Beauchamp

“ That fellow shan't get off. I'll never give it up till I've caught him. I'll track him, like a hare, to his form, and he shall be punished. Mr. Beauchamp has been kind to me--one of the first that ever were; and I'll not forget kindness, though I'll try to forget unkindness."
"Take care what you are about, Stephen," answered his mother-in-law, "or you may do harm instead of good. Watch him, if you will, to prevent mischief; and above all, let me know every thing that you see and hear. I will talk with Mr. Beauchamp, as you call him, this very day. I wonder if the woman is living!" ”

“ Beauchamp’s meditations were diverted by the sight of the coast of France dashed in rain-lines across a weed-strewn sea. The “three days” granted him by Renée were over, and it scarcely troubled him that he should be behind the time; he detested mystery, holding it to be a sign of pretentious feebleness, often of imposture, it might be frivolity. Punctilious obedience to the mysterious brevity of the summons, and not to chafe at it, appeared to him as much as could be expected of a struggling man. ”

“ Descending on the deep green valley in Summer is like a change of climes. The château stood square at a branch of the river, tossing three light bridges of pretty woodwork to park and garden. Great bouquets of swelling blue and pink hydrangia nestled at his feet on shaven grass. An open window showed a cloth of colour, as in a reminiscence of Italy.
Beauchamp heard himself addressed:—“You are looking for my sister-in-law, M. Beauchamp?” ”

“ I should tell you that we have been making inquiries, and had learnt that a Miss Beauchamp went to Montreal in Canada about twelvemonths ago. That lady no doubt is the one in your house: it may be the one we are wishing to find. We have already sent out letters to ascertain, and are expecting their answers every day. How long have you been in England?”
“Not a fortnight yet. I asked Miss Beauchamp if I could call on any of her friends in England with news of her; but she said she had none that she cared to send to.”
“It can be no other than Clarice!” murmured Jane in her inmost heart. ”

“ Thus saying, with the landlord leading the way and Beauchamp, Ned Hayward, and one or two others following, he walked slowly upstairs and entered the room where Captain Moreton lay. The surgeon was bending over him and holding his head up on his left-arm. But the moment the old man heard the bustle of many feet, he waved his right-hand as if to forbid any one to approach. Every body paused for an instant, and in the midst of the silence that ensued an awful and very peculiar sound was heard, something like that made by a horse taking a draught of water, but not so long and regular. ”

“ Beauchamp, "in having taken my evening walk in that direction; but at the same time, it is but fair to acknowledge that my share in the rescue of your sister and her daughter was but small. I only kept one man in play, while Captain Hayward had to contend with two."
"All the same! all the same, my dear Sir," said the baronet; "the reserve shares all the glory of a battle even if it does not pull a trigger. ”

“ Descendant of the renowned Lord Mayor of London, I presume?"
"No, Sir, no," answered the magistrate, while Beauchamp could scarcely refrain from laughing. "What I want to know is, what you have to do with this affair?"
"Every thing in the world," answered Ned Hayward, carving the chicken, "as I and my friend Beauchamp here had equal shares in saving the ladies from the clutches of these vagabonds. He came back here to give information, while I rode on with the ladies to protect them. Bring me a bottle of your best sherry, landlord. ”

“ Colonel Halkett indulged in a turn or two up and down the room. He threw open a window, sniffed the moist air, and went to his daughter to speak to her resolutely.
'Between a Radical and a Tory, I don't know where your head has been whirled to, my dear. Your heart seems to be gone: more sorrow for us! And for Nevil Beauchamp to be pretending to love you while carrying on with this Frenchwoman!'
'He has never said that he loved me.'
The splendour of her beauty in humility flashed on her father, and he cried out: 'You are too good for any man on earth! We won't talk in the dark, my darling. ”

“ CHAPTER XXXII.
"You said just now, doctor," observed Beauchamp as they strolled through the park, "that Ned Hayward particularly interested you. I am glad of it, for he did so with me from the first, without my well knowing why; and we are always glad to find a prepossession which savours perhaps a little of weakness, kept in countenance by others for whom we have a respect."
"You mistake altogether, young gentleman," replied the doctor, with the dry spirit upon him. "In my case it is no prepossession; neither did he interest me from the first. I generally can give a reason for what I feel. ”

“ Irish orators off the Parliamentary stage and the public platform are ready to laugh at themselves and at each other, whereas Beauchamp is in deadly earnest from six o’clock in the morning until twelve o’clock at night. Surely it can have been nothing else but sheer weariness that forced the writer to pitch his hero unexpectedly into the Channel, and bring his career to an untimely end. Never was catastrophe more inexplicable, and from the artistic point of view less justifiable, than Beauchamp’s death. We wake as from a prolonged nightmare with a gasp. ”

“ Beauchamp, even in a small degree, the kindness he had received. He pondered upon these things for full five minutes, and then returned to his cottage, where he found the old lady in the inner room, making the little boy repeat a short prayer at his bedside, after having washed and dressed him. It was a sweet and wholesome sight to the father. He contrasted it with former days, and he felt the balmy influence of honest peace pour over his heart. One of the first rewards of a return to virtue from any of man's many deviations, is an appreciation of its excellence. ”

“ The spring sun cast precise shadows from the posts of the footway and from the porticoes of the mansions; in the plane trees in the centre it fell in a moving tangle of quivering light.
Mr. Beauchamp watched the blackbird, which was swift, vivid, and noiseless, in the tall uncut grass.
A man so bent that the sunlight rested on his back, and his face was in the shadow, went by with a basket of watercress, and then a hackney coach lazily dragged over the cobbles, the driver absorbed in an old copy of The Gazette that gave stale news of the war. ”

“ Shrapnel should die, and repentance comes too late!” said Beauchamp.
She had no clear answer to that, save the hope of its being an unfounded apprehension. “As far as it is in my power, Nevil, I will avoid injustice to him in my thoughts.”
He gazed at her thankfully. “Well,” said he, “that’s like sighting the cliffs. But I don’t feel home round me while the colonel is so strangely prepossessed. For a high-spirited gentleman like your father to approve, or at least accept, an act so barbarous is incomprehensible. Speak to him, Cecilia, will you? Let him know your ideas.” ”

“ The popular cry proclaimed him a ghost, and he walked like one, impassive, blanched, and silent amid the uproar of mobs of jolly ruffians, for each of whom it was a point of honour to have a shy at old Shrapnel.
Clad in this preparation of pie-crust, he called from time to time at Beauchamp’s hotel, and renewed his monologue upon that Radical empire in the future which was for ever in the future for the pioneers of men, yet not the less their empire. “Do we live in our bodies?” quoth he, replying to his fiery interrogation: “Ay, the Tories! the Liberals!” ”

“ I shoot my arrows at a mark that is pretty certain to return them to me. And as to perfect success, I should be like the panic-stricken shopkeepers in my alarm at it; for I should believe that genii of the air fly above our tree-tops between us and the incognizable spheres, catching those ambitious shafts they deem it a promise of fun to play pranks with.
Young Mr. Beauchamp at that period of the panic had not the slightest feeling for the taxpayer. ”

“ Beauchamp smoothed his forehead roughly, trying hard to inspire himself with the tonic draughts of sentiments cast in the form of proverbs. “Lord Romfrey saw her, you say?”
“He did, Nevil, and admired her.”
“Well, if I suffer, let me think of her! For courage and nobleness I shall never find her equal. Have you changed your ideas of Frenchwomen now? Not a word, you say, not a look, to show her disdain of me whenever my name was mentioned!”
“She could scarcely feel disdain. She was guilty of a sad error.”
“Through trusting in me. Will nothing teach you where the fault lies? ”

“ Soon after this the boat was set for Venice again.
When he rejoined his companions he kissed Rosamund's hand, and Renee, despite a confused feeling of humiliation and anger, loved him for it.
Glittering Venice was now in sight; the dome of Sta. Maria Salute shining like a globe of salt.
Roland flung his arm round his friend's neck, and said, 'Forgive me.'
'You do what you think right,' said Beauchamp.
'You are a perfect man of honour, my friend, and a woman would adore you. Girls are straws. It's part of Renee's religion to obey her father. That's why I was astonished! . . . ”

“ Beauchamp, who has turned out a lord, was always very kind to me when he was at the inn, and gave me many a shilling; and I should not like to do them any harm, if I can stop it; and I could see they were wonderfully bitter against him, by the way of that lady and her husband."
"He is not her husband," said Widow Lamb, with a scoff; "but that matters not, Bill; you are a good boy, and have done quite right; and, perhaps, it may save much mischief ”

“ You will regret to hear that the project of Captain Beauchamp’s voyage is in danger of being abandoned. A committee of a vacant Radical borough has offered to nominate him. My influence is weak; madame would have him go back with her and her brother to Normandy. My influence is weak, I suppose, because he finds me constantly leaning to expediency—I am your pupil. It may be quite correct that powder is intended for explosion: we do not therefore apply a spark to the barrel. I ventured on that. He pitied me in the snares of simile and metaphor. He is the same, you perceive. ”

“ He betrayed as little as he felt that the coming Earl of Romfrey was different from the cadet of the family.
A novel sharpness in the “Stop that,” with which he crushed Beauchamp’s affectedly gentle and unusually roundabout opening of the vexed Shrapnel question, rang like a shot in the room at Steynham, and breathed a different spirit from his customary easy pugnacity that welcomed and lured on an adversary to wild outhitting. Some sorrowful preoccupation is, however, to be expected in the man who has lost a brother, and some degree of irritability at the intrusion of past disputes. ”

“ I wish to Heaven you could catch him."
"Have you any idea of his name?" asked Beauchamp.
"None in the world," replied Ned Hayward; "but there are two people here who must know, I think. One is young Wittingham, and the other is Ste Gimlet, otherwise Wolf. I have a strong notion this fellow was one of those attacking the carriage the other night. But that puts me in mind, Beauchamp, that I intended to go up and talk to Gimlet, but I have not time now. I wish you would; and just tell him from me, I will pay his boy's schooling if he will send him to learn something better than making bird-traps. ”

“ Cougham also, Cougham had passed through his Radical phase, as one does on the road to wisdom. So the frog telleth tadpoles: he too has wriggled most preposterous of tails; and he has shoved a circular flat head into corners unadapted to its shape; and that the undeveloped one should dutifully listen to experience and accept guidance, is devoutly to be hoped. Alas! Beauchamp would not be taught that though they were yoked they stood at the opposite ends of the process of evolution. ”

“ It very rarely happens that any one who is looked anxiously for ever does come; and of course, in the present instance, Beauchamp took the natural course and disappointed the two ladies.
"I have a message to deliver from Captain Hayward to your new keeper, Sir John," he said, "and therefore I will walk over to his cottage, and see him. An hour I dare say will accomplish it."
"It depends upon legs, my dear Sir," answered the baronet, looking up. "It would cost my two an hour and a half to go and come; so if I might advise, you would take four. ”

“ This intelligence is, that the ostensible proprietor is not the real one; your acquaintance, Mr. Wharton, having become virtually possessed of the property, perhaps, by not the fairest means."
"Humph!" said Doctor Miles; but he added nothing further, and Beauchamp went on.
"Poor Mr. St. Leger Moreton," he said, "was by no means a man of business, an easy, kind-hearted, somewhat too sensitive person."
"I know, I know," answered Doctor Miles, "I was well acquainted with him; and if ever man died of a broken heart, which is by no means so unusual an occurrence as people suppose, he did so." ”

“ Forgetful of her horror of his revolutionary ideas, forgetful of the elevation of her own, she thrilled secretly on hearing it stated by the jubilant young Tories at Mount Laurels, as a characteristic of Beauchamp, that he was clever in parrying political thrusts, and slipping from the theme; he who with her gave out unguardedly the thoughts deepest in him. And the thoughts!—were they not of generous origin? Where so true a helpmate for him as the one to whom his mind appealed? It could not be so with the Frenchwoman. ”