The short interval before their departure passed off agreeably to all. Quackinboss never wearied at hearing the doctor talk, and led him on to speak of America, and what he had seen of the people, with an intense interest.
“Could you live here, sir?” asked Quackinboss, at the close of one of these discussions.
“It is my intention to live and die here,” said the doctor. “I go back to England now, that this boy may pay off a long load of vengeance for me. Ay, Alfred, you shall hear my long-cherished plan at once. I want you to become a fellow of that same University which drove me from its walls. They were not wrong, perhaps,—at least, I will not now dispute their right,—but I mean to be more in the right than they were. My name shall stand upon their records associated with their proudest achievements, and Layton the scholar, Layton the discoverer, eclipse the memory of Layton the rebel.”
This was the dream of many a year of struggle, defeat, and depression; and now that it was avowed, it seemed as though his heart were relieved of a great load of care. As for Alfred, the goal was one to stimulate all his energies, and he pledged himself fervently to do his utmost to attain it.
“And I must be with you the day you win,” cried Quackinboss, with an enthusiasm so unusual with him that both Layton and his son turned their glances towards him, and saw that his eyes were glassy with tears. Ashamed of his emotion, he started suddenly up, saying, “I'll go and book our berths for Wednesday next.”
CHAPTER XLVIII. AT ROME
Let us now return to some of the actors in our drama who for a while back have been playing out their parts behind the scenes. The Heathcote family, consisting of Sir William and his ward, May Leslie, Mrs. Morris and her late husband's friend, Captain Holmes, were domesticated in a sumptuous residence near the “Pincian,” but neither going out into the world nor themselves receiving visitors. Sir William's health, much broken and uncertain as it was, formed the excuse for this reclusion; but the real reason was the fact, speedily ascertained by the Captain, and as speedily conveyed to his daughter, that “Society” had already decided against them, and voted the English family at the Palazzo Balbi as disfranchised.
Very curious and very subtle things are the passively understood decrees of those who in each city of Europe call themselves the “World.” The delicate shades by which recognition is separated from exclusion; the fine tints, perceptible only to the eyes of fashion, by which certain frailties are relieved from being classed with grave derelictions; the enduring efficacy of the way in which the smell of the roses will cling to the broken vase of virtue and rescue its fragments from dishonor,—are all amongst the strangest and most curious secrets of our civilization.
Were it not for a certain uniformity in the observances, one might be disposed to stigmatize as capricious the severity occasionally displayed here, while a merciful lenity was exhibited there; but a closer examination will show that some fine discriminating sense is ever at work, capable of distinguishing between genteel vice and the wickedness that forgets conventionalities. As in law, so in morals, no man need criminate himself, but he who does so by an inadvertence is lost. Now the Heathcotes were rich, and yet lived secluded. The world wanted not another count in the indictment against them. A hundred stories were circulated about them. They had come to place the “girl” in a convent. Old Sir William had squandered away all her fortune, and the scheme now was to induce her to turn Catholic and take the veil. “The old fool”—the world is complimentary on these occasions—was going to marry that widow, whom he had picked up at Leamington or Ems or Baden-Baden. If the Captain had not kept the Hell in the Circus, he was the very double of the man who had it. At all events, it was better not to have him in the Club; and so the banker, who was to have proposed, withdrew him.