"Indeed, Nevil, I have not an idea. I only wish your patriotism were large enough to embrace them."
"He compares them to geese claiming possession of the whole common, and hissing at every foot of ground they have to yield. They"re always having to retire and always hissing. "Retreat and menace," that"s the motto for them."
"Very well, Nevil, I am a goose upon a common."
So saying, Cecilia swam forward like a swan on water to give the morning kiss to her papa, by the open window of the breakfast-room.
Never did bird of Michaelmas fling off water from her feathers more thoroughly than this fair young lady the false t.i.tle she pretended to a.s.sume.
"I hear you"re of the dinner party at Grancey Lespel"s on Wednesday,"
the colonel said to Beauchamp. "You"ll have to stand fire."
"They will, papa," murmured Cecilia. "Will Mr. Austin be there?"
"I particularly wish to meet Mr. Austin," said Beauchamp.
"Listen to him, if you do meet him," she replied.
His look was rather grave.
"Lespel "s a Whig," he said.
The colonel answered. "Lespel was a Whig. Once a Tory always a Tory,--but court the people and you"re on quicksands, and that"s where the Whigs are. What he is now I don"t think he knows himself. You won"t get a vote."
Cecilia watched her friend Nevil recovering from his short fit of gloom.
He dismissed politics at breakfast and grew companionable, with the charm of his earlier day. He was willing to accompany her to church too.
"You will hear a long sermon," she warned him.
"Forty minutes." Colonel Halkett smothered a yawn that was both retro and prospective.
"It has been fifty, papa."
"It has been an hour, my dear."
It was good discipline nevertheless, the colonel affirmed, and Cecilia praised the Rev. Mr. Brisk of Urplesdon vicarage as one of our few remaining Protestant clergymen.
"Then he ought to be supported," said Beauchamp. "In the dissensions of religious bodies it is wise to pat the weaker party on the back--I quote Stukely Culbrett."
"I "ve heard him," sighed the colonel. "He calls the Protestant clergy the social police of the English middle-cla.s.s. Those are the things he lets fly. I have heard that man say that the Church stands to show the pa.s.sion of the human race for the drama. He said it in my presence. And there "s a man who calls himself a Tory!
You have rather too much of that playing at grudges and dislikes at Steynham, with squibs, nicknames, and jests at things that--well, that our stability is bound up in. I hate squibs."
"And I," said Beauchamp. Some shadow of a frown crossed him; but Stukely Culbrett"s humour seemed to be a refuge. "Protestant parson-not clergy,"
he corrected the colonel. "Can"t you hear Mr. Culbrett, Cecilia? The Protestant parson is the policeman set to watch over the respectability of the middle-cla.s.s. He has sharp eyes for the sins of the poor. As for the rich, they support his church; they listen to his sermon--to set an example: discipline, colonel. You discipline the tradesman, who"s afraid of losing your custom, and the labourer, who might be deprived of his bread. But the people? It"s put down to the wickedness of human nature that the parson has not got hold of the people. The parsons have lost them by senseless Conservatism, because they look to the Tories for the support of their Church, and let the religion run down the gutters. And how many thousands have you at work in the pulpit every Sunday? I"m told the Dissenting ministers have some vitality."
Colonel Halkett shrugged with disgust at the mention of Dissenters.
"And those thirty or forty thousand, colonel, call the men that do the work they ought to be doing demagogues. The parsonry are a power absolutely to be counted for waste, as to progress."
Cecilia perceived that her father was beginning to be fretted.
She said, with a tact that effected its object: "I am one who hear Mr.
Culbrett without admiring his wit."
"No, and I see no good in this kind of Steynham talk," Colonel Halkett said, rising. "We"re none of us perfect. Heaven save us from political parsons!"
Beauchamp was heard to utter, "Humanity."
The colonel left the room with Cecilia, muttering the Steynham tail to that word: "tomt.i.ty," for the solace of an aside repartee.
She was on her way to dress for church. He drew her into the library, and there threw open a vast placard lying on the table. It was printed in blue characters and red. "This is what I got by the post this morning. I suppose Nevil knows about it. He wants tickling, but I don"t like this kind of thing. It "s not fair war. It "s as bad as using explosive bullets in my old game."
"Can he expect his adversaries to be tender with him?" Cecilia simulated vehemence in an underbreath. She glanced down the page:
"FRENCH MARQUEES" caught her eye.
It was a page of verse. And, oh! could it have issued from a Tory Committee?
"The Liberals are as bad, and worse," her father said.
She became more and more distressed. "It seems so very mean, papa; so base. Ungenerous is no word for it. And how vulgar! Now I remember, Nevil said he wished to see Mr. Austin."
"Seymour Austin would not sanction it."
"No, but Nevil might hold him responsible for it."
"I suspect Mr. Stukely Culbrett, whom he quotes, and that smoking-room lot at Lespel"s. I distinctly discountenance it. So I shall tell them on Wednesday night. Can you keep a secret?"
"And after all Nevil Beauchamp is very young, papa!--of course I can keep a secret."
The colonel exacted no word of honour, feeling quite sure of her.
He whispered the secret in six words, and her cheeks glowed vermilion.
"But they will meet on Wednesday after this," she said, and her sight went dancing down the column of verse, of which the following trotting couplet is a specimen:--
"O did you ever, hot in love, a little British middy see, Like Orpheus asking what the deuce to do without Eurydice?"
The middy is jilted by his FRENCH MARQUEES, whom he "did adore," and in his wrath he recommends himself to the wealthy widow Bevisham, concerning whose choice of her suitors there is a doubt: but the middy is encouraged to persevere:
"Up, up, my pretty middy; take a draught of foaming Sillery; Go in and win the uriddy with your Radical artillery."
And if Sillery will not do, he is advised, he being for superlatives, to try the sparkling Sillery of the Radical vintage, selected grapes.
This was but impudent nonsense. But the reiterated apostrophe to "MY FRENCH MARQUEES" was considered by Cecilia to be a brutal offence.
She was shocked that her party should have been guilty of it. Nevil certainly provoked, and he required, hard blows; and his uncle Everard might be right in telling her father that they were the best means of teaching him to come to his understanding. Still a foul and stupid squib did appear to her a debasing weapon to use.