CHAPTER L

AT THE COTTAGE ON THE COMMON

Rain went with Lord Romfrey in a pursuing cloud all the way to Bevisham,

and across the common to the long garden and plain little

green-shuttered, neat white cottage of Dr. Shrapnel. Carriages were

driving from the door; idle men with hands deep in their pockets hung

near it, some women pointing their shoulders under wet shawls, and boys.

The earl was on foot. With no sign of discomposure, he stood at the

half-open door and sent in his card, bearing the request for permission

to visit his nephew. The reply failing to come to him immediately, he

began striding to and fro. That garden gate where he had flourished the

righteous whip was wide. Foot-farers over the sodden common were

attracted to the gateway, and lingered in it, looking at the long,

green-extended windows, apparently listening, before they broke away to

exchange undertone speech here and there. Boys had pushed up through the

garden to the kitchen area. From time to time a woman in a dripping

bonnet whimpered aloud.

An air of a country churchyard on a Sunday morning when the curate has

commenced the service prevailed. The boys were subdued by the moisture,

as they are when they sit in the church aisle or organ-loft, before their

members have been much cramped.

The whole scene, and especially the behaviour of the boys, betokened to

Lord Romfrey that an event had come to pass.

In the chronicle of a sickness the event is death.

He bethought him of various means of stopping the telegraph and

smothering the tale, if matters should have touched the worst here. He

calculated abstrusely the practicable shortness of the two routes from

Bevisham to Romfrey, by post-horses on the straightest line of road, or

by express train on the triangle of railway, in case of an extreme need

requiring him to hasten back to his wife and renew his paternal-despotic

system with her. She had but persuaded him of the policy of a liberal

openness and confidence for the moment's occasion: she could not turn his

nature, which ran to strokes of craft and blunt decision whenever the

emergency smote him and he felt himself hailed to show generalship.

While thus occupied in thoughtfulness he became aware of the monotony of

a tuneless chant, as if, it struck him, an insane young chorister or

canon were galloping straight on end hippomaniacally through the Psalms.

There was a creak at intervals, leading him to think it a machine that

might have run away with the winder's arm.

The earl's humour proposed the notion to him that this perhaps was one of

the forms of Radical lamentation, ululation, possibly practised by a

veteran impietist like Dr. Shrapnel for the loss of his youngster, his

political cub--poor lad!

Deriding any such paganry, and aught that could be set howling, Lord

Romfrey was presently moved to ask of the small crowd at the gate what

that sound was.

'It's the poor commander, sir,' said a wet-shawled woman, shivering.

'He's been at it twenty hours already, sir,' said one of the boys.

'Twenty-foor hour he 've been at it,' said another.

A short dispute grew over the exact number of hours. One boy declared

that thirty hours had been reached. 'Father heerd'n yesterday morning as

he was aff to 's work in the town afore six: that brings 't nigh thirty

and he ha'n't stopped yet.'

The earl was invited to step inside the gate, a little way up to the

house, and under the commander's window, that he might obtain a better

hearing.

He swung round, walked away, walked back, and listened.

If it was indeed a voice, the voice, he would have said, was travelling

high in air along the sky.

Yesterday he had described to his wife Nevil's chattering of hundreds to

the minute. He had not realized the description, which had been only his

manner of painting delirium: there had been no warrant for it. He heard

the wild scudding voice imperfectly: it reminded him of a string of

winter geese changeing waters. Shower gusts, and the wail and hiss of the

rows of fir-trees bordering the garden, came between, and allowed him a

moment's incredulity as to its being a human voice. Such a cry will often

haunt the moors and wolds from above at nightfall. The voice hied on,

sank, seemed swallowed; it rose, as if above water, in a hush of wind and

trees. The trees bowed their heads rageing, the voice drowned; once more

to rise, chattering thrice rapidly, in a high-pitched key, thin, shrill,

weird, interminable, like winds through a crazy chamber-door at midnight.

The voice of a broomstick-witch in the clouds could not be thinner and

stranger: Lord Romfrey had some such thought.

Dr. Gannet was the bearer of Miss Denham's excuses to Lord Romfrey for

the delay in begging him to enter the house: in the confusion of the

household his lordship's card had been laid on the table below, and she

was in the sick-room.

'Is my nephew a dead man?' said the earl.

The doctor weighed his reply. 'He lives. Whether he will, after the

exhaustion of this prolonged fit of raving, I don't dare to predict. In

the course of my experience I have never known anything like it. He

lives: there's the miracle, but he lives.'

'On brandy?'

'That would soon have sped him.'

'Ha. You have everything here that you want?'

'Everything.'

'He's in your hands, Gannet.'

The earl was conducted to a sitting-room, where Dr. Gannet left him for a

while.

Mindful that he was under the roof of his enemy, he remained standing,

observing nothing.

The voice overheard was off at a prodigious rate, like the far sound of a

yell ringing on and on.

The earl unconsciously sought a refuge from it by turning the leaves of a

book upon the table, which was a complete edition of Harry Denham's

Poems, with a preface by a man named Lydiard; and really, to read the

preface one would suppose that these poets were the princes of the earth.

Lord Romfrey closed the volume. It was exquisitely bound, and presented

to Miss Denham by the Mr. Lydiard. 'The works of your illustrious

father,' was written on the title-page. These writers deal queerly with

their words of praise of one another. There is no law to restrain them.

Perhaps it is the consolation they take for the poor devil's life they

lead!

A lady addressing him familiarly, invited him to go upstairs.

He thanked her. At the foot of the stairs he turned; he had recognized

Cecilia Halkett.

Seeing her there was more strange to him than being there himself; but he

bowed to facts.

'What do you think?' he said.

She did not answer intelligibly.

He walked up.

The crazed gabbling tongue had entire possession of the house, and rang

through it at an amazing pitch to sustain for a single minute.

A reflection to the effect that dogs die more decently than we men,

saddened the earl. But, then, it is true, we shorten their pangs by

shooting them.

A dismal figure loomed above him at the head of the stairs.

He distinguished it in the vast lean length he had once whipped and flung

to earth.

Dr. Shrapnel was planted against the wall outside that raving chamber, at

the salient angle of a common prop or buttress. The edge of a shoulder

and a heel were the supports to him sideways in his distorted attitude.

His wall arm hung dead beside his pendent frock-coat; the hair of his

head had gone to wildness, like a field of barley whipped by tempest. One

hand pressed his eyeballs: his unshaven jaw dropped.

Lord Romfrey passed him by.

The dumb consent of all present affirmed the creature lying on the bed to

be Nevil Beauchamp.

Face, voice, lank arms, chicken neck: what a sepulchral sketch of him!

It was the revelry of a corpse.

Shudders of alarm for his wife seized Lord Romfrey at the sight. He

thought the poor thing on the bed must be going, resolving to a cry,

unwinding itself violently in its hurricane of speech, that was not

speech nor exclamation, rather the tongue let loose to run to the death.

It seemed to be out in mid-sea, up wave and down wave.

A nurse was at the pillow smoothing it. Miss Denham stood at the foot of

the bed.

'Is that pain?' Lord Romfrey said low to Dr. Gannet.

'Unconscious,' was the reply.

Miss Denham glided about the room and disappeared.

Her business was to remove Dr. Shrapnel, that he might be out of the way

when Lord Romfrey should pass him again: but Dr. Shrapnel heard one voice

only, and moaned, 'My Beauchamp!' She could not get him to stir.

Miss Denham saw him start slightly as the earl stepped forth and, bowing

to him, said: 'I thank you, sir, for permitting me to visit my nephew.'

Dr. Shrapnel made a motion of the hand, to signify freedom of access to

his house. He would have spoken the effort fetched a burst of terrible

chuckles. He covered his face.

Lord Romfrey descended. The silly old wretch had disturbed his equanimity

as a composer of fiction for the comfort and sustainment of his wife: and

no sooner had he the front door in view than the calculation of the three

strides requisite to carry him out of the house plucked at his legs, much

as young people are affected by a dancing measure; for he had, without

deigning to think of matters disagreeable to him in doing so, performed

the duty imposed upon him by his wife, and now it behoved him to ward off

the coming blow from that double life at Romfrey Castle.

He was arrested in his hasty passage by Cecilia Halkett.

She handed him a telegraphic message: Rosamund requested him to stay two

days in Bevisham. She said additionally: 'Perfectly well. Shall fear to

see you returning yet. Have sent to Tourdestelle. All his friends. Ni

espoir, ni crainte, mais point de deceptions. Lumiere. Ce sont les

tenebres qui tuent.'

Her nimble wits had spied him on the road he was choosing, and outrun

him.

He resigned himself to wait a couple of days at Bevisham. Cecilia begged

him to accept a bed at Mount Laurels. He declined, and asked her: 'How is

it you are here?'

'I called here,' said she, compressing her eyelids in anguish at a wilder

cry of the voice overhead, and forgetting to state why she had called at

the house and what services she had undertaken. A heap of letters in her

handwriting explained the nature of her task.

Lord Romfrey asked her where the colonel was.

'He drives me down in the morning and back at night, but they will give

me a bed or a sofa here to-night--I can't . . .' Cecilia stretched her

hand out, blinded, to the earl.

He squeezed her hand.

'These letters take away my strength: crying is quite useless, I know

that,' said she, glancing at a pile of letters that she had partly

replied to. 'Some are from people who can hardly write. There were people

who distrusted him! Some are from people who abused him and maltreated

him. See those poor creatures out in the rain!'

Lord Romfrey looked through the venetian blinds of the parlour window.

'It's as good as a play to them,' he remarked.

Cecilia lit a candle and applied a stick of black wax to the flame,

saying: 'Envelopes have fallen short. These letters will frighten the

receivers. I cannot help it.'

'I will bring letter paper and envelopes in the afternoon,' said Lord

Romfrey. 'Don't use black wax, my dear.'

'I can find no other: I do not like to trouble Miss Denham. Letter paper

has to be sealed. These letters must go by the afternoon post: I do not

like to rob the poor anxious people of a little hope while he lives. Let

me have note paper and envelopes quickly: not black-edged.'

'Plain; that's right,' said Lord Romfrey.

Black appeared to him like the torch of death flying over the country.

'There may be hope,' he added.

She sighed: 'Oh! yes.'

'Gannet will do everything that man can do to save him.'

'He will, I am sure.'

'You don't keep watch in the room, my dear, do you?'

'Miss Denham allows me an hour there in the day: it is the only rest she

takes. She gives me her bedroom.'

'Ha: well: women!' ejaculated the earl, and paused. 'That sounded like

him!'

'At times,' murmured Cecilia. 'All yesterday! all through the night! and

to-day!'

'He'll be missed.'

Any sudden light of happier expectation that might have animated him was

extinguished by the flight of chatter following the cry which had sounded

like Beauchamp.

He went out into the rain, thinking that Beauchamp would be missed. The

fellow had bothered the world, but the world without him would be heavy

matter.

The hour was mid-day, workmen's meal-time. A congregation of shipyard

workmen and a multitude of children crowded near the door. In passing

through them, Lord Romfrey was besought for the doctor's report of

Commander Beauchamp, variously named Beesham, Bosham, Bitcham, Bewsham.

The earl heard his own name pronounced as he particularly disliked to

hear it--Rumfree. Two or three men scowled at him.

It had not occurred to him ever before in his meditations to separate his

blood and race from the common English; and he was not of a character to

dwell on fantastical and purposeless distinctions, but the

mispronunciation of his name and his nephew's at an instant when he was

thinking of Nevil's laying down his life for such men as these gross

excessive breeders, of ill shape and wooden countenance, pushed him to

reflections on the madness of Nevil in endeavouring to lift them up and

brush them up; and a curious tenderness for Nevil's madness worked in his

breast as he contrasted this much-abused nephew of his with our general

English--the so-called nobles, who were sunk in the mud of the traders:

the traders, who were sinking in the mud of the workmen: the workmen, who

were like harbour-flats at ebb tide round a stuck-fast fleet of vessels

big and little.

Decidedly a fellow like Nevil would be missed by him!

These English, huddling more and more in flocks, turning to lumps,

getting to be cut in a pattern and marked by a label--how they bark and

snap to rend an obnoxious original! One may chafe at the botheration

everlastingly raised by the fellow; but if our England is to keep her

place she must have him, and many of him. Have him? He's gone!

Lord Romfrey reasoned himself into pathetic sentiment by degrees.

He purchased the note paper and envelopes in the town for Cecilia. Late

in the afternoon he deposited them on the parlour table at Dr.

Shrapnel's. Miss Denham received him. She was about to lie down for her

hour of rest on the sofa. Cecilia was upstairs. He inquired if there was

any change in his nephew's condition.

'Not any,' said Miss Denham.

The voice was abroad for proof of that.

He stood with a swelling heart.

Jenny flung out a rug to its length beside the sofa, and; holding it by

one end, said: 'I must have my rest, to be of service, my lord.'

He bowed. He was mute and surprised.

The young lady was like no person of her age and sex that he remembered

ever to have met.

'I will close the door,' he said, retiring softly.

'Do not, my lord.'

The rug was over her, up to her throat, and her eyes were shut. He looked

back through the doorway in going out. She was asleep.

'Some delirium. Gannet of good hope. All in the usual course'; he

transmitted intelligence to his wife.

A strong desire for wine at his dinner-table warned him of something

wrong with his iron nerves.