“You’re a Sybarite, Sam, a frankly brutal sensualist. Well, I give you credit for making no pretences. You aren’t a hypocrite anyway.”
“It isn’t worth while with you, Beaumont. There’s nothing to be got out of you by make-believe. But I can pull a long face and snivel and turn up the whites of my eyes and groan on occasion. It’s in the family, you know. But I’m not paid for doing it. My uncle is. That’s all the difference. But here we are at the club. Don’t think I’ll go in just yet. I’ll do a half-time at the theatre. So long.”
Beaumont entered the reading-room of the club. There was no library in this feeble imitation of a London club. He took up the current number of the “Nineteenth Century Review.” He had to cut its leaves. The members of the club, manufacturers, merchants, and the larger shopkeepers preferred to have their monthlies boiled down for them by Mr. Stead in the “Review of Reviews.” But Edward could not concentrate his mind on the weighty problems discussed by the sages of the century. His thoughts wandered to the scene in the Market Place.
“Which is right,” he mused, “that girl or Sam? The girl, of course. But am I any better, au fond, than Storth, the epicurean little beast? Is there any difference between us, except that he is honest with himself? I spend my leisure in political agitation, and rather plume myself on being a Town Councillor and Vice-President of the Liberal Two Hundred at twenty-four, and would rather any day wag my tongue on a public platform for nothing than earn a couple of guineas by exercising the same useful member in the County Court or Police Court. But do I really care for the political reforms for which I agitate, and am I really indignant at the wrongs about which I wax eloquent? How much of my wrath against the House of Lords, I wonder, arises from the fact that I am not myself the ‘tenth transmitter of a foolish face?’ When I thunder against the iniquity of a restricted franchise, is it not, perhaps, mainly because it tickles my ears to hear the answering plaudits of the great unfranchised? Sam Storth likes soft living, and says so, and in that he is honest. I like monstrari digito et diceri hic Niger est. But I call my liking public spirit, intelligent Liberalism, and look to be, and indeed am, patted on the back for it by others and myself. His liking I call sensuality and scorn. But aren’t his ways and my ways equally a self-gratification in different forms? Now, that girl does really seem to care for people. I’ll be bound she feels like a sister to the poor wretches of the slums. There’s a screw loose with you somewhere, Edward, my boy. What’s the matter with you? That girl’s got religion. She believes in Christ. Curious; but I’ll bet she does. What a facility women have for accepting myths for facts. The clear, cold light of science is a grand thing, but I sometimes feel inclined to say, ‘Hang the clear, cold light of science.’ Heigho! the ‘Nineteenth’s’ deadly dull, and the ‘Contemporary’ attain a deeper depth of Beotian opacity. I wonder if I can cut in at a rubber.” And Beaumont threw his magazine aside and ascended to the higher regions of the Club, where two or three rooms were set aside for the devotees of whist, nap and poker.
Edward Beaumont and Sam Storth, though both solicitors, and partners in the practice of a much and perhaps undeservedly abused profession, were in almost every particular in which men may be compared or contrasted as dissimilar as two men may well be. Beaumont was a native of Huddersfield, and his family connections with the town and district were numerous and intricate. The Beaumonts of that vicinity are a numerous progeny, and may be found in every calling, in every trade and every craft. The Squire of White Meadows is a Beaumont, and traces an unbroken line of descent from one of the most intrepid of the Crusaders, whose effigy may be seen to this day in the small, time-worn church on the ancestral domain. The Beaumonts, or de Bellomontes, were, aforetime, lords of the manor of Huddersfield itself, but that position passed from them many centuries ago. Whether or no our Edward Beaumont was of the Beaumonts of White Meadows is a matter which Edward himself affected to regard as of absolutely no importance. His father had been, like himself, a solicitor, and had founded the present firm of Beaumont and Storth. His grandfather had been a cloth manufacturer, and as to his great grandfather, Edward declared that he, too, had been either a cloth manufacturer of the smallest, or, more likely, a handloom weaver of a saving disposition. As in Huddersfield it is quite exceptional for anyone to be able to refer to a grandfather at all, Edward could very well afford to affect indifference on the score of his great grand-sire’s status.
If looks go for anything Beaumont might certainly have pretended to aristocratic lineage. He was tall above the ordinary, and well proportioned, his frame well-knit and active, his features regular, his hair abundant, of the hue of the raven, and with the natural sheen of perfect health. His eyes, well shaped, were dark and full of fire and expression. He had a well-formed mouth, mobile lips, of that fullness that may betoken either the orator, the poet, or the sensualist, a rounded, dimpled chin, the long White hand commonly supposed to be indicative of gentle birth. But the tips of the fingers were square rather than finely pointed, a trait which a palmist had assured him indicated stubborness of character or resoluteness of will, but which Edward asserted more probably suggested that one of his female ancestors had been engaged in the manual exercise of “twisting,” one of the many processes of cloth manufacture, and one eminently calculated to stub the fingers of the artist.
Edward Beaumont had been carefully educated, and had taken to books like a duck to water. His natural aptitude and facility of apprehension made his studies easy to him, and though no one who knows what is properly implied in the term scholarship, would have called him a scholar, he had taken a fair degree at his University, at that time a somewhat uncommon attainment in the lower branch of the legal profession, and could no doubt hold his own indifferent will among other educated gentlemen. He was reputed to be a sound and careful lawyer, when he could be induced to take the necessary trouble, but none questioned that he was always a ready one, and it is not, therefore, surprising that he preferred the change and excitement and rivalry of the Courts to the more prosaic and monotonous and retired, if also more profitable, exercise of the dreary art of conveyancing. The same alertness of mind and nimbleness of speech that served him well in the forum inclined him to the political platform, and already he was a warm favourite of the working-classes at the meetings under the auspices of the Liberal Party with which the adults of the West Riding beguile the tedium of the winter months. Edward was wont to declare that he had imbibed Radicalism with his mother’s milk, and certain it is he could point with equal truth and pride to more than one of his relations who had suffered in the popular cause. His partner Sam Storth, used to complain that Edward’s political engagements took him a great deal away from the office, and if Edward laughingly pleaded that his public appearances were a capital advertisement of the firm, his more sagacious partner retorted that Edward’s “clap-trap clientèle,” as he was pleased to stigmatise it, wasn’t worth half the time it took to attend to it, and that for every decent client Beaumont’s Radicalism attracted it frightened a dozen better ones away.
“Depend upon it, Beaumont,” he said one day, “Leatham’s is the right tip.”
Now, Mr. Leatham was the respected member for Huddersfield, and sat, of course, in the Liberal interest.
“Expound, most sapient Sam,” said Edward.