The first thing which caught his eyes as he entered the drawing-room before dinner was Argemone listening in absorbed reverence to her favourite vicar,—a stern, prim, close-shaven, dyspeptic man, with a meek, cold smile, which might have become a cruel one. He watched and watched in vain, hoping to catch her eye; but no—there she stood, and talked and listened—
‘Ah,’ said Bracebridge, smiling, ‘it is in vain, Smith! When did you know a woman leave the Church for one of us poor laymen?’
‘Good heavens!’ said Lancelot, impatiently, ‘why will they make such fools of themselves with clergymen?’
‘They are quite right. They always like the strong men—the fighters and the workers. In Voltaire’s time they all ran after the philosophers. In the middle ages, books tell us, they worshipped the knights errant. They are always on the winning side, the cunning little beauties. In the war-time, when the soldiers had to play the world’s game, the ladies all caught the red-coat fever; now, in these talking and thinking days (and be hanged to them for bores), they have the black-coat fever for the same reason. The parsons are the workers now-a-days—or rather, all the world expects them to be so. They have the game in their own hands, if they did but know how to play it.’
Lancelot stood still, sulking over many thoughts. The colonel lounged across the room towards Lord Vieuxbois, a quiet, truly high-bred young man, with a sweet open countenance, and an ample forehead, whose size would have vouched for great talents, had not the promise been contradicted by the weakness of the over-delicate mouth and chin.
‘Who is that with whom you came into the room, Bracebridge?’ asked Lord Vieuxbois. ‘I am sure I know his face.’
‘Lancelot Smith, the man who has taken the shooting-box at Lower Whitford.’
‘Oh, I remember him well enough at Cambridge! He was one of a set who tried to look like blackguards, and really succeeded tolerably. They used to eschew gloves, and drink nothing but beer, and smoke disgusting short pipes; and when we established the Coverley Club in Trinity, they set up an opposition, and called themselves the Navvies. And they used to make piratical expeditions down to Lynn in eight oars, to attack bargemen, and fen girls, and shoot ducks, and sleep under turf-stacks, and come home when they had drank all the public-house taps dry. I remember the man perfectly.’
‘Navvy or none,’ said the colonel, ‘he has just the longest head and the noblest heart of any man I ever met. If he does not distinguish himself before he dies, I know nothing of human nature.’
‘Ah yes, I believe he is clever enough!—took a good degree, a better one than I did—but horribly eclectic; full of mesmerism, and German metaphysics, and all that sort of thing. I heard of him one night last spring, on which he had been seen, if you will believe it, going successively into a Swedenborgian chapel, the Garrick’s Head, and one of Elliotson’s magnetic soirées. What can you expect after that?’