Sir Meeson Corby produced an aspect of the word ‘if,’ so perkily, that the dejected Captain Abrane laughed outright and gave him double reason to fret for Lord Fleetwood’s arrival, by saying: ‘If he hangs off much longer, I shall have to come on you for another fifty.’
Our two pedestrians out of Salzburg were standing up in the night of cloud and pines above the glittering pool, having made their way along the path from the hill anciently dedicated to the god Mercury; and at the moment when Sir Meeson put forth his frilled wrists to say: ‘If you had seen his hands—the creature Fleetwood trotted off alone with!—you’d be a bit anxious too’; the young lord called his comrade to gaze underneath them: ‘There they are, hard at it, at their play!—it’s the word used for the filthiest gutter scramble.’
They had come to know something of one another’s humours; which are taken by young men for their characters; and should the humours please, they are friends, until further humours develop, trying these nascent conservatives hard to suit them to their moods as well as the accustomed. Lord Fleetwood had discovered in his companion, besides the spirit of independence and the powers of thought impressed on him by Woodseer’s precocious flashes, a broad playfulness, that trenched on buffoonery; it astonished, amused, and relieved him, loosening the spell of reverence cast over him by one who could so wonderfully illumine his brain. Prone to admire and bend the knee where he admired, he chafed at subjection, unless he had the particular spell constantly renewed. A tone in him once or twice of late, different from the comrade’s, had warned Woodseer to be guarded.
Susceptible, however, of the extreme contrast between the gamblers below and Nature’s lover beside him, Fleetwood returned to his enthusiasm without thinking it a bondage.
‘I shall never forget the walk we ‘ve had. I have to thank you for the noblest of pleasures. You ‘ve taught me—well, a thousand things; the things money can’t buy. What mornings they were! And the dead-tired nights! Under the rock and up to see the snowy peak pink in a gap of thick mist. You were right: it made a crimsoning colour shine like a new idea. Up in those mountains one walks with the divinities, you said. It’s perfectly true. I shall remember I did. I have a treasure for life! Now I understand where you get your ideas. The life we lead down there is hoggish. You have chosen the right. You’re right, over and over again, when you say, the dirty sweaters are nearer the angels for cleanliness than my Lord and Lady Sybarite out of a bath, in chemical scents. A man who thinks, loathes their High Society. I went through Juvenal at college. But you—to be sure, you add example—make me feel the contempt of it more. I am everlastingly indebted to you. Yes, I won’t forget: you preach against the despising of anything.
This was pleasant in Woodseer’s ears, inasmuch as it established the young nobleman as the pupil of his philosophy for the conduct of life; and to fortify him, he replied:
‘Set your mind on the beauty, and there’ll be no room for comparisons. Most of them are unjust, precious few instructive. In this case, they spoil both pictures: and that scene down there rather hooks me; though I prefer the Dachstein in the wane of the afterglow. You called it Carinthia.’
‘I did: the beautiful Gorgon, haggard Venus—if she is to be a girl!’ Fleetwood rejoined. ‘She looked burnt out—a spectre.’
‘One of the admirably damned,’ said Woodseer, and he murmured with enjoyment: ‘Between the lights—that ‘s the beauty and the tragedy of Purgatory!’
His comrade fell in with the pictured idea: ‘You hit it:—not what you called the “sublimely milky,” and not squalid as you’ll see the faces of the gambling women at the tables below. Oblige me—may I beg?—don’t clap names on the mountains we’ve seen. It stamps guide-book on them, English tourist, horrors. We’ll moralize over the crowds at the tables down there. On the whole, it’s a fairish game: you know the odds against you, as you don’t on the Turf or the Bourse. Have your fling; but don’t get bitten. There’s a virus. I’m not open to it. Others are.’