Beauchamp's Career Part 88

Jenny Denham fastened a vast cloak and a comforter on the doctor's heedless shoulders and throat, enjoining on him to return in good time for dinner.

He put his finger to her cheek in reproof of such supererogatory counsel to a man famous for his punctuality.

The day had darkened.

Beauchamp begged Jenny to play to him on the piano.

'Do you indeed care to have music?' said she. 'I did not wish you to meet a deputation, because your strength is not yet equal to it. Dr.

Shrapnel dwells on principles, forgetful of minor considerations.'

'I wish thousands did!' cried Beauchamp. 'When you play I seem to hear ideas. Your music makes me think.'

Jenny lit a pair of candles and set them on the piano. 'Waltzes?' she asked.

'Call in a puppet-show at once!'

She smiled, turned over some leaves, and struck the opening notes of the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven, and made her selections.

At the finish he said: 'Now read me your father's poem, "The Hunt of the Fates."'

She read it to him.

'Now read, "The Ascent from the Inferno."'

That she read: and also 'Soul and Brute,' another of his favourites.

He wanted more, and told her to read 'First Love--Last Love.'

'I fear I have not the tone of voice for love-poems,' Jenny said, returning the book to him.

'I'll read it,' said he.

He read with more impressiveness than effect. Lydiard's reading thrilled her: Beauchamp's insisted too much on particular lines. But it was worth while observing him. She saw him always as in a picture, remote from herself. His loftier social station and strange character precluded any of those keen suspicions by which women learn that a fire is beginning to glow near them.

'How I should like to have known your father!' he said. 'I don't wonder at Dr. Shrapnel's love of him. Yes, he was one of the great men of his day! and it's a higher honour to be of his blood than any that rank can give. You were ten years old when you lost him. Describe him to me.'

'He used to play with me like a boy,' said Jenny. She described her father from a child's recollection of him.

'Dr. Shrapnel declares he would have been one of the first surgeons in Europe: and he was one of the first of poets,' Beauchamp pursued with enthusiasm. 'So he was doubly great. I hold a good surgeon to be in the front rank of public benefactors--where they put rich brewers, bankers, and speculative manufacturers now. Well! the world is young. We shall alter that in time. Whom did your father marry?'

Jenny answered, 'My mother was the daughter of a London lawyer. She married without her father's approval of the match, and he left her nothing.'

Beauchamp interjected: 'Lawyer's money!'

'It would have been useful to my mother's household when I was an infant,' said Jenny.

'Poor soul! I suppose so. Yes; well,' Beauchamp sighed. 'Money! never mind how it comes. We're in such a primitive condition that we catch at anything to keep us out of the cold; dogs with a bone!--instead of living, as Dr. Shrapnel prophecies, for and, with one another. It's war now, and money's the weapon of war. And we're the worst nation in Europe for that. But if we fairly recognize it, we shall be the first to alter our ways. There's the point. Well, Jenny, I can look you in the face to-night. Thanks to my uncle Everard at last!'

'Captain Beauchamp, you have never been blamed.'

'I am Captain Beauchamp by courtesy, in public. My friends call me Nevil. I think I have heard the name on your lips?'

'When you were very ill.'

He stood closer to her, very close.

'Which was the arm that bled for me? May I look at it? There was a bruise.'

'Have you not forgotten that trifle? There is the faintest possible mark of it left.'

'I wish to see.'

She gently defended the arm, but he made it so much a matter of earnest to see the bruise of the old Election missile on her fair arm, that, with a pardonable soft blush, to avoid making much of it herself, she turned her sleeve a little above the wrist. He took her hand.

'It was for me!'

'It was quite an accident: no harm was intended.'

'But it was in my cause--for me!'

'Indeed, Captain Beauchamp...'

'Nevil, we say indoors.'

'Nevil--but is it not wiser to say what comes naturally to us?'

'Who told you to-day that you had brought me to life? I am here to prove it true. If I had paid attention to your advice, I should not have gone into the cottage of those poor creatures and taken away the fever. I did no good there. But the man's wife said her husband had been ruined by voting for me: and it was a point of honour to go in and sit with him.

You are not to have your hand back: it is mine. Don't you remember, Jenny, how you gave me your arm on the road when I staggered; two days before the fever knocked me over? Shall I tell you what I thought then?

I thought that he who could have you for a mate would have the bravest and helpfullest wife in all England. And not a mere beauty, for you have good looks: but you have the qualities I have been in search of. Why do your eyes look so mournfully at me? I am full of hope. We'll sail the Esperanza for the Winter: you and I, and our best friend with us. And you shall have a voice in the council, be sure.'

'If you are two to one?' Jenny said quickly, to keep from faltering.

Beauchamp pressed his mouth to the mark of the bruise on her arm. He held her fast.

'I mean it, if you will join me, that you and I should rejoice the heart of the dear old man--will you? He has been brooding over your loneliness here if you are unmarried, ever since his recovery. I owe my life to you, and every debt of grat.i.tude to him. Now, Jenny!'

'Oh! Captain Beauchamp--Nevil, if you will... if I may have my hand. You exaggerate common kindness. He loves you. We both esteem you.'

'But you don't love me?'

'Indeed I have no fear that I shall be unable to support myself, if I am left alone.'

'But I want your help. I wake from illness with my eyes open. I must have your arm to lean on now and then.'

Jenny dropped a s.h.i.+vering sigh.

'Uncle is long absent!' she said.

Her hand was released. Beauchamp inspected his watch.