Tales and Novels Volume X Part 23

"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 a.s.suredly is," said Lady Davenant, looking at him from behind her newspaper. "Distinguished above all his many compet.i.tors 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 s.e.x, 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 fas.h.i.+onable, and if so, quite respectable, you know, and in your style quite grand.

"And gossiping wonders at being so fine--

"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 gla.s.s 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 _soupcon_ 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 hook.

"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 _navete_?" 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, "Navete 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 navete 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."