"It was M. le comte de Croisnel, a very old friend and comrade of mine,"
Beauchamp replied.
"Why do those Frenchmen everlastingly wear their uniforms?--tell me!
Don"t you think it detestable style?"
"He came over in a hurry."
"Now, don"t be huffed. I know you, for defending your friends, Captain Beauchamp! Did he not come over with ladies?"
"With relatives, yes."
"Relatives of course. But when British officers travel with ladies, relatives or other, they prefer the simplicity of mufti, and so do I, as a question of taste, I must say."
"It was quite by misadventure that M. de Croisnel chanced to come in his uniform."
"Ah! I know you, for defending your friends, Captain Beauchamp. He was in too great a hurry to change his uniform before he started, or en route?"
"So it happened."
Mrs. Grancey let a lingering eye dwell maliciously on Beauchamp, who said, to shift the burden of it: "The French are not so jealous of military uniforms as we are. M. de Croisnel lost his portmanteau."
"Ah! lost it! Then of course he is excuseable, except to the naked eye.
Dear me! you have had a bruise on yours. Was Monsieur votre ami in the Italian campaign?"
"No, poor fellow, he was not. He is not an Imperialist; he had to remain in garrison."
"He wore a mult.i.tude of medals, I have been told. A cup of tea, Cecilia.
And how long did he stay in England with his relatives?"
"Two days."
"Only two days! A very short visit indeed--singularly short. Somebody informed me of their having been seen at Romfrey Castle, which cannot have been true."
She turned her eyes from Beauchamp silent to Cecilia"s hand on the teapot. "Half a cup," she said mildly, to spare the poor hand its betrayal of nervousness, and relapsed from her air of mistress of the situation to chatter to Mr. Austin.
Beauchamp continued silent. He took up a book, and presently a pencil from his pocket, then talked of the book to Cecilia"s cousin; and leaving a paper-cutter between the leaves, he looked at Cecilia and laid the book down.
She proceeded to conduct Mrs. Grancey Lespel to her room.
"I do admire Captain Beauchamp"s cleverness; he is as good as a French romance!" Mrs. Grancey exclaimed on the stairs. "He fibs charmingly. I could not help drawing him out. Two days! Why, my dear, his French party were a fortnight in the country. It was the marquise, you know--the old affair; and one may say he"s a constant man."
"I have not heard Captain Beauchamp"s cleverness much praised," said Cecilia. "This is your room, Mrs. Grancey."
"Stay with me a moment. It is the room I like. Are we to have him at dinner?"
Cecilia did not suppose that Captain Beauchamp would remain to dine.
Feeling herself in the clutches of a gossip, she would fain have gone.
"I am just one bit glad of it, though I can"t dislike him personally,"
said Mrs. Grancey, detaining her and beginning to whisper. "It was really too bad. There was a French party at the end, but there was only one at the commencement. The brother was got over for a curtain, before the husband arrived in pursuit. They say the trick Captain Beauchamp played his cousin Cecil, to get him out of the house when he had made a discovery, was monstrous--fiendishly cunning. However, Lady Romfrey, as that woman appears to be at last, covered it all. You know she has one of those pa.s.sions for Captain Beauchamp which completely blind women to right and wrong. He is her saint, let him sin ever so! The story"s in everybody"s mouth. By the way, Palmet saw her. He describes her pale as marble, with dark long eyes, the most innocent look in the world, and a walk, the absurd fellow says, like a statue set gliding. No doubt Frenchwomen do walk well. He says her eyes are terrible traitors; I need not quote Palmet. The sort of eyes that would look fondly on a stone, you know. What her reputation is in France I have only indistinctly heard. She has one in England by this time, I can a.s.sure you. She found her match in Captain Beauchamp for boldness. Where any other couple would have seen danger, they saw safety; and they contrived to accomplish it, according to those horrid talebearers. You have plenty of time to dress, my dear; I have an immense deal to talk about. There are half-a-dozen scandals in London already, and you ought to know them, or you will be behind the t.i.ttle-tattle when you go to town; and I remember, as a girl, I knew nothing so excruciating as to hear blanks, dashes, initials, and half words, without the key. Nothing makes a girl look so silly and unpalatable. Naturally, the reason why Captain Beauchamp is more talked about than the rest is the politics. Your grand reformer should be careful. Doubly heterodox will not do! It makes him interesting to women, if you like, but he won"t soon hear the last of it, if he is for a public career. Grancey literally crowed at the story.
And the wonderful part of it is, that Captain Beauchamp refused to be present at the earl"s first ceremonial dinner in honour of his countess.
Now, that, we all think, was particularly ungrateful: now, was it not?"
"If the countess--if ingrat.i.tude had anything to do with it," said Cecilia.
She escaped to her room and dressed impatiently.
Her boudoir was empty: Beauchamp had departed. She recollected his look at her, and turned over the leaves of the book he had been hastily scanning, and had condescended to approve of. On the two pages where the paper-cutter was fixed she perceived small pencil dots under certain words. Read consecutively, with a participle termination struck out to convey his meaning, they formed the pathetically ungrammatical line:
"Hear: none: but: accused: false."
Treble dots were under the word "to-morrow." He had scored the margin of the sentences containing his dotted words, as if in admiration of their peculiar wisdom.
She thought it piteous that he should be reduced to such means of communication. The next instant Cecilia was shrinking from the adept intriguer--French-taught!
In the course of the evening her cousin remarked:
"Captain Beauchamp must see merit in things undiscoverable by my poor faculties. I will show you a book he has marked."
"Did you see it? I was curious to examine it," interposed Cecilia; "and I am as much at a loss as you to understand what could have attracted him. One sentence..."
"About the sheikh in the stables, where he accused the pretended physician? Yes, what was there in that?"
"Where is the book?" said Mrs. Grancey.
"Not here, I think." Cecilia glanced at the drawing-room book-table, and then at Mr. Austin, the victim of an unhappy love in his youth, and unhappy about her, as her father had said. Seymour Austin was not one to spread the contagion of intrigue! She felt herself caught by it, even melting to feel enamoured of herself in consequence, though not loving Beauchamp the more.
"This newspaper, if it"s not merely an airy project, will be ruination,"
said Tuckham. "The fact is, Beauchamp has no bend in him. He can"t meet a man without trying a wrestle, and as long as he keeps his stiffness, he believes he has won. I"ve heard an oculist say that the eye that doesn"t blink ends in blindness, and he who won"t bend breaks. It"s a pity, for he"s a fine fellow. A Radical daily Journal of Shrapnel"s colour, to educate the people by giving them an interest in the country!
Goodness, what a delusion! and what a waste of money! He"ll not be able to carry it on a couple of years. And there goes his eighty thousand!"
Cecilia"s heart beat fast. She had no defined cause for its excitement.
Colonel Halkett returned to Mount Laurels close upon midnight, very tired, coughing and complaining of the bitter blowing East. His guests shook hands with him, and went to bed.
"I think I"ll follow their example," he said to Cecilia, after drinking a tumbler of mulled wine.
"Have you nothing to tell me, dear papa?" said she, caressing him timidly.
"A confirmation of the whole story from Lord Romfrey in person--that"s all. He says Beauchamp"s mad. I begin to believe it. You must use your judgement. I suppose I must not expect you to consider me. You might open your heart to Austin. As to my consent, knowing what I do, you will have to tear it out of me. Here"s a country perfectly contented, and that fellow at work digging up grievances to persuade the people they"re oppressed by us. Why should I talk of it? He can"t do much harm; unless he has money--money! Romfrey says he means to start a furious paper.
He"ll make a bonfire of himself. I can"t stand by and see you in it too.
I may die; I may be spared the sight."
Cecilia flung her arms round his neck. "Oh! papa."
"I don"t want to make him out worse than he is, my dear. I own to his gallantry--in the French sense as well as the English, it seems! It"s natural that Romfrey should excuse his wife. She"s another of the women who are crazy about Nevil Beauchamp. She spoke to me of the "pleasant visit of her French friends," and would have enlarged on it, but Romfrey stopped her. By the way, he proposes Captain Baskelett for you, and we"re to look for Baskelett"s coming here, backed by his uncle. There"s no end to it; there never will be till you"re married: and no peace for me! I hope I shan"t find myself with a cold to-morrow."
The colonel coughed, and perhaps exaggerated the premonitory symptoms of a cold.