George Meredith - Beauchamp's Career. Complete

‘I wish you knew him, papa, and would advise him,’ his daughter said.

The General nodded hastily. ‘By-and-by, by-and-by.’

They had in fact taken seats at a table of mutton pies in a pastrycook’s shop, where dashing military men were restrained solely by their presence from a too noisy display of fascinations before the fashionable waiting-women.

Rosamund looked at Miss Denham. As soon as they were in the street the latter said, ‘If you will be good enough to come with me, madam…?’ Rosamund bowed, thankful to have been comprehended. The two young ladies kissed cheeks and parted. General Sherwin raised his hat, and was astonished to see Mrs. Culling join Miss Denham in accepting the salute, for they had not been introduced, and what could they have in common? It was another of the oddities of female nature.

‘My name is Mrs. Culling, and I will tell you how it is that I am interested in Captain Beauchamp,’ Rosamund addressed her companion. ‘I am his uncle’s housekeeper. I have known him and loved him since he was a boy. I am in great fear that he is acting rashly.’

‘You honour me, madam, by speaking to me so frankly,’ Miss Denham answered.

‘He is quite bent upon this Election?’

‘Yes, madam. I am not, as you can suppose, in his confidence, but I hear of him from Dr. Shrapnel.’

‘Your uncle?’

‘I call him uncle: he is my guardian, madam.’

It is perhaps excuseable that this communication did not cause the doctor to shine with added lustre in Rosamund’s thoughts, or ennoble the young lady.

‘You are not relatives, then?’ she said.

‘No, unless love can make us so.’

‘Not blood-relatives?’

‘No.’

‘Is he not very… extreme?’

‘He is very sincere.’

‘I presume you are a politician?’

Miss Denham smiled. ‘Could you pardon me, madam, if I said that I was?’ The counter-question was a fair retort enfolding a gentler irony. Rosamund felt that she had to do with wits as well as with vivid feminine intuitions in the person of this Miss Denham.

She said, ‘I really am of opinion that our sex might abstain from politics.’

‘We find it difficult to do justice to both parties,’ Miss Denham followed. ‘It seems to be a kind of clanship with women; hardly even that.’

Rosamund was inattentive to the conversational slipshod, and launched one of the heavy affirmatives which are in dialogue full stops. She could not have said why she was sensible of anger, but the sentiment of anger, or spite (if that be a lesser degree of the same affliction), became stirred in her bosom when she listened to the ward of Dr. Shrapnel. A silly pretty puss of a girl would not have excited it, nor an avowed blood-relative of the demagogue.

Nevil’s hotel was pointed out to Rosamund, and she left her card there. He had been absent since eight in the morning. There was the probability that he might be at Dr. Shrapnel’s, so Rosamund walked on.

‘Captain Beauchamp gives himself no rest,’ Miss Denham said.

‘Oh! I know him, when once his mind is set on anything,’ said Rosamund.

‘Is it not too early to begin to—canvass, I think, is the word?’

‘He is studying whatever the town can teach him of its wants; that is, how he may serve it.’

‘Indeed! But if the town will not have him to serve it?’

‘He imagines that he cannot do better, until that has been decided, than to fit himself for the post.’

‘Acting upon your advice? I mean, of course, your uncle’s; that is, Dr. Shrapnel’s.’

‘Dr. Shrapnel thinks it will not be loss of time for Captain Beauchamp to grow familiar with the place, and observe as well as read.’

‘It sounds almost as if Captain Beauchamp had submitted to be Dr. Shrapnel’s pupil.’

‘It is natural, madam, that Dr. Shrapnel should know more of political ways at present than Captain Beauchamp.’

‘To Captain Beauchamp’s friends and relatives it appears very strange that he should have decided to contest this election so suddenly. May I inquire whether he and Dr. Shrapnel are old acquaintances?’

‘No, madam, they are not. They had never met before Captain Beauchamp landed, the other day.’

‘I am surprised, I confess. I cannot understand the nature of an influence that induces him to abandon a profession he loves and shines in, for politics, at a moment’s notice.’

Miss Denham was silent, and then said:

‘I will tell you, madam, how it occurred, as far as circumstances explain it. Dr. Shrapnel is accustomed to give a little country feast to the children I teach, and their parents if they choose to come, and they generally do. They are driven to Northeden Heath, where we set up a booth for them, and try with cakes and tea and games to make them spend one of their happy afternoons and evenings. We succeed, I know, for the little creatures talk of it and look forward to the day. When they are at their last romp, Dr. Shrapnel speaks to the parents.’

‘Can he obtain a hearing?’ Rosamund asked.

‘He has not so very large a crowd to address, madam, and he is much beloved by those that come.’

‘He speaks to them of politics on those occasions?’

‘Adouci a leur intention. It is not a political speech, but Dr. Shrapnel thinks, that in a so-called free country seeking to be really free, men of the lowest class should be educated in forming a political judgement.’

‘And women too?’

‘And women, yes. Indeed, madam, we notice that the women listen very creditably.’

‘They can put on the air.’

‘I am afraid, not more than the men do. To get them to listen is something. They suffer like the men, and must depend on their intelligence to win their way out of it.’

Rosamund’s meditation was exclamatory: What can be the age of this pretentious girl?

An afterthought turned her more conciliatorily toward the person, but less to the subject. She was sure that she was lending ear to the echo of the dangerous doctor, and rather pitied Miss Denham for awhile, reflecting that a young woman stuffed with such ideas would find it hard to get a husband. Mention of Nevil revived her feeling of hostility.

We had seen a gentleman standing near and listening attentively,’ Miss Denham resumed, ‘and when Dr. Shrapnel concluded a card was handed to him. He read it and gave it to me, and said, “You know that name.” It was a name we had often talked about during the war.

He went to Captain Beauchamp and shook his hand. He does not pay many compliments, and he does not like to receive them, but it was impossible for him not to be moved by Captain Beauchamp’s warmth in thanking him for the words he had spoken. I saw that Dr. Shrapnel became interested in Captain Beauchamp the longer they conversed. We walked home together. Captain Beauchamp supped with us. I left them at half-past eleven at night, and in the morning I found them walking in the garden. They had not gone to bed at all. Captain Beauchamp has remained in Bevisham ever since. He soon came to the decision to be a candidate for the borough.’

Rosamund checked her lips from uttering: To be a puppet of Dr. Shrapnel’s!

She remarked, ‘He is very eloquent—Dr. Shrapnel?’

Miss Denham held some debate with herself upon the term.

‘Perhaps it is not eloquence; he often… no, he is not an orator.’

Rosamund suggested that he was persuasive, possibly.

Again the young lady deliberately weighed the word, as though the nicest measure of her uncle or adoptor’s quality in this or that direction were in requisition and of importance—an instance of a want of delicacy of perception Rosamund was not sorry to detect. For good-looking, refined-looking, quick-witted girls can be grown; but the nimble sense of fitness, ineffable lightning-footed tact, comes of race and breeding, and she was sure Nevil was a man soon to feel the absence of that.