CHAPTER X
Dick Sheridan felt it to be a great relief to him to turn a laugh against his brother in regard to the sudden step taken by Miss Linley, which seemed to have disconcerted not only Charles, but half the population of Bath as well. Dick could not bear to be suspected of entertaining hopes on his own account as to Elizabeth Linley; he possessed a certain amount of vanity—the vanity of a young man who is the son of an extremely vain old man, and who, though gifted—or cursed—with a certain wit in conversation, is still rather uncertain about his future. It was this vanity which had caused him to keep as a profound secret his attachment to Betsy: he could not have endured the humiliation of taking a place among the rejected suitors, and he had not so much vanity as made him unable to perceive that there was always a possibility of his loving in vain.
He felt that, as his secret had hitherto escaped suspicion—and he fancied that it had done so—he could best keep it concealed by laughing at the men who, like his friend Halhed and his brother Charles, had worn their heart upon their sleeve. The man who is ready to laugh is not the man who is ready to love, most people think; and, being aware of this, he made himself ready to laugh. Before the evening had come, he had so many opportunities of laughing that he felt sure, if he were to meet Betsy and her elderly lover, he would be able to laugh in their faces.
He could not understand how it was that he had been so overcome in the morning by an emotion which was certainly not one of laughter, when he had seen Betsy in the distance.
It was really extraordinary how many young men showed their desire to confide in him in the course of the afternoon. Some were even anxious to read to him the verses which they had composed in celebration of their rejection by Miss L-nl-y; and this showed him how well he had kept his secret. His brother, who seemed, in spite of Dick’s want of sympathy, to take a very lenient view of Dick’s attitude toward him, was actually the first to approach him after dinner with the story of his sufferings, and with an attempt to enshrine the deepest of them in a pastoral poem which took the form of a dialogue between one Corydon and his friend Damon, on the subject of the ill-treatment of both of them by the shepherdess Phyllis, who, they both frankly admitted, was as charming a vocalist as she was a beautiful nymph, and who dwelt on the banks of a stream, to which all the country were in the habit of flocking on account of its healing properties.
Charles inquired if his brother did not think that the allusions to the vocalism of the young shepherdess and the incident of her living in the neighbourhood of a medicinal spring were rather apt; and Dick, taking the matter very seriously now, had no hesitation in expressing the opinion that no unprejudiced critic could fail to perceive from these data that the poet meant to refer to Miss Linley and to Bath. He was not sure, however, that Miss Linley would, on reading the verses, be stung to the quick. Dick did not think that as a rule young women were deeply affected by classical allusions, however apt they might be. But undoubtedly the verses were well intentioned, and quite equal in merit to many that appeared in the Advertiser.
Poor Charles was forced to be content with such commendation. To be sure, he took rather a higher view of the poem himself, and he said that young Halhed had declared that some of the lines were quite equal to any that Pope had written, and that Mr. Greville had assured him that if he had not known that he, Charles, had composed the poem, he would unhesitatingly have accepted it as the work of Dryden. Still, he was much gratified by Dick’s opinion that it was on an intellectual level with the material which appeared in the Poet’s Corner of the Advertiser. He rather thought that he would go away for a while to the country. Did not Dick think that the situation of the moment necessitated his retirement from the frivolities of Bath for a month or two?