Beauchamp's Career Part 85

'My dear saint, you're dreaming. He spoke insultingly of you to Cecil.'

'Is my lord that man's dupe? I would stand against him before the throne of G.o.d, with what little I know of his interview with Dr. Shrapnel, to confront him and expose his lie. Do not speak of him. He stirs my evil pa.s.sions, and makes me feel myself the creature I was when I returned to Steynham from my first visit to Bevisham, enraged with jealousy of Dr.

Shrapnel's influence over Nevil, spiteful, malicious: Oh! such a nest of vileness as I pray to heaven I am not now, if it is granted me to give life to another. Nevil's misfortunes date from that,' she continued, in reply to the earl's efforts to soothe her. 'Not the loss of the Election: that was no misfortune, but a lesson. He would not have shone in Parliament: he runs too much from first principles to extremes. You see I am perfectly reasonable, Everard: 'I can form an exact estimate of character and things.' She smiled in his face. 'And I know my husband too: what he will grant; what he would not, and justly would not. I know to a certainty that vexatious as I must be to you now, you are conscious of my having reason for being so.'

'You carry it so far--fifty miles beyond the mark,' said he. 'The man roughed you, and I taught him manners.'

'No!' she half screamed her interposition. 'I repeat, he was in no way discourteous or disobliging to me. He offered me a seat at his table, and, heaven forgive me! I believe a bed in his house, that I might wait and be sure of seeing Nevil, because I was very anxious to see him.'

'All the same, you can't go to the man.'

'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 s.h.i.+ning 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.n.a.logy between his manner of regarding her and the way that superst.i.tious 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.