Beauchamp's Career. Volume 6

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George Meredith. Beauchamp's Career. Volume 6

CHAPTER XLII. THE TWO PASSIONS

CHAPTER XLIII. THE EARL OF ROMFREY AND THE COUNTESS

CHAPTER XLIV. THE NEPHEWS OF THE EARL, AND ANOTHER EXHIBITION OF THE TWO PASSIONS IN BEAUCHAMP

CHAPTER XLV. A LITTLE PLOT AGAINST CECILIA

CHAPTER XLVI. AS IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN FORESEEN

CHAPTER XLVII. THE REFUSAL OF HIM

CHAPTER XLVIII. OF THE TRIAL AWAITING THE EARL OF ROMFREY

CHAPTER XLIX. A FABRIC OF BARONIAL DESPOTISM CRUMBLE

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An extraordinary telegraphic message, followed by a still more extraordinary letter the next morning, from Rosamund Culling, all but interdicted the immediate occupation of his house in town to Everard, now Earl of Romfrey. She begged him briefly not to come until after the funeral, and proposed to give him good reasons for her request at their meeting. 'I repeat, I pledge myself to satisfy you on this point,' she wrote. Her tone was that of one of your heroic women of history refusing to surrender a fortress.

Everard's wrath was ever of a complexion that could suffer postponements without his having to fear an abatement of it. He had no business to transact in London, and he had much at the Castle, so he yielded himself up to his new sensations, which are not commonly the portion of gentlemen of his years. He anticipated that Nevil would at least come down to the funeral, but there was no appearance of him, nor a word to excuse his absence. Cecil was his only supporter. They walked together between the double ranks of bare polls of the tenantry and peasantry, resembling in a fashion old Froissart engravings the earl used to dote on in his boyhood, representing bodies of manacled citizens, whose humbled heads looked like nuts to be cracked, outside the gates of captured French towns, awaiting the disposition of their conqueror, with his banner above him and prancing knights around. That was a glory of the past. He had no successor. The thought was chilling; the solitariness of childlessness to an aged man, chief of a most ancient and martial House, and proud of his blood, gave him the statue's outlook on a desert, and made him feel that he was no more than a whirl of the dust, settling to the dust.

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'Why, ma'am? But I have no objection to his making the marquis a happy husband.'

'He has done what few men would have done, that she may be a self- respecting wife.'

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