CHAPTER XI

CAPTAIN BASKELETT

Our England, meanwhile, was bustling over the extinguished war, counting

the cost of it, with a rather rueful eye on Manchester, and soothing the

taxed by an exhibition of heroes at brilliant feasts. Of course, the

first to come home had the cream of the praises. She hugged them in a

manner somewhat suffocating to modest men, but heroism must be brought to

bear upon these excesses of maternal admiration; modesty, too, when it

accepts the place of honour at a public banquet, should not protest

overmuch. To be just, the earliest arrivals, which were such as reached

the shores of Albion before her war was at an end, did cordially

reciprocate the hug. They were taught, and they believed most naturally,

that it was quite as well to repose upon her bosom as to have stuck to

their posts. Surely there was a conscious weakness in the Spartans, who

were always at pains to discipline their men in heroical conduct, and

rewarded none save the stand-fasts. A system of that sort seems to betray

the sense of poverty in the article. Our England does nothing like it.

All are welcome home to her so long as she is in want of them. Besides,

she has to please the taxpayer. You may track a shadowy line or crazy

zigzag of policy in almost every stroke of her domestic history: either

it is the forethought finding it necessary to stir up an impulse, or else

dashing impulse gives a lively pull to the afterthought: policy becomes

evident somehow, clumsily very possibly. How can she manage an enormous

middle-class, to keep it happy, other than a little clumsily? The

managing of it at all is the wonder. And not only has she to stupefy the

taxpayer by a timely display of feastings and fireworks, she has to stop

all that nonsense (to quote a satiated man lightened in his purse) at the

right moment, about the hour when the old standfasts, who have simply

been doing duty, return, poor jog-trot fellows, and a complimentary motto

or two is the utmost she can present to them. On the other hand, it is

true she gives her first loves, those early birds, fully to understand

that a change has come in their island mother's mind. If there is a

balance to be righted, she leaves that business to society, and if it be

the season for the gathering of society, it will be righted more or less;

and if no righting is done at all, perhaps the Press will incidentally

toss a leaf of laurel on a name or two: thus in the exercise of grumbling

doing good.

With few exceptions, Nevil Beauchamp's heroes received the motto instead

of the sweetmeat. England expected them to do their duty; they did it,

and she was not dissatisfied, nor should they be. Beauchamp, at a

distance from the scene, chafed with customary vehemence, concerning the

unjust measure dealt to his favourites: Captain Hardist, of the Diomed,

twenty years a captain, still a captain! Young Michell denied the cross!

Colonel Evans Cuff, on the heights from first to last, and not advanced a

step! But Prancer, and Plunger, and Lammakin were thoroughly well taken

care of, this critic of the war wrote savagely, reviving an echo of a

queer small circumstance occurring in the midst of the high dolour and

anxiety of the whole nation, and which a politic country preferred to

forget, as we will do, for it was but an instance of strong family

feeling in high quarters; and is not the unity of the country founded on

the integrity of the family sentiment? Is it not certain, which the

master tells us, that a line is but a continuation of a number of dots?

Nevil Beauchamp was for insisting that great Government officers had paid

more attention to a dot or two than to the line. He appeared to be at war

with his country after the peace. So far he had a lively ally in his

uncle Everard; but these remarks of his were a portion of a letter, whose

chief burden was the request that Everard Romfrey would back him in

proposing for the hand of a young French lady, she being, Beauchamp

smoothly acknowledged, engaged to a wealthy French marquis, under the

approbation of her family. Could mortal folly outstrip a petition of that

sort? And apparently, according to the wording and emphasis of the

letter, it was the mature age of the marquis which made Mr. Beauchamp so

particularly desirous to stop the projected marriage and take the girl

himself. He appealed to his uncle on the subject in a 'really--really'

remonstrative tone, quite overwhelming to read. 'It ought not to be

permitted: by all the laws of chivalry, I should write to the girl's

father to interdict it: I really am particeps criminis in a sin against

nature if I don't!' Mr. Romfrey interjected in burlesque of his

ridiculous nephew, with collapsing laughter. But he expressed an

indignant surprise at Nevil for allowing Rosamund to travel alone.

'I can take very good care of myself,' Rosamund protested.

'You can do hundreds of things you should never be obliged to do while

he's at hand, or I, ma'am,' said Mr. Romfrey. 'The fellow's insane. He

forgets a gentleman's duty. Here's his "humanity" dogging a French frock,

and pooh!--the age of the marquis! Fifty? A man's beginning his prime at

fifty, or there never was much man in him. It's the mark of a fool to

take everybody for a bigger fool than himself-or he wouldn't have written

this letter to me. He can't come home yet, not yet, and he doesn't know

when he can! Has he thrown up the service? I am to preserve the alliance

between England and France by getting this French girl for him in the

teeth of her marquis, at my peril if I refuse!'

Rosamund asked, 'Will you let me see where Nevil says that, sir?'

Mr. Romfrey tore the letter to strips. 'He's one of your fellows who cock

their eyes when they mean to be cunning. He sends you to do the

wheedling, that's plain. I don't say he has hit on a bad advocate; but

tell him I back him in no mortal marriage till he shows a pair of

epaulettes on his shoulders. Tell him lieutenants are fledglings--he's

not marriageable at present. It's a very pretty sacrifice of himself he

intends for the sake of the alliance, tell him that, but a lieutenant's

not quite big enough to establish it. You will know what to tell him,

ma'am. And say, it's the fellow's best friend that advises him to be out

of it and home quick. If he makes one of a French trio, he's dished. He's

too late for his luck in England. Have him out of that mire, we can't

hope for more now.'

Rosamund postponed her mission to plead. Her heart was with Nevil; her

understanding was easily led to side against him, and for better reasons

than Mr. Romfrey could be aware of: so she was assured by her experience

of the character of Mademoiselle de Croisnel. A certain belief in her

personal arts of persuasion had stopped her from writing on her homeward

journey to inform him that Nevil was not accompanying her, and when she

drove over Steynham Common, triumphal arches and the odour of a roasting

ox richly browning to celebrate the hero's return afflicted her mind with

all the solid arguments of a common-sense country in contravention of a

wild lover's vaporous extravagances. Why had he not come with her? The

disappointed ox put the question in a wavering drop of the cheers of the

villagers at the sight of the carriage without their bleeding hero. Mr.

Romfrey, at his hall-doors, merely screwed his eyebrows; for it was the

quality of this gentleman to foresee most human events, and his capacity

to stifle astonishment when they trifled with his prognostics. Rosamund

had left Nevil fast bound in the meshes of the young French sorceress, no

longer leading, but submissively following, expecting blindly, seeing

strange new virtues in the lurid indication of what appeared to border on

the reverse. How could she plead for her infatuated darling to one who

was common sense in person?

Everard's pointed interrogations reduced her to speak defensively,

instead of attacking and claiming his aid for the poor enamoured young

man. She dared not say that Nevil continued to be absent because he was

now encouraged by the girl to remain in attendance on her, and was more

than half inspired to hope, and too artfully assisted to deceive the

count and the marquis under the guise of simple friendship. Letters

passed between them in books given into one another's hands with an

audacious openness of the saddest augury for the future of the pair, and

Nevil could be so lost to reason as to glory in Renee's intrepidity,

which he justified by their mutual situation, and cherished for a proof

that she was getting courage. In fine, Rosamund abandoned her task of

pleading. Nevil's communications gave the case a worse and worse aspect:

Renee was prepared to speak to her father; she delayed it; then the two

were to part; they were unable to perform the terrible sacrifice and slay

their last hope; and then Nevil wrote of destiny--language hitherto

unknown to him, evidently the tongue of Renee. He slipped on from Italy

to France. His uncle was besieged by a series of letters, and his cousin,

Cecil Baskelett, a captain in England's grand reserve force--her Horse

Guards, of the Blue division--helped Everard Romfrey to laugh over them.

It was not difficult, alack! Letters of a lover in an extremity of love,

crying for help, are as curious to cool strong men as the contortions of

the proved heterodox tied to a stake must have been to their chastening

ecclesiastical judges. Why go to the fire when a recantation will save

you from it? Why not break the excruciating faggot-bands, and escape,

when you have only to decide to do it? We naturally ask why. Those

martyrs of love or religion are madmen. Altogether, Nevil's adjurations

and supplications, his threats of wrath and appeals to reason, were an

odd mixture. 'He won't lose a chance while there's breath in his body,'

Everard said, quite good-humouredly, though he deplored that the chance

for the fellow to make his hero-parade in society, and haply catch an

heiress, was waning. There was an heiress at Steynham, on her way with

her father to Italy, very anxious to see her old friend Nevil--Cecilia

Halkett--and very inquisitive this young lady of sixteen was to know the

cause of his absence. She heard of it from Cecil.

'And one morning last week mademoiselle was running away with him, and

the next morning she was married to her marquis!'

Cecil was able to tell her that.

'I used to be so fond of him,' said the ingenuous young lady. She had to

thank Nevil for a Circassian dress and pearls, which he had sent to her

by the hands of Mrs. Culling--a pretty present to a girl in the nursery,

she thought, and in fact she chose to be a little wounded by the cause of

his absence.

'He's a good creature-really,' Cecil spoke on his cousin's behalf. 'Mad;

he always will be mad. A dear old savage; always amuses me. He does! I

get half my entertainment from him.'

Captain Baskelett was gifted with the art, which is a fine and a precious

one, of priceless value in society, and not wanting a benediction upon it

in our elegant literature, namely, the art of stripping his fellow-man

and so posturing him as to make every movement of the comical wretch

puppet-like, constrained, stiff, and foolish. He could present you

heroical actions in that fashion; for example:

'A long-shanked trooper, bearing the name of John Thomas Drew, was

crawling along under fire of the batteries. Out pops old Nevil, tries to

get the man on his back. It won't do. Nevil insists that it's exactly one

of the cases that ought to be, and they remain arguing about it like a

pair of nine-pins while the Muscovites are at work with the bowls. Very

well. Let me tell you my story. It's perfectly true, I give you my word.

So Nevil tries to horse Drew, and Drew proposes to horse Nevil, as at

school. Then Drew offers a compromise. He would much rather have crawled

on, you know, and allowed the shot to pass over his head; but he's a

Briton, old Nevil the same; but old Nevil's peculiarity is that, as you

are aware, he hates a compromise--won't have it--retro Sathanas! and

Drew's proposal to take his arm instead of being carried pickaback

disgusts old Nevil. Still it won't do to stop where they are, like the

cocoa-nut and the pincushion of our friends, the gipsies, on the downs:

so they take arms and commence the journey home, resembling the best of

friends on the evening of a holiday in our native clime--two steps to the

right, half-a-dozen to the left, etcaetera.'

Thus, with scarce a variation from the facts, with but a flowery chaplet

cast on a truthful narrative, as it were, Captain Baskelett could render

ludicrous that which in other quarters had obtained honourable mention.

Nevil and Drew being knocked down by the wind of a ball near the battery,

'Confound it!' cries Nevil, jumping on his feet, 'it's because I

consented to a compromise!'--a transparent piece of fiction this, but so

in harmony with the character stripped naked for us that it is accepted.

Imagine Nevil's love-affair in such hands! Recovering from a fever, Nevil

sees a pretty French girl in a gondola, and immediately thinks, 'By

jingo, I'm marriageable.' He hears she is engaged. 'By jingo, she's

marriageable too.' He goes through a sum in addition, and the total is a

couple; so he determines on a marriage. 'You can't get it out of his

head; he must be married instantly, and to her, because she is going to

marry somebody else. Sticks to her, follows her, will have her, in spite

of her father, her marquis, her brother, aunts, cousins, religion,

country, and the young woman herself. I assure you, a perfect model of

male fidelity! She is married. He is on her track. He knows his time will

come; he has only to be handy. You see, old Nevil believes in Providence,

is perfectly sure he will one day hear it cry out, "Where's

Beauchamp?"--"Here I am!"--"And here's your marquise!"--"I knew I should

have her at last," says Nevil, calm as Mont Blanc on a reduced scale.'

The secret of Captain Baskelett's art would seem to be to show the

automatic human creature at loggerheads with a necessity that winks at

remarkable pretensions, while condemning it perpetually to doll-like

action. You look on men from your own elevation as upon a quantity of our

little wooden images, unto whom you affix puny characteristics, under

restrictions from which they shall not escape, though they attempt it

with the enterprising vigour of an extended leg, or a pair of raised

arms, or a head awry, or a trick of jumping; and some of them are

extraordinarily addicted to these feats; but for all they do the end is

the same, for necessity rules, that exactly so, under stress of activity

must the doll Nevil, the doll Everard, or the dolliest of dolls, fair

woman, behave. The automatic creature is subject to the laws of its

construction, you perceive. It can this, it can that, but it cannot leap

out of its mechanism. One definition of the art is, humour made easy, and

that may be why Cecil Baskelett indulged in it, and why it is popular

with those whose humour consists of a readiness to laugh.

The fun between Cecil Baskelett and Mr. Romfrey over the doll Nevil

threatened an intimacy and community of sentiment that alarmed Rosamund

on behalf of her darling's material prospects. She wrote to him,

entreating him to come to Steynham. Nevil Beauchamp replied to her both

frankly and shrewdly: 'I shall not pretend that I forgive my uncle

Everard, and therefore it is best for me to keep away. Have no fear. The

baron likes a man of his own tastes: they may laugh together, if it suits

them; he never could be guilty of treachery, and to disinherit me would

be that. If I were to become his open enemy to-morrow, I should look on

the estates as mine-unless I did anything to make him disrespect me. You

will not suppose it likely. I foresee I shall want money. As for Cecil, I

give him as much rope as he cares to have. I know very well Everard

Romfrey will see where the point of likeness between them stops. I apply

for a ship the moment I land.'

To test Nevil's judgement of his uncle, Rosamund ventured on showing this

letter to Mr. Romfrey. He read it, and said nothing, but subsequently

asked, from time to time, 'Has he got his ship yet?' It assured her that

Nevil was not wrong, and dispelled her notion of the vulgar imbroglio of

a rich uncle and two thirsty nephews. She was hardly less relieved in

reflecting that he could read men so soberly and accurately. The

desperation of the youth in love had rendered her one little bit doubtful

of the orderliness of his wits. After this she smiled on Cecil's

assiduities. Nevil obtained his appointment to a ship bound for the coast

of Africa to spy for slavers. He called on his uncle in London, and spent

the greater part of the hour's visit with Rosamund; seemed cured of his

passion, devoid of rancour, glad of the prospect of a run among the

slaving hulls. He and his uncle shook hands manfully, at the full

outstretch of their arms, in a way so like them, to Rosamund's

thinking--that is, in a way so unlike any other possible couple of men so

situated--that the humour of the sight eclipsed all the pleasantries of

Captain Baskelett. 'Good-bye, sir,' Nevil said heartily; and Everard

Romfrey was not behind-hand with the cordial ring of his 'Good-bye,

Nevil'; and upon that they separated. Rosamund would have been willing to

speak to her beloved of his false Renee--the Frenchwoman, she termed her,

i.e. generically false, needless to name; and one question quivered on

her tongue's tip: 'How, when she had promised to fly with you, how could

she the very next day step to the altar with him now her husband?' And,

if she had spoken it, she would have added, 'Your uncle could not have

set his face against you, had you brought her to England.' She felt

strongly the mastery Nevil Beauchamp could exercise even over his uncle

Everard. But when he was gone, unquestioned, merely caressed, it came to

her mind that he had all through insisted on his possession of this

particular power, and she accused herself of having wantonly helped to

ruin his hope--a matter to be rejoiced at in the abstract; but what

suffering she had inflicted on him! To quiet her heart, she persuaded

herself that for the future she would never fail to believe in him and

second him blindly, as true love should; and contemplating one so brave,

far-sighted, and self-assured, her determination seemed to impose the

lightest of tasks.

Practically humane though he was, and especially toward cattle and all

kinds of beasts, Mr. Romfrey entertained no profound fellow-feeling for

the negro, and, except as the representative of a certain amount of

working power commonly requiring the whip to wind it up, he inclined to

despise that black spot in the creation, with which our civilization

should never have had anything to do. So he pronounced his mind, and the

long habit of listening to oracles might grow us ears to hear and

discover a meaning in it. Nevil's captures and releases of the grinning

freights amused him for awhile. He compared them to strings of bananas,

and presently put the vision of the whole business aside by talking of

Nevil's banana-wreath. He desired to have Nevil out of it. He and Cecil

handed Nevil in his banana-wreath about to their friends. Nevil, in his

banana-wreath, was set preaching 'humanitomtity.' At any rate, they

contrived to keep the remembrance of Nevil Beauchamp alive during the

period of his disappearance from the world, and in so doing they did him

a service.

There is a pause between the descent of a diver and his return to the

surface, when those who would not have him forgotten by the better world

above him do rightly to relate anecdotes of him, if they can, and to

provoke laughter at him. The encouragement of the humane sense of

superiority over an object of interest, which laughter gives, is good for

the object; and besides, if you begin to tell sly stories of one in the

deeps who is holding his breath to fetch a pearl or two for you all, you

divert a particular sympathetic oppression of the chest, that the

extremely sensitive are apt to suffer from, and you dispose the larger

number to keep in mind a person they no longer see. Otherwise it is

likely that he will, very shortly after he has made his plunge, fatigue

the contemplative brains above, and be shuffled off them, even as great

ocean smoothes away the dear vanished man's immediate circle of foam, and

rapidly confounds the rippling memory of him with its other agitations.

And in such a case the apparition of his head upon our common level once

more will almost certainly cause a disagreeable shock; nor is it

improbable that his first natural snorts in his native element, though

they be simply to obtain his share of the breath of life, will draw down

on him condemnation for eccentric behaviour and unmannerly; and this in

spite of the jewel he brings, unless it be an exceedingly splendid one.

The reason is, that our brave world cannot pardon a breach of continuity

for any petty bribe.

Thus it chanced, owing to the prolonged efforts of Mr. Romfrey and Cecil

Baskelett to get fun out of him, at the cost of considerable

inventiveness, that the electoral Address of the candidate, signing

himself 'R. C. S. Nevil Beauchamp,' to the borough of Bevisham, did not

issue from an altogether unremembered man.

He had been cruising in the Mediterranean, commanding the Ariadne, the

smartest corvette in the service. He had, it was widely made known, met

his marquise in Palermo. It was presumed that he was dancing the round

with her still, when this amazing Address appeared on Bevisham's walls,

in anticipation of the general Election. The Address, moreover, was

ultra-Radical: museums to be opened on Sundays; ominous references to the

Land question, etc.; no smooth passing mention of Reform, such as the

Liberal, become stately, adopts in speaking of that property of his, but

swinging blows on the heads of many a denounced iniquity.

Cecil forwarded the Address to Everard Romfrey without comment.

Next day the following letter, dated from Itchincope, the house of Mr.

Grancey Lespel, on the borders of Bevisham, arrived at Steynham:

'I have despatched you the proclamation, folded neatly. The electors of

Bevisham are summoned, like a town at the sword's point, to yield him

their votes. Proclamation is the word. I am your born representative! I

have completed my political education on salt water, and I tackle you on

the Land question. I am the heir of your votes, gentlemen!--I forgot, and

I apologize; he calls them fellow-men. Fraternal, and not so risky. Here

at Lespel's we read the thing with shouts. It hangs in the smoking-room.

We throw open the curacoa to the intelligence and industry of the

assembled guests; we carry the right of the multitude to our host's

cigars by a majority. C'est un farceur que notre bon petit cousin. Lespel

says it is sailorlike to do something of this sort after a cruise.

Nevil's Radicalism would have been clever anywhere out of Bevisham. Of

all boroughs! Grancey Lespel knows it. He and his family were Bevisham's

Whig M.P.'s before the day of Manchester. In Bevisham an election is an

arrangement made by Providence to square the accounts of the voters, and

settle arrears. They reckon up the health of their two members and the

chances of an appeal to the country when they fix the rents and leases.

You have them pointed out to you in the street, with their figures

attached to them like titles. Mr. Tomkins, the twenty-pound man; an

elector of uncommon purity. I saw the ruffian yesterday. He has an extra

breadth to his hat. He has never been known to listen to a member under

L20, and is respected enormously--like the lady of the Mythology, who was

an intolerable Tartar of virtue, because her price was nothing less than

a god, and money down. Nevil will have to come down on Bevisham

in the Jupiter style. Bevisham is downright the dearest of

boroughs--"vaulting-boards," as Stukely Culbrett calls them--in the

kingdom. I assume we still say "kingdom."

'He dashed into the Radical trap exactly two hours after landing. I

believe he was on his way to the Halketts at Mount Laurels. A notorious

old rascal revolutionist retired from his licenced business of

slaughterer--one of your gratis doctors--met him on the high-road, and

told him he was the man. Up went Nevil's enthusiasm like a bottle rid of

the cork. You will see a great deal about faith in the proclamation;

"faith in the future," and "my faith in you." When you become a Radical

you have faith in any quantity, just as an alderman gets turtle soup. It

is your badge, like a livery-servant's cockade or a corporal's sleeve

stripes--your badge and your bellyful. Calculations were gone through at

the Liberal newspaper-office, old Nevil adding up hard, and he was

informed that he was elected by something like a topping eight or nine

hundred and some fractions. I am sure that a fellow who can let himself

be gulled by a pile of figures trumped up in a Radical newspaper-office

must have great faith in the fractions. Out came Nevil's proclamation.

'I have not met him, and I would rather not. I shall not pretend to offer

you advice, for I have the habit of thinking your judgement can stand by

itself. We shall all find this affair a nuisance. Nevil will pay through

the nose. We shall have the ridicule spattered on the family. It would be

a safer thing for him to invest his money on the Turf, and I shall advise

his doing it if I come across him.

'Perhaps the best course would be to telegraph for the marquise!'

This was from Cecil Baskelett. He added a postscript:

'Seriously, the "mad commander" has not an ace of a chance. Grancey and I

saw some Working Men (you have to write them in capitals, king and queen

small); they were reading the Address on a board carried by a red-nosed

man, and shrugging. They are not such fools.

'By the way, I am informed Shrapnel has a young female relative living

with him, said to be a sparkler. I bet you, sir, she is not a Radical. Do

you take me?'

Rosamund Culling drove to the railway station on her way to Bevisham

within an hour after Mr. Romfrey's eyebrows had made acute play over this

communication.