Book: Helen

M >> Maria Edgeworth >> Helen




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 ecarte,
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 mere 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 lien corfee."

"_Poissarde!_ of one of the best born, best bred women in England!" cried
Lady Cecilia; "bien coiffee, I allow."

"Lady Cecilia is _si coiffee 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,' hut 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 he 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.

"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
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 _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 he
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 _naivete_?" 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, "Naviete 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 naivete 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'eloquence 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!"

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