunch to him.
'Grapes take one back to the South,' said he. 'How do you bear compliments? You have been in Italy some years, and it must be the South that has worked the miracle.'
'In my growth?' said Cecilia, smiling. 'I have grown out of my Circassian dress, Nevil.'
'You received it, then?'
'I wrote you a letter of thanks—and abuse, for your not coming to Steynham. You may recognize these pearls.'
The pearls were round her right wrist. He looked at the blue veins.
'They're not pearls of price,' he said.
'I do not wear them to fascinate the jewellers,' rejoined Miss Halkett.
'So you are a candidate at an Election. You still have a tinge of Africa, do you know? But you have not abandoned the navy?'
'—Not altogether.'
'Oh! no, no: I hope not. I have heard of you, . . . but who has not? We cannot spare officers like you. Papa was delighted to hear of your promotion. Parliament!'
The exclamation was contemptuous.
'It's the highest we can aim at,' Beauchamp observed meekly.
'I think I recollect you used to talk politics when you were a midshipman,' she said. 'You headed the aristocracy, did you not?'
'The aristocracy wants a head,' said Beauchamp.
'Parliament, in my opinion, is the best of occupations for idle men,' said she.
'It shows that it is a little too full of them.'
'Surely the country can go on very well without so much speech-making?'
'It can go on very well for the rich.'
Miss Halkett tapped with her foot.
'I should expect a Radical to talk in that way, Nevil.'
'Take me for one.'
'I would not even imagine it.'
'Say Liberal, then.'
'Are you not'—her eyes opened on him largely, and narrowed from surprise to reproach, and then to pain—are you not one of us? Have you gone over to the enemy, Nevil?'
'I have taken my side, Cecilia; but we, on our side, don't talk of an enemy.'
'Most unfortunate! We are Tories, you know, Nevil. Papa is a thorough Tory. He cannot vote for you. Indeed I have heard him say he is anxious to defeat the plots of an old Republican in Bevisham—some doctor there; and I believe he went to London to look out for a second Tory candidate to oppose to the Liberals. Our present Member is quite safe, of course. Nevil, this makes me unhappy. Do you not feel that it is playing traitor to one's class to join those men?'
Such was the Tory way of thinking, Nevil Beauchamp said: the Tories upheld their Toryism in the place of patriotism.
'But do we not owe the grandeur of the country to the Tories?' she said, with a lovely air of conviction. 'Papa has told me how false the Whigs played the Duke in the Peninsula: ruining his supplies, writing him down, declaring, all the time he was fighting his first hard battles, that his cause was hopeless—that resistance to Napoleon was impossible. The Duke never, never had loyal support but from the Tory Government. The Whigs, papa says, absolutely preached submission to Napoleon! The Whigs, I hear, were the Liberals of those days. The two Pitts were Tories. The greatness of England has been built up by the Tories. I do and will defend them: it is the fashion to decry them now. They have the honour and safety of the country at heart. They do not play disgracefully at reductions of taxes, as the Liberals do. They have given us all our heroes. Non fu mai gloria senza invidia. They have done service enough to despise the envious mob. They never condescend to supplicate brute force for aid to crush their opponents. You feel in all they do that the instincts of gentlemen are active.'
Beauchamp bowed.
'Do I speak too warmly?' she asked. 'Papa and I have talked over it often, and especially of late. You will find him your delighted host and your inveterate opponent.'
'And you?'
'Just the same. You will have to pardon me; I am a terrible foe.'
'I declare to you, Cecilia, I would prefer having you against me to having you indifferent.'
'I wish I had not to think it right that you should be beaten. And now— can you throw off political Nevil, and be sailor Nevil? I distinguish between my old friend, and my . . .our . . .'
'Dreadful antagonist?'
'Not so dreadful, except in the shock he gives us to find him in the opposite ranks. I am grieved. But we will finish our sail in peace. I detest controversy. I suppose, Nevil, you would have no such things as yachts? they are the enjoyments of the rich!'
He reminded her that she wished to finish her sail in peace; and he had to remind her of it more than once. Her scattered resources for argumentation sprang up from various suggestions, such as the flight of yachts, mention of the shooting season, sight of a royal palace; and adopted a continually heightened satirical form, oddly intermixed with an undisguised affectionate friendliness. Apparently she thought it possible to worry him out of his adhesion to the wrong side in politics. She certainly had no conception of the nature of his political views, for one or two extreme propositions flung to him in jest, he swallowed with every sign of a perfect facility, as if the Radical had come to regard stupendous questions as morsels barely sufficient for his daily sustenance. Cecilia reflected that he must be playing, and as it was not a subject for play she tacitly reproved him by letting him be the last to speak of it. He may not have been susceptible to the delicate chastisement, probably was not, for when he ceased it was to look on the beauty of her lowered eyelids, rather with an idea that the weight of his argument lay on them. It breathed from him; both in the department of logic and of feeling, in his plea for the poor man and his exposition of the poor man's rightful claims, he evidently imagined that he had spoken overwhelmingly; and to undeceive him in this respect, for his own good, Cecilia calmly awaited the occasion when she might show the vanity of arguments in their effort to overcome convictions. He stood up to take his leave of her, on their return to the mouth of the Otley river, unexpectedly, so that the occasion did not arrive; but on his mentioning an engagement he had to give a dinner to a journalist and a tradesman of the town of Bevisham, by way of excuse for not complying with her gentle entreaty that he would go to Mount Laurels and wait to see the colonel that evening, 'Oh! then your choice must be made irrevocably, I am sure,' Miss Halkett said, relying upon intonation and manner to convey a great deal more, and not without a minor touch of resentment for his having dragged her into the discussion of politics, which she considered as a slime wherein men hustled and tussled, no doubt worthily enough, and as became them; not however to impose the strife upon the elect ladies of earth. What gentleman ever did talk to a young lady upon the dreary topic seriously? Least of all should Nevil Beauchamp have done it. That object of her high imagination belonged to the exquisite sphere of the feminine vision of the pure poetic, and she was vexed by the discord he threw between her long-cherished dream and her unanticipated realization of him:, if indeed it was he presenting himself to her in his own character, and not trifling, or not passing through a phase of young man's madness.
Possibly he might be the victim of the latter and more pardonable state, and so thinking she gave him her hand.
'Good-bye, Nevil. I may tell papa to expect you tomorrow?'
'Do, and tell him to prepare for a field-day.'
She smiled. 'A sham fight that will not win you a vote! I hope you will find your guests this evening agreeable companions.'
Beauchamp half-shrugged involuntarily. He obliterated the piece of treason toward them by saying that he hoped so; as though the meeting them, instead of slipping on to Mount Laurels with her, were an enjoyable prospect.
He was dropped by the Esperanza's boat near Otley ferry, to walk along the beach to Bevisham, and he kept eye on the elegant vessel as she glided swan-like to her moorings off Mount Laurels park through dusky merchant craft, colliers, and trawlers, loosely shaking her towering snow-white sails, unchallenged in her scornful supremacy; an image of a refinement of beauty, and of a beautiful servicelessness.
As the yacht, so the mistress: things of wealth, owing their graces to wealth, devoting them to wealth—splendid achievements of art both! and dedicated to the gratification of the superior senses.
Say that they were precious examples of an accomplished civilization; and perhaps they did offer a visible ideal of grace for the rough world to aim at. They might in the abstract address a bit of a monition to the uncultivated, and encourage the soul to strive toward perfection, in beauty: and there is no contesting the value of beauty when the soul is taken into account. But were they not in too great a profusion in proportion to their utility? That was the question for Nevil Beauchamp. The democratic spirit inhabiting him, temporarily or permanently, asked whether they were not increasing to numbers which were oppressive? And further, whether it was good, for the country, the race, ay, the species, that they should be so distinctly removed from the thousands who fought the grand, and the grisly, old battle with nature for bread of life. Those grimy sails of the colliers and fishing-smacks, set them in a great sea, would have beauty for eyes and soul beyond that of elegance and refinement. And do but look on them thoughtfully, the poor are everlastingly, unrelievedly, in the abysses of the great sea . . . .
One cannot pursue to conclusions a line of meditation that is half-built on the sensations as well as on the mind. Did Beauchamp at all desire to have those idly lovely adornments of riches, the Yacht and the Lady, swept away? Oh, dear, no. He admired them, he was at home with them. They were much to his taste. Standing on a point of the beach for a last look at them before he set his face to the town, he prolonged the look in a manner to indicate that the place where business called him was not in comparison at all so pleasing: and just as little enjoyable were his meditations opposed to predilections. Beauty plucked the heart from his breast. But he had taken up arms; he had drunk of the questioning cup, that which denieth peace to us, and which projects us upon the missionary search of the How, the Wherefore, and the Why not, ever afterward. He questioned his justification, and yours, for gratifying tastes in an ill- regulated world of wrong-doing, suffering, sin, and bounties unrighteously dispensed—not sufficiently dispersed. He said by-and-by to pleasure, battle to-day. From his point of observation, and with the store of ideas and images his fiery yet reflective youth had gathered, he presented himself as it were saddled to that hard-riding force known as the logical impetus, which spying its quarry over precipices, across oceans and deserts, and through systems and webs, and into shops and cabinets of costliest china, will come at it, will not be refused, let the distances and the breakages be what they may. He went like the meteoric man with the mechanical legs in the song, too quick for a cry of protestation, and reached results amazing to his instincts, his tastes, and his training, not less rapidly and naturally than tremendous Ergo is shot forth from the clash of a syllogism.