"You make it hard for me to treat you with respect."
"Fire away. Those Radical friends of yours have to learn a lesson, and it"s worth a purse to teach them that a lady, however feeble she may seem to them, is exactly of the strength of the best man of her acquaintance."
"That"s well said!" came from Colonel Halkett.
Beauchamp stared at him, amazed by the commendation of empty language.
"You acted in error; barbarously, but in error," he addressed his uncle.
"And you have got a fine topic for mouthing," Mr. Romfrey rejoined.
"You mean to sit still under Dr. Shrapnel"s forgiveness?"
"He"s taken to copy the Christian religion, has he?"
"You know you were deluded when you struck him."
"Not a whit."
"Yes, you know it now: Mrs. Culling--"
"Drag in no woman, Nevil Beauchamp!"
"She has confessed to you that Dr. Shrapnel neither insulted her nor meant to ruffle her."
"She has done no such nonsense."
"If she has not!--but I trust her to have done it."
"You play the trumpeter, you terrorize her."
"Into opening her lips wider; nothing else. I"ll have the truth from her, and no mincing: and from Cecil Baskelett and Palmet."
"Give Cecil a second licking, if you can, and have him off to Shrapnel."
"You!" cried Beauchamp.
At this juncture Stukely Culbrett closed the ma.n.u.script in his hands, and holding it out to Beauchamp, said:
"Here"s your letter, Nevil. It"s tolerably hard to decipher. It"s mild enough; it"s middling good pulpit. I like it."
"What have you got there?" Colonel Halkett asked him.
"A letter of his friend Dr. Shrapnel on the Country. Read a bit, colonel."
"I? That letter! Mild, do you call it?" The colonel started back his chair in declining to touch the letter.
"Try it," said Stukely. "It"s the letter they have been making the noise about. It ought to be printed. There"s a hit or two at the middle-cla.s.s that I should like to see in print. It"s really not bad pulpit; and I suspect that what you object to, colonel, is only the dust of a well-thumped cushion. Shrapnel thumps with his fist. He doesn"t say much that"s new. If the parsons were men they"d be saying it every Sunday. If they did, colonel, I should hear you saying, amen."
"Wait till they do say it."
"That"s a long stretch. They"re turn-c.o.c.ks of one Water-company--to wash the greasy citizens!"
"You"re keeping Nevil on the gape;" said Mr. Romfrey, with a whimsical shrewd cast of the eye at Beauchamp, who stood alert not to be foiled, arrow-like in look and readiness to repeat his home-shot. Mr. Romfrey wanted to hear more of that unintelligible "You!" of Beauchamp"s. But Stukely Culbrett intended that the latter should be foiled, and he continued his diversion from the angry subject.
"We"ll drop the sacerdotals," he said. "They"re behind a veil for us, and so are we for them. I"m with you, colonel; I wouldn"t have them persecuted; they sting fearfully when whipped. No one listens to them now except the cla.s.s that goes to sleep under them, to "set an example"
to the cla.s.s that can"t understand them. Shrapnel is like the breeze shaking the turf-gra.s.s outside the church-doors; a trifle fresher. He knocks nothing down."
"He can"t!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the colonel.
"He sermonizes to shake, that"s all. I know the kind of man."
"Thank heaven, it"s not a common species in England!"
"Common enough to be cla.s.sed."
Beauchamp struck through the conversation of the pair: "Can I see you alone to-night, sir, or to-morrow morning?"
"You may catch me where you can," was Mr. Romfrey"s answer.
"Where"s that? It"s for your sake and mine, not for Dr. Shrapnel"s. I have to speak to you, and must. You have done your worst with him; you can"t undo it. You have to think of your honour as a gentleman. I intend to treat you with respect, but wolf is the t.i.tle now, whether I say it or not."
"Shrapnel"s a rather long-legged sheep?"
"He asks for nothing from you."
"He would have got nothing, at a cry of peccavi!"
"He was innocent, perfectly blameless; he would not lie to save himself.
You mistook that for--but you were an engine shot along a line of rails.
He does you the justice to say you acted in error."
"And you"re his parrot."
"He pardons you."
"Ha! t" other cheek!"
"You went on that brute"s errand in ignorance. Will you keep to the character now you know the truth? Hesitation about it doubles the infamy. An old man! the best of men! the kindest and truest! the most unselfish!"
"He tops me by half a head, and he"s my junior."
Beauchamp suffered himself to give out a groan of sick derision: "Ah!"
"And it was no joke holding him tight," said Mr. Romfrey, "I "d as lief snap an ash. The fellow (he leaned round to Colonel Halkett) must be a fellow of a fine const.i.tution. And he took his punishment like a man.
I"ve known worse: and far worse: gentlemen by birth. There"s the choice of taking it upright or fighting like a rabbit with a weasel in his hole. Leave him to think it over, he"ll come right. I think no harm of him, I"ve no animus. A man must have his lesson at some time of life. I did what I had to do."
"Look here, Nevil," Stukely Culbrett checked Beauchamp in season: "I beg to inquire what Dr. Shrapnel means by "the people." We have in our country the n.o.bles and the squires, and after them, as I understand it, the people: that"s to say, the middle-cla.s.s and the working-cla.s.s--fat and lean. I"m quite with Shrapnel when he lashes the fleshpots. They want it, and they don"t get it from "their organ," the Press. I fancy you and I agree about their organ; the dismallest organ that ever ground a hackneyed set of songs and hymns to madden the thoroughfares."