CHAPTER XII.
One evening, Helen was looking over a beautiful scrap-book of Lady Cecilia’s. Beauclerc, who had stood by for some time, eyeing it in rather scornful silence, at length asked whether Miss Stanley was a lover of albums and autographs?
Helen had no album of her own, she said, but she was curious always to see the autographs of celebrated people.
“Why?” said Beauclerc.
“I don’t know. It seems to bring one nearer to them. It gives more reality to our imagination of them perhaps,” said Helen.
“The imagination is probably in most cases better than the reality,” replied he.
Lady Davenant stooped over Helen’s shoulder to look at the handwriting of the Earl of Essex—the writing of the gallant Earl of Essex, at sight of which, as she observed, the hearts of queens have beat high. “What a crowd of associated ideas rise at the sight of that autograph! who can look at it without some emotion?”
Helen could not. Beauclerc in a tone of raillery said he was sure, from the eager interest Miss Stanley took in these autographs, that she would in time become a collector herself; and he did not doubt that he should see her with a valuable museum, in which should be preserved the old pens of great men, that of Cardinal Chigi, for instance, who boasted that he wrote with the same pen for fifty years.
“And by that boast you know,” said Lady Davenant, “convinced the Cardinal de Retz that he was not a great, but a very little man. We will not have that pen in Helen’s museum.”
“Why not?” Beauclerc asked, “it was full as well worth having as many of the relics to be found in most young ladies’ and even old gentlemen’s museums. It was quite sufficient whether a man had been great or little that he had been talked of,—that he had been something of a lion—to make any thing belonging to him valuable to collectors, who preserve and worship even ‘the parings of lions’ claws.’”
That class of indiscriminate collectors Helen gave up to his ridicule; still he was not satisfied. He went on to the whole class of ‘lion-hunters,’ as he called them, condemning indiscriminately all those who were anxious to see celebrated people; he hoped Miss Stanley was not one of that class.
“No, not a lion-hunter,” said Helen; she hoped she never should be one of that set, but she confessed she had a great desire to see and to know distinguished persons, and she hoped that this sort of curiosity, or as she would rather call it enthusiasm, was not ridiculous, and did not deserve to be confounded with the mere trifling vulgar taste for sight-seeing and lion-hunting.
Beauclerc half smiled, but, not answering immediately, Lady Davenant said, that for her part she did not consider such enthusiasm as ridiculous; on the contrary, she liked it, especially in young people. “I consider the warm admiration of talent and virtue in youth as a promise of future excellence in maturer age.”
“And yet,” said Beauclerc, “the maxim ‘not to admire,’ is, I believe, the most approved in philosophy, and in practice is the great secret of happiness in this world.”
“In the fine world, it is a fine air, I know,” said Lady Davenant. “Among a set of fashionable young somnambulists it is doubtless the only art they know to make men happy or to keep them so; but this has nothing to do with philosophy, Beauclerc, though it has to do with conceit or affectation.”
Mr. Beauclerc, now piqued, with a look and voice of repressed feeling, said, that he hoped her ladyship did not include him among that set of fashionable somnambulists.
“I hope you will not include yourself in it,” answered Lady Davenant: “it is contrary to your nature, and if you join the nil admirari coxcombs, it can be only for fashion’s sake—mere affectation.”
Beauclerc made no reply, and Lady Davenant, turning to Helen, told her that several celebrated people were soon to come to Clarendon Park, and congratulated her upon the pleasure she would have in seeing them. “Besides being a great pleasure, it is a real advantage,” continued she, “to see and be acquainted early in life with superior people. It enables one to form a standard of excellence, and raises that standard high and bright. In men, the enthusiasm becomes glorious ambition to excel in arts or arms; in women, it refines and elevates the taste, and is so far a preventive against frivolous, vulgar company, and all their train of follies and vices. I can speak from my own recollection, of the great happiness it was to me, when I early in life became acquainted with some of the illustrious of my day.”
“And may I ask,” said Beauclerc, “if any of them equalled the expectations you had formed of them?”
“Some far exceeded them,” said Lady Davenant.
“You were fortunate. Every body cannot expect to be so happy,” said Beauclerc. “I believe, in general it is found that few great men of any times stand the test of near acquaintance. No man——”
“Spare me!” cried Lady Davenant, interrupting him, for she imagined she knew what he was going to say; “Oh! spare me that old sentence, ‘No man is a hero to his valet de chambre.’ I cannot endure to hear that for the thousandth time; I heartily wish it had never been said at all.”
“So do I,” replied Beauclerc; but Lady Davenant had turned away, and he now spoke in so low a voice, that only Helen heard him. “So do I detest that quotation, not only for being hackneyed, but for having been these hundred years the comfort both of lean-jawed envy and fat mediocrity.”
He took up one of Helen’s pencils and began to cut it—he looked vexed, and low to her observed, “Lady Davenant did not do me the honour to let me finish my sentence.”
“Then,” said Helen, “if Lady Davenant misunderstood you, why do not you explain?”
“No, no it is not worth while, if she could so mistake me.”
“But any body may be mistaken; do explain.”
“No, no,” said he, very diligently cutting the pencil to pieces; “she is engaged, you see, with somebody—something else.”
“But now she has done listening.”
“No, no, not now; there are too many people, and it’s of no consequence.”
By this time the company were all eagerly talking of every remarkable person they had seen, or that they regretted not having seen. Lady Cecilia now called upon each to name the man among the celebrated of modern days, whom they should most liked to have seen. By acclamation they all named Sir Walter Scott, ‘The Ariosto of the North!’
All but Beauclerc; he did not join the general voice; he said low to Helen with an air of disgust—“How tired I am of hearing him called ‘The Ariosto of the North!’”
“But by whatever name,” said Helen, “surely you join in that general wish to have seen him?”
“Yes, yes, I am sure of your vote,” cried Lady Cecilia, coming up to them, “You, Granville, would rather have seen Sir Walter Scott than any author since Shakespeare—would not you?”
“Pardon me, on the contrary, I am glad that I have never seen him.”
“Glad not to have seen him!—not?”
The word not was repeated with astonished incredulous emphasis by all voices. “Glad not to have seen Sir Walter Scott! How extraordinary! What can Mr. Beauclerc mean?”
“To make us all stare,” said Lady Davenant, “so do not gratify him. Do not wonder at him; we cannot believe what is impossible, you know, only because it is impossible. But,” continued she, laughing, “I know how it is. The spirit of contradiction—the spirit of singularity—two of your familiars, Granville, have got possession of you again, and we must have patience while the fit is on.”
“But I have not, and will not have patience,” said Lord Davenant, whose good-nature seldom failed, but who was now quite indignant.
“I wonder you are surprised, my dear Lord,” said Lady Davenant, “for Mr. Beauclerc likes so much better to go wrong by himself than to go right with all the world, that you could not expect that he would join the loud voice of universal praise.”
“I hear the loud voice of universal execration,” said Beauclerc; “you have all abused me, but whom have I abused? What have I said?”
“Nothing.” replied Lady Cecilia; “that is what we complain of. I could have better borne any abuse than indifference to Sir Walter Scott.”
“Indifference!” exclaimed Beauclerc—“what did I say Lady Cecilia, from which you could infer that I felt indifference? Indifferent to him whose name I cannot pronounce without emotion! I alone, of all the world, indifferent to that genius, pre-eminent and unrivalled, who has so long commanded the attention of the whole reading public, arrested at will the instant order of the day by tales of other times, and in this commonplace, this every-day existence of ours, created a holiday world, where, undisturbed by vulgar cares, we may revel in a fancy region of felicity, peopled with men of other times—shades of the historic dead, more illustrious and brighter than in life!”
“Yes, the great Enchanter,” cried Cecilia.
“Great and good Enchanter,” continued Beauclerc, “for in his magic there is no dealing with unlawful means. To work his ends, there is never aid from any one of the bad passions of our nature. In his writings there is no private scandal—no personal satire—no bribe to human frailty—no libel upon human nature. And among the lonely, the sad, and the suffering, how has he medicined to repose the disturbed mind, or elevated the dejected spirit!—perhaps fanned to a flame the unquenched spark, in souls not wholly lost to virtue. His morality is not in purple patches, ostentatiously obtrusive, but woven in through the very texture of the stuff. He paints man as he is, with all his faults, but with his redeeming virtues—the world as it goes, with all its compensating good and evil, yet making each man better contented with his lot. Without our well knowing how, the whole tone of our minds is raised—for, thinking nobly of our kind, he makes us think more nobly of ourselves!”
Helen, who had sympathised with Beauclerc in every word he had said, felt how true it is that
“——Next to genius, is the power Of feeling where true genius lies.”
“Yet after all this, Granville,” said Lady Cecilia, “you would make us believe you never wished to have seen this great man?”
Beauclerc made no answer.
“Oh! how I wish I had seen him!” said Helen to Lady Davenant, the only person present who had had that happiness.
“If you have seen Raeburn’s admirable pictures, or Chantrey’s speaking bust,” replied Lady Davenant, “you have as complete an idea of Sir Walter Scott as painting or sculpture can give. The first impression of his appearance and manner was surprising to me, I recollect, from its quiet, unpretending good nature; but scarcely had that impression been made before I was struck with something of the chivalrous courtesy of other times. In his conversation you would have found all that is most delightful in all his works—the combined talent and knowledge of the historian, novelist, antiquary, and poet. He recited poetry admirably, his whole face and figure kindling as he spoke: but whether talking, reading, or reciting, he never tired me, even with admiring; and it is curious that, in conversing with him, I frequently found myself forgetting that I was speaking to Sir Walter Scott; and, what is even more extraordinary, forgetting that Sir Walter Scott was speaking to me, till I was awakened to the conviction by his saying something which no one else could have said. Altogether he was certainly the most perfectly agreeable and perfectly amiable great man I ever knew.”
“And now, mamma,” said Lady Cecilia, “do make Granville confess honestly he would give the world to have seen him.”
“Do, Lady Davenant,” said Helen, who saw, or thought she saw, a singular emotion in Beauclerc’s countenance, and fancied he was upon the point of yielding; but Lady Davenant, without looking at him, replied,—“No, my dear, I will not ask him—I will not encourage him in affectation.”
At that word dark grew the brow of Beauclerc, and he drew back, as it were, into his shell, and out of it came no more that night, nor the next morning at breakfast. But, as far as could be guessed, he suffered internally, and no effort made to relieve did him any good, so every one seemed to agree that it was much better to let him alone, or let him be moody in peace, hoping that in time the mood would change; but it changed not till the middle of that day, when, as Helen was sitting working in Lady Davenant’s room, while she was writing, two quick knocks were heard at the door.
“Come in!” said Lady Davenant.
Mr. Beauclerc stood pausing on the threshold——
“Do not go, Miss Stanley,” said he, looking very miserable and ashamed, and proud, and then ashamed again.
“What is the matter, Granville?” said Lady Davenant.
“I am come to have a thorn taken out of my mind,” said he—“two thorns which have sunk deep, kept me awake half the night. Perhaps, I ought to be ashamed to own I have felt pain from such little things. But so it is; though, after all, I am afraid they will be invisible to you, Lady Davenant.”
“I will try with a magnifying-glass,” said she; “lend me that of your imagination, Granville—a high power, and do not look so very miserable, or Miss Stanley will laugh at you.”
“Miss Stanley is too good to laugh.”
“That is being too good indeed,” said Lady Davenant. “Well, now to the point.”
“You were very unjust to me, Lady Davenant, yesterday, and unkind.”
“Unkind is a woman’s word; but go on.”
“Surely man may mark ‘unkindness’ altered eye’ as well as woman,” said Beauclerc; “and from a woman and a friend he may and must feel it, or he is more or less than man.”
“Now what can you have to say, Granville, that will not be anticlimax to this exordium?”
“I will say no more if you talk of exordiums and anti-climaxes,” cried he. “You accused me yesterday of affectation—twice, when I was no more affected than you are.”
“Oh! is that my crime? Is that, what has hurt you so dreadfully? Here is the thorn that has gone in so deep! I am afraid that, as is usual, the accusation hurt the more because it was——”
“Do not say ‘true,’” interrupted Beauclerc, “for you really cannot believe it, Lady Davenant. You know me, and all my faults, and I have plenty; but you need not accuse me of one that I have not, and which from the bottom of my soul I despise. Whatever are my faults, they are at least real, and my own.”
“You may allow him that,” said Helen.
“Well I will—I do,” said Lady Davenant; “to appease you, poor injured innocence; though anyone in the world might think you affected at this moment. Yet I, who know you, know that it is pure real folly. Yes, yes, I acquit you of affectation.”
Beauclerc’s face instantly cleared up.
“But you said two thorns had gone into your mind—one is out, now for the other.”
“I do not feel that other, now,” said Beauclerc, “it was only a mistake. When I began with ‘No man,’ I was not going to say, ‘No man is a hero to his valet de chambre.’ If I had been allowed to finish my sentence, it would have saved a great deal of trouble, I was going to say that no man admires excellence more fervently than I do, and that my very reason for wishing not to see celebrated people is, lest the illusion should be dispelled.
“No description ever gives us an exact idea of any person, so that when any one has been much described and talked of, before we see them we form in our mind’s eye some image, some notion of our own, which always proves to be unlike the reality; and when we do afterwards see it, even if it be fairer or better than our imagination, still at first there is a sort of disappointment, from the non-agreement with our previously formed conception. Every body is disappointed the first time they see Hamlet, or Falstaff, as I think Dugald Stewart observes.”
“True; and I remember,” said Lady Davenant, “Madame de la Rochejaquelin once said to me, ‘I hate that people should come to see me. I know it destroys the illusion.’”
“Yes,” cried Beauclerc; “how much I dread to destroy any of those blessed illusions, which make the real happiness of life. Let me preserve the objects of my idolatry; I would not approach too near the shrine; I fear too much light. I would not know that they were false!”
“Would you then be deceived?” said Lady Davenant.
“Yes,” cried he; “sooner would I believe in all the fables of the Talmud than be without the ecstasy of veneration. It is the curse of age to be thus miserably disenchanted; to outlive all our illusions, all our hopes. That may be my doom in age, but, in youth, the high spring-time of existence, I will not be cursed with such a premature ossification of the heart. Oh! rather, ten thousand times rather, would I die this instant!”
“Well! but there is not the least occasion for your dying,” said Lady Davenant, “and I am seriously surprised that you should suffer so much from such slight causes; how will you ever get through the world if you stop thus to weigh every light word?”
“The words of most people,” replied he, “pass by me like the idle wind; but I do weigh every word from the very few whom I esteem, admire, and love; with my friends, perhaps, I am too susceptible, I love them so deeply.”
This is an excuse for susceptibility of temper which flatters friends too much to be easily rejected. Even Lady Davenant admitted it, and Helen thought it was all natural.
CHAPTER XIII.
Lady Cecilia was now impatient to have the house filled with company. She gave Helen a catalogue raisonné of all who were expected at Clarendon Park, some for a fashionable three days’ visit; some for a week; some for a fortnight or three weeks, be the same more or less. “I have but one fixed principle,” said she, “but I have one,—never to have tiresome people when it can possibly be avoided. Impossible, you know, it is sometimes. One’s own and one’s husband’s relations one must have; but, as for the rest, it’s one’s own fault if one fails in the first and last maxim of hospitality—to welcome the coming and speed the parting guest.”
The first party who arrived were of Lady Davenant’s particular friends, to whom Cecilia had kindly given the precedence, if not the preference, that her mother might have the pleasure of seeing them, and that they might have the honour of taking leave of her, before her departure from England.
They were political, fashionable, and literary; some of ascendency in society, some of parliamentary promise, and some of ministerial eminence—the aristocracy of birth and talents well mixed.
The aristocracy of birth and the aristocracy of talents are words now used more as a commonplace antithesis, than as denoting a real difference or contrast. In many instances, among those now living, both are united in a manner happy for themselves and glorious for their country. England may boast of having among her young nobility
men distinguished in literature and science, in senatorial eloquence and statesmanlike abilities.
But in this party at Clarendon Park there were more of the literary and celebrated than without the presence of Lady Davenant could perhaps have been assembled, or perhaps would have been desired by the general and Lady Cecilia. Cecilia’s beauty and grace were of all societies, and the general was glad for Lady Davenant’s sake and proud for his own part, to receive these distinguished persons at his house.
Helen had seen some of them before at Cecilhurst and at the Deanery. By her uncle’s friends she was kindly recognised, by others of course politely noticed; but miserably would she have been disappointed and mortified, if she had expected to fix general attention, or excite general admiration. Past and gone for ever are the days, if ever they were, when a young lady, on her entrance into life, captivated by a glance, overthrew by the first word, and led in triumph her train of admirers. These things are not to be done now-a-days.
Yet even when unnoticed Helen was perfectly happy. Her expectations were more than gratified in seeing and in hearing these distinguished people, and she sat listening to their conversation in delightful enjoyment, without even wanting to have it seen how well she understood.
There is a precious moment for young people, if taken at the prime, when first introduced into society, yet not expected, not called upon to take a part in it, they, as standers by, may see not only all the play, but the characters of the players, and may learn more of life and of human nature in a few months, than afterwards in years, when they are themselves actors upon the stage of life, and become engrossed by their own parts. There is a time, before the passions are awakened, when the understanding, with all the life of nature, fresh from all that education can do to develop and cultivate, is at once eager to observe and able to judge, for a brief space blessed with the double advantages of youth and age. This time once gone is lost irreparably; and how often it is lost—in premature vanity, or premature dissipation!
Helen had been chiefly educated by a man, and a very sensible man, as Dean Stanley certainly was in all but money matters. Under his masculine care, while her mind had been brought forward on some points, it had been kept back on others, and while her understanding had been cultivated, it had been done without the aid of emulation or competition; not by touching the springs of pride, but by opening sources of pure pleasure; and this pure pleasure she now enjoyed, grateful to that dear uncle. For the single inimitable grace of simplicity which she possessed, how many mothers, governesses, and young ladies themselves, willingly, when they see how much it charms, would too late exchange half the accomplishments, all the acquirements, so laboriously achieved!
Beauclerc, who had seen something of the London female world, was, both from his natural taste and from contrast, pleased with Helen’s fresh and genuine character, and he sympathised with all her silent delight. He never interrupted her in her enthusiastic contemplation of the great stars, but he would now and then seize an interval of rest to compare her observations with his own; anxious to know whether she estimated their relative magnitude and distances as he did. These snatched moments of comparison and proof of agreement in their observations, or the pleasure of examining the causes of their difference of opinion, enhanced the enjoyment of this brilliant fortnight; and not a cloud obscured the deep serene.
Notwithstanding all the ultra-refined nonsense Beauclerc had talked about his wish not to see remarkable persons, no one could enjoy it more, as Helen now perceived; and she saw also that he was considered as a man of promise among all these men of performance. But there were some, perhaps very slight things, which raised him still more in her mind, because they showed superiority of character. She observed his manner towards the general in this company, where he had himself the ‘vantage ground—so different now from what it had been in the Old-Forest battle, when only man to man, ward to guardian. Before these distinguished persons there was a look—a tone of deference at once most affectionate and polite.
“It is so generous,” said Lady Cecilia to Helen; “is not it?” and Helen agreed.
This brilliant fortnight ended too soon, as Helen thought, but Lady Cecilia had had quite enough of it. “They are all to go to-morrow morning, and I am not sorry for it,” said she at night, as she threw herself into an arm-chair, in Helen’s room; and, after having indulged in a refreshing yawn, she exclaimed, “Very delightful, very delightful! as you say, Helen, it has all been; but I am not sure that I should not be very much tired if I had much more of it. Oh! yes, I admired them all amazingly, but then admiring all day long is excessively wearisome. The very attitude of looking up fatigues both body and mind. Mamma is never tired, because she never has to look up; she can always look down, and that’s so grand and so easy. She has no idea how the neck of my poor mind aches this minute; and my poor eyes! blasted with excess of light. How yours have stood it so well, Helen, I cannot imagine! how much stronger they must be than mine. I must confess, that, without the relief of music now and then, and ecarté, and that quadrille, bad as it was, I should never have got through it to-night alive or awake. But,” cried she, starting up in her chair, “do you know Horace Churchill stays to-morrow. Such a compliment from him to stay a day longer than he intended! And do you know what he says of your eyes, Helen?—that they are the best listeners he ever spoke to. I should warn you though, my dear, that he is something, and not a little, I believe, of a male coquette. Though he is not very young, but he well understands all the advantages of a careful toilette. He has, like that George Herbert in Queen Elizabeth’s time, ‘a genteel humour for dress.’ He is handsome still, and his fine figure, and his fine feelings, and his fine fortune, have broken two or three hearts; nevertheless I am delighted that he stays, especially that he stays on your account.”
“Upon my account!” exclaimed Helen. “Did not you see that, from the first day when Mr. Churchill had the misfortune to be placed beside me at dinner, he utterly despised me: he began to talk to me, indeed, but left his sentence unfinished, his good story untold, the instant he caught the eye of a grander auditor.”
Lady Cecilia had seen this, and marvelled at a well-bred man so far forgetting himself in vanity; but this, she observed, was only the first day; he had afterwards changed his manner towards Helen completely.
“Yes, when he saw Lady Davenant thought me worth speaking to. But, after all, it was quite natural that he should not know well what to say to me. I am only a young lady. I acquit him of all peculiar rudeness to me, for I am sure Mr. Churchill really could not talk for only one insignificant hearer, could not bring out his good things, unless he felt secure of possessing the attention of the whole dinner-table, so I quite forgive him.”
“After this curse of forgiveness, my dear Helen, I will wish you a good night,” said Lady Cecilia, laughing; and she retired with a fear that there would not be jealousy enough between the gentlemen, or that Helen would not know how to play them one against another.
There is a pleasure in seeing a large party disperse; in staying behind when others go:—there is advantage as well as pleasure, which is felt by the timid, because they do not leave their characters behind them; and rejoiced in by the satirical, because the characters of the departed and departing are left behind, fair game for them. Of this advantage no one could be more sensible, no one availed himself of it with more promptitude and skill, than Mr. Churchill: for well he knew that though wit may fail, humour may not take—though even flattery may pall upon the sense, scandal, satire, and sarcasm, are resources never failing for the lowest capacities, and sometimes for the highest.
This morning, in the library at Clarendon Park, he looked out of the window at the departing guests, and, as each drove off, he gave to each his coup de patte. To Helen, to whom it was new, it was wonderful to see how each, even of those next in turn to go, enjoyed the demolition of those who were just gone; how, blind to fate, they laughed, applauded, and licked the hand just raised to strike themselves. Of the first who went—“Most respectable people,” said Lady Cecilia; “a bonne mère de famille.”
“Most respectable people!” repeated Horace—“most respectable people, old coach and all.” And then, as another party drove off—“No fear of any thing truly respectable here.”
“Now, Horace, how can you say so?—she is so amiable and so clever.”
“So clever? only, perhaps, a thought too fond of English liberty and French dress. Poissarde bien coiffée.”
“Poissarde! of one of the best born, best bred women in England!” cried Lady Cecilia; “bien coiffée, I allow.”
“Lady Cecilia is si coiffée de sa belle amie, that I see I must not say a word against her, till—the fashion changes. But, hark! I hear a voice I never wish to hear.”
“Yet nobody is better worth hearing——”
“Oh! yes, the queen of the Blues—the Blue Devils!”
“Hush!” cried the aide-de-camp, “she is coming in to take leave.”
Then, as the queen of the Blue Devils entered, Mr. Churchill, in the most humbly respectful manner, begged—“My respects—I trust your grace will do me the favour—the justice to remember me to all your party who—do me the honour to bear me in mind—” then, as she left the room, he turned about and laughed.
“Oh! you sad, false man!” cried the lady next in turn to go. “I declare, Mr. Churchill, though I laugh, I am quite afraid to go off before you.”
“Afraid! what could malice or envy itself find to say of your ladyship, intacte as you are?—Intacte!” repeated he, as she drove off, “intacte!—a well chosen epithet, I flatter myself!”
“Yes, intacte—untouched—above the breath of slander,” cried Lady Cecilia.
“I know it: so I say,” replied Churchill: “fidelity that has stood all temptations—to which it has ever been exposed; and her husband is——”
“A near relation of mine,” said Lady Cecilia. “I am not prudish as to scandal in general,” continued she, laughing; “‘a chicken, too, might do me good,’ but then the fox must not prey at home. No one ought to stand by and hear their own relations abused.”
“A thousand pardons! I depended too much on the general maxim—that the nearer the bone the sweeter the slander.”
“Nonsense!” said Lady Cecilia.
“I meant to say, the nearer the heart the dearer the blame. A cut against a first cousin may go wrong—but a bosom friend—oh! how I have succeeded against best friends; scolded all the while, of course, and called a monster. But there is Sir Stephen bowing to you.” Then, as Lady Cecilia kissed her hand to him from the window, Churchill went on: “By the by, without any scandal, seriously I heard something—I was quite concerned—that he had been of late less in his study and more in the boudoir of ———. Surely it cannot be true!”
“Positively false,” said Lady Cecilia.
“At every breath a reputation dies,” said Beauclerc.
“‘Pon my soul, that’s true!” said the aide-de-camp. “Positively, hit or miss, Horace has been going on, firing away with his wit, pop, pop, pop! till he has bagged—how many brace?”
Horace turned away from him contemptuously, and looked to see whereabouts Lady Davenant might be all this time.
CHAPTER XIV.
Lady Davenant was at the far end of the room engrossed, Churchill feared, by the newspaper; as he approached she laid it down, and said,—
“How scandalous some of these papers have become, but it is the fault of the taste of the age. ‘Those who live to please, must please to live.’”
Horace was not sure whether he was cut or not, but he had the presence of mind not to look hurt. He drew nearer to Lady Davenant, seated himself, and taking up a book as if he was tired of folly, to which he had merely condescended, he sat and read, and then sat and thought, the book hanging from his hand.
The result of these profound thoughts he gave to the public, not to the aide-de-camp; no more of the little pop-gun pellets of wits—but now was brought out reason and philosophy. In a higher tone he now reviewed the literary, philosophical, and political world, with touches of La Bruyere and Rochefoucault in the characters he drew and in the reflections he made; with an air, too, of sentimental contrition for his own penetration and fine moral sense, which compelled him to see and to be annoyed by the faults of such superior men.
The analysis he made of every mind was really perfect—in one respect, not a grain of bad but was separated from the good, and held up clean and clear to public view. And as an anatomist he showed such knowledge both of the brain and of the heart, such an admirable acquaintance with all their diseases and handled the probe and the scalpel so well, with such a practised hand!
“Well, really this is comfortable,” said Lord Davenant, throwing himself back in his arm-chair—“True English comfort, to sit at ease and see all one’s friends so well dissected! Happy to feel that it is our duty to our neighbour to see him well cut up—ably anatomised for the good of society; and when I depart—when my time comes—as come it must, nobody is to touch me but Professor Churchill. It will be a satisfaction to know that I shall be carved as a dish fit for gods, not hewed as a carcase for hounds. So now remember, Cecilia, I call on you to witness—I hereby, being of sound mind and body, leave and bequeath my character, with all my defects and deficiencies whatsoever, and all and any singular curious diseases of the mind, of which I may die possessed, wishing the same many for his sake,—to my good friend Doctor Horace Churchill, professor of moral, philosophic, and scandalous anatomy, to be by him dissected at his good pleasure for the benefit of society.”
“Many thanks, my good lord; and I accept your legacy for the honour—not the value of the gift, which every body must be sensible is nothing,” said Churchill, with a polite bow—“absolutely nothing. I shall never be able to make anything of it.”
“Try—try, my dear friend,” answered Lord Davenant. “Try, don’t be modest.”
“That would be difficult when so distinguished,” said Beauclerc, with an admirable look of proud humility.
“Distinguished Mr. Horace Churchill assuredly is,” said Lady Davenant, looking at him from behind her newspaper. “Distinguished above all his many competitors in this age of scandal; he has really raised the art to the dignity of a science. Satire, scandal, and gossip, now hand-in-hand—the three new graces: all on the same elevated rank—three, formerly considered as so different, and the last left to our inferior sex, but now, surely, to be a male gossip is no reproach.”
“O, Lady Davenant!—male gossip—what an expression!”
“What a reality!”
“Male gossip!—‘Tombe sur moi le ciel!’” cried Churchill.
“‘Pourvu que je me venge,’ always understood,” pursued Lady Davenant; “but why be so afraid of the imputation of gossiping, Mr. Churchill? It is quite fashionable, and if so, quite respectable, you know, and in your style quite grand.
“Malice, to be hated, needs but to be seen, but now when it is elegantly dressed we look upon it without shame or consciousness of evil; we grow to doat upon it—so entertaining, so graceful, so refined. When vice loses half its grossness, it loses all its deformity. Humanity used to be talked of when our friends were torn to pieces, but now there is such a philosophical perfume thrown over the whole operation, that we are irresistibly attracted. How much we owe to such men as Mr. Churchill, who make us feel detraction virtue!”
He bowed low as Lady Davenant, summoned by her lord, left the room, and there he stood as one condemned but not penitent.
“If I have not been well sentenced,” said he, as the door closed, “and made ‘to feel detraction virtue!’—But since Lady Cecilia cannot help smiling at that, I am acquitted, and encouraged to sin again the first opportunity. But Lady Davenant shall not be by, nor Lord Davenant either.”
Lady Cecilia sat down to write a note, and Mr. Churchill walked round the room in a course of critical observation on the pictures, of which, as of every thing else, he was a supreme judge. At last he put his eye and his glass down to something which singularly attracted his attention on one of the marble tables.
“Pretty!” said Lady Cecilia, “pretty are not they?—though one’s so tired of them every where now—those doves!”
“Doves!” said Churchill, “what I am admiring are gloves, are not they, Miss Stanley?” said he, pointing to an old pair of gloves, which, much wrinkled and squeezed together, lay on the beautiful marble in rather an unsightly lump.
“Poor Doctor V———,” cried Helen to Cecilia; “that poor Doctor V———-is as absent as ever! he is gone, and has forgotten his gloves!”
“Absent! oh, as ever!” said Lady Cecilia, going on with her note, “the most absent man alive.”
“Too much of that sort of thing I think there is in Doctor V———-,” pursued Churchill: “a touch of absence of mind, giving the idea of high abstraction, becomes a learned man well enough; but then it should only be slight, as a soupçon of rouge, which may become a pretty woman; all depends on the measure, the taste, with which these things are managed—put on.”
“There is nothing managed, nothing put on in Doctor V———,” cried Helen, eagerly, her colour rising; “it is all perfectly sincere, true in him, whatever it be.”
Beauclerc put down his book.
“All perfectly true! You really think so, Miss Stanley?” said Churchill, smiling, and looking superior down.
“I do, indeed,” cried Helen.
“Charming—so young! How I do love that freshness of mind!”
“Impertinent fellow! I could knock him down, felt Beauclerc.
“And you think all Doctor V———‘s humility true?” said Churchill. “Yes, perfectly!” said Helen; “but I do not wonder you are surprised at it, Mr. Churchill.”
She meant no malice, though for a moment he thought she did; and he winced under Beauclerc’s smile.
“I do not wonder that any one who does not know Doctor V——— should be surprised by his great humility,” added Helen.
“You are sure that it is not pride that apes humility?” asked Churchill.
“Yes, quite sure!”
“Yet—” said Churchill (putting his malicious finger through a great hole in the thumb of the doctor’s glove) “I should have fancied that I saw vanity through the holes in these gloves, as through the philosopher’s cloak of old.”
“Horace is a famous fellow for picking holes and making much of them, Miss Stanley, you see,” said the aide-de-camp.
“Vanity! Doctor V——has no vanity!” said Helen, “if you knew him.”
“No vanity! Whom does Miss Stanley mean?” cried the aide-de-camp. “No vanity? that’s good. Who? Horace?”
“Mauvais plaisant!” Horace put him by, and, happily not easily put out of countenance, he continued to Helen,—
“You give the good doctor credit, too, for all his naïveté?” said Churchill.
“He does not want credit for it,” said Helen, “he really has it.”
“I wish I could see things as you do, Miss Stanley.”
“Show him that, Helen,” cried Lady Cecilia, looking at a table beside them, on which lay one of those dioramic prints which appear all a confusion of lines till you look at them in their right point of view. “Show him that—it all depends, and so does seeing characters, on getting the right point of view.”
“Ingenious!” said Churchill, trying to catch the right position; “but I can’t, I own—” then abruptly resuming, “Navïeté charms me at fifteen,” and his eye glanced at Helen, then was retracted, then returning to his point of view, “at eighteen perhaps may do,” and his eyes again turned to Helen, “at eighteen—it captivates me quite,” and his eye dwelt. “But naïveté at past fifty, verging to sixty, is quite another thing, really rather too much for me. I like all things in season, and above all, simplicity will not bear long keeping. I have the greatest respect possible for our learned and excellent friend, but I wish this could be any way suggested to him, and that he would lay aside this out-of-season simplicity.”
“He cannot lay aside his nature,” said Helen, “and I am glad of it, it is such a good nature.”
“Kind-hearted creature he is, I never heard him say a severe word of any one,” said Lady Cecilia.
“What a sweet man he must he!” said Horace, making a face at which none present, not even Helen, could forbear to smile. “His heart, I am sure, is in the right place always. I only wish one could say the same of his wig. And would it be amiss if he sometimes (I would not be too hard upon him, Miss Stanley), once a fortnight, suppose—brushed, or caused to be brushed, that coat of his?”
“You have dusted his jacket for him famously, Horace, I think,” said the aide-de-camp.
At this instant the door opened, and in came the doctor himself.
Lady Cecilia’s hand was outstretched with her note, thinking, as the door opened, that she should see the servant come in, for whom she had rung.
“What surprises you all so, my good friends,” said the doctor, stopping and looking round in all his native simplicity.
“My dear doctor” said Lady Cecilia, “only we all thought you were gone—that’s all.”
“And I am not gone, that’s all. I stayed to write a letter, and am come here to look for—but I cannot find-my—”
“Your gloves, perhaps, doctor, you are looking for,” said Churchill, going forward, and with an air of the greatest respect and consideration, both for the gloves and for their owner, he presented them; then shook the doctor by the hand, with a cordiality which the good soul thought truly English, and, bowing him out, added, “How proud he had been to make his acquaintance,—au revoir, he hoped, in Park Lane.”
“Oh you treacherous—!” cried Lady Cecilia, turning to Horace, as soon as the unsuspecting philosopher was fairly gone. “Too bad really! If he were not the most simple-minded creature extant, he must have seen, suspected, something from your look; and what would have become of you if the doctor had come in one moment sooner, and had heard you—I was really frightened.”
“Frightened! so was I, almost out of my wits,” said Churchill. “Les revenans always frighten one; and they never hear any good of themselves, for which reason I make it a principle, when once I have left a room, full of friends especially, never—never to go back. My gloves, my hat, my coat, I’d leave, sooner than lose my friends. Once I heard it said, by one who knew the world and human nature better than any of us—once I heard it said in jest, but in sober earnest I say, that I would not for more than I am worth be placed, without his knowing it, within earshot of my best friend.”
“What sort of a best friend can yours he?” cried Beauclerc.
“Much like other people’s, I suppose,” replied Horace, speaking with perfect nonchalance—“much like other people’s best friends. Whosoever expects to find better, I guess, will find worse, if he live in the world we live in.”
“May I go out of the world before I believe or suspect any such thing?” cried Beauclerc. “Rather than have the Roman curse light upon me, ‘May you survive all your friends and relations!’ may I die a thousand times!”
“Who talks of dying, in a voice so sweet—a voice so loud?” said provoking Horace, in his calm, well-bred tone; “for my part, I who have the honour of speaking to you, can boast, that never since I was of years of discretion (counting new style, beginning at thirteen, of course)—never have I lost a friend, a sincere friend—never, for this irrefragable reason—since that nonage, never was I such a neophyte as to fancy I had found that lusus natures, a friend perfectly sincere.”
“How I pity you!” cried Beauclerc, “if you are in earnest; but in earnest you can’t be.”
“Pardon me, I can, and I am. And in earnest you will oblige me, Mr. Beauclerc, if you will spare me your pity: for, all things in this world considered,” said Horace Churchill, drawing himself up, “I do not conceive that I am much an object of pity.” Then, turning upon his heel, he walked away, conscious, however, half an instant afterwards, that he had drawn himself up too high, and that for a moment his temper had spoiled his tone, and betrayed him into a look and manner too boastful, bordering on the ridiculous. He was in haste to repair the error.
Not Garrick, in the height of his celebrity and of his susceptibility, was ever more anxious than Horace Churchill to avert the stroke of ridicule—to guard against the dreaded smile. As he walked away, he felt behind his back that those he left were smiling in silence.
Lady Cecilia had thrown herself on a sofa, resting, after the labour of l’éloquence de billet. He stopped, and, leaning over the back of the sofa on which she reclined, repeated an Italian line in which was the word “pavoneggiarsi.”
“My dear Lady Cecilia, you, who understand and feel Italian so well, how expressive are some of their words! Pavoneggiarsi!—untranslatable. One cannot say well in English, to peacock oneself. To make oneself like unto a peacock is flat; but pavoneggiarsi—action, passion, picture, all in one! To plume oneself comes nearest to it; but the word cannot be given, even by equivalents, in English; nor can it be naturalised, because, in fact, we have not the feeling. An Englishman is too proud to boast—too bashful to strut; if ever he peacocks himself, it is in a moment of anger, not in display. The language of every country,” continued he, raising his voice, in order to reach Lady Davenant, who just then returned to the room, as he did not wish to waste a philosophical observation on Lady Cecilia,—“the language of every country is, to a certain degree, evidence, record, history of its character and manners.” Then, lowering his voice almost to a whisper, but very distinct, turning while he spoke so as to make sure that Miss Stanley heard—“Your young friend this morning quite captivated me by her nature—nature, the thing that now is most uncommon, a real natural woman; and when in a beauty, how charming! How delicious when one meets with effusion de coeur: a young lady, too, who speaks pure English, not a leash of languages at once; and cultivated, too, your friend is, for one does not like ignorance, if one could have knowledge without pretension—so hard to find the golden mean!—and if one could find it, one might not be nearer to——”
Lady Cecilia listened for the finishing word, but none came. It all ended in a sigh, to be interpreted as she pleased. A look towards the ottoman, where Beauclerc had now taken his seat beside Miss Stanley, seemed to point the meaning out: but Lady Cecilia knew her man too well to understand him.
Beauclerc, seated on the ottoman, was showing to Helen some passages in the book he was reading; she read with attention, and from time to time looked up with a smile of intelligence and approbation. What either said Horace could not hear, and he was the more curious, and when the book was put down, after carelessly opening others he took it up. Very much surprised was he to find it neither novel nor poem: many passages were marked with pencil notes of approbation, he took it for granted these were Bleauclerc’s; there he was mistaken, they were Lady Davenant’s. She was at her work-table. Horace, book in hand, approached; the book was not in his line, it was more scientific than literary—it was for posterity more than for the day; he had only turned it over as literary men turn over scientific books, to seize what may serve for a new simile or a good allusion; besides, among his philosophical friends, the book being talked of, it was well to know enough of it to have something to say, and he had said well, very judiciously he had praised it among the elect; but now it was his fancy to depreciate it with all his might; not that he disliked the author or the work now more than he had done before, but he was in the humour to take the opposite side from Beauclerc, so he threw the book from him contemptuously “Rather a slight hasty thing, in my opinion,” said he. Beauclerc’s eyes took fire as he exclaimed, “Slight! hasty! this most noble, most solid work!”
“Solid in your opinion,” said Churchill, with a smile deferential, slightly sneering.
“Our own opinion is all that either of us can give,” said Beauclerc; “in my opinion it is the finest view of the progress of natural philosophy, the most enlarged, the most just in its judgments of the past, and in its prescience of the future; in the richness of experimental knowledge, in its theoretic invention, the greatest work by any one individual since the time of Bacon.”
“And Bacon is under your protection, too?”
“Protection! my protection?” said Beauclerc.
“Pardon me, I simply meant to ask if you are one of those who swear by Lord Verulam.”
“I swear by no man, I do not swear at all, not on philosophical subjects especially; swearing adds nothing to faith,” said Beauclerc.
“I stand corrected,” said Churchill, “and I would go further, and add that in argument enthusiasm adds nothing to reason—much as I admire, as we all admire,” glancing at Miss Stanley, “that enthusiasm with which this favoured work has been advocated!”
“I could not help speaking warmly,” cried Beauclerc; “it is a book to inspire enthusiasm; there is such a noble spirit all through it, so pure from petty passions, from all vulgar jealousies, all low concerns! Judge of a book, somebody says, by the impression it leaves on your mind when you lay it down; this book stands that test, at least with me, I lay it down with such a wish to follow—with steps ever so unequal still to follow, where it points the way.”
“Bravo! bravissimo! hear him, hear him! print him, print him! hot-press from the author to the author, hot-press!” cried Churchill, and he laughed.
Like one suddenly awakened from the trance of enthusiasm by the cold touch of ridicule, stood Beauclerc, brought down from heaven to earth, and by that horrid little laugh, not the heart’s laugh.
“But my being ridiculous does not make my cause so, and that is a comfort.”
“And another comfort you may have, my dear Granville,” said Lady Davenant, “that ridicule is not the test of truth; truth should be the test of ridicule.”
“But where is the book?” continued Beauclerc.
Helen gave it to him.
“Now, Mr. Churchill,” said Beauclerc; “I am really anxious, I know you are such a good critic, will you show me these faults? blame as well as praise must always be valuable from those who themselves excel.”
“You are too good,” said Churchill.
“Will you then be good enough to point out the errors for me?”
“Oh, by no means,” cried Churchill, “don’t note me, do not quote me, I am nobody, and I cannot give up my authorities.”
“But the truth is all I want to get at,” said Beauclerc.
“Let her rest, my dear sir, at the bottom of her well; there she is, and there she will be for ever and ever, and depend upon it none of our windlassing will ever bring her up.”
“Such an author as this,” continued Beauclerc, “would have been so glad to have corrected any error.”
“So every author tells you, but I never saw one of them who did not look blank at a list of errata—if you knew how little one is thanked for them!”
“But you would be thanked now,” said Beauclerc:—“the faults in style, at least.”
“Nay, I am no critic,” said Churchill, confident in his habits of literary detection; “but if you ask me,” said he, as he disdainfully flirted the leaves back and forward with a “There now!” and a “Here now!” “We should not call that good writing—you could not think this correct? I may be wrong, but I should not use this phrase. Hardly English that—colloquial, I think; and this awkward ablative absolute—never admitted now.”
“Thank you,” said Beauclerc, “these faults are easily mended.”
“Easily mended, say you? I say, better make a new one.”
“WHO COULD?” said Beauclerc.
“How many faults you see,” said Helen, “which I should never have perceived unless you had pointed them out, and I am sorry to know them now.” Smiling at Helen’s look of sincere mortification, in contrast at this moment with Mr. Churchill’s air of satisfied critical pride, Lady Davenant said,—
“Why sorry, my dear Helen? No human work can be perfect; Mr. Churchill may be proud of that strength of eye which in such a powerful light can count the spots. But whether it be the best use to make of his eyes, or the best use that can be made of the light, remains to be considered.”