'I should have said so too, before my destiny touched me.'
'A certain dignity of position, my dear, demands a corresponding dignity of conduct: you can't go.'
'If I am walking in the very eye of heaven, and feeling it shining on me where I go, there is no question for me of human dignity.'
Such flighty talk offended Lord Romfrey.
'It comes to this: you're in want of a parson.'
Rosamund was too careful to hint that she would have expected succour and seconding from one or other of the better order of clergymen.
She shook her head. 'To this, my dear lord: I have a troubled mind; and it is not to listen nor to talk, that I am in need of, but to act.'
'Yes, my dear girl, but not to act insanely. I do love soundness of head. You have it, only just now you're a little astray. We'll leave this matter for another time.'
Rosamund held him by the arm. 'Not too long!'
Both of them applied privately to Mrs. Wardour-Devereux for her opinion and counsel on the subject of the proposal to apologize to Dr. Shrapnel. She was against it with the earl, and became Rosamund's echo when with her. When alone, she was divided into two almost equal halves: deeming that the countess should not insist, and the earl should not refuse: him she condemned for lack of sufficient spiritual insight to perceive the merits of his wife's request: her she accused of some vestige of something underbred in her nature, for putting such fervid stress upon the supplication: i.e. making too much of it—a trick of the vulgar: and not known to the languid.
She wrote to Lydiard for advice.
He condensed a paragraph into a line:
'It should be the earl. She is driving him to it, intentionally or not.'
Mrs. Devereux doubted that the countess could have so false an idea of her husband's character as to think it possible he would ever be bent to humble himself to the man he had castigated. She was right. It was by honestly presenting to his mind something more loathsome still, the humbling of herself, that Rosamund succeeded in awakening some remote thoughts of a compromise, in case of necessity. Better I than she!
But the necessity was inconceivable.
He had really done everything required of him, if anything was really required, by speaking to Shrapnel civilly. He had spoken to Shrapnel twice.
Besides, the castle was being gladdened by happier tidings of Beauchamp. Gannet now pledged his word to the poor fellow's recovery, and the earl's particular friends arrived, and the countess entertained them. October passed smoothly.
She said once: 'Ancestresses of yours, my lord, have undertaken pilgrimages as acts of penance for sin, to obtain heaven's intercession in their extremity.'
'I dare say they did,' he replied. 'The monks got round them.'
'It is not to be laughed at, if it eased their hearts.'
Timidly she renewed her request for permission to perform the pilgrimage to Bevisham.
'Wait,' said he, 'till Nevil is on his legs.'
'Have you considered where I may then be, Everard?'
'My love, you sleep well, don't you?'
'You see me every night.'
'I see you sound asleep.'
'I see you watching me.'
'Let's reason,' said the earl; and again they went through the argument upon the apology to Dr. Shrapnel.
He was willing to indulge her in any amount of it: and she perceived why. Fox! she thought. Grand fox, but fox downright. For her time was shortening to days that would leave her no free-will.
On the other hand, the exercise of her free-will in a fast resolve, was growing all the more a privilege that he was bound to respect. As she became sacreder and doubly precious to him, the less would he venture to thwart her, though he should think her mad. There would be an analogy between his manner of regarding her and the way that superstitious villagers look on their crazy innocents, she thought sadly. And she bled for him too: she grieved to hurt his pride. But she had come to imagine that there was no avoidance of this deed of personal humiliation.
Nevil had scrawled a note to her. She had it in her hand one forenoon in mid November, when she said to her husband: 'I have ordered the carriage for two o'clock to meet the quarter to three train to London, and I have sent Stanton on to get the house ready for us tonight.'
Lord Romfrey levelled a marksman's eye at her.
'Why London? You know my wish that it should be here at the castle.'
'I have decided to go to Bevisham. I have little time left.'
'None, to my thinking.'
'Oh I yes; my heart will be light. I shall gain. You come with me to London?'
'You can't go.'
'Don't attempt to reason with me, please, please!'
'I command, madam.'
'My lord, it is past the hour of commanding.'
He nodded his head, with the eyes up amid the puckered brows, and blowing one of his long nasal expirations, cried, 'Here we are, in for another bout of argument.'
'No; I can bear the journey, rejoice in confessing my fault, but more argument I cannot bear. I will reason with you when I can: submit to me in this.'
'Feminine reasoning!' he interjected.
'I have nothing better to offer. It will be prudent to attend to me. Take my conduct for the portion I bring you. Before I put myself in God's care I must be clean. I am unclean. Language like that offends you. I have no better. My reasoning has not touched you; I am helpless, except in this determination that my contrition shall be expressed to Dr. Shrapnel. If I am to have life, to be worthy of living and being a mother, it must be done. Now, my dear lord, see that, and submit. You're but one voice: I am two.'
He jumped off his chair, frowning up his forehead, and staring awfully at the insulting prospect. 'An apology to the man? By you? Away with it.'
'Make allowances for me if you can, my dear lord that is what I am going to do.'
'My wife going there?' He strode along furiously. 'No!'
'You will not stop her.'
'There's a palsy in my arm if I don't.'
She plucked at her watch.
'Why, ma'am, I don't know you,' he said, coming close to her. 'Let 's reason. Perhaps you overshot it; you were disgusted with Shrapnel. Perhaps I was hasty; I get fired by an insult to a woman. There was a rascal kissed a girl once against her will, and I heard her cry out; I laid him on his back for six months; just to tell you; I'd do the same to lord or beggar. Very well, my dear heart, we'll own I might have looked into the case when that dog Cecil . . . what's the matter?'
'Speak on, my dear husband,' said Rosamund, panting.
'But your making the journey to Bevisham is a foolish notion.'
'Yes? well?'
'Well, we'll wait.'
'Oh! have we to travel over it all again?' she exclaimed in despair at the dashing out of a light she had fancied. 'You see the wrong. You know the fever it is in my blood, and you bid me wait.'
'Drop a line to Nevil.'
'To trick my conscience! I might have done that, and done well, once. Do you think I dislike the task I propose to myself? It is for your sake that I would shun it. As for me, the thought of going there is an ecstasy. I shall be with Nevil, and be able to look in his face. And how can I be actually abasing you when I am so certain that I am worthier of you in what I do?'
Her exaltation swept her on. 'Hurry there, my lord, if you will. If you think it prudent that you should go in my place, go: you deprive me of a great joy, but I will not put myself in your way, and I consent. The chief sin was mine; remember that. I rank it viler than Cecil Baskelett's. And listen: when—can you reckon?—when will he confess his wickedness? We separate ourselves from a wretch like that.'
'Pooh,' quoth the earl.
'But you will go?' She fastened her arms round the arm nearest: 'You or I! Does it matter which? We are one. You speak for me; I should have been forced to speak for you. You spare me the journey. I do not in truth suppose it would have injured me; but I would not run one unnecessary risk.'
Lord Romfrey sighed profoundly. He could not shake her off. How could he refuse her?
How on earth had it come about that suddenly he was expected to be the person to go?
She would not let him elude her; and her stained cheeks and her trembling on his arm pleaded most pressingly and masteringly. It might be that she spoke with a knowledge of her case. Positive it undoubtedly was that she meant to go if he did not. Perhaps the hopes of his House hung on it. Having admitted that a wrong had been done, he was not the man to leave it unamended; only he would have chosen his time, and the manner. Since Nevil's illness, too, he had once or twice been clouded with a little bit of regret at the recollection of poor innocent old Shrapnel posted like a figure of total inebriation beside the doorway of the dreadful sickroom.
There had been women of the earl's illustrious House who would have given their hands to the axe rather than conceal a stain and have to dread a scandal. His Rosamund, after all, was of their pattern; even though she blew that conscience she prattled of into trifles, and swelled them, as women of high birth in this country, out of the clutches of the priests, do not do.
She clung to him for his promise to go.
He said: 'Well, well.'
'That means, you will,' said she.
His not denying it passed for the affirmative.
Then indeed she bloomed with love of him.
'Yet do say yes,' she begged.
'I'll go, ma'am,' shouted the earl. 'I'll go, my love,' he said softly.
CHAPTER LIII
THE APOLOGY TO DR. SHRAPNEL
'You and Nevil are so alike,' Lady Romfrey said to her lord, at some secret resemblance she detected and dwelt on fondly, when the earl was on the point of starting a second time for Bevisham to perform what she had prompted him to conceive his honourable duty, without a single intimation that he loathed the task, neither shrug nor grimace.
'Two ends of a stick are pretty much alike: they're all that length apart,' said he, very little in the humour for compliments, however well braced for his work.
His wife's admiring love was pleasant enough. He preferred to have it unspoken. Few of us care to be eulogized in the act of taking a nauseous medical mixture.
For him the thing was as good as done, on his deciding to think it both adviseable and right: so he shouldered his load and marched off with it. He could have postponed the right proceeding, even after the partial recognition of his error:—one drops a word or two by hazard, one expresses an anxiety to afford reparation, one sends a message, and so forth, for the satisfaction of one's conventionally gentlemanly feeling: but the adviseable proceeding under stress of peculiar circumstances, his clearly-awakened recognition of that, impelled him unhesitatingly. His wife had said it was the portion she brought him. Tears would not have persuaded him so powerfully, that he might prove to her he was glad of her whatever the portion she brought. She was a good wife, a brave woman, likely to be an incomparable mother. At present her very virtues excited her to fancifulness nevertheless she was in his charge, and he was bound to break the neck of his will, to give her perfect peace of wind. The child suffers from the mother's mental agitation. It might be a question of a nervous or an idiot future Earl of Romfrey. Better death to the House than such a mockery of his line! These reflections reminded him of the heartiness of his whipping of that poor old tumbled signpost Shrapnel, in the name of outraged womankind. If there was no outrage?
Assuredly if there was no outrage, consideration for the state of his wife would urge him to speak the apology in the most natural manner possible. She vowed there was none.
He never thought of blaming her for formerly deceiving him, nor of blaming her for now expediting him.
In the presence of Colonel Halkett, Mr. Tuckham, and Mr. Lydiard, on a fine November afternoon, standing bareheaded in the fir-bordered garden of the cottage on the common, Lord Romfrey delivered his apology to Dr. Shrapnel, and he said:
'I call you to witness, gentlemen, I offer Dr. Shrapnel the fullest reparation he may think fit to demand of me for an unprovoked assault on him, that I find was quite unjustified, and for which I am here to ask his forgiveness.'
Speech of man could not have been more nobly uttered.
Dr. Shrapnel replied:
'To the half of that, sir—'tis over! What remains is done with the hand.'
He stretched his hand out.
Lord Romfrey closed his own on it.
The antagonists, between whom was no pretence of their being other after the performance of a creditable ceremony, bowed and exchanged civil remarks: and then Lord Romfrey was invited to go into the house and see Beauchamp, who happened to be sitting with Cecilia Halkett and Jenny Denham. Beauchamp was thin, pale, and quiet; but the sight of him standing and conversing after that scene of the skinny creature struggling with bareribbed obstruction on the bed, was an example of constitutional vigour and a compliment to the family very gratifying to Lord Romfrey. Excepting by Cecilia, the earl was coldly received. He had to leave early by special express for London to catch the last train to Romfrey. Beauchamp declined to fix a day for his visit to the castle with Lydiard, but proposed that Lydiard should accompany the earl on his return. Lydiard was called in, and at once accepted the earl's invitation, and quitted the room to pack his portmanteau.
A faint sign of firm-shutting shadowed the corners of Jenny's lips.
'You have brought my nephew to life,' Lord Romfrey said to her.
'My share in it was very small, my lord.'
'Gannet says that your share in it was very great.'
'And I say so, with the authority of a witness,' added Cecilia.
'And I, from my experience,' came from Beauchamp.
His voice had a hollow sound, unlike his natural voice.
The earl looked at him remembering the bright laughing lad he had once been, and said: 'Why not try a month of Madeira? You have only to step on board the boat.'
'I don't want to lose a month of my friend,' said Beauchamp.
'Take your friend with you. After these fevers our Winters are bad.'
'I've been idle too long.'
'But, Captain Beauchamp,' said Jenny, 'you proposed to do nothing but read for a couple of years.'
'Ay, there's the voyage!' sighed he, with a sailor-invalid's vision of sunny seas dancing in the far sky.
'You must persuade Dr. Shrapnel to come; and he will not come unless you come too, and you won't go anywhere but to the Alps!' She bent her eyes on the floor. Beauchamp remembered what had brought her home from the Alps. He cast a cold look on his uncle talking with Cecilia: granite, as he thought. And the reflux of that slight feeling of despair seemed to tear down with it in wreckage every effort he had made in life, and cry failure on him. Yet he was hoping that he had not been created for failure.
He touched his uncle's hand indifferently: 'My love to the countess: let me hear of her, sir, if you please.'
'You shall,' said the earl. 'But, off to Madeira, and up Teneriffe: sail the Azores. I'll hire you a good-sized schooner.'
'There is the Esperanza,' said Cecilia. 'And the vessel is lying idle,
Nevil! Can you allow it?'
He consented to laugh at himself, and fell to coughing.
Jenny Denham saw a real human expression of anxiety cross the features of the earl at the sound of the cough.
Lord Romfrey said 'Adieu,' to her.
He offered her his hand, which she contrived to avoid taking by dropping a formal half-reverence.
'Think of the Esperanza; she will be coasting her nominal native land! and adieu for to-day,' Cecilia said to Beauchamp.
Jenny Denham and he stood at the window to watch the leave-taking in the garden, for a distraction. They interchanged no remark of surprise at seeing the earl and Dr. Shrapnel hand-locked: but Jenny's heart reproached her uncle for being actually servile, and Beauchamp accused the earl of aristocratic impudence.
Both were overcome with remorse when Colonel Halkett, putting his head into the room to say good-bye to Beauchamp and place the Esperanza at his disposal for a Winter cruise, chanced to mention in two or three half words the purpose of the earl's visit, and what had occurred. He took it for known already.
To Miss Denham he remarked: 'Lord Romfrey is very much concerned about your health; he fears you have overdone it in nursing Captain Beauchamp!
'I must be off after him,' said Beauchamp, and began trembling so that he could not stir.
The colonel knew the pain and shame of that condition of weakness to a man who has been strong and swift, and said: 'Seven-league boots are not to be caught. You'll see him soon. Why, I thought some letter of yours had fetched him here! I gave you all the credit of it.'
'No, he deserves it all himself—all,' said Beauchamp and with a dubious eye on Jenny Denham: 'You see, we were unfair.'
The 'we' meant 'you' to her sensitiveness; and probably he did mean it for 'you': for as he would have felt, so he supposed that his uncle must have felt, Jenny's coldness was much the crueller. Her features, which in animation were summer light playing upon smooth water, could be exceedingly cold in repose: the icier to those who knew her, because they never expressed disdain. No expression of the baser sort belonged to them. Beauchamp was intimate with these delicately-cut features; he would have shuddered had they chilled on him. He had fallen in love with his uncle; he fancied she ought to have done so too; and from his excess of sympathy he found her deficient in it.
He sat himself down to write a hearty letter to his 'dear old uncle Everard.'
Jenny left him, to go to her chamber and cry.