C , ^sMji' '^ } i : 1 f J UWiVcR.^^^J;' Or A ■ 'uRBANA- ■ •- ;--^''^^ EOj? /^,^/P^efO ^^ci^^. /^iT^ - ar. ^ o^^ MISS BEAUOHAMP A PHILISTINE. VOL. I. MISS BEAUCHAMP A PHILISTINE. BY CONSTANCE MacEWEN, AUTHOR OF "GIN A BODY MEET A BODY," ETC. m THREE VOLUMES.— VOL. L ' Such a Lord is Love. LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL (Limited). 1883. [All Rights reserved'} ? u tt g a y r CLAY AND TAYLOR, PKIXTERS. PREFACE. ^^ The modern meaning of the term Philistine "^^ has been so variously rendered, that it may J^ be as well to explain that my heroine, Miss Beauchamp, is merely called " A Philistine " in j^ derision, as she is the reverse of a Philistine, ^ whether you translate the word according to $ a great living writer, or according to Byron, ." or accordino' to the usual translation of the ,^ term as op^Dosed to the ^sthetical School. ^ Fehmary 27th, 1883. V ^5^ CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGIi I. GROPINGS 1 11. HOMESPUN 13 III. A QUEST 28 IV. CONTRASTS ... 40 V. AMIDST DEAD THINGS ... 44 VI. OUT GRAZING ... 54 VII. MR. CANTILUPE ... 62 VIII. OURS ... 70 IX. A DAY IN FEBRUARY 77 X. LET IT BE ''RIZPAH" ... 85 XI. HE HAS AN UNDULATING MOVEMENT... ... 98 XII. FLYING A KITE ... ... 110 XIII. THREE PHILOSOPHEUS ... ... ... 120 XIV. 'tis a VANDYKE ... ... 129 VIU CONTENTS. CHAP. XV. TOWNSFOLK XVI. LEGALITY XVIL WHAT THEY SAID XVIII. TWO LADIES IN THE TWILIGHT XIX. COSMOS HALL ... XX. MRS. battle's LAST DISCOVERY XXI. A FATHER CONFESSOR XXn. ETHICS ON HORSEBACK XXIIL FOUR o'clock TEA 142 156 1G6 180 ... 193 ... 209 231 240 251 \AmA i:^- VOLUME I. " Love took up the harp of Life and smote on all the chords with might, Smote the chord of Self, that trembling, pass'd in music out of sight." MISS BEAUCHAMP: A PHILISTINE. CHAPTER I. GROPINGS. " ' Proputtij, proputty, proputty,^ tliafs luliat I ^ears 'em sady . . : ' Proputty, j^rojMtty, proputty! " T\IANA BEAUCHAMP — the last of the Beaucliamps, the inheritor of all the dis- tinguished points of that distinguished race ; the inheritor of all the accumulated wit and brilliant parts of that hair-brained assemblage of ancestral dignitaries who had made ducks and drakes of all that was come-at-able, and VOL. I. B MISS BEAUCHAMP. left Beaucliamp Court mortgaged up to its last tree, to this, the sole remaining repre- sentative of that once prolific race, Diana Beauchamp. "You say the property is strictly entailed, Mr. Bovin ? " Mr. Bovin murmured assent (he is not at all like a lawyer — more like a rosy-cheeked farmer, more like cattle and hams and pecks o' barley). " Entailed upon you and your heirs," he adds lazily, as if the hum of bees is in his ears, and the rhythm of scythes; "that's the meaning of entail. Ladies are supposedly ignorant of these matters." " Can I let the estate ? " " No, Miss Beauchamp, you cannot ; there is a curious clause in the title-deeds relatingr to that question." " It seems I can do nothing but live here, and yet have nothing to live on." GROPINGS. " Just so, my dear young lady ; it's provok- ing, very provoking." And then Mr. Bovin looked as growly as a good-natured farmer might look on a drenching ingathering day. " In Italy I supported myself ; doubtless you have heard of my proceedings,'' said Diana, leaning her head on her hand, and looking re- flectively down the grand avenue which faced the window. ''Very creditable, very highly creditable," responded Mr. Bovin, clinking the dangles on his massive gold chain. " You are the last of a clever race." " A clever race, were they ? " said Diana dreamily, as if she were some alien offshoot. "Was Sir Golf clever?" " In his own line," said Mr. Bovin. " What line ? " Mr. Bovin dimpled — or dumpled perhaps is a more appropriate term — into easy smiles. B 2 MISS BEAUCHAMP. '* Fishing. Sir Golf hooked the biggest salmon that — well, that ever was hooked. It weighed eighty pounds." " Ah ! " said Diana, looking away from Mr. Bovin with a wholly humoristic smile. *' There are so many styles of cleverness, Miss Beau champ, so many and various forms. I take it that a man who hooks a big salmon is as clever as the man who badgers his witness into a hysterical state of negation. Each hooks his salmon on his own line." After this Mr. Bovin looked downwards on his flowered waistcoat, and smiled aldermani- cally. " I am interested in Sir Golf, because Mrs. Battle says I am so like him," said Diana. " Mrs. Battle studied Sir Golfs features, doubtless. Yes, now you mention it, I think you do resemble Sir Golf very markedly. But this is natural. He w^as your father's GROPINGS. brother, very near of kin." Then silence fell. *' You know who originated my recitations, Mr. Bovin ? " "I do ; the Philothea — a remarkable woman, a very remarkable woman. I took Mrs. Bovin to hear her lecture. She quite- upset my wife, dear soul." Then Mr. Bovin " dumpled " in cycles as if recollection had stirred a mischievous brain- wave. " The Philothea was lost in the Livonia, and left her immense fortune to a chance acquaintance, Miss Cora Porsyth, since married to that radical fellow Carrington Mervin. I wish she had left her fortune to you, Miss Beau- champ. Well, well, you must carry on your recitations in this country. You may redeem the estate." Mr. Bovin's brow had puckered up, and his lips were drawn tightly together. These MISS BEAUCHAMP. were his facial activities when legally speak- ing. He was unprepared for the effect of his words ; he had thought his client distin- guished-looking, but unemotional, veering to- wards northern rather tlian southern hemi- spheres. AYith an exclamation of joy Diana rose and took those two podgy hands of Mr. Bovin's in her own, and held them, to his discomfort. " You have won my eternal gratitude. You have filled me with hope. Yes, I ivill redeem the estate. But do not English people look somewhat coldly on this form of entertain- ment ? "What of their criticism ? Could I bear it ? Should I meet with the exquisite courtesy in this country I have met with in Italy ? Will stolid stares discountenance me?" Mr. Bovin's hands were safely tucked away. He did not understand emotional people ; GROPINGS. besides^, he had thought Miss Beauchamp the reverse of emotional, and it's very discounte- nancing to find people different to your conceptions. You never recover your surprise, and the surprise opens out into all sorts of odd suggestions and overbalancing concep- tions, so that you never feel righted again. Besides, his hands belonged to Mrs. Bovin, dear good soul. If only Diana could have followed these reflective mazes in which the amiable, bucolic, and eminently unimaginative Mr. Bovin found himself, she too would have been filled with discountenancing reflections ; but Diana was as one floundering in quagmires when con- versing with Mr. Bovin. He was a lawyer, and, furthermore, her lawyer. He would understand her enthusiasm. " I have no doubt you would draw a large audience," he at last said, speaking slowly 8 MISS BEAUCHAMP. and with measurement. " He or she who points with one finger, standing midway on a stretch of pavement — north, south, east, or west — draws a large and interested audience shortly to his or her side. I think the fact that Miss Beau champ, of Beauchamp, will appear in * Recitation ' is sufficient guarantee of an interested audience. With regard to the Gorgon izing stare, people will pay to stare, and English people, now more than ever, exact the full value of their coin. It's a Cheap Jack age." '' How many thousand pounds will it take to redeem Beauchamp ? " said Diana, rising and pacing the room, her head bent slightly forward as she stood for a moment facing Mr. Bovin in the flickerino: liorht of the fire, with the dusky wintry shadows enfolding her in their mysterious mantlings. "Of course I was joking, Miss Beauchamp. GROPINGS. You can never redeem the Court, though you may make a sufficiently handsome income to live up to the requirements of an aesthetical ao;e." " How many thousand pounds "will it take to redeem Beauchamp ? " reiterated Diana ; her tone was impelling, and her slight fingers were tightly interlaced. " Fifty thousand pounds would pay off the mortgage," said Mr. Bovin lazily. Once more the hum of bees and the rhythm of scythes were surely in his ears. When we are dealing with visionaries we may surely look sleepy. " Ah ! " said Diana ; and then she resumed her walk up and down the faded carpet as if Mr. Bovin was out of her ken. What trans- mitted grace lurked in the movements of Diana ! Somehow you liked to watch her. She seemed to mingle with the sighings and 10 MISS BEAUCHAMP. whisperings and chaugeful moods of Nature's mysticism. "Well, I think I must be going back to Mrs. Bovin now, dear soul," said Mr. Bovin, rising slowly and warily from the arm-chair which had held him longer than he had intended ; but sometimes a piece of furniture will hold us as tightly as any person or thing. How much heroism has been slaugh- tered by a few downy feathers and a padded piece of seduction installed in a warm corner I There is subtle power in a meditative grip. " Mrs. Bovin must have won your thanks, Mr. Bovin, or else you would not call her a *dear soul.' Whenever husbands call their wives ' dear souls ' I feel sure they have merited this distinction by some conspicuous forbearance." Mr. Bovin regarded his client with a stare GROPINGS. 11 which had something of fear in its composition. Was she in fun, or was she in earnest ? These wide-awake young ladies were a positive nine- teenth century nightmare. How thankful he felt that Mrs. Bovin was as she was, ^' dear soul," groping about in a twilight existence. Miss Beauchamp would twist everybody and everything upside down. *' Of course I was joking," said Diana, re- garding mischievously the crumpled appearance Mr. Bovin had developed. " Joking as far as you are concerned, though in. most instances I assure you 'tis the case. I've seen such a comical side of life, for my observations have been carried on through a powerful telescope at a long range — always at a Ion or rano^e— in wholesome fear of claws and teeth." Mr. Bovin smiled, and bowed with the respect 12 MISS BEAUCHAMP. due to a clever client ; and, as he walked down the avenue, which no mortgagee could rob of its calm dignity, mentally ejaculated, "From all clever women defend me I " CHAPTER 11. HOMESPUN. " And because rigid. is right, to follow right were loisdom in the scorn of consequence J ^ Diana paced up and down the faded carpet, which had received the impress of so many bygone feet, amidst the shadowy furniture which had stood " exactly so '' for so many gene- rations, — up and down, heedless of the gloom. What is sunlight or moonlight, heat or cold, times or seasons, to a dominant spirit ? She was a sculptor carving a destiny, — carving it exquisitely, as if she were the President who ordered her own goings. Life had been a struggle hitherto ; it would be none the less 14 MISS BEAUCHAMP. SO now — the acquisition of Beauchamp was no positive gain. For years she had been alone in the world ; for years she had been flung on her own resources, and those resources consisted in a marvellously retentive memory, an exquisite sensibility (which seemed to weave the sorrows and joys of the character she portrayed in her recitations into the very warp and woof of her own being), a voice of sweet and powerful range, and a subtle distinction of manner which, like a magnet, repelled where it did not draw\ *'The continental world declared there was ^matter' in me ; will the insular world say so too ? " mused Diana. " Fifty thousand pounds," — a sum acquired by men over and over again ; by women rarely, unless they are able to draw through the medium of a quill pen and a drop of ink ; unless they have a daisy-chain kind of mind, or HOMESPUN. 15 brains which can toss off some flowers of rhetoric. " Hope, I invoke thee ! " cried Diana aloud. " Come, gaily decked sprite, with thy eager glad eyes, and whisper in the quick o' my ear that 1 shall redeem the Court." But there was no answer to her cry save the answer of her own indomitable will. " Here is something on which to expend these burnino: energ;ies, which are for ever ursrino: and goading me to enterprise. Here is something to conquer. " Mr. Bovin laughed as ironically as if I had said I would pay ofl" the national debt. Mr. Bovin thinks it's a pity that I am not a ' dear soul ' ; but circumstances, be they what they may, will never turn me into a ' dear soul.' I've a yearning after the ' dear souls ' ; I stretch out mental feelers towards them ; I often cry out for a placid interior — for a soul which wonders not, C[uestions not. I cry out for the moral and 16 MISS BEAUCHAMP. mental paraphernalia of a ' dear soul ' — the comfortable nature which wakes up with a * dear dear ' — and trots up and down the highways and byways of life, and comes off without scars and scratches." And now Diana lauo-hed — lauorhed o o with the spring-tide of a pure laugh, rung out unadulterated. "If Mrs. Battle hears me laughing all alone, she will think all descriptions of things/' thought Diana. " This comes of a solitary existence and solitary dialoguings with one- self." Then she went to the door and called Mrs. Battle. Mrs. Battle was never far distant. She had been as useful to Sir Golf as the old warming- pan watch he carried in his waistcoat pocket ; and now she was to be as useful to Diana. She had been lady housekeeper to Sir Golf, if such a term could be applied to the domestic arrangements of the Court, which consisted of HOMESPUX. 1 7 an ancient male and female factotum who had joined hands for the sake of conveniency below- stairs. Mrs. Battle had been Sir Golfs butt and sole source of amusement indoors. " The only fault I can find with you, most estimable Battle," he used to say — when, dinner ended, he would sink into the arm-chair which had a trick of holding its occupants — " is this : you won't rise. No salmon flounder- ing in that river over there has ever, in the long run, resisted my bait, but I've never succeeded in getting so much as a surface agitation out of you." Whereupon the inestimable Mrs. Battle would smile, and say, "Sir Golf I Sir Golf!" and then sighing placidly, " Sir Golf ! Sir Golf ! " Mrs. Battle always wore homespuns ; she wore home manufactures on principle. She VOL. I. c MISS BEAUCHAMP. needed no Lady Bective to stir up the esprit de corps in her gentle mind. She was in a " homespun " now, though its tint was sombre ; for she mourned Sir Golf. Mrs. Battle, like many extremely amiable people, had one ferocious point. It was this — he or she who despised their nationality. " My husband was an Englishman," she would say ; '' my mother, father, aunts, uncles, grandfathers, grandmothers," and here she fell away from her generations and gave way to genealogical pantings, and, generally speak- ing, left her audience to fill in the rest ; her audience, for the most part, consisting of Mrs. Bovin or Miss Edwards, the doctor^s sister. Mrs. Battle panted slightly as she entered the room ; she was stout, and hurry of move- ment induced panting. The panting merged into a comfortable sigh as she took her usual HOMESPUN. " 1 9 seat in the deep recess of the old-fashioned fireplace. " From whence comes your unruffled calm, i\Irs. Battle ? " said Diana. " Occasionally it's instructive to dive beneath the exterior into the interior to examine the roots of other natures. Let me examine yours. I've been one short week at the Court, and each day Mrs. Battle has presented the same unvarying front. 'Tis not so with Nature ; each day, each moment, she varies ; the light creeping down the mountain sides at noon, and the shadows creeping down the same mountains at even, change its aspect from grave to gay, or gay to grave. But with you, morning, noon, and nio;ht make not the slio;htest difference. In Italy physiognomies vary ten thousand times within twelve hours. Take Marcia, my maid — she was all stilettos and smiles. Mrs. Battle, did you ever learn the Catechism ? " C 2 20 MISS BEAUCHAMP. " Of course I did," said Mrs. Battle, " and everything else that's thoroughly English." ^' Bravissimo" said Diana, continuing her restless walk up and down the room ; " may I put you through it ? " Mrs. Battle smoothed her hair placidly, and smiled benignly. The Golfs had ever been thus, and if you did not take them as you found them, then you must find them as you took them — which was the deepest piece of philosophy Mrs. Battle's grey matter had ever shaped. " What is your name ? " " Martha, Miss Beauchamp, so named after my great-grandmother on the maternal side." " N. or M. ? M. has it. Did you ever compare the English and Scotch Catechisms ? You had better not. They open fire so very differently. What are your likes and dislikes ? I will be the key. HOMESPUN. 21 " You like to ' purr ' and to be ' purred ' at. You were born without claws — I declare it — and the phantasm of other people's claws has never crossed your imagination ; your imagination as yet lies dormant, and no s]3ring- tide is likely to awake it ; so rest thee well, thou baleful or most blessed of gifts, the subtle powerful sense which clothes everybody and everything in its own strange mantlings. '' Martha Battle, promise me this ; place your hand on your thigh, like Jacob of old, and vow your vow, that you will 7iever leave me. You rest me. Yes, it is restful to live with a wholesome soul — wholesome as bread, of which we never tire. I have seen so much unwholesomeness in w^omen. When I pant for the streams of my heart to flow fresh and pure, I go to Nature, and stretch out my hands towards it. As yet I seem to know God but throug^h Nature. If the flowers and 22 MISS BEAUCHAMP. the streams and the woods are so fair, what must He be ? So I know Him in His works ; I've approached no nearer as yet. Sometimes in Florence, when examining the petals of an asphodel, I've cried out, *' Make me pure and divinely careless as these creations of Thine liand.' These my prayers, my only prayers. This my nearest approach to communion with the Infinite. " Then with finite beings I've floated on the surface of society, touched extended finger- tips, and extended finger-tips to be touched in return. I've dived beneath the surface of society, and watched life's aquarium at work and at play, and yet the desire for friendship has never stirred within me. So long as the winds can carry my secrets, and the sun kiss my lips, and the flowers whisper of revelations yet to come, and Leone and Muscatel lick my hands, what do I want with HOMESPUN. 23 friendsJiip, so called ? Some have said, there is too much ice about me ; but to-night I feel aglow with a tropical sun. Mr. Bovin has given me an aim, an object, a ^oal — the redemp- tion of this Court." Mrs. Battle held up ten fingers, shaped like wickets ; but her countenance portrayed no horror, such as upraised hands generally carry. " That's right," said Diana, " 'tis thus you encourage me. Our hands are subtle members, equal to our brains, in their own line, as Mr. Bovin would say. London will be the scene of my activities, Mr. Cantilupe the medium of my activities. The Philothea told me to go to him if I required information on any subject or floating in a new capital. In Kome, or Florence, I never lacked an audience ; London may be more critical, it can hardly be so artistic." 24 MTSS BEAUCHAMP. *' Recitations don't pay/' said Mrs. Battle, looking into the fire. " Cela depend',' said Diana. " I don't know French," said Mrs. Battle, still looking into the fire. " Don't know French, and say so ! No wonder you are wholesome, no wonder you look calm," cried Diana delightedly. " You are a corrective to an uprisino^ vision. " The uprising vision was maliciously asked by a friend — ' Do you remember your premier baiser ? ' The malicious one meanwhile negli- gently turning over the leaves of the valse so named. My uprising vision, standing on the quicksands of an educational confession, bowed with a finesse worthy of relegating her to diplomatic wifehood — bowed, and thus veiled her ignorance." " English is the only language worth know- ing," said Mrs. Battle. HOMESPUN. 25 " Behold her ! " said Diana, as if addressing an audience, " behokl her ! An English lady, girt about with white giants, only to be approached by an invasion of aeronauts from the other side. Recitations dont pay ! Recitations shall pay ! Shant and sUall^ an ugly, sinful couple, are they not ? Yet what thew and sinew, what bludgeons and daggers, and various implements dow^n to a thief's skeleton key ! Martha Battle, ]iglit a candle here and there, and listen to the throb of Shakespeare's soul — that wonderful soul of his, now^ aglow with the splendours of an orient sun, and now dark with the darkness of driving storms." Mrs. Battle sighed placidly as she rose and did Miss Beauchamp's bidding ; then sank into her chair again, and with meek, upraised eyes prepared herself for an exhibition of some sort. Framed in one of the arched windows at the 26 MISS BEAUCnAMP. end of the long room, Diana seemed already to have merged her personality in that of the poet's conception. Her voice rang out clear and impelling, hurrying you along with the resistless force of her own impassioned render- ing ; her figure lent itself to each expression of her words ; her countenance mirrored the changeful words of each varied scene ; and her eyes, filled with the electric currents of the forces which swayed her, seemed a recitation in themselves. Surely this was genius utter- inor orenius. o o Mrs. Battle, sittinsj blinking: in the wax- lights, felt herself in the presence of a novel being. But then she was a Beauchamp, and the Beauchamps were rare. Still no Beau- champ within her recollection had ^been so rare as this Diana. There must be sometliinor o in race, or there must be something in edu- cation, or there must be somethinof in some- HOMESPUN. 27 thing ; and then Mrs. Battle relapsed into dimness. " Recitations shall pay," said Diana, throw- ing herself negligently into Sir Golfs arm- chair, and clasping her hands carelessly about her neck. CHAPTEE III. A QUEST. " 0, yd methought I saw the Holy Grail All jjall'd ill crimson samite, and around Great anf/els, atcful shapes, and icings, and eyes^ '' Must I die, Edwards 1 " The speaker was a man in the prime of life — a man, though sick unto death, yet goodly to look upon. *' Life and death are not in my hands, Sir Blaise." " I will know Him in whose hands they are, should I recover," said the sick man^ uprising from the pillow by sheer force of inflexible will. "If I die now, I cry with Voltaire, ' I'm A QUEST. 29 about to take a leap in the dark. He who puts his horse at a *'clyke" in the dark is surely mad.' God ! I have been mad ! " Mr. Edwards was silent. He was not a physician of souls. " Have they shot Nell ? " *' Yes ; her life was sheer agony." " Poor Nell ! " and here a light broke over the suffering face of Sir Blaise, which, if it was not love, was akin to it. Then a deep groan was wrung from him as pain took the mastery, then unconsciousness. Mr. Edwards applied restoratives. The re- storatives availed. Two hours of mortal agony passed. Mr. Edwards moistened those parched lips, and bathed that brow on which the veins stood out like the tendrils of a vine, knotted and twisted with pain, with the con- trolling, yet tender touch of sympathy. Mr. Edwards was not a physician of souls, 30 MISS BEAUCHAMP. but lie was an arch-physician of bodies. The hours grew to night, and at last Sir Blaise fell into fitful slumber. Not till then did Mr. Edwards's expression vary from fixed gravity to ease. Stooping down, he swept those pene- trating eyes of his over Sir Blaise's features, and murmured, " He will pull through/' Vows made on sick-beds, or when Death has laid a finger on us, are seldom kept. Where are the nine ? is repeated over and over again in the experience of each of us. Where are the nine ? Out once again with the summer winds, whispering glad mystic breathings about us ; out amidst the starry blossoms and the sun-kissed fruits, plucking June roses, and marvelling at the jug-jug of the nightingale. Our vows, where are they ? Gone ! Yes, gone with the feverish dreams of yesternight — gone to echo amidst the 31 haunted spots of earth. Gone where all that has perished untimely finds a grave. Sir Blaise is not as the nine, he is as the one ; he has returned to give thanks, or, rather, he has set out on his quest — but, like many others, he has lost his way. All the county was distressed when Sir Blaise Panmure was carried insensible from the hunting-field. The distress showed itself after the usual form — an epidemic of paste- board and a flotilla of notes ; but no one was admitted to the presence of Sir Blaise. Two months had passed since the accident, and Sir Blaise was as well again as he had ever been. Yet no persuasive message or winning inquiry had availed to open the doors of Whitefriars to friend or acquaintance. " Tell them, one and all. Vizard," he had said to his confidential valet, " I am off on a quest, and till I find the Beatific Vision I can see no one." 32 MISS BEAUCHAMP. AVliereupoii Vizard, who worshipped Sir Bhiise, had given way to absolute tears in the •privacy of his own room; for no one should share his sorrowful belief that Sir Blaise would never recover his accident. He was so strange — so unlike what he had been ; and so Vizard made his excuses, framing them now in plush and now in gold, now in wood and now in metal, and showing a pictorial imagin- ation in the arrangement of these excuses. And Sir Blaise set out on his quest — a quest the thoughtful of all ages have set out on, from Odin upwards, because the problems of life and death oppress them, because the inevitable is beckoning with too ghastly a gesture unless the strange future can be decked with some sweet sprays from Hope's ever-beauteous garden, unless they can find some safe and happy anchorage for their tossed and wearied souls. Some travel many A QUEST. 33 leagues and climb many staircases before the star hath led them to the little Babe of Beth- lehem ; some try first one philosophy and then another, and look into many creeds and divers cults, before, with exultations trampling on pain, they clasp the feet of the crucified Christ. Whitefriars was the estate adjoining Beau- champ Court, and for centuries it had looked down with all the complacent grandeur even bricks and mortar can display on the palpable ruin at its side, — with its grass-grown walks, moss-covered stones, and disconsolate shutters, which, like eyes which hold a tragic past, looked the type of the wreck within. On the magnificent terrace which sentinelled the front aspect of Whitefriars the Argus-eyed peacocks sunned themselves, and strutted con- spicuously, breathing pomp, in juxtaposition to the melancholy hoots of the owls, which had made their dwelling-place amidst the ivy now VOL. I. D 34 MISS BEAUCHAMP. much too prolitic at Beaucliamp, and the mys- terious bats which flitted about the neglected walks with dismal flappings. The lawns and parterres at Whitefriars were clipped and docked like a French poodle or Polo pony ; the pleasaunce would have accorded with the stately steps of wigged gallants and hooped ladies in the reign of Queen Bess ; those walks were squared out for grandiloquent speeches of a past day. The home farm was a model, and the stables mio^ht have been a national boast. Such con- trasts seem like the irony of fate — full of the mockings and gibings of a transmitted plague, which dodges the footsteps of recurring gener- ations, and avenges itself on the profuseness which will deck some natures, which will give and never take, and which twists its pocket inside out, and still smiles through all, if with rueful relish of the smile. A QUEST. 35 Perhaps ^Sir Blaise Pannnire would have twisted his pockets inside out if he had been a '' town man " ; but he abhorred London and all tow^ns without distinction ; loved horses, dogs, and sport ; hated fashion and sham ; had never rend a novel, so was Arcadian in his simplicity as reg^ards w^oraen ; in fact, he cared but little about them, though they cared a good deal about him. He viewed them as delicate china — too fragile for much use ; as flowers, which a too ardent sun might wither at a glance ; as creatures to be approached wdth exceeding reverence. Lady Panmure had been one of this fragile growth. All dimly Sir Blaise remembered her. and the remembrance w^as tinged with worship. Memory recalled the exceeding care with which his father. Sir Dyke, had dug about and w^atered his conversation when ad- dressing her, relegating all strong expressions L> 2 36 MISS BEAU CHAMP. t(j the g;alleries of liis mental arrang-ements, and becoming a metamorphosed man for the very few minutes in each day he spent with this Sevres china wife he had married. Sir Blaise could not imagine a lady who would not be as his mother had been — fine, ex- tremely fine — flexible as textures which pass through rings, wrought delicately as spider's web. So years rolled by, and no Lady Panmure reioned at Whitefriars — not for lack of hardi- o lioud on the ladies' part ; for, notwithstanding the fragility of Sevres china, ladies can be as tough as earthenware, and they had in more than one instance ventured perilously far on the quicksands of half-disclosed sentiments, which, in full revelation, were the white rose of confession. Sir Blaise was so lovable — surely he could be lovino-. And Sir Blaise — ah ! he stroked A QUEST. 37 his moustache, called his dogs about him, and frowned, half puzzled at the stoutness of Sevres china ; and then the frown lightened into a half-smile, as he viewed a favourite hunter, and murmured to himself how women babble, and they don't know what they say — how should they ? And thus once more the sex were rein- stated in the cabinet, of value priceless ; but, as yet, no Lady Panmure reigned at White - friars — or ever will, was whispered in the servants' hall. Only Vizard checked that growing whisper by closing one eye and open- ing the other, and looking so alarmingly prophetic, and prophetically obscure, that it was felt, though not acknowledged by the household, that the secret springs and watch- words and passes, which are the peculiar signs by which the initiated pass in and out, and sit down within those inner cycles of a being, 38 MISS BEAUCHAMr. were known, nay, mud be known, to Vizard — that juggler movement of the eyelid meant oceanic depths. How often does a strange smile, an odd twinkle, or an incipient shrug, open up a thousand outlets and inlets, leadino: down roads where, turning from right to left, you find no bourn. How often does one human being flagellate another with no weapon more deadly than these civilized movements of lip, eye, or shoulder — which yet are more eloquent of savagery than poignards or stilettos, in so far that subtlety is ever more dangerous than (jpen warfare ! And as we grow more civilized, alas ! we grow more subtle, more sure of aim — more conscious that the most deadly wounds are those which no physician can heal, no ointment mollify. Knowledge is power : and so language becomes A QUEST. 39 the chosen instrument with which we play iipoij the heart-strings of each other, and force out those cries which ring dumb through the immensity of space, and only wake an' echo in the heart of Infinitude, Who is infinitely kind. CHAPTER IV. CONTKASTS. " Here, too, all hush'd below the mellow w.oon, Save that one rivulet from a tiny cave Came lightiiing dowmvard, and so split itself Among the roses, and was lost again." The estates which arc passing under our notice were situated in the right pleasant county of Hereford — a county prolific of all things — corn, cattle, rivers, meadows, May- blush of blossom, and September-blush of fruitage. "A county which," writes Camden, "for yielding of corne, dnd feeding of cattle, is in all jolaces most fruitful, and therewith passing well furnished with all things neces- CONTRASTS. 41 sary for man's life ; insomuch as it would scorne to be considered seconde to any other county throughout all England for fertility of soil ; and, therefore," saith he, " for wheat, wool, water, it yieldeth to no shire in England. And verily it hath also divers notable rivers, Wye, Lug, and Munow, which, after they have watered the most flowering meadows and fruitful corne fields, at length meet together, and in one channel passe on to the Severne sea." Whitefriars stood some seven miles to the north of Leominster. The modern castellated mansion retained but few traces of its ancient architecture ; but here and there the owner could point to the handiwork of the past — a walled garden, and pleasaunce to the rear, and an ancient chapel which no supplanting touch had altered. Beauchamp Court, from the purest point of view, was far more in- 42 JSIISS BEAUCHAMP. teresting, as no wealthy Beauchamp had been able, if inclined, to profcine its antiquity, and the only architects who had meddled with it for centuries w^ere the noiseless, yet ceaseless- ly active, workmen wdiom Time employs — whose crumbling touch is yet full of loving reverence. Somehow the sun seemed to beat down on Beauchamp with a greater fervency of love than on the stately mansion at its side, and the shadows linger more regretfully about the quaint doorway and the mouldering gateway wdth its mutilated coat-of-arms ; and if the crows and rooks did jabber too pronouncedly now and then of their strange adventures in their flights amidst the chimney-pots of Leo- minster, or w^anderings farther or nearer as they listed, the blackbird's mellow^ whistle and the thrush's kingly note made melody, to which high angels might listen, as they built CONTRASTS, 43 their nests in the grand old trees, and strutted on the daisy-covered lawns in search of forage. The snails crawled about with indifferent in- terest as to their shells — no tyrant heel would crush them ; and the bees wooed the pollens from morn till night with amorous buzz. As for the butterflies, they lived and died secure — collection hunters were unknown here — a very Eden they had found. All wild crea- tures that the march of civilization has left seemed to haunt the grounds by right of law ; and Diana, who had now come to join them, seemed not the least untamed for all her culture. CHAPTER V. AMIDST DEAD THINGS. " But even lohile I drank the brook and ate The goodly apples^ all these things at once Fell into dust, and I tvas left alone." Who loves lumber-rooms ? To some natures they are as seductive as an old curiosity shop, and when these lumber-rooms are to be found in ancient dwellings they are indeed like a story in the Arabian Nights. You may not come across gold or jewels, but you are on ground bewitched with the bewitchment of tradition. Here you can sit cross-legged like a mystic Turk, and weave endlessly; here you can call up vision after vision, and tread the AMIDST DEAD THINGS. 45 streets of dead cities, and gaze at the kings and queens who inhabited them. Yes, there is a spell in these speechful things, which dead hands have laid by ; there is a dumb eloquence which will enthral you, and hold you silent many an hour. Here is an ancient robe ; 'tis brocade — we see no such brocade now — 'tis full of shifting tints. •' What hours of gladness are enwrapped amidst your folds, or was she sad for all her brave attire — she who flitted up and down this very staircase thus robed ? " thought Diana, as wdth a dreamful sigh she laid it back with its sprigs of rosemary on its empty bodice. Now the hilt of a sword attracted her, and she drew it from its sheath, and shuddered. It was no plaything ; dented, rusty, scratched — it had history written on its steely face ; it 46 MISS BEAUCHAMP. bore the brand of Cain, it had surely tasted human blood. Here was a doll — a wooden thinor without legs or arms — yet, doubtless, the most dearly loved of all the treasures of some bygone child. The pathos of childhood consists in its tenacious clingrino^ to the mutilated and shabby ; it has less liking for those frilled and furbelowed darlings which a sticky finger can damage hopelessly, or a smothering kiss denude of all its paint. Diana dropped a tear on the w^ooden doll. She had sighed over the glorious fabric, shuddered at the cruel sword ; but emotion stirred at the toy, and yet she knew not why. Now some curious Florentine fabric attracted her ; the Beauchamps had been roving men, all save Sir Golf, but the salmon kept him quiet. It was like a glimpse of Italia's skies to Diana ; she pressed her lips to the stuff, and held it to «< AMIDST DEAD THINGS. 47 her heart. " Italy, ray foster-mother, some child of yours busied himself with this creation at the loom ! " Diana fell to measuring^ her treasure. How many yards were here ? What draperies she would make ! those sombre dining-room curtains should be replaced by this wonderful feast of colour. Yes, the Court should wake up at the touch of an artiste, for Diana was an artiste in every fibre of her being. Colour was like the peal of a bell to her ; it had unspoken prayer in its amaziug glories of hue and tint ; it was the embodiment of a celestial vision. She was quitting the lumber-room with the fabric in one great pile on her arms, which were strong and supple as any Greek statue's — for Diana's form was moulded like one of the nymphs or fauns of the artist's studio — when a picture, with its face to the 48 MISS BEAUOHAMP. wall, caught her attention. Pausing, she slipped her roll of stuff to the ground, and turned it to the light. It was covered with dust, and black with age, but neither dust nor age could hide the depths of colour which the touch of a maestro had left on the canvas, it was the head and bust of a woman — a woman out of whose eyes looked a great sorrow and a great repentance, and round the dusky beauty of whose head a faint nimbus shone. Once more Diana slid to the floor ; she " knelt upon her knees," and looked long at those haunting eyes, which made that canvas tell its tale for all time. The brocaded robe had spoken, the rusty sword had spoken, the wooden doll had spoken ; yet the face of this woman held her as none of these dead things had — with an overpowering sense of the mystery of evil and the mystery of repentance. AMIDST DEAD THINGS. 49 How long Diana knelt before the picture she took no count ; she was penetrated with a touch of genius. By whom was that limng woman painted ? She s'pohe from the canvas, she must &o speaJc as long as the world endures. Surely this was a master- piece ; yet the canvas was turned to the wall, as if those eyes must whisper forth their secret to the stones and plaster. Was this a Vandyke ? a Eembrandt ? a Eapjiael ? a Giotto ? which- — *' Miss Beau champ ! " Mrs. Battle's un- emotional voice, which had a bah, bah, for all times, awakened her from her reverie. " Luncheon is ready. You must be frozen amongst this rubbish. Don't you find all this dead stuff most depressing ? Do come down to the warmth and light ; do leave this rat-hole." Diana was silent ; she only indicated with a VOL. I. E 50 MISS BEAUCHAMP. wave of her hand the picture, as if this were sufficient to enchain Mrs. Battle also. " Horrified with the dust ! I don't wonder, Miss Beauchamj) ; look at that frame, fine growing soil." Mrs. Battle smiled ; she was treading on the confines of a shadowy joke. " What dreaJfal eyes the poor lady has, to be sure ! No wonder she was sent up here — such an awful stare in them, they follow one, I declare. Oh dear, I should have a night- mare, I'm sure, if I looked at her long. AVhat a heap of rubbish there is up here, to be sure ! and how it multiplies ! Eubbish is the only thing that does multiply, I believe. Dear, dear — to be sure — to be sure." Then Diana looked at Mrs. Battle, much as some saore midit look at a babblino; child. To appreciate genius, the breath of genius must, at least, have hovered about you. If has taken you by the hand, and whispered AMIDST DEAD THINGS. 51 something of its secret in your ear. Florence, the Asphodel of our world, had led Diana up and down her streets, and away through her olive valleys. Florence had shown her all her orlorious children, wrous^ht in stone and metal and colour. Florence had whispered of aspiration, and Diana had kindled as at the touch- of inspiration. The sweeping shadows of that matchless drapery, the living soul in those wonderful eyes, the dusky glory of the sorrow- smitten yet heavenward glancing face, with the faintly outlined nimbus like a rainbow promise — all, all was lost on Mrs. Battle. It was a picture covered with dust, black with age, fit for lumber, rooms — nothing more. " Come," said Diana, " let us discourse on home-made bread and chicken fricassee; Fm hungry " ; yet she made no pretence of move- ment, only slid nearer the picture. She might E 2 52 MISS BEAUCHAMP. luive beeu telling her beads — there was a great awe in her face, and a great reverence. God- like genius had evoked it. '* Yes," said Mrs. Battle, gathering her skirts about her, and looking round with protesting vexation at such a medley of rubbish, "let us go to luncheon." " I will follow you," said Diana ; " leave me for one more minute ; I'm doing homage." " Doing what ? " said Mrs. Battle, con- fusedly, " doing what ? " as in hopeless mental disorder she pattered down the steep spiral staircase which led up to the *'' rat- hole." Many minutes passed before Diana rose, and when at last she turned away from her meditation and followed Mrs. Battle's steps, there was a lio;ht on her face as thousfh she had been walking on some sun-kissed spot where mystic flowers bloom, and birds who AMIDST DEAD THINGS. 53 had soared so Iiigh that they had caught some angel notes, sang wondrous songs. She had been where genius catches its inspiration — she had been in rare company. CHAPTER VI. OUT GRAZING. " Thus in the seas of life enlisted. With echoing straits hetween us thrown, Dotting the shoreless ivatenj ivild, We mortal myriads live alone." " This is bread," said Diana, as she faced Mrs. Battle at luncheon, '' not a stone J' ''A stone?" said Mrs. Battle; "I should think not." " I mean to say it is real bread, it is full of corn — a gracious product." Mrs. Battle smiled comfortably. She wished Miss Beauchamp would always talk of bread or cabbages ; she was so at home in a kitchen garden, or at a harvest-home. OUT GRAZING. 55 *' I must say, Jane can bake as well as any Herefordshire woman," said Mrs, Battle. " Jane is the wife of John, is she not ? '^ said Diana. '' Yes. I hope you will not alter the do- mestic arrangements. Miss Beauchamp. Jane and John are a handy couple, and very respect- able. Sir Golf valued them." " Ah, they have ' clomb ' the heights of re- spectability and sat down to view the strugglers below, and have added to respectability handy ways. I see no reason why I should dis- place them from their altitudes, Mrs. Battle. Respect ability wears a patched coat worn threadbare, and stands by the road-side, with hands which will not beg — that is one aspect of respectability. Then we have the other. It inhabits a substantial villa, and wears shiny broadcloth, and clothes its face in * smirJdnessJ It has a frown, though, for the grimy hand 56 MISS BEAUCHAMP. which ventures to find its way to the brass knocker, and for those mud -stained boots which would dare to tread its Kidderminster carpets. Oh, respectability, 'tis some people's creed." " You will allow Jane and John to stay on," said Mrs. Battle. '' If they desire it. Handy respectability is not to be lightly dispensed with." Then Diana laughed, lookino; askew at Mrs. Battle. "You see I know all about Jane's mother, father, brothers, sisters, and aunts," said Mrs. Battle, breathlessly threading her beloved genealogies ; " likewise John's father, mother, brother, sister, aunt, on the mother's side. I was to have seen his uncle ; only, poor man (he was a woodcutter), the very day I was to see him, the branch of a tree gave way witli him, and down he fell, and was carried to the hospital, and there he died. It's so very OUT GRAZING. 57 necessary in these queer days to know all about the stock from which you take your servants — it's not sufficient to know her or himr " What shall we do when servitude is rele- gated to tradition ? " said Diana. " The streams of knowledge are becoming very accessible ; even the Arabs who haunt the corners of our streets and the by-paths and the slums will by-and-by prick up attentive ears, and quench a thirst — which is growing upon them — for knowledge, at the drinking fountain hard by. " Passing through London on my way here the other day, the cabby, for some reason of his own, took me through all the back ways ; and, after my usual fashion, I tried to pick up some stray ears of corn, which would build up this never- to -be -completed educational fabric. We entered a street more ill-favoured than any, but at the corner of it stood a drinking 58 MISS BEAUCHAMP. fountain, the gift of Mrs. Jordan — suggestive name ! — and wearied horses were quenching their thirst at its God-sent streams. I thought by-and-by some more Mrs. Jordan's may be raised up to build free schools for men and women at every corner of our densely populated cities ; there will be proportionate results." " Education has a levelling tendency," said Mrs. Battle, as she grazed on laboriously and patiently amidst the green pastures of a lobster salad. " Unquestionably," said Diana. " Culture will take the wind out of the sails of the most heady duchess who has no book-lore. Culture is a wondrous weapon ; its hilt is as precious as the hilt of Excalibur. Ah ! Mrs. Battle, as King Arthur said — * The old order cliangetli, yielding place to 7iew.' ^Yho can say whether kings and queens and I OUT GRAZING. 59 courtiers will be here to-morrow ? The masses are awaking from the sleep of ignorance. They begin to understand good and evil. When knowledge works like summer heat within their brains, and bears its blossomings and its lusty fruits, who knows but that they may rise and claim their equality — the equality of descent from a common father, ' the Adam ' — • the equality of culture derived from a common source — and the equality of wealth derived from the exercise of brains ? Everybody is a lady — it's the pet term for the flower-seller at the corner of a thoroughfare and the fitter in a Bond Street draper's. " Conservatism may still mildly talk of the young person behind the counter ; but — shall I say, alas ! — a shrill clarion is drowning that remonstrating voice. The young person dresses as a lady — better than some ladies. She is conversant with various languages, she can touch 60 MISS BEAUCHAMP. one or two instruments, and, by virtue of her varied accomplishments and incomparable get- up, she calls herself a lady. *' By-and-by, we shall reject that term as obsolete, and woman will be the most dignified and coveted term of distinction : we shall return to primitive days." " Sir Golf was Conservative — all the Beau- champs have been Tories," said Mrs. Battle, as she grazed on amongst those delectable pastures. Her countenance was unruffled. Diana might have been painting sunsets or moon- lights. Upheavals and craters did not come in Mrs. Battle's way. The rise and fall of empires were to her like the rise and fall of temperatures — subjects to be mildly concerned about when salads were out of the way. Nothing more. '' Conservatives, were they ? " said Diana. OUT GRAZING. 61 " I am nothing ; the world will fight its way into light, whether there be Conservatives or Liberals at the wheel. It's an age of jostle," she continued, rising, and meditatively exam- ining those gloomy curtains which were to exchange places with the Florentine fabric. *'Yet though, as befits me, I am nothing in political bias, if 'tis Conservatism to glory in the stillness of this old Court, I do so glory. This stillness will possess me by-and-by ; and if you say to me, ' AVhat is it thou hast seen, or what hast thou heard ? ' I shall make answer : * I heard the water lapping on the crag, and the long ripple washing in the reeds ! Italy fills me with dreams of Art ; Herefordshire with quaint fancies of Nature. And now I must write to Mr. Cantilupe — he who is to make my fortune ; from poetry to prose. Telle est la vie. Pardon, pardon. Such is life. You are Euglish, and I — I am nothing. CHAPTER VII. MR. CANTILUPE. " Beneath the shadow of some bird of prey T . Mr. Cantilupe had what appraisers term a hijoii residence in M Street, Grosvenor Square. Nothing in the shape of matter took root there but the rare and curious ; this fact was significant of the man. Everything was stamped with individuality, everything had a history, a romance, attached to its personality (if such a term may be applied to things). Mr. Cantilupe's occupation or calling was not calendared amongst professions or profes- sionals. Yet he had a calling, and to that calling he owed his knowledge of peoples MR. CANTILUPE. 63 and their handiwork, and to that calling he owed the iadefinable strangeness which touched you with an indefinable sensation in his presence. Did you require an impossible introduction, Mr. Cantilupe was your man. Did you sigh for that masterpiece of Giotto, Mr. Cantilupe would make arrangements by which you should possess your desire by noon to-morrow\ Did you hunger for the forelocks of those Philistines, leave the matter in those riuged serpentine supple fingers which conveyed so much. Were you sick unto death, Mr. Can- tilupe had an exorcising power ; some forms of malady had been known to depart beneath the passes of his numerical calculations. Were you desirous of settling to a career, one glance from those strange orbs of his, and you were relegated to the high or low places of this swinging ball. Were you curious about the 64 MISS EEAUCHAMP. formation of your " crown," Mr. Cantilupe, as his fingers glide with expressive emphasizing inquiry over your seat of learning, will soon tell you how much of the poet, orator, philoso- pher, wrangler, or metaphysician there is about you ; also how beautiful, or how deformed, your soul is. ]\Ir. Cantilupe, with these mysterious advan- tages over other people — advantages which dwarf muscular powers, and even mental abilities, kinged it over men and women, whatever their nationality ; for all languages, dead and living, seemed to be known by him. For him fine gold poured in — not niggardly, or with halting movements and melancholy countings, but eagerly, precipitately, with bows and scrapes. This ai'ch-Jesuit must be propitiated. He knew all about everybody and everybody's " cup- board " ; and he could make those skeletons live and grin. Bah ! whence did that hideous MR. CANTILUPE. 65 skeleton start into horrible life the other day, and stare in letters of black and white from all the leading newspapers ? ]\Ir. Cantilupe had been seen to smile at Lord B , and when Mr. Cantilupe smiled, might the skies protect you, for nothing else would. How much Mr. Cantilupe played on the savagery of the supposedly civilized peoples of Europe, it would be impossible to say. He had obtained complete mastery of the gamut of human nature, and he could play on that gamut like an Orph^e, or a fiend ; he knew the fascination the weird and fantastical yet hold for mankind, the power which something unreadable yet holds over the imaoination. And he laughed in his sleeve at the super- stition which yet beclouds even trained, versed, professing Christians, in the matter of witch- craft, which yet mumbles and mutters under a red cloak, which yet consults the stars or VOL. I. F 66 MISS BEAUOHAMP. believes in ghosts, or hears a knocking, or turns a table. With such an inward entourage, we should expect something odd in the outward en- tourac/e, and while Mr. Cantilupe is scanning Diana's letter, which had just arrived, and had Ijeen handed to him hj an automaton negro — for Mr. Cantiluj)e had a man-servant who stood at the hall door and opened it, and walked upstairs, and held letters and parcels in those Ethiopian hands — a mechanical man, all springs, but harmless ; who, as Mr. Can- tilupe remarked to an a,larmed visitor, "will neither bite nor devour you, and can keep a secret." We will sketch him. He is standing by the mantelpiece, a tall slight man, lithe of limb, and with the grace of a panther lurking in his movements. His hair is prematurely grey, for his face is young ; this lends a wonderful brilliancy to his eyes. 67 and a peculiar clearness to his skin. But we must examine his eyes, because all his pow'er seems to lie there. They seem to be the out- ward manifestation of his inward peculiarities ; they are long, wide-open eyes, and steady as the planets ; they fix you, and beneath them you pale or redden or suffocate ; they stir you ; even very unimaginative people — people who are blind to all phenomena — like to get away from them and sit down afar. A grey moustache half reveals thin chiselled lips — ■ lips which might be cruel, never sensuous. The contour of his face is severely classic. After reading Diana's note, Mr. Cantilupe strolled to an oval mirror at the end of the room — a mirror surmounted by an eagle — and looked at himself therein ; the gaze at his visioned self was prolonged, meditative, scrutinizing — not the enamoured glance of the vain youth in the lake, whose fabled history F 2 (38 MISS bp:auchamp. has been carried dowu the stream of Time in the white garments of Narcissus ; nor the fussy peerings of a Mr. Dally, who is much exercised about the last thing in ties, or the irritable condition of his complexion ; but the intensity of a gaze directed inwards, which would read an answer to a query ; the steady gaze of absorption, complete, entire, unreserved. What the mirror answered Mr. Cantilupe, who shall say ? He passed his hand over its glassy surface, as if to obliterate his own image, then returned to the mantelpiece and re-read Diana's letter. Shortly after he went to a cabinet, a priceless thing, with a tragic history which ]\lr. Canti- lupe knew, and none other ; took out some fragrant paper monogram ed with a strange device, culled from Egyptian pyramids and encircled with a crown — Mr. Cantilupe owned to no generations ; he would have sunk amongst MR. CANTILUPE. 69 the herd with genealogies — and wrote an an- swer to Diana. It read thus : "You are the Great Diana, and already I see, as in a mirror, crowds falling down before you, as they did before that Great Diana of the Ephesians. ** Your inspirations are culled from that fruitful mother of genius, Nature. All who would join the world of art or letters must study her profoundly ; first of all in her mystic breathings, interpreted through the, medium of her matchless productions, and secondly in her offspring, the children of men. " To you I will be at home on Tuesday at the hour you mention, half-past three. You must come alone ; I see but one at a sitting. " Cantilupe. " M Street, Grosvenor Square, "January 29th.'' CHAPTER VIII. ouns. ''Shall he then, cutting the stays which hold him fast to the social state, put out to sea ivith no guidance hut his genius ? " The county people were much exercised about Miss Beauchamp — should they call, or should they not call ? The question was vigorously discussed at various luncheon tables within a radius of a few miles from Beauchamp Court. " I think not," said Lady Masters to Francisca and Cecilia, as they discussed the tiresome proposition for the second time ; " Miss Beau- champ has come out to a career — her recita- tions will be ' sandwiched ' about all over OURS. 7 1 London this suring^. She has left our circle, though for the sake of Sir Golf, that lapsed but charming man of my young days (before he took to salmon), I have admitted a question on the subject." ''The Utterati will gather about her," said Cecilia pensively, " and she will find them far more of her feather than we." Cecilia painted a little, and sang a little, and had a dim admiration for her patron saint. She was considered the most artistic of her family, and Ladv Masters had a nig-htmare of an errant poet, with long hair and strange ways, floating down on Cecilia one day ; so she had to be a little stern now and then, and endeavour to give Cecilia what she needed — backbone. " It is well she has Mrs. Battle to look after her," said Lady Masters ; '' Mrs. Battle is a highly respectable woman, her father was a small squire, and unfortunate." MISS BEAUCHAMP. " A small, unfortunate squire," said Fran- cisca, \\'ho was supposed to be rather slangy, though this troubled Lady Masters less than the poetic sensibilities of Cecilia ; " What a caution ! " " True, my dear ; the misfortunes of others are a caution to us, and we take warning, and invest our funds more carefully, and so on." ''How charmino^ it would be to deck a barore with white samite, and float about with bags of gold, which the swans could carry to those who needed help," said Cecilia, a faint flush creeping upwards like the dawn on her transparent skin. Lady Masters looked reprovingly at Cecilia, and said, in measured tones, " Have some filet de veaif, Cecilia ; white meat is best for the complexion." " We shall do away with the intolerable vulgarity of food, I hope, soon," said Cecilia OURS. 73 languidly. " Mr. Languedoc says sestlieticisni is a self-feeding development." " Air. Languedoc is a very foolish young man," said Lady Masters. " I met Miss Beauchamp yesterday," said Francisca, glancing at her mother, with humor- ously arched eyebrows. " I'm not sure I did not offer to arrange the girth of her saddle. I was maliciously possessed with the intention of withholding this extract in a day's journeying ; but mamma's settling the question was too much for my hoarded intelligence, and out it came. Yes, 1 met ' The Diana,' and she looks far more of a Philistine than I do — she is charming. She was trundling along on that old bay pony of Sir Golfs, which is blind of an eye, and has the stagorers and the roarinofs ; but she sat it like a — well — like an English-woman. We English can ride ; few are our accomplishments, few our artistic developments, starved our imaginations, MISS BEAUCHAMP. but ice can ride. Diana Beauchamp made that old bay cob look like a palfrey from enchanted woods." '' Describe her," said Cecilia breathlessly. liady Masters said nothing. When events pass out of your reach, silence is your only alternative — if you be wise. '' Describe ! Who can describe ? Descrip- tions had best be given over to signboard artists," said Francisca. " Fill in the signboard," said Cecilia ; " Fm curious." '' Her hair is flecked with gold, and her eyes are like leverage ; she flashed ten thousand thank-you's to rue, for I did strap up the girth ; it had become loosened, and of course she had no groom. I was stumping along when I met ' The Diana.' Her upper lip — well, it's caught up in the clouds by the Loves, or the Muses. And her fio;ure ! I thought mine tolerable ; OURS. 75 but the orreatest of her charms consists in this — o she is pose.'^ " Fose on what ? " said Lady Masters ; " fixing her pi?ice nez ?^' "On her ruined estate, to be sure," said Francisca laughing. " Nothing makes people so post as the consciousness that their fortune must consist in their own attainments or achievements. We may be pose from borrow^ed surroundings ; these swept away, where are we ? She is pose because she is so extraordinarily gifted, we hear." " * We hear ' and ' they say,' never a word of truth in either," said Lady Masters ; " but what passed between you ? " And then she gave her silk dress the slightest shake in the world ; she felt irritated, for both Cecilia and Francisca seemed to think the honour con- ferred was on Miss Beauchamp's side rather than hers. MISS BEAUCHAMP. " Salutations ; notliincr more. I took far more interest in her than she in me." '' What do you desire me to do ? " said Lady Masters, after a long pause and another diminuendo shake of her silk dress. " Call, like a love," said Cecilia. " Yes, like a popsie • mammiekins," said Francisca. So the question was settled. CHAPTER IX. A DAY IX FEBRUAEY. " / am made immortal bij apprehending mij possession of incorriqjtihle good.'' '' .4^ everg pool relied s the image of the sun, so everg thought atid thing restores tis an image and creature of the supreme good.'' '* Three dreadful days a-doing ; we can't compass our work under." So said Diana to Mrs. Battle, as they rattled along in a nerve- shattering cab to the quiet rooms in Kensing- ton which they had engaged during their stay in London ; for on the following day Diana had to keep her appointment with Mr. Cantilupe. MISS BEAUOHAMP. " We might as well stay the week," said Mrs. Battle ; " the rooms are engaged for a week." "Dear soul," said Diana, looking with a certain winsomeness at Mrs. Battle, which somehow rendered any term pleasant from her ; " how I delight in you when you carry me on your ample shoulders I The accusative keys are yours, the banking accounts are yours ; all I have to do is to courtesy to fame." February had just entered, and London showed a grimy face of expectancy. Diana felt too restless to sit down amidst the dis- tressing details which make up the sum total of most apartments. A new phase was about to open before her — new interests and new hopes. Leaving; Mrs. Battle to make thingrs com- fortable, she soon wended her way to Kensing- A DAY IN FEBRUARY. 79 ton Gardens, and found herself listening delightedly to an early blackbird who could withhold his love-lore no longer. The air Avas soft, and a pale sun shining : the trees were full of promise. He had a paean of praise within him ; he must tell it out : and so he sang high up on a cedar tree, which, with many others, shows a melancholy desire for the native soil of Lebanon. "Ah! my blackbird," thought Diana, "if Kant saw Heaven in a swallow's eye, surely I hear Heaven in vour note." Wandering on, she passed old Kensington Palace, and fell to admiring the soft tints which ao-e has left on the red bricks of which it is built. She passed out at a low gateway, lingering to admire some cherubs which are quite exquisitely rounded in limb — Engbsh chefs'd'ceuvre. These cherubs hover over the doorway of an arbour which flanks this en- 80 MISS BEAUCHAMP. trance to Kensington Gardens, and invites Ics mmrahlcs to be seated within its gloomy shadow. iVrbours — at all times the most unwholesome- looking retreats, where even '' sweet lovers " must surely feel a creeping sense of impending woe — in London look more abject than elsewhere, for no roses climbing about them, or starry clematis, beckon you in with alluring promise of a downy hour. They stand up like paupers in a museum, surrounded by wealth that they dare not touch. Now Diana is faced by a church, or is it a small cathedral ? The door stands open, as church doors should. "This is like Italy," she thought, as she entered ; there the churches are always open, and some kneeling figures telling their beads. Kneeling, Diana . gazed long at the eastern window. It was rich in colour, and the suljject was one round which A DAY IN FEBRUARY. 81 the strongest hopes and fears of Christendom have gathered — the Passion of our Lord. The bowed form of the Christ, rocked in an agony of supplication beneath the ilex groves of Gethsemane, smote Diana with a sense of sin. Ah ! corroding touch, is there one can say, " I know it not " ? And then the remembrance of St. Augustine's words flitted across her — ^' Sacred Wounded Side, from whence flowed the two Sacraments" — ^' Bathe in these and be clean." The blackbird was still singinoj in the cedar tree as Diana retraced her steps, but this time she did not notice his song. She was pondering over the magnetism of Faith. Mrs. Battle greeted Diana with many ex- clamations of joy on her return. " I was quite alarmed about you. Miss Beauchamp, you were out so long ; this big London is as full of snares as a field full of gin-traps. Is VOL. I. G 82 MISS BEAUCHAMP. your purse safe ? You should carry it as I carry mine ; it cuts two ways — being difficult to get at, it strangles the desire to spend ; and as for a thief, he must needs be a cunning fellow who would find a pocket three materials deep. You look tired, dear heart. Sit down and rest you. Let me carry your bonnet upstairs, and I'll bring down your shoes." "No, no," said Diana, ''you are alluring. The primitive woman within me cries ' Yield ! ' But I've buried the primitive woman — I'm as rhythmic as the splash of waters. Besides, we are oroingr to have an Emerson eveninor. You are not ' acquaint ' with the American poets, or prose poets. You don't know what a delightful set they are, full of Old World cult and Young ^Yorld life." " Emerson ! " murmured Mrs. Battle — " Emer- son ! I ought to know that name ! Of course I A DAY IN FEBRUARY. 83 do ! i\Ir. Emerson, of Leominster, the dentist. A most superior man. I'm sure the last time he was destroying a * nerve ' he kept me most thoroughly amused with his chitty-chatty talk — some relation, doubtless." " I have not studied the Emerson tree," said Diana (whose eyes alone expressed laughter), " so I can't say whether its venerable branches spread across the Atlantic as far as Leominster ; but I can say the mind of that gifted man branches out into the limitless, for he projects himself into space." '' Dear, dear ! " said Mrs. Battle, looking to the adjustment of the band of a neat muslin arrangement she was manufacturing as a dressy addition for a possible Leominster tea-fight ; " does he go up in a balloon, like those dashing gentlemen we read about ? " "Oh, Mrs. Battle," said Diana, ''you are a hopeless pupil ; I am afraid I shall be like G 2 84 MISS BEAUCHAMP. a nightmare to you. I know after 1 recited * Lady Macbeth ' you never slept at all. I saw it in every outline, when you descended to breakfast." " I enjoyed it extremely," said ^Mrs. Battle tremulously ; *' it's true I did see Lady Macbeth standing by my bedside, with hands so red — so red ; and it's true I sat up half the night staring — gasping — at her ; but I enjoyed it extremely." " Martha Battle, recitations are not for you ; imagination has lain dormant so long that imao^ination when aroused is now but a nightcapped horror, and therefore it shall afflict you no more. I will confine my re- citations to Mr. Cantilupe till I find a wider audience." Mrs. Battle tried not to look pleased as she put a last triumphant stitch in that snowy throat arrangement. CHAPTER X. LET IT BE "RIZPAH." ^^ Ah ! you that have lived so soft, what should you know of the night? The blast, and the hurning shame, and the hitter frost, and the fright. I have done it while you were asleep. You were only made for the day ; I have gather d my hahy together, and note you may go your way^ The Ethiopian automaton startled Diana wlien in response to her ring he threw wide the doors of Mr. Cantilupe's residence, and then with sliding, gliding movements led the way to the library, where Mr. Cantilupe received his visitors. She had grasped the fact that he 86 MISS BEAUCHAMP. was a macliine made to order, though, after a moment's survey, and looked decidedly diverted at lier reception, as the automaton softly closed the door, and glided once more to the hall. Mr. Cantilupe, after the la^^se of a few seconds, emerged from some draperies in a deep recess which seemed made for his recep- tion, as it held no furniture, and the curtains draped space. It was thus he always came upon his visitors. To take people by surprise is- almost always to lift the veil which holds the inmost sanctuary from your gaze. The momentary start, the entire aspect — you are in possession of the whole. The gladness, if gladness there be, is yours ; the reverse, if it be there, is yours also. The mystic appearance of Mr. Cantilupe startled Diana equally as much as the Ethi- opian had ; but she covered it with a graceful LET IT BE " EIZPAH." 87 " courtesy," for Diana had enough old-fashioned dignity about her, with all her Zingara ways, to have made her take easily to hoops and powdered hair, arranged like mountains of snow. The swan-dip over, Mr. Cantilupe drew a chair (Louis XIV. workmanship) forward and ensconced Diana therein ; then retired to the mantelpiece, and, leaning his small head on his taper fingers, gazed long and penetratingly at Diana in silence. Whether he had cast a spell about her, or had evoked stillness, Diana knew not ; but those extraordinary eyes absolutely checked speech. At last Mr. Cantilupe spoke — " Miss Beauchamp, you have fulfilled my expectations ; your recitations will be attended by the dart of either sex. You have now but to make your terms. Would you prefer a salary? Forgive the gross term. Or would 88 MISS BEAUCHAMP. you rather depend upon the profits you may draw, merely making me your man of busi- ness ? '' " Do you mean to say you will engage me at a certain sum a week, and yourself make all the necessary arrangements of time and place ? " " That is my meaniug." " You know nothing of my capabilities," said Diana ; "how can you fix the price of my recitations ? " Mr. Cantilupe merely waved his hand, as if such questionings were not weighted with common sense. " Let me recite something," said Diana, rising. " Let it be ' Eizpah,' " said Mr. Cantilupe, quittiug the mantelpiece, and lowering the blinds so as to fill the room with a more mellow liofht. LET IT BE "PJZPAH." 89 " ' Eizpali/ '' said Diana, dreamily. " You have chosen a passionate wail — why ? " " Because it finds an echo in the nineteenth century," said Mr. Cantilupe. Eising, Diana moved towards the curtains whence Mr. Cantilupe had made his appearance, and thus chose her backg-round. In tlie few seconds which it had taken her to traverse the room, her very countenance seemed to have gathered the sob at the heart of the mother ; with the hunted expression in her eyes as in accents, which had the sough of the winds in their anguished depths, she commenced that song which will surely ring down the ages till the ag^es are no more — " Wailing, wailing, icailing, the zcind over land and sea, And Willie's voice in the wind, mother, come out to me ! Why shoidd he call me to-night, when he knows that I cannot go 1 For the downs are as bright as dag, and the full moon stares at the snow." 90 MISS BEAUCHAMP. The passionate query ia Diana's eyes seemed to bring before you the long stretch of downs, mantled white, and hushed beneath the round full stare of the moon, into yet more breathless stillness. Surely the ground was dead^ and this was its shroud ; surely never again at Spring's soft touch would the emerald green put forth, and the rabbits emerge from their holes. And now the ghostly query rang in a horrified whisper at your ear — ^^ AnyiJdng fallen again? nay, tcJiat was there left to fall 2 I have talxen them home. I have immhered the hones — I have hidden them all. What am I saying, and what are you ? Do you come as a spy ? Falls ! what falls ? ivho knows ? As the tree falls, so must it lie.'* And yet again — " But the night has crept into my heart, and begun to darken my eyes." ' LET IT BE ''EIZPAH." 91 If any tiling could add to the pathos of those matchless words, it was rung out in living, breatliino; life from Diana, the livins: ex- ponent ; the darkening heart whence those shadows were thrusting upwards to darken the eyes, and tliere to crouch through all the weary years. Mr. Cantilupe had listened with bent brows, his mystic glances examining the carpet, though every now and then when the dra- matic power of Diana reached those heights where reticence veils, he cast one strange transitory glance at her upturned face. He made no visible sign of pleasure as the recitation closed, yet an attentive observer might have noticed that his fingers trembled as he held them on the bell, during a moment's deliberation. Mr. Cantilupe for once was mastered by an impulse — an impulse which by now was 92 MISS BEAUCHAMP. matured into deliberate purpose. From the moment Diana's letter had been placed in his hand he had touched a new ana mysterious force. He was keenly conscious of the fact, for all his sensibilities were matters of careful study with him. That such a force does exist, and works the tragic joys and sorrows of life, he was well aware ; but that such a force should play upon him had been a matter of no small astonishment to himself In Diana^s letter he had beheld an intellectual mate ; in Diana herself he beheld something yet more mystically enchanting. " It is difficult to believe you are a North- erner," he said abruptly. " You have all the Southern love of colour — it is declared in your power of expression ; and you have all the unconsciousness of ' self ' which is native to the Italians." " Italy mothered me," said Diana ; " and I am 93 as mucli her child as if a closer tie bound me to her." This time, in answer to the bell, the auto- maton was succeeded by a dwarf carrying a Sevres china tray, with a tea-service en suite. The dwarf placed the tray on a table — a thing all cupids and roses — and retired as noiselessly as he had entered. " I hope my domestic arrangements have created no alarm, Miss Beauchamp." Mr. Cantilu23e, pouring out tea and handling a cream jug, seemed more saturated with pan- ther grace than ever. Most men holding a tea-pot look incongruous : he did not. " An enfant terrible once asked Diego, ' Are you a child ? because if you are a child why don't you grow ? ' Diego repeated the jest to me, and laughed. He, like Socrates, fathers many a jest at his ugliness. * What matter,' says Dieo^o, ^ how his^h or how low I be since I 94 MISS BEAUCHAMP. must cruQible into dust ; and if crooked things are to be made straight hereafter, what matter down here, where all is dust — one huge dust- bin ? ' Diego is a philosophical fellow, but the Ethiopian more so, because he never opens his lips." " I like strange things," said Diana. " And strange people ? " said Mr. Cantilupe. "People are to me like moving figures," said Diana, "interesting in perspective, inter- esting in their surroundings and draperies. I have had no intimacies ; I only know people in the abstract." " I thought so," said Mr. Cantilupe. " In Italy life passes like a pageant," con- tinued Diana ; " the dress of the people turns them one and all into pictures — 'tis a human- ising dress. Then the intense blue of the o sky, the perpetual melody of the splash of water, the scent of flowers, the world of Art, LET IT BE " PJZPAH." 95 all turns life into a beautiful dream. Sorrow is there, doubtless, but sorrow with poetry on its eyelids ; not the gaunt sorrow that meets you at every turn here in London. I wish all our beo-o'ars could be Italianised." Mr. Cantilupe made no answer, but went to the cabinet with the history, and drew out several water-colour sketches by a well-known artist. " Is this your Rome ? " he said. Diana's face filled with light. Rome shrouded in mist ; Rome with Artemis veiling her face from its paganisms. " He has painted more than he saw," said !Mr. Cantilupe. " He was an artist indeed ; and yet it was not till a great modern writer — perhaps the greatest we have for rhythmic melody of words — turned himself into a street crier, shouting his friend's perfections into a dull and unappreciative ear, called the 'public 96 MISS BEAXJCHAMP. ear,' that he was at hist enshrined as a genius." " What of this ? 'Tis by another artist, per- haps as great ; but he has no trumpeter, so the walls of Jericho have not fallen down before him. Do you recognise Venice sleep- ing in the noon -day heat ? This fellow can paint the air. You can absolutely see Hermes at play." "Venice, the home of the seven-robed daughters of light ! " said Diana delightedly. " Next to being there, to see her touched by the brush of a maestro is best. Italy leaves for ever a moonlight in the soul." '' I wonder if Cook's tourists are endowed with moonlit minds ! " said Mr. Cantilupe, looking at Diana with a shadowy smile. *' Cook's tourists must come to the recita- tions ; but we will begin with the exotics." Then Mr. Cantilupe took out a pocket- LET IT BE " RIZPAH." 97 book, made a memo, and handed it to Miss Beaucliamp. He had written his terms thereon. AYould they be hers ? Diana looked, and crimsoned. Tlie sun seemed huge ; at that rate in a few years (and what are years ?) she could redeem the Court, and then sit down and weep for her lost aim. " You are too generous," she stammered. jNIr. Cantilupe smiled ; but not as he had smiled at Lord B . VOL. CHAPTER XL HE HAS AN UNDULATING MOVEMENT. " Events come upon us like evil enchantments, and thoughts, feelings, apparitions in the darkness, are events; are they not?" After Easter Diana was to appear at the Cosmos Hall. Mr. Cantilupe had described the dimensions of the hall and the elegance of the arrangements. " It is a new build- ing," he had said, *' and perfectly appointed — statuary, drapery, flowers, and many other charming details, combine to make it a success. The framework is there — i/ou will give it a soul." " I should have felt terribly cast down had HE HAS AN UNDULATING MOVEMENT. 99 you told me St. James's Hall was to be the scene of my dthiitl' Diana liad said as she bade Mr. Cantilupe Adieu at the station, for he had called, and accompanied the ladies to the train ; in fact, he had inaugurated himself the custodian of The Diana. " I don't like that man," said Mrs. Battle, as the train moved off; *' he frightens me." '* What do you mean ? " said Diana ; " he is charming. I feel my feet with him.'' " He reminds me of the serpents in the Zoo," said Mrs. Battle ; "he has an undulating movement." " And a * forked tongue,' you will hazard next," said Diana ; *' I defy you to say he has a serpent's eye — glittering, restless, small ! " ''No," said Mrs. Battle, "but he is a man who would wind about your life, and suffocate you." " My dear Mrs. Battle, don't develop, H 2 100 MISS BEAUCHAMP. please don't. Your conceptions are abnormal, preposterous ; relapse, I beseech you, into your homespun.'^ "He affects me with a peculiar sensation. He is unlike anybody I have seen before," continued Mrs. Battle. " Of course he is. Suppose you lived on nothing but ham. and eggs, or porridge and barley-meal, and suddenly an extraordinary dish was placed before you — the last thing evolved by a c7ie/ such as Brillat Savarin employed. If you were a do?i viva?it your eyes would sparkle, and goodness knows what convulsions of joy would shake you ; but if you happened to be a person who had no imagination beyond ham and eggs, porridge and barley-meal, you would turn away from that distinguished dish with no phantasm of appetite. Let us spiritualise our dishes. Mr. Bovin is ham and eggs, and Mr. Cantilupe — the HE HAS AX UNDULATING MOVEMENT. 101 last thing evolved for a gourmet. These two men, bracketed together, make a comedy in themselves." "Mr. Bovin is a very clever man," said Mrs. Battle ; ''he is a laborious man ; he has won his establishment brick by brick — yes, brick by brick he bought the ' Limes,' and step by step he wooed his wife — my friend, Mrs. Bovin. Doctor Edwards is also a clever man. He has studied physic till he knows exactly from one glance the state of our frames. In the society of these two gentlemen I feel perfectly at ease." *' You are not afraid of the ' hiss ' beneath the leaves," said Diana. " Doubtless the Bovins ^r and Edwardses of creation are estimable, worthy people ; they are turned out by the gross, and are a credit to their generation ; but ^ / it is this ' legally speaking,' and ' professionally speaking,' and ' in my own line speaking,' 102 MISS BEAUCHAMP. that makes the mass of people so profoundly uninteresting. Why can't a man be various and branch out in all directions, and be a many -limbed hydra, or an ever- enlarging mansion which adds turret to turret for its ever-increas- ing intelligences every year. The old order changeth ever ; the ' adjective ' of to-day is the * noun ' of to-morrow." Mrs. Battle was listening, and endeavouring to follow Diana's flights, much as a bandy- legged pup tries to keep ])ace with a fox-terrier who is on the scent. " Imagine," continued Diana, " bow fatiguing to strike one note on an instrument all your life long ; you may produce the tone soft or hard, but 'tis still the same note. Life is made up of these one-note people. The professor of Sanscrit is all Sanscrit ; the mamma and her baby is all baby. We have a succession of drawers in our mental cells. Let us fill HE HAS AN UNDULATING MOVEMENT. 103 them. Mr. Cantilupe's cupboards are uncom- monly well filled." " Cupboards ! what cupboards ? " said Mrs. Battle, pausing in the midst of a consumption of sponge-cake she had produced from her travelling-bag — of course she carried supplies for journeying loss; — "Miss Beauchamp, it is like a game of battledore and shuttlecock, talking to you." " Hit out, my homespun. Hit out right and left, you will catch something by-and- by — if not the shuttlecock, then its shadow. I remember once hearing a very clever young Professor lecture to a crowd of us admiring ladies, on some subject which was supposedly beyond our reach, though we were there for the express purpose of hearing what he had to say on this particular question. Sometimes, as he paced up and down the plat- form, he seemed withdrawn from our gaze 104 MISS BEAUCHAMP. altogether, as some new abstraction flitted ghost-like before him. We sat all eyes, and pricked ears — listening ears — don't they look precocious ? Sometimes I've sat and looked at an assemblage of ears, divorcing them entirely from the other members, and an extraordinary effect is produced. The Professor threw out an obscure hint, then a full-blown theory, and we scrambled. ' Catch what you can,' said he, complacently, ' follow as best you are able.' The brightest intelligence amongst us dulled beneath such labelled incompetency ; we, one and all, soon lost our ' proud carrying.' " " Miss Edwards, the Doctor's sister, is most anxious to see you," said Mrs. Battle, shutting up her bag for half an hour. " She is the most scholarly lady in Leominster ; ask her what you may, she knows all about it ; she studies a big book, called Beetons Universal, or some such name ; I believe she knows every HE HAS AN UNDULATING MOVEMENT. 105 word of it by heart ; and she knows everybody by name and reputation ; and she knows all the ships that have been wrecked, and the captains of them ; and all the steamers that sail round the world, and the time of their sailing ; and all the banks that have broken, and the mines that have blown up, and the companies which have suuk. I think you would like her very much, she is so well informed. It's astonishing — her information, and yet she has only lived at Leominster." " Just as well," said Diana gravely. *' She would have been even more effrai/ante than she is, if she had added on travelling experiences. It is fortunate she has lived between the covers of Beetons Universal. What dreadful know- ledge 1 " " Still, you will see her when she calls," said Mrs. Battle anxiously. " She is a very useful person." 106 MISS BEAUCHAMP. " I see everybody who wants to see me," said Diana. " You are so like Sir Golf in some ways," said Mrs. Battle ; "he was so approachable. Very different to your father, I believe." Diana's face clouded. "Papa was too ^exquisite' — poverty is at daggers-drawn with the * exquisite.' To pos- sess, whether you will or not, the ' grand air,' and then to have but few coins in your pocket — is it not provoking ? Does it not make the world scowl on man or woman ? Of mamma I have but a dim recollection. I re- member her bidding me good-bye at school in Rome. I was a small child — this was the last time I saw her. She was the practical part of papa, I believe. He became very reckless after her loss ; but of course you have heard all these details from Sir Golf, tlioiio-li he showed so little interest in us, I can scarce- HE HAS AN UNDULATING MOVEMENT. 107 ly believe he mentioned the filling in of events." Mrs. Battle shook her head, as she drew another sponge-cake from her bag. " Salmon took the mastery of Sir Golf," she said, munching. " Eoman fever, the scourge of the country,'' continued Diana — " which never attacked me, perhaps because in Italy I breathe my native air — took its remorseless hold on papa, and I was left alone ; but for ' the Philothea,' I know not what would have become of me. I had walked to the Campa^na ; it was a long way, and I was tired. Yet I was happy, for I could feel alone with the earth and sky, and some- times, notwithstanding all its beauty, the very majesty of Imperial Kome, with all its ruined bygone greatness, falls like a sad-coloured mantle on your spirit. You can appreciate my meaning in some degree, if you think of picnicing in 108 MISS BEAUCHAMP. AVestminster Abbey. Kome is one huge ex- tended maornificence of colossal g^randeur and ruined might. Rome seems to cry through all her streets, ' See what man can do ! See from whence he has fallen ! ' I think had Darwin lived in Rome instead of Kent, he would hardly have worked out his theory of the monkeys. Here is colour and melody and beauty, and its Nemesis, ruin, tracking it everywhere. So I had gone to the Canqjapia, I had the long walk back before me. The road was dusty ; but, as I said before, I was happy. A carriage drove slowl}^ past me. A lady was thrown back in it ; perhaps, for all my inward content, I looked forlorn. The eyes of this lady alighted on me meditatively. She desired the driver to stop. '' * You are tired,' she said gracefully. * This is such a dusty road. You are returning to Rome. Bo let me drive you there. I am so dull! HE HAS AN UNDULATING MOVEMENT. 109 " Thus graciously acco.^ted, I did not refuse. The result of this drive you know — recitations all over Italy, followed by my summons here. Mr. Cantilupe says recitations are peculiarly adapted to the mood of people just now/' " I wish you would not place your affairs in Mr. Cantilupe's hands," said Mrs. Battle. " He is so like the serpent I saw at the Zoo yesterday. So dreadfully like — dear, dear." " You have localized the serpent," said Diana ; "he was ranked plural just now. Still, Mr. Cantilupe is decidedly ' singular ' ; you are right there." CHAPTER XII. FLYIXG A KITE. " Smile like the knot of cowslips on the cliff not to he come at })]) the iciUing hand.'' " One comfort is, that great men taken u}') in any way are projitahle company." Sir Blaise had lived the life of a hermit — making due allowance for an entourage which left nothing to be desired — for three months. He had not, it is true, looked out on four bare walls, told his beads, lain prostrate on a damp floor, resorted to rigorous penance, abstained from meats ; those outward signs of an inw^ard struggle had not been his. None the less he had looked inwards for the first time at his FLYING A KITE. Ill spiritual structure (for, pass by the fact as we may, each one of us holds within us two worlds, the one terrestrial, the other celestial ; we are linked, indissolubly linked, with the latter, temporarily with the former ; yet to behold us, one would think surely the reverse must be the case) ; and had seen a strange procession sweep up and down within those four walls. Sir Blaise could hardly lay the pleasing unction to his soul which is the peculiar quackery the poor man plasters Ids soul withal — " I never does no harm to nobody, and I does what I can." No, no ; there were a great many flies in the apothecary's ointment. When death had gripped him, those "flies," how they tormented him ! All the same, he was floundering about in hopeless confusion — a confusion as helpless as befalls an amateur when flung into the ocean by an expert. 112 MISS BEAUCHAMP. Books of theology presented themselves before him, and he read them ; hard facts, uncompromising truths, hammer and nail, screw and pickaxe. Sir Blaise sat in the library at Whitefriars with the pale winter sunbeams chasing each other over the open pages, as if to caress his quest, and to promise light. When a man thus sits down deliberately to find out his God, and to face the mystery of his being, how godlike he seems ! Meantime the county commenced to be seriously curious about Sir Blaise. Was he going to retire for ever from all society ? He had thrown up the mastership of the hounds, — the first step in that direction. Sir Blaise give up hunting! He whose ''Tally-ho" was like the glorious cry of some Nimrod, was he going to turn Whitefriars into a monastery ? Was he going to follow in the footsteps of FLYING A KITE. Father Ignatius ? Pity was, Whitefriars had been restored ; it would have carried out past traditions far better in its ancient guise. Was Father Ignatius at the bottom of it ? Sir Blaise had been at Brighton not long ago, and the Father was there at the same time. By- the-bye, what had taken Sir Blaise to Brighton ? These invulnerables always caught it in the end, and that pretty severely ; it must be "love." Yes, it was love. They were quite sure it was love ; when a man turns recluse, be sure love is at the bottom of it. Nothing else will drive him to such extremes. Money loss will sour a man up, and he will perhaps fly the country, or go about with a dog- leaved lip, and throw couleur de jaune on everything, but he won't shut himself up. No, 'tis love makes people cry, " Muffles ! Lluffles ! Tie up the knocker. Say I am VOL. I. • 1 114 MISS BEAUCHAMP. sick ; nay, further, dead." 'Tis love consorts with ashes and embosoms solitude — love which glow^ers and maddens and wreathes and twists. Yes, yes ! Miss Edwards, the Doctor's sister, had perhaps heard all about it — the county must really ask her to luncheon. So Miss Edwards received an invasion of notes, and looked unutterables, and read up Beeton^s Universal, and plastered her hair in straight lines on either side till the parting widened terribly, and wore " kids " at bedtime to get her hands as w^hite as Lady Masters' s, and w^ent forth scrub and brush and cram to her luncheons. That she had no information was her oivn information ; she was to be feasted, and she must bring a " dole " for that feasting. That her brother w^as reticent — madly reticent — was not her fault ; that he never gave her the smallest iota of information concerning his patients was FLYING A KITE. 115 the fault of that mad reticence. Oh that he were like dear old Doctor Gosling, the allopathic and general practitioner, who was brimming over with details and on dits about other people's patients, to say nothing of illustrated volumes concerning his own. The Doctor — for it was thus Miss Edwards named her brother, even in thought — was buttoned up in silence. If he would but take her advice, and study Beeton, he w^ould be able to hold his own and show up as she. Yv^here would she be without the Universal? Beneath the heel of everybody. As it was, she could fetch and carry for picked intellects, for even tltese get hazy now and then over dates and birth-places, and so on. Miss Edwards w^ent the round of her luncheons, and flew a kite, and then recovered it to fly it a yard or two farther. She rather enjoyed this kite- flying, for the eyes of the county were I 2 116 MISS BEAUCHAMP. looking on, the weather all that could be desired, and the kite, enfin flying up in a gale of hurry to descend in a dead calm. " Stupid old thing ! " said Francisca (for it was especially at the Masters's she had dis- played her powers); "the ^ stoopidest^ o\(\. thing that ever came cackling into creation. She knows nothing at all about the matter. Doctor Edwards is not likely to give his patients' secrets up for her to arrange them into mother tinctures, and distil them in globules and pilules." " Of course," said Lady Masters meditatively, " Doctor Edwards carries the key to this extraordinary seclusion on the part of Sir Blaise. Medical men become a species of Father Confessor." "Medical pets," said Francisca; "from one pulse to another — that is the way with most young ladies — myself excluded. But very FLYING A KITE. 117 lively people, such as myself, seldom have a pulse." Cecilia looked down. Francisca was so terribly straight; but then Mr. Languedoc had never sat at her feet, with eyes full of dreams, repeating Mariana in the South. Would Francisca have come throuo-h such a o moment as that, and still find herself without a pulse ? Was it not enough to give anybody a wild pulse ? Cecilia was smiling pensively, and Lady Masters, glancing at her, had a vision of Mr. Languedoc's pale eyes, long hair, and slight form — through which Cecilia de- clared the moon looked. She drew up her figure bracingly, and said — " Cecilia, what of your tonic-sol-fa ? Per- sistent practice is the only method of culti- vating the vox huniana." *' What peculiar noises we do make through the medium of our vox humanasl'' said 118 MISS BEArCHAMP. Francisca. " Neighing and braying, and ball- ing and crowing, each of us carries our dupli- cate animal somewhere. My last idea is to make a collection of the afflictive human noises I have heard. I shall call it the most original onic-sol'fa on record. It will include Mr. Baldock's * bray,' and Mrs. Yesey's ' wee-wee,' Count Gleiker s * surprise snort,' and Professor Tweedie's scientifical ' snuffles.' I shall label them neatly, and write beneath — ' Contributions gladly received.' " '* My dear Francisca, how will you cage the sounds ? " said Lady Masters laughing. " How does Edison cage everything ? I intend to rival Edison. Are you quite sure there is no commercial blood in our veins, no intervening streamlets to break the flow and take the prose out of us ? Where does Cecilia get her hereditary nocturnes in blue and silver ? Where does Miss Beauchamp get her FLYING A KITE. 119 dramatic power and Bohemian ways ? Where has Sir Bhiise found an interpreter to soli- tude ? And, histly — where, oh ! where, has Miss Edwards derived her knowledge of all thino's ? o CHAPTER XIII. THREE PHILOSOPHERS. " Body cannot teach wisdom, God only." " He ivlio loves goodness harhours angels, reveres reverence^ and lives ivitli God." ''I WOXDER what became of De Quincey?" thought Sir Blaise. A college friend of by- gone years had started into life at memory's touch. What an extraordinary amount of hric-a-hrac our memories hold ! And yet not one bit of that old assemblage of value and rubbish but has its special importance, nay, its priceless worth. Every separate atom will make a perfect whole some day, and when, hereafter, we see this collection of events, THREE PHILOSOPHERS. 121 which we call " life," presented before us with each piece fitting into the puzzle, we shall say, " the threads were indeed deftly spun, the results were indeed systematically gathered/' Sir Blaise was thrown back in an arm-chair in the library. He had been so sitting for two hours. Three " Skyes," each one as long and low as the other, were lying on the hearth- rug at his feet — perfect of their kind, for Sir Blaise instinctively gathered perfection to himself. His knowledge of cattle (allow the word to embrace dogs) was hereditary. What are we to do with these hereditary virtues and failings ? Make the most of them in the one instance, and conquer them in the other, says Worldly Wisdom, smiling and purring with happy ease of facial muscles. But suppose you have inherited a traditional past, wherein the exotics of a cultivated under- standing bloomed happily in the midst of 122 MISS BEAUCHAMP. stately surroundings ; and suppose the rolling centuries had carried root and flower away, leaving nothing but the exquisite fragrance which has floated down the ages to haunt you like a dream ; suppose yourself also to take birth in Cremation Villa, and to be snuffing up commonplace odours and feeding on the medium intelligences of beef-eaters and the " sample " type of cult ; and throughout your nature, and for ever stealthily wafted towards you, is the subtle fragrance of that inherited memory making you like a mute note or a discordant string amidst your surroundings ; — what a succession of mauvais q?iarts cVheure your life must be as you move awkwardly in your ill-fitting garments, unless you have lost yourself in the transcendental glories of the future — w^hich is the common heritage of all who will to possess it — and let a rarer, sweeter fragrance from the garden of our restored Eden THREE PHILOSOPHEES. 123 overpower that baleful inheritance which made you like a sparrow on the house-top of Cremation Villa. Hereditary knowledge as to the perfec- tions of cattle, and cattle had descended to Sir Blaise ; so if you w^anted to see either horse or dog or heifer without a flaw, you had best pay a visit to Whitefriars. The three Skyes w^ere of one mind on one point — passionate attachment to Sir Blaise. There is something inexpressibly charming in a door's love. It has elements of exceediuor beauty. To be loved with a dog- like attach- ment, for staying powers, and indifference to cold or warmth, time or place or circumstance, you will not find easily surpassed. Every human love w^ould do well to have some of these rudimentary instincts linked to its higher capacities. The Skye breed have the virtues of their race very markedly developed. First, 124 MISS BEAUCHAMP. faithfulness — absolute and entire — you only till death and after death ; then patient watch- fulness — your step, through the patient hours waiting for you — your very expression is scanned. If you are in trouble, your dog knows it — and his mute sympathy is yours. If you are gay — your dog shares in it — his delighted wags and glad barks are yours ; he is one with you, whatever your mood. Surely God gave us dogs for a peculiar form of com- panionship. How dull our walks would be without them ; how lonely our homes ! A home without animals is imperfect. Fidgety people, with their notions of " mess," how we pity them their loss, and rejoice in our gain. That dear old hidden bone is the expressio?i of a faithful presence that we would not be with- out for the most orderly "just so" arrange- ments. ''Bury me with my dogs about me," said THREE PHILOSOPHERS. 125 _ . . Frederick the Great, " for they are my true friends." Three long heads lay on the hearthrug in unbroken line, and three pairs of eyes were meditatively gazing into the fire. " I wonder what became of De Quincey ? " Sir Blaise's voice broke the stillness. Diogenes, the eldest of the three, immedi- ately rose, and, after stretching his long lithe body, sat staring at his master with an un- exampled expression of knowledge, derived from vast and cultivated reflections. There is in this peculiar breed of Skye a very depth of meaning in their eyes. The " Tubbed Philo- sopher" at the National Gallery has just such an expression, and it is in no way exaggerated. Socrates followed on, and helped himself to a stretch by placing two paws on Sir Blaise's knee ; while Plato sneezed, and threw out a platonic in illustrative fashion, by dashing at 126 MISS BEAUCHAMP. Dio's tail. Plato was the youngest of the three, and the most flighty, having many a time to be held between Dio's paws and shown the philosopher's teeth, as he growled out his contempt for the platonics which don't exist except in theory, as life is too real for such cloaked sentiments. *'Down," said Sir Blaise; and down sunk the philosophers into dreams and speculations once more. " I recall him perfectly well now^," mused Sir Blaise. " We heathens used to get away from hi.n ; he made us feel swinish. I re- member once going to his rooms at Balliol, and thinking in what a mediaeval style he had done them up. He never gave ' wines ' or joined in any larks, and his nickname, St. Gussy, seemed to fit him like a monk's cowl ; yet there was nothing effeminate about him. AVhat biceps he had ! I remember asking him, ' Why don't THREE PHILOSOPHERS. 127 you go in for the Blue ? you ought to throw those biceps of yours into the national ser- vice ' ; and his reply — ' I have another race on hand, uone the less real for being super- natural. I've to hit out against a common foe, a wily fellow, who has a thousand masks and a million garbs. I'm alive to a fact at last, thank God ! Lucifer has fallen from Heaven, and his chosen seat is Earth. This race beats all Earth's races hollow — it takes all a fellow's time and energies.' " But I remember expostulating with him, ' There are so many opinions on this subject. What are all these scientifical fellows telling us ? ' " ' What, indeed ? ' said he, with a short laugh. ' The origin of many things, but not the origin of sin. They may boil down every- thing, but they cant boil down that. They had best go back to Eden, and, in a rever- 128 MISS BEAUCHAMP. beratinor *' hiss," which has circled down the ages, look into this matter, for it's vastly more important than the formation of strata.' "Years have passed since then. I wonder if a letter to the University Club would find him. Well, I can but try." Rising hurriedly, Sir Blaise Avrote a few lines to Keith de Quincey, and then, with more alacrity than he had shown for months, ordered his horse, and, for the first time since his accident, went for a ride. CHAPTER XIV. 'tis a VANDYKE. " Through the years and the centuries, tl trough evil ages, through toys and atoms, a great and henejicerd tendency irresistibly streams." "He that can discern the loveliness of things, ive call him Poet^ Painter, Man of Genius, gifted, lovable." Easter had come, and brought with it such a flight of golden days that but for almanacks and vegetation you might have closed your eyes, and, as the soft air played about you, cried, " It is summer — it is summer ! " Beauchamp Court looked like some old en- chanted spot which had fallen asleep under a spell. The gardeners had forgotten all about VOL. I. K 130 MISS BEAUCHAMP. hoes and rakes ; and so Nature was having a lawless time, running wild with careless exuberance — that was all. The rabbits, too, had such games, from morning till night ; they began to know all about Diana, and scarcely took the trouble to get them to their holes, when they heard the sound of her footsteps. She was their friend. One venerable bunny had told them so. She had been guilty of leaving her young, one day, at the sound of Diana's moving drapery, and scampering as fast as her hoppers would carry her down a glade hard by. But once hidden in the long grass, she had peeped out, and seen Diana go to her burrow, and put in her hand, and bring out first one little soft ball, and then another and another, and lay them against her cheek and kiss them, and then gently replace them. Madame Bunny spread the news far and 'tis a VANDYKE. 131 wide, so there was joy among the multitude of rabbits. Diana w^as never w^eary of rambling about the grounds. Beau champ was already very dear to her, and its redemption her absorbing aim. " Every tree of you shall be out of the mort- gagee's hands. I'll have the right to turn tree-hewer, like the Premier, if I will. Not that one of your glorious frames shall be touched ; live on you shall, and gather about you the birds, with their loves and their nests and their songs, till Time destroys or light- ning blasts." She was standing beneath a chestnut w^hich was already in bloom, for Easter fell late. As these thoughts were flitting through her, the avenue, with its grand sentinels, faced her ; and a book was in her hand. She w^as studying " Eizpah " in every detail of its light 132 MISS BEAUCHAMP. and shade ; also a selection from the American poets, which she had decided upon reciting at lier first appearance. Her eyes were bent upon the open page now in utter absorption, so she neither saw nor heard the aj)proach of Mr. Cantilupe (for it was he coming, with the undulating move- ment so obnoxious to Mrs. Battle) towards her, closely followed by Diego. ''Miss Beauchamp! " Diana started ; his voice was at her ear. " Mr. Cantilupe ! " '' Yes, Mr. Cantilupe. I have caught you, as I expected to catch you, engrossed with your art. Study, study, 'tis the only way to win renown, though artistic germs must of course be there to cultivate in the first instance. I am here, because I have much to say to you about Cosmos Hall. The time is drawing very near." 'tis a VANDYKE. 13: " How good of you to come all this distance," said Diana. She had been so entirely alone for the last few weeks that the sound of a fresh voice had seemed strange to her at first — much as a recluse feels an alien when suddenly hurled into a crowd. " Nothing good about it," said Mr. Cantilupe, extending his taper fingers, and waving all goodness out of his way. " You have not walked from Leominster," said Diana suddenly, aghast. Mr. Cantilupe again waved his hand as if shunting all inquiries. "Your servant will be tired," continued Diana. Mr. Cantilupe stroked his moustache, and said, " Diego and I are of one mind — we know nothing of that malady called fatigue." " You must stay now you are here," said Diana. " I have a big establishment, as you 134 MISS BEAUCHAMr. may perceive." There was a mocking smile about Diana's lips. "Yes, I perceive," said Mr. Cantilupe. "We will partake of your hospitality till nightfall, when Diego and I will retrace our steps to Leominster. I have enaafred rooms at the * Green Man ' till to-morrow. The most out- of-the-way inn or hotel I could find. I am addicted to out-of-the-way spots. "You have a charming place, Miss Beau- champ ; it only needs a * kiss ' to wake it all up. The cook would begin to bake tlie bread, the scullery-inaid to peel the potatoes, the — ah ." Mr. Cantilupe w^as very fond of breaking ofi in the middle of his sentences — these jjeculiarities lent themselves to his role; did he think he would be the Prince ? There was a biis^ht wood fire in the hall, and before it lay Diana's two vaiiricns — Leone 'tis a VANDYKE. 135 and Muscatel ; it would be kindest to call them foreigners, or varieties, for into their pedigrees only the very foolish would dive. At the sight of Mr. Cantilupe they rose simultaneously, and snarled long and low, gathering about Mr. Cantilupe's legs, and muttering dislike at the visitor. Mrs. Battle, who was peeping from the dining-room door, murmured, " Sensible brutes ! they see what I see. Miss Beauchamp, for all her talent, is so ' headlong/ " " Your canine friends are not so hospitable as their mistress," said Mr. Cantilupe, as he glided after Diana to the drawing-room. "They have the manners of their class, I suppose," said Diana. '' They are not suffi- ciently well-bred to smile and hate at the same moment — that is a matter of culte ; nevertheless, Leone and Muscatel are of price- less worth to me. We made friends in an 136 MISS BEAUCHAMP. itinerant fashion in Tuscany. I found them homeless and hungry, they found me friend- less and hungry in another fashion ; so a bond of close sympathy was struck." " Miss Beauchamp need never be friendless,'' said Mr. Cantilupe, assuming his favourite position at the mantelpiece. " My acquaintances are numerous — my friends none," said Diana. " Friends too often, like a gulf-stream, suck you under when they have drained the sources of your past, present, and future." "When thought flashes on thought, and subtle sympathies are exchanged, gulf-streams are forgotten. Miss Beauchamp, you must learn to value friendship." " In theory," said Diana lightly. " In practice," said Mr. Cantilupe, looking at her with peculiar intentness. Once more, as at their first interview, a 'tis a VANDYKE. 137 profound silence fell, and Diana could not break it while Mr. Cantilupe's extraordinary eyes held her. Had he studied mesmerism ? What had he not studied ? Mr. Cantilupe allowed the silence just as long as he desired, and then commenced a running commentary on the manner in which the drawing- room was arranged. " Admirable taste ! The past and present meet without clashing, and none but an artiste could fuse such opposing forces." Suddenly his comments ceased, and he strolled towards the corner where Diana had enshrined her treasured picture from the lumber- room. He remained fully ten minutes silently regarding it, Diana as silently regarding him, thinking how he worships Art, and appreciates genius. " It strikes him mute just as it did me ! " But when ten minutes had elapsed, Diana 138 MISS BEAUCHAMP. spoke. " You admire my treasure ; I discovered it in the lumber-room. I have seen just such treasures in Italy. Sometimes I think this is a masterpiece ; if so, Mr. Cantilupe, I need hardly carry out* my recitations. What is £50,000 to an Art collector ? " " Is this modest sum your goal ? " said Mr. Cantilupe negligently. " Yes," said Diana, interlacing her fingers. " May I remove this picture from the wall ? " said he, after another prolonged ex- amination. " Do ; perhaps you can find out the master." Mr. Cantilupe had his back to Diana during a careful survey of marks and signs by which an original may be discovered. As he replaced it he said, " 'Tis a Vandyke. Miss Beauchamp, you are fortunate ; you were born under a lucky planet." "You say it is a Vandyke," Diana said slowly. 'tis a VANDYKE. 139 " Have I heard you aright, or am I dreaming ? This can't be true.'' " It is quite true," said Mr. Cantilupe, as he arranged the picture in a more correct line — " it is quite true. I have never been mistaken in discerning an old master." Then Mr. Cantilupe strolled to the divan on which Diana was sitting, and, bending down, said, " What will you do with your new possession ? Will you keep it, or will you part with it ? Eemember, 'tis a Vandyke — only a Vandyke." He paused and smiled, then said : — " I have a friend (or shall I say acquaintance ? for, like you, I, too, disdain friends) ; he is wealthy — a Eussian nabob. Just now he has a mania for the old masters ; to-morrow, it may be, for French poodles. If you like he shall buy your Vandyke, and he shall give £30,000 for it — it is not/tiny to him. He ranks but little lower than the 140 MISS BEAUCHAMP. Imperial House ; he has estates in every capital of Europe. Shall he buy your Vandyke ? Miss Beauchamp has but to command. I will see him to-morrow. His manias always last exactly two months. I keep a careful account of dates in my pocket- book. This mania has one week more to run ; if I were to suggest the purchase of an old master after that period, he would say — ' Poiff ! I can't think, my dear Cantilupe, whatever induced me to buy those ridiculous old pictures. I declare I am surprised at my bad taste. Why, one Whistler is worth the whole lot of them strung together. No, no — I've done with such nonsense. I'm about to make a collection of wigs. Get me one of the Lord Chancellor's. I'll give £30,000 for it. And discover one of old Ben Jonson's. I'm turning sage et raisonnable. No more old masters for me.' We are just in time. Did 'mrci TIS A VAN FAKE. 14 1 I not say, Miss Beauchamp, you were born under a lucky planet ? Will you part with your Vandyke ? " What restrained Diana from grasping Mr. Cantilupe's taper fingers, much as she had Mr. Bovin's dumplings, she never knew. " AVill I?" she said, as she rose from the divan. "Will I? W^hy are you so kind to me ? After tliis^ surely I must believe in friendship." Looking down on the carpet, Mr. Cantilupe said, " What of Cosmos Hall ? Will the arrange- ments still stand ? But I think you said £50,000 is your goal." " I must earn the rest," said Diana, pacing the room. "£20,000 is a mere trifle now — a trifle at least when one feels inspired, and I do ; " and she looked so. Mr. Cantilupe retired to the mantelpiece again, and remained, head on hand, buried in thought, till the dinner bell awoke him. CHAPTER XV. TOWNSFOLK. ^' A man^s reach should exceed his grasp ; or ichafs a Heaven for?" Mrs. Bovin had been withheld from calling on Miss Beauchamp by indisposition, but she was now quite well again, and to be quite well, with her, meant bubble and squeak from morning till night. Mrs. Bovin 's acquaintance with syntax was small, she bowed awkwardly to nouns and adjectives, and they in their turn treated her very maliciously, courtesying in every sentence in the wrong place, with mock court ; but Mrs. Bovin thoug:ht the bows and courtesies were TOWNSFOLK. 143 quite the correct thing, and no voice was louder or more authoritative in Leominster circles than hers. She had looked in on Miss Edwards the day before her intended visit to the Court, and told her of her intention, if the weather " got up" fine, of taking a fly, and driving to Beau- champ ; and she also asked Miss Edwards to accompany her Miss Edwards expressed much pleasure. '* Legally speaking, you have a right to call ; and professionally speaking, / have," said she, glancing at the bird of paradise on Mrs. Bovin's bonnet. "Miss Beauchamp is herself a professional," said Mrs. Bovin, who now and then emerged out of the reo;ions of twilio;ht. " What are recitations % " " The recitative style is a kind of tuneful pro- nunciation more musical than common speech, 1-44 MISS BEAUCHAMP. and less so than song or chant," said Miss Edwards. •' It's the last thing ' got up,' " said Mrs. Bovin, who \vas full of positive intelligence. '' I hear our new Duchess — the Duchess of Alton — is orreat at recitation. AVith rec^ard to ]\Iiss Beauchamp, poor thing, I'm very sorry f