Animated Conversation at a Luncheon-Table Vernon was crossing the hall to the dining-room as Mrs Mountstuart stepped in. She called to him: "Are the champions reconciled?"
He replied: "Hardly that, but they have consented to meet at an altar to offer up a victim to the gods in the shape of modern poetic imitations of the classical."
"That seems innocent enough. The Professor has not been anxious about his chest?"
"He recollects his cough now and then."
"You must help him to forget it."
"Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer are here," said Vernon, not supposing it to be a grave announcement until the effect of it on Mrs.
Mountstuart admonished him.
She dropped her voice: "Engage my fair friend for one of your walks the moment we rise from table. You may have to rescue her; but do. I mean it."
"She's a capital walker." Vernon remarked in simpleton style.
"There's no necessity for any of your pedestrian feats," Mrs Mountstuart said, and let him go, turning to Colonel De Craye to pronounce an encomium on him: "The most open-minded man I know!
Warranted to do perpetual service, and no mischief. If you were all ... instead of catching at every prize you covet! Yes, you would have your reward for unselfishness, I assure you. Yes, and where you seek it! That is what none of you men will believe."
"When you behold me in your own livery!" cried the colonel.
"Do I?" said she, dallying with a half-formed design to he confidential. "How is it one is always tempted to address you in the language of innuendo? I can't guess."
"Except that as a dog doesn't comprehend good English we naturally talk bad to him."
The great lady was tickled. Who could help being amused by this man? And after all, if her fair Middleton chose to be a fool there could be no gainsaying her, sorry though poor Sir Willoughby's friends must feel for him.
She tried not to smile.
"You are too absurd. Or a baby, you might have added."
"I hadn't the daring."
"I'll tell you what, Colonel De Craye, I shall end by falling in love with you; and without esteeming you, I fear."
"The second follows as surely as the flavour upon a draught of Bacchus, if you'll but toss off the glass, ma'am."
"We women, sir, think it should be first."
"'Tis to transpose the seasons, and give October the blossom and April the apple, and no sweet one! Esteem's a mellow thing that comes after bloom and fire, like an evening at home; because if it went before it would have no father and couldn't hope for progeny; for there'd be no nature in the business. So please, ma'am, keep to the original order, and you'll be nature's child, and I the most blessed of mankind."
"Really, were I fifteen years younger. I am not so certain ... I might try and make you harmless."
"Draw the teeth of the lamb so long as you pet him!"
"I challenged you, colonel, and I won't complain of your pitch.
But now lay your wit down beside your candour, and descend to an every-day level with me for a minute."
"Is it innuendo?"
"No; though I daresay it would be easier for you to respond to if it were."
"I'm the straightforwardest of men at a word of command."
"This is a whisper. Be alert, as you were last night. Shuffle the table well. A little liveliness will do it. I don't imagine malice, but there's curiosity, which is often as bad, and not so lightly foiled. We have Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer here."
"To sweep the cobwebs out of the sky!"
"Well, then, can you fence with broomsticks?"
"I have had a bout with them in my time."
"They are terribly direct."
"They 'give point', as Napoleon commanded his cavalry to do."
"You must help me to ward it."
"They will require variety in the conversation."
"Constant. You are an angel of intelligence, and if I have the judgeing of you, I'm afraid you'll be allowed to pass, in spite of the scandal above. Open the door; I don't unbonnet."
De Craye threw the door open.
Lady Busshe was at that moment saying, "And are we indeed to have you for a neighbour, Dr. Middleton?"
The Rev. Doctor's reply was drowned by the new arrivals.
"I thought you had forsaken us," observed Sir Willoughby to Mrs.
Mountstuart.
"And run away with Colonel De Craye? I'm too weighty, my dear friend. Besides, I have not looked at the wedding-presents yet."
"The very object of our call!" exclaimed Lady Culmer.
"I have to confess I am in dire alarm about mine," Lady Busshe nodded across the table at Clara. "Oh! you may shake your head, but I would rather hear a rough truth than the most complimentary evasion."
"How would you define a rough truth, Dr. Middleton?" said Mrs. Mountstuart.
Like the trained warrior who is ready at all hours for the trumpet to arms, Dr. Middleton waked up for judicial allocution in a trice.
"A rough truth, madam, I should define to be that description of truth which is not imparted to mankind without a powerful impregnation of the roughness of the teller."
"It is a rough truth, ma'am, that the world is composed of fools, and that the exceptions are knaves," Professor Crooklyn furnished that example avoided by the Rev. Doctor.
"Not to precipitate myself into the jaws of the foregone definition, which strikes me as being as happy as Jonah's whale, that could carry probably the most learned man of his time inside without the necessity of digesting him," said De Craye, "a rough truth is a rather strong charge of universal nature for the firing off of a modicum of personal fact."
"It is a rough truth that Plato is Moses atticizing," said Vernon to Dr. Middleton, to keep the diversion alive.
"And that Aristotle had the globe under his cranium," rejoined the Rev. Doctor.
"And that the Moderns live on the Ancients."
"And that not one in ten thousand can refer to the particular treasury he filches."
"The Art of our days is a revel of rough truth," remarked Professor Crooklyn.
"And the literature has laboriously mastered the adjective, wherever it may be in relation to the noun, Dr. Middleton added.