Beauchamp's Career Part 77

'Engaged in earnest?' said he.

'Yes.'

'Of your free will?'

'Yes.'

Her father stepped out on the terrace, from one of the open windows, trailing a newspaper like a pocket-handkerchief. Cecilia threaded the flower-beds to meet him.

'Here's an accident to one of our ironclads,' he called to Beauchamp.

'Lives lost, sir?'

'No, thank heaven! but, upon my word, it's a warning. Read the telegram; it's the Hastings. If these are our defences, at a cost of half a million of money, each of them, the sooner we look to our land forces the better.'

'The Shop will not be considered safe!' said Beauchamp, taking in the telegram at a glance. 'Peppel's a first-rate officer too: she couldn't have had a better captain. Ship seriously damaged!'

He handed back the paper to the colonel.

Cecilia expected him to say that he had foreseen such an event.

He said nothing; and with a singular contraction of the heart she recollected how he had denounced our system of preparing mainly for the defensive in war, on a day when they stood together in the park, watching the slow pa.s.sage of that very ship, the Hastings, along the broad water, distant below them. The 'swarms of swift vessels of attack,' she recollected particularly, and 'small wasps and rams under mighty steam-power,' that he used to harp on when declaring that England must be known for the a.s.sailant in war: she was to 'ray out' her worrying fleets. 'The defensive is perilous policy in war': he had said it. She recollected also her childish ridicule of his excess of emphasis: he certainly had foresight.'

Mr. Austin and Mr. Tuckham came strolling in conversation round the house to the terrace. Beauchamp bowed to the former, nodded to the latter, scrutinizing him after he had done so, as if the flash of a thought were in his mind. Tuckham's radiant aspect possibly excited it: 'Congratulate me!' was the honest outcry of his face and frame. He was as over-flowingly rosy as a victorious candidate at the hustings commencing a speech. Cecilia laid her hand on an urn, in dread of the next words from either of the persons present. Her father put an arm in hers, and leaned on her. She gazed at her chamber window above, wishing to be wafted thither to her seclusion within. The trembling limbs of physical irresoluteness was a new experience to her.

'Anything else in the paper, colonel? I've not seen it to-day,' said Beauchamp, for the sake of speaking.

'No, I don't think there's anything,' Colonel Halkett replied. 'Our diplomatists haven't been shining much: that 's not our forte.'

'No: it's our field for younger sons.'

'Is it? Ah! There's an expedition against the hilltribes in India, and we're such a peaceful nation, eh? We look as if we were in for a complication with China.'

'Well, sir, we must sell our opium.'

'Of course we must. There's a man writing about surrendering Gibraltar!'

'I'm afraid we can't do that.'

'But where do you draw the line?' quoth Tuckham, very susceptible to a sneer at the colonel, and entirely ignorant of the circ.u.mstances attending Beauchamp's position before him. 'You defend the Chinaman; and it's questionable if his case is as good as the Spaniard's.'

'The Chinaman has a case against our traders. Gibraltar concerns our imperial policy.'

'As to the case against the English merchants, the Chinaman is for shutting up his millions of acres of productive land, and the action of commerce is merely a declaration of a universal public right, to which all States must submit.'

'Immorality brings its punishment, be sure of that. Some day we shall have enough of China. As to the Rock, I know the argument; I may be wrong. I've had the habit of regarding it as necessary to our naval supremacy.'

'Come! there we agree.'

'I'm not so certain.'

'The counter-argument, I call treason.'

'Well,' said Beauchamp, 'there's a broad policy, and a narrow. There's the Spanish view of the matter--if you are for peace and harmony and disarmament.'

'I'm not.'

'Then strengthen your forces.'

'Not a bit of it!'

'Then bully the feeble and truckle to the strong; consent to be hated till you have to stand your ground.'

'Talk!'

'It seems to me logical.'

'That's the French notion--c'est lodgique!'

Tuckham's p.r.o.nunciation caused Cecilia to level her eyes at him pa.s.singly.

'By the way,' said Colonel Halkett, 'there are lots of horrors in the paper to-day; wife kickings, and starvations--oh, dear me! and the murder of a woman: two columns to that.'

'That, the Tory reaction is responsible for!' said Tuckham, rather by way of a joke than a challenge.

Beauchamp accepted it as a challenge. Much to the benevolent amus.e.m.e.nt of Mr. Austin and Colonel Halkett, he charged the responsibility of every crime committed in the country, and every condition of misery, upon the party which declined to move in advance, and which therefore apologized for the perpetuation of knavery, villany, brutality, injustice, and foul dealing.

'Stick to your laws and systems and inst.i.tutions, and so long as you won't stir to amend them, I hold you accountable for that long newspaper list daily.'

He said this with a visible fire of conviction.

Tuckham stood bursting at the monstrousness of such a statement.

He condensed his indignant rejoinder to: 'Madness can't go farther!'

'There's an idea in it,' said Mr. Austin.

'It's an idea foaming at the mouth, then.'

'Perhaps it has no worse fault than that of not marching parallel with the truth,' said Mr. Austin, smiling. 'The party accusing in those terms ... what do you say, Captain Beauchamp?--supposing us to be pleading before a tribunal?'

Beauchamp admitted as much as that he had made the case gigantic, though he stuck to his charge against the Tory party. And moreover: the Tories-and the old Whigs, now Liberals, ranked under the heading of Tories--those Tories possessing and representing the wealth of the country, yet had not started one respectable journal that a lady could read through without offence to her, or a gentleman without disgust!

If there was not one English newspaper in existence independent of circulation and advertis.e.m.e.nts, and of the tricks to win them, the Tories were answerable for the vacancy. They, being the rich who, if they chose, could set an example to our Press by subscribing to maintain a Journal superior to the flattering of vile appet.i.tes--'all that nauseous matter,' Beauchamp stretched his fingers at the sheets Colonel Halkett was holding, and which he had not read--'those Tories,' he bowed to the colonel, 'I'm afraid I must say you, sir, are answerable for it.'

'I am very well satisfied with my paper,' said the colonel.

Beauchamp sighed to himself. 'We choose to be satisfied,' he said. His pure and mighty DAWN was in his thoughts: the unborn light of a day denied to earth!