Beauchamps Career | Page 9

was Nevil;
and if ever he contradicted a senior, it was in the interests of the
country. Veneration of heroes, living and dead, kept down his conceit.
He worshipped devotedly. From an early age he exacted of his
flattering ladies that they must love his hero. Not to love his hero was
to be strangely in error, to be in need of conversion, and he proselytized
with the ardour of the Moslem. His uncle Everard was proud of his
good looks, fire, and nonsense, during the boy's extreme youth. He
traced him by cousinships back to the great Earl Beauchamp of
Froissart, and would have it so; and he would have spoilt him had not
the young fellow's mind been possessed by his reverence for men of
deeds. How could he think of himself, who had done nothing,
accomplished nothing, so long as he brooded on the images of signal
Englishmen whose names were historic for daring, and the strong arm,
and artfulness, all given to the service of the country?--men of a
magnanimity overcast with simplicity, which Nevil held to be pure
insular English; our type of splendid manhood, not discoverable
elsewhere. A method of enraging him was to distinguish one or other of
them as Irish, Scottish, or Cambrian. He considered it a
dismemberment of the country. And notwithstanding the pleasure he
had in uniting in his person the strong red blood of the chivalrous Lord
Beauchamp with the hard and tenacious Romfrey blood, he hated the
title of Norman. We are English--British, he said. A family resting its
pride on mere ancestry provoked his contempt, if it did not show him
one of his men. He had also a disposition to esteem lightly the family
which, having produced a man, settled down after that effort for
generations to enjoy the country's pay. Boys are unjust; but Nevil
thought of the country mainly, arguing that we should not accept the
country's money for what we do not ourselves perform. These traits of
his were regarded as characteristics hopeful rather than the reverse;
none of his friends and relatives foresaw danger in them. He was a
capital boy for his elders to trot out and banter.
Mrs. Rosamund Culling usually went to his room to see him and doat
on him before he started on his rounds of an evening. She suspected

that his necessary attention to his toilet would barely have allowed him
time to finish his copy of the letter. Certain phrases had bothered him.
The thrice recurrence of 'ma patrie' jarred on his ear. 'Sentiments'
afflicted his acute sense of the declamatory twice. 'C'est avec les
sentiments du plus profond regret': and again, 'Je suis bien scar que
vous comprendrez mes sentiments, et m'accorderez l'honneur que je
reclame au nom de ma patrie outrage.' The word 'patrie' was broadcast
over the letter, and 'honneur' appeared four times, and a more delicate
word to harp on than the others!
'Not to Frenchmen,' said his friend Rosamund. 'I would put "Je suis
convaincu": it is not so familiar.'
'But I have written out the fair copy, ma'am, and that alteration seems a
trifle.'
'I would copy it again and again, Nevil, to get it right.'
'No: I'd rather see it off than have it right,' said Nevil, and he folded the
letter.
How the deuce to address it, and what direction to write on it, were
further difficulties. He had half a mind to remain at home to conquer
them by excogitation.
Rosamund urged him not to break his engagement to dine at the
Halketts', where perhaps from his friend Colonel Halkett, who would
never imagine the reason for the inquiry, he might learn how a letter to
a crack French regiment should be addressed and directed.
This proved persuasive, and as the hour was late Nevil had to act on her
advice in a hurry.
His uncle Everard enjoyed a perusal of the manuscript in his absence.
CHAPTER II
UNCLE, NEPHEW, AND ANOTHER

The Honourable Everard Romfrey came of a race of fighting earls,
toughest of men, whose high, stout, Western castle had weathered our
cyclone periods of history without changeing hands more than once,
and then but for a short year or two, as if to teach the original
possessors the wisdom of inclining to the stronger side. They had a
queen's chamber in it, and a king's; and they stood well up against the
charge of having dealt darkly with the king. He died among them--how
has not been told. We will not discuss the conjectures here. A savour of
North Sea foam and ballad pirates hangs about the early chronicles of
the family. Indications of an ancestry that had lived between the wave
and the cloud were discernible in their notions of right and wrong. But