'Firebrand is too strong a word for poor Nevil,' she remonstrated.

In that estimate of the character of Nevil Beauchamp, Cecilia soon had to confess that she had been deceived, though not by him.

CHAPTER XVII. HIS FRIEND AND FOE

Looking from her window very early on a Sunday morning, Miss Halkett saw Beauchamp strolling across the gra.s.s of the park. She dressed hurriedly and went out to greet him, smiling and thanking him for his friendliness in coming.

He said he was delighted, and appeared so, but dashed the sweetness.

'You know I can't canva.s.s on Sundays!

'I suppose not,' she replied. 'Have you walked up from Bevisham? You must be tired.'

'Nothing tires me,' said he.

With that they stepped on together.

Mount Laurels, a fair broad house backed by a wood of beeches and firs, lay open to view on the higher gra.s.sed knoll of a series of descending turfy mounds dotted with gorseclumps, and faced South-westerly along the run of the Otley river to the gleaming broad water and its opposite border of forest, beyond which the downs of the island threw long interlapping curves. Great ships pa.s.sed on the line of the water to and fro; and a little mist of masts of the fishing and coasting craft by Otley village, near the river's mouth, was like a web in air. Cecilia led him to her dusky wood of firs, where she had raised a bower for a place of poetical contemplation and reading when the clear lapping salt river beneath her was at high tide. She could hail the Esperanza from that cover; she could step from her drawing-room window, over the flower-beds, down the gravel walk to the hard, and be on board her yacht within seven minutes, out on her salt-water lake within twenty, closing her wings in a French harbour by nightfall of a summer's day, whenever she had the whim to fly abroad. Of these enviable privileges she boasted with some happy pride.

'It's the finest yachting-station in England,' said Beauchamp.

She expressed herself very glad that he should like it so much.

Unfortunately she added, 'I hope you will find it pleasanter to be here than canva.s.sing.'

'I have no pleasure in canva.s.sing,' said he. 'I canva.s.s poor men accustomed to be paid for their votes, and who get nothing from me but what the baron would call a parsonical exhortation. I'm in the thick of the most spiritless crew in the kingdom. Our southern men will not compare with the men of the north. But still, even among these fellows, I see danger for the country if our commerce were to fail, if distress came on them. There's always danger in disunion. That's what the rich won't see. They see simply nothing out of their own circle; and they won't take a thought of the overpowering contrast between their luxury and the way of living, that's half-starving, of the poor. They understand it when fever comes up from back alleys and cottages, and then they join their efforts to sweep the poor out of the district. The poor are to get to their work anyhow, after a long morning's walk over the proscribed s.p.a.ce; for we must have poor, you know. The wife of a parson I canva.s.sed yesterday, said to me, "Who is to work for us, if you do away with the poor, Captain Beauchamp?"'

Cecilia quitted her bower and traversed the wood silently.

'So you would blow up my poor Mount Laurels for a peace-offering to the lower cla.s.ses?'

'I should hope to put it on a stronger foundation, Cecilia.'

'By means of some convulsion?'

'By forestalling one.'

'That must be one of the new ironclads,' observed Cecilia, gazing at the black smoke-pennon of a tower that slipped along the water-line. 'Yes?

You were saying? Put us on a stronger----?'

'It's, I think, the Hastings: she broke down the other day on her trial trip,' said Beauchamp, watching the ship's progress animatedly. 'Peppel commands her--a capital officer. I suppose we must have these costly big floating barracks. I don't like to hear of everything being done for the defensive. The defensive is perilous policy in war. It's true, the English don't wake up to their work under half a year. But, no: defending and looking to defences is bad for the fighting power; and there's half a million gone on that ship. Half a million! Do you know how many poor taxpayers it takes to make up that sum, Cecilia?'

'A great many,' she slurred over them; 'but we must have big ships, and the best that are to be had.'

'Powerful fast rams, sea-worthy and fit for running over shallows, carrying one big gun; swarms of harryers and worriers known to be kept ready for immediate service; readiness for the offensive in case of war--there's the best defence against a declaration of war by a foreign State.'

'I like to hear you, Nevil,' said Cecilia, beaming: 'Papa thinks we have a miserable army--in numbers. He says, the wealthier we become the more difficult it is to recruit able-bodied men on the volunteering system.

Yet the wealthier we are the more an army is wanted, both to defend our wealth and to preserve order. I fancy he half inclines to compulsory enlistment. Do speak to him on that subject.'

Cecilia must have been innocent of a design to awaken the fire-flash in Nevil's eyes. She had no design, but hostility was latent, and hence perhaps the offending phrase.

He nodded and spoke coolly. 'An army to preserve order? So, then, an army to threaten civil war!'

'To crush revolutionists.'

'Agitators, you mean. My dear good old colonel--I have always loved him--must not have more troops at his command.'

'Do you object to the drilling of the whole of the people?'

'Does not the colonel, Cecilia? I am sure he does in his heart, and, for different reasons, I do. He won't trust the working-cla.s.ses, nor I the middle.'

'Does Dr. Shrapnel hate the middle-cla.s.s?'

'Dr. Shrapnel cannot hate. He and I are of opinion, that as the middle-cla.s.s are the party in power, they would not, if they knew the use of arms, move an inch farther in Reform, for they would no longer be in fear of the cla.s.s below them.'

'But what horrible notions of your country have you, Nevil! It is dreadful to hear. Oh! do let us avoid politics for ever. Fear!'

'All concessions to the people have been won from fear.'

'I have not heard so.'

'I will read it to you in the History of England.'

'You paint us in a condition of Revolution.'

'Happily it's not a condition unnatural to us. The danger would be in not letting it be progressive, and there's a little danger too at times in our slowness. We change our blood or we perish.'

'Dr. Shrapnel?'

'Yes, I have heard Dr. Shrapnel say that. And, by-the-way, Cecilia--will you? can you?--take me for the witness to his character. He is the most guileless of men, and he's the most unguarded. My good Rosamund saw him.

She is easily prejudiced when she is a trifle jealous, and you may hear from her that he rambles, talks wildly. It may seem so. I maintain there is wisdom in him when conventional minds would think him at his wildest.

Believe me, he is the humanest, the best of men, tenderhearted as a child: the most benevolent, simple-minded, admirable old man--the man I am proudest to think of as an Englishman and a man living in my time, of all men existing. I can't overpraise him.'

'He has a bad reputation.'

'Only with the cla.s.s that will not meet him and answer him.'

'Must we invite him to our houses?'

'It would be difficult to get him to come, if you did. I mean, meet him in debate and answer his arguments. Try the question by brains.'

'Before mobs?'

'Not before mobs. I punish you by answering you seriously.'

'I am sensible of the flattery.'

'Before mobs!' Nevil e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. 'It's the Tories that mob together and cry down every man who appears to them to threaten their privileges. Can you guess what Dr. Shrapnel compares them to?'