it is not eloquence; he often… no, he is not an orator.’
Rosamund suggested that he was persuasive, possibly.
Again the young lady deliberately weighed the word, as though the nicest measure of her uncle or adoptor’s quality in this or that direction were in requisition and of importance—an instance of a want of delicacy of perception Rosamund was not sorry to detect. For good-looking, refined-looking, quick-witted girls can be grown; but the nimble sense of fitness, ineffable lightning-footed tact, comes of race and breeding, and she was sure Nevil was a man soon to feel the absence of that.
‘Dr. Shrapnel is persuasive to those who go partly with him, or whose condition of mind calls on him for great patience,’ Miss Denham said at last.
‘I am only trying to comprehend how it was that he should so rapidly have won Captain Beauchamp to his views,’ Rosamund explained; and the young lady did not reply.
Dr. Shrapnel’s house was about a mile beyond the town, on a common of thorn and gorse, through which the fir-bordered highway ran. A fence waist-high enclosed its plot of meadow and garden, so that the doctor, while protecting his own, might see and be seen of the world, as was the case when Rosamund approached. He was pacing at long slow strides along the gravel walk, with his head bent and bare, and his hands behind his back, accompanied by a gentleman who could be no other than Nevil, Rosamund presumed to think; but drawing nearer she found she was mistaken.
‘That is not Captain Beauchamp’s figure,’ she said.
‘No, it is not he,’ said Miss Denham.
Rosamund saw that her companion was pale. She warmed to her at once; by no means on account of the pallor in itself.
‘I have walked too fast for you, I fear.’
‘Oh no; I am accused of being a fast walker.’
Rosamund was unwilling to pass through the demagogue’s gate. On second thoughts, she reflected that she could hardly stipulate to have news of Nevil tossed to her over the spikes, and she entered.
While receiving Dr. Shrapnel’s welcome to a friend of Captain Beauchamp, she observed the greeting between Miss Denham and the younger gentleman. It reassured her. They met like two that have a secret.
The dreaded doctor was an immoderately tall man, lean and wiry, carelessly clad in a long loose coat of no colour, loose trowsers, and huge shoes.
He stooped from his height to speak, or rather swing the stiff upper half of his body down to his hearer’s level and back again, like a ship’s mast on a billowy sea. He was neither rough nor abrupt, nor did he roar bullmouthedly as demagogues are expected to do, though his voice was deep. He was actually, after his fashion, courteous, it could be said of him, except that his mind was too visibly possessed by distant matters for Rosamund’s taste, she being accustomed to drawing-room and hunting and military gentlemen, who can be all in the words they utter. Nevertheless he came out of his lizard-like look with the down-dropped eyelids quick at a resumption of the dialogue; sometimes gesturing, sweeping his arm round. A stubborn tuft of iron-grey hair fell across his forehead, and it was apparently one of his life’s labours to get it to lie amid the mass, for his hand rarely ceased to be in motion without an impulsive stroke at the refractory forelock. He peered through his eyelashes ordinarily, but from no infirmity of sight. The truth was, that the man’s nature counteracted his spirit’s intenser eagerness and restlessness by alternating a state of repose that resembled dormancy, and so preserved him. Rosamund was obliged to give him credit for straightforward eyes when they did look out and flash. Their filmy blue, half overflown with grey by age, was poignant while the fire in them lasted. Her antipathy attributed something electrical to the light they shot.
Dr. Shrapnel’s account of Nevil stated him to have gone to call on Colonel Halkett, a new resident at Mount Laurels, on the Otley river. He offered the welcome of his house to the lady who was Captain Beauchamp’s friend, saying, with extraordinary fatuity (so it sounded in Rosamund’s ears), that Captain Beauchamp would certainly not let an evening pass without coming to him. Rosamund suggested that he might stay late at Mount Laurels.
‘Then he will arrive here after nightfall,’ said the doctor. ‘A bed is at your service, ma’am.’
The offer was declined. ‘I should like to have seen him to-day; but he will be home shortly.’
‘He will not quit Bevisham till this Election’s decided unless to hunt a stray borough vote, ma’am.’
‘He goes to Mount Laurels.
‘For that purpose.’
‘I do not think he will persuade Colonel Halkett to vote in the Radical interest.’
‘That is the probability with a landed proprietor, ma’am. We must knock, whether the door opens or not. Like,’ the doctor laughed to himself up aloft, ‘like a watchman in the night to say that he smells smoke on the premises.’
‘Surely we may expect Captain Beauchamp to consult his family about so serious a step as this he is taking,’ Rosamund said, with an effort to be civil.
Why should he?’ asked the impending doctor.
His head continued in the interrogative position when it had resumed its elevation. The challenge for a definite reply to so outrageous a question irritated Rosamund’s nerves, and, loth though she was to admit him to the subject, she could not forbear from saying, ‘Why? Surely his family have the first claim on him!’
‘Surely not, ma’am. There is no first claim. A man’s wife and children have a claim on him for bread. A man’s parents have a claim on him for obedience while he is a child. A man’s uncles, aunts, and cousins have no claim on him at all, except for help in necessity, which he can grant and they require. None—wife, children, parents, relatives—none has a claim to bar his judgement and his actions. Sound the conscience, and sink the family! With a clear conscience, it is best to leave the family to its own debates. No man ever did brave work who held counsel with his family. The family view of a man’s fit conduct is the weak point of the country. It is no other view than, “Better thy condition for our sakes.” Ha! In this way we breed sheep, fatten oxen: men are dying off. Resolution taken, consult the family means—waste your time! Those who go to it want an excuse for altering their minds. The family view is everlastingly the shopkeeper’s! Purse, pence, ease, increase of worldly goods, personal importance—the pound, the English pound! Dare do that, and you forfeit your share of Port wine in this world; you won’t be dubbed with a title; you’ll be fingered at! Lord, Lord! is it the region inside a man, or out, that gives him peace? Out, they say; for they have lost faith in the existence of an inner. They haven’t it. Air-sucker, blood-pump, cooking machinery, and a battery of trained instincts, aptitudes, fill up their vacuum. I repeat, ma’am, why should young Captain Beauchamp spend an hour consulting his family? They won’t approve him; he knows it. They may annoy him; and what is the gain of that? They can’t move him; on that I let my right hand burn. So it would be useless on both sides. He thinks so. So do I. He is one of the men to serve his country on the best field we can choose for him. In a ship’s cabin he is thrown away. Ay, ay, War, and he may go aboard. But now we must have him ashore. Too few of such as he!’
‘It is matter of opinion,’ said Rosamund, very tightly compressed; scarcely knowing what she said.
How strange, besides hateful, it was to her to hear her darling spoken of by a stranger who not only pretended to appreciate but to possess him! A stranger, a man of evil, with monstrous ideas! A terribly strong inexhaustible man, of a magical power too; or would he otherwise have won such a mastery over
