'A bas-relief,' the vicar repeated, in a disgusted tone. 'Yes, my dear, I'm not surprised you should be astonished at it, but I said a bas-relief. He has reproduced my Bologna Four Seasons in clay, and what's worse, Eva, he has really done it extremely well too, confound him.'
It was only on very rare occasions that the vicar allowed himself the use of such doubtful expressions, and even then he employed them in his born capacity as a Howard-Russell rather than in his acquired one as a clergyman of the Church of England.
'Eva, my dear,' he said again after a long pause, 'the boy's head is bandaged now, and after all there's really nothing in any way in his condition to shock you. It might be as well, perhaps, if you were to go to see him, and ask Mr. Walkem whether the cook ought to make him anything in the way of jelly or beef-tea or any stuff of that sort, you know. These little attentions to one's dependents in illness are only Christian, only Christian. And, do you know, Eva, you might at the same time just glance at the panel by the bed-head, and tell me by-and-by what you think of it. I've great confidence in your judgment, my dear, and after all it mayn't perhaps be really quite so good as I'm at first sight inclined to believe it.'
When niece and uncle met again at dinner, Eva unhesitatingly proclaimed her opinion that the bas-relief was very clever (a feminine expression for every degree of artistic or intellectual merit, not readily apprehended by the ridiculous hair-splitting male intelligence). The vicar moved uneasily in his chair. This was most disconcerting. What on earth was he to do with the boy? As a man of taste, he felt that he mustn't keep a possible future Canova blacking boots in his back kitchen; as a Christian minister, he felt that he must do the best he could to advance the position of all his parishioners; yet finally, as a loyal member of this commonwealth, he felt that he ought not to countenance people of that position in life in having tastes and occupations above their natural station. Old Churchill's son, too! Could anything be more annoying? 'What on earth ought we to do with him, Eva?' he asked doubtfully.
'Send him to London to some good artist, and see what he can make of him,' Eva replied with astonishing promptitude. (It's really wonderful how young people of the present day will undertake to solve the most difficult practical problems off-hand, as if there were absolutely nothing in them.)
The vicar glanced towards the Dook uneasily. 'It's a very extraordinary thing,' he said, 'for a lad of his class to go and dream of going and doing. I may be old-fashioned, Eva, my dear, but I don't quite like it. I won't deny that I don't quite like it.'
'Haven't I read somewhere,' Eva went on innocently, 'that Giotto or somebody was a peasant boy who fed sheep, and that some one or other, Cimabue, I think (only I don't know how to pronounce his name properly), saw some drawings he'd made with a bit of charcoal on some rock, and took him for his pupil, and made him into, oh, such a great painter?
I know it was such a delightfully romantic story, wherever I read it.'
The vicar coughed drily. 'That was in the thirteenth century, my dear,' he said, in his coldest and most repressive tone. 'The thirteenth century was a very long time ago, Eva. Society hadn't organised itself then, as it has done in our own day. Besides, the story has been critically doubted. Ci-ma-bu-e,' and the vicar dwelt carefully on each syllable of the name with a little distinct intonation which mutely corrected Eva's faulty Italian without too obtrusively exciting the butler's attention, 'had probably very little to do with discovering Giot-to.—Capel, this is not the green seal claret. Go and decant some green seal at once, will you.—My dear, this is a discussion which had better not be carried on before the servants.'
In three days more the Dook was regaling the gossips of the White Lion with the whole story how the vicar, with his usual artistic sensibility, had discovered merit in that lad of Churchill's, and had found out as the thing the lad had made out of mud were really what they call a bas-relief, 'which I've seen 'em, of course,' said the Dook, loftily, 'in lots of palaces in Italy, carved by Jotter, and Bonnomey, and Jamberty, and all them old swells; but I never took much notice of this one o' young Churchill's, naterally, till the vicar came in; and then, as soon as ever he clapped eyes on it, he says at once to me, “Capel,” says he, “that's a bas-relief.” And then, I remembered as I'd seen just the same sort of things, as I was sayin', over in Italy, by the cart-load; but, Lord, who'd have ever thought old Sam Churchill's son could ever ha' done one! And now the vicar's asted Sam to let him get the boy apprenticed to a wood-carver: and Sam's give his consent; and next week the boy's going off to Exeter, and going to make his fortune as sure as there's apples in Herefordshire.'