The day before she left home was pa.s.sed by the three in botanizing, some miles distant from Bevisham, over sand country, marsh and meadow; Dr. Shrapnel, deep in the science, on one side of her, and Beauchamp, requiring instruction in the names and properties of every plant and simple, on the other. It was a day of summer sweetness, gentle laughter, conversation, and the happiest homeliness. The politicians uttered barely a syllable of politics. The dinner basket was emptied heartily to make way for herb and flower, and at night the expedition homeward was crowned with stars along a road refreshed by mid-day thunder-showers and smelling of the rain in the dust, past meadows keenly scenting, gardens giving out their innermost balm and odour. Late at night they drank tea in Jenny"s own garden. They separated a little after two in the morning, when the faded Western light still lay warm on a bow of sky, and on the level of the East it quickened. Jenny felt sure she should long for that yesterday when she was among foreign scenes, even among high Alps-those mysterious eminences which seemed in her imagination to know of heaven and have the dawn of a new life for her beyond their peaks.
Her last words when stepping into the railway carriage were to Beauchamp: "Will you take care of him?" She flung her arms round Dr.
Shrapnel"s neck, and gazed at him under troubled eyelids which seemed to be pa.s.sing in review every vision of possible harm that might come to him during her absence; and so she continued gazing, and at no one but Dr. Shrapnel until the bend of the line cut him from her sight.
Beauchamp was a very secondary person on that occasion, and he was unused to being so in the society of women--unused to find himself entirely eclipsed by their interest in another. He speculated on it, wondering at her concentrated fervency; for he had not supposed her to possess much warmth.
After she was fairly off on her journey, Dr. Shrapnel mentioned to Beauchamp a case of a Steynham poacher, whom he had thought it his duty to supply with means of defence. It was a common poaching case.
Beauchamp was not surprised that Mr. Romfrey and Dr. Shrapnel should come to a collision; the marvel was that it had never occurred before, and Beauchamp said at once: "Oh, my uncle Mr. Romfrey would rather see them stand their ground than not." He was disposed to think well of his uncle. The Jersey bull called him away to Holdesbury.
Captain Baskelett heard of this poaching case at Steynham, where he had to appear in person when he was in want of cheques, and the Bevisham dinner furnished an excuse for demanding one. He would have preferred a positive sum annually. Mr. Romfrey, however, though he wrote his cheques out like the lord he was by nature, exacted the request for them; a system that kept the gallant gentleman on his good behaviour, probably at a lower cost than the regular stipend. In handing the cheque to Cecil Baskelett, Mr. Romfrey spoke of a poacher, of an old poaching family called the d.i.c.ketts, who wanted punishment and was to have it, but Mr.
Romfrey"s local lawyer had informed him that the man Shrapnel was, as usual, supplying the means of defence. For his own part, Mr. Romfrey said, he had no objection to one rascal"s backing another, and Shrapnel might hit his hardest, only perhaps Nevil might somehow get mixed up in it, and Nevil was going on quietly now--he had in fact just done capitally in la.s.soing with a shot of the telegraph a splendid little Jersey bull that a Yankee was after: and on the whole it was best to try to keep him quiet, for he was mad about that man Shrapnel; Shrapnel was his joss: and if legal knocks came of this business Nevil might be thinking of interfering: "Or he and I may be getting to exchange a lot of shindy letters," Mr. Romfrey said. "Tell him I take Shrapnel just like any other man, and don"t want to hear apologies, and I don"t mix him up in it. Tell him if he likes to have an explanation from me, I"ll give it him when he comes here. You can run over to Holdesbury the morning after your dinner."
Captain Baskelett said he would go. He was pleased with his cheque at the time, but hearing subsequently that Nevil was coming to Steynham to meet Colonel Halkett and his daughter, he became displeased, considering it a very silly commission. The more he thought of it the more ridiculous and unworthy it appeared. He asked himself and Lord Palmet also why he should have to go to Nevil at Holdesbury to tell him of circ.u.mstances that he would hear of two or three days later at Steynham.
There was no sense in it. The only conclusion for him was that the scheming woman Culling had determined to bring down every man concerned in the Bevisham election, and particularly Mr. Romfrey, on his knees before Nevil. Holdesbury had been placed at his disposal, and the use of the house in London, which latter would have been extremely serviceable to Cecil as a place of dinners to the Parliament of Great Britain in lieu of the speech-making generally expected of Members, and not so effectively performed. One would think the baron had grown afraid of old Nevil! He had spoken as if he were.
Cecil railed unreservedly to Lord Palmet against that woman "Mistress Culling," as it pleased him to term her, and who could be offended by his calling her so? His fine wit revelled in bestowing t.i.tles that were at once batteries directed upon persons he hated, and entrenchments for himself.
At four o"clock on a sultry afternoon he sat at table with his Bevisham supporters, and pledged them correspondingly in English hotel champagne, sherry and claret. At seven he was rid of them, but parched and heated, as he deserved to be, he owned, for drinking the poison. It would be a good subject for Parliament if he could get it up, he reflected.
"And now," said he to Palmet, "we might be crossing over to the Club if I hadn"t to go about that stupid business to Holdesbury to-morrow morning. We shall miss the race, or, at least, the start."
The idea struck him: "Ten to one old Nevil "s with Shrapnel," and no idea could be more natural.
"We "ll call on Shrapnel," said Palmet. "We shall see Jenny Denham.
He gives her out as his niece. Whatever she is she"s a br.i.m.m.i.n.g little beauty. I a.s.sure you, Bask, you seldom see so pretty a girl."
Wine, which has directed men"s footsteps upon more marvellous adventures, took them to a chemist"s shop for a cooling effervescent draught, and thence through the town to the address, furnished to them by the chemist, of Dr. Shrapnel on the common.
Bad wine, which is responsible for the fate of half the dismal bodies hanging from trees, weltering by rocks, grovelling and bleaching round the bedabbled mouth of the poet"s Cave of Despair, had rendered Captain Baskelett"s temper extremely irascible; so when he caught sight of Dr.
Shrapnel walling in his garden, and perceived him of a giant"s height, his eyes fastened on the writer of the abominable letter with an exultation peculiar to men having a devil inside them that kicks to be out. The sun was low, blazing among the thicker branches of the pollard forest trees, and through sprays of hawthorn. Dr. Shrapnel stopped, facing the visible master of men, at the end of his walk before he turned his back to continue the exercise and some discourse he was holding aloud either to the heavens or bands of invisible men.
"Ahem, Dr. Shrapnel!" He was accosted twice, the second time imperiously.
He saw two gentlemen outside the garden-hedge.
"I spoke, sir," said Captain Baskelett.
"I hear you now, sir," said the doctor, walking in a parallel line with them.
"I desired to know, sir, if you are Dr. Shrapnel?"
"I am."
They arrived at the garden-gate.
"You have a charming garden, Dr. Shrapnel," said Lord Palmet, very affably and loudly, with a steady observation of the cottage windows.
Dr. Shrapnel flung the gate open.
Lord Palmet raised his hat and entered, crying loudly, "A very charming garden, upon my word!"
Captain Baskelett followed him, bowing stiffly.
"I am," he said, "Captain Beauchamp"s cousin. I am Captain Baskelett, one of the Members for the borough."
The doctor said, "Ah."
"I wish to see Captain Beauchamp, sir. He is absent?"
"I shall have him here shortly, sir."
"Oh, you will have him!" Cecil paused.
"Admirable roses!" exclaimed Lord Palmet.
"You have him, I think," said Cecil, "if what we hear is correct. I wish to know, sir, whether the case you are conducting against his uncle is one you have communicated to Captain Beauchamp. I repeat, I am here to inquire if he is privy to it. You may hold family ties in contempt--Now, sir! I request you abstain from provocations with me."
Dr. Shrapnel had raised his head, with something of the rush of a rocket, from the stooping posture to listen, and his frown of non-intelligence might be interpreted as the coming on of the fury Radicals are p.r.o.ne to, by a gentleman who believed in their constant disposition to explode.
Cecil made play with a pacifying hand. "We shall arrive at no understanding unless you are good enough to be perfectly calm. I repeat, my cousin Captain Beauchamp is more or less at variance with his family, owing to these doctrines of yours, and your extraordinary Michael-Scott-the-wizard kind of spell you seem to have cast upon his common sense as a man of the world. You have him, as you say. I do not dispute it. I have no, doubt you have him fast. But here is a case demanding a certain respect for decency. Pray, if I may ask you, be still, be quiet, and hear me out if you can. I am accustomed to explain myself to the comprehension of most men who are at large, and I tell you candidly I am not to be deceived or diverted from my path by a show of ignorance."
"What is your immediate object, sir?" said Dr. Shrapnel, chagrined by the mystification within him, and a fear that his patience was going.
"Exactly," Cecil nodded. He was acute enough to see that he had established the happy commencement of fretfulness in the victim, which is equivalent to a hook well struck in the mouth of your fish, and with an angler"s joy he prepared to play his man. "Exactly. I have stated it.
And you ask me. But I really must decline to run over the whole ground again for you. I am here to fulfil a duty to my family; a highly disagreeable one to me. I may fail, like the lady who came here previous to the Election, for the result of which I am a.s.sured I ought to thank your eminently disinterested services. I do. You recollect a lady calling on you?"
Dr. Shrapnel consulted his memory. "I think I have a recollection of some lady calling."
"Oh! you think you have a recollection of some lady calling."
"Do you mean a lady connected with Captain Beauchamp?"
"A lady connected with Captain Beauchamp. You are not aware of the situation of the lady?"
"If I remember, she was a kind of confidential housekeeper, some one said, to Captain Beauchamp"s uncle."
"A kind of confidential housekeeper! She is recognized in our family as a lady, sir. I can hardly expect better treatment at your hands than she met with, but I do positively request you to keep your temper whilst I am explaining my business to you. Now, sir! what now?"
A trifling breeze will set the tall tree bending, and Dr. Shrapnel did indeed appear to display the agitation of a full-driving storm when he was but hara.s.sed and vexed.
"Will you mention your business concisely, if you Please?" he said.
"Precisely; it is my endeavour. I supposed I had done so. To be frank, I would advise you to summon a member of your household, wife, daughter, housekeeper, any one you like, to whom you may appeal, and I too, whenever your recollections are at fault."
"I am competent," said the doctor.
"But in justice to you," urged Cecil considerately.
Dr. Shrapnel smoothed his chin hastily. "Have you done?"