When a clever man resolves on a villanous action, he hastens, by the exercise of his cleverness, to get rid of the sense of his villany. With more than his usual alertness, Randal employed the next hour or two in ascertaining how far Baron Levy merited the character he boasted, and how far his word might be his bond. He repaired to young men whom he esteemed better judges on these points than Spendquick and Borrowell,—young men who resembled the Merry Monarch, inasmuch as—
“They never said a foolish thing,
And never did a wise one.”
There are many such young men about town,—sharp and able in all affairs except their own. No one knows the world better, nor judges of character more truly, than your half-beggared roue. From all these Baron Levy obtained much the same testimonials: he was ridiculed as a would-be dandy, but respected as a very responsible man of business, and rather liked as a friendly, accommodating species of the Sir Epicure Mammon, who very often did what were thought handsome, liberal things; and, “in short,” said one of these experienced referees, “he is the best fellow going—for a money-lender! You may always rely on what he promises, and he is generally very forbearing and indulgent to us of good society; perhaps for the same reason that our tailors are,—to send one of us to prison would hurt his custom. His foible is to be thought a gentleman. I believe, much as I suppose he loves money, he would give up half his fortune rather than do anything for which we could cut him. He allows a pension of three hundred a year to Lord S——-. True; he was his man of business for twenty years, and before then S——- was rather a prudent fellow, and had fifteen thousand a year. He has helped on, too, many a clever young man,—the best borough-monger you ever knew. He likes having friends in parliament. In fact, of course he is a rogue; but if one wants a rogue, one can’t find a pleasanter. I should like to see him on the French stage,—a prosperous Macaire; Le Maitre could hit him off to the life.”
From information in these more fashionable quarters, gleaned with his usual tact, Randal turned to a source less elevated, but to which he attached more importance. Dick Avenel associated with the baron,—Dick Avenel must be in his clutches. Now Randal did justice to that gentleman’s practical shrewdness. Moreover, Avenel was by profession a man of business. He must know more of Levy than these men of pleasure could; and as he was a plain-spoken person, and evidently honest, in the ordinary acceptation of the word, Randal did not doubt that out of Dick Avenel he should get the truth.
On arriving in Eaton Square, and asking for Mr. Avenel, Randal was at once ushered into the drawing-room. The apartment was not in such good, solid, mercantile taste as had characterized Avenel’s more humble bachelor’s residence at Screwstown. The taste now was the Honourable Mrs. Avenel’s; and, truth to say, no taste could be worse. Furniture of all epochs heterogeneously clumped together,—here a sofa a la renaissance in Gobelin; there a rosewood Console from Gillow; a tall mock-Elizabethan chair in black oak, by the side of a modern Florentine table of Mosaic marbles; all kinds of colours in the room, and all at war with each other; very bad copies of the best-known pictures in the world in the most gaudy frames, and impudently labelled by the names of their murdered originals,—“Raphael,” “Corregio,” “Titian,” “Sebastian del Piombo.” Nevertheless, there had been plenty of money spent, and there was plenty to show for it. Mrs. Avenel was seated on her sofa a la renaissance, with one of her children at her feet, who was employed in reading a new Annual in crimson silk binding. Mrs. Avenel was in an attitude as if sitting for her portrait.
Polite society is most capricious in its adoptions or rejections. You see many a very vulgar person firmly established in the beau monde; others, with very good pretensions as to birth, fortune, etc., either rigorously excluded, or only permitted a peep over the pales. The Honourable Mrs. Avenel belonged to families unquestionably noble, both by her own descent and by her first marriage; and if poverty had kept her down in her earlier career, she now, at least, did not want wealth to back her pretensions. Nevertheless, all the dispensers of fashion concurred in refusing their support to the Honourable Mrs. Avenel. One might suppose it was solely on account of her plebeian husband; but indeed it was not so. Many a woman of high family can marry a low-born man not so presentable as Avenel, and, by the help of his money, get the fine world at her feet. But Mrs. Avenel had not that art. She was still a very handsome, showy woman; and as for dress, no duchess could be more extravagant. Yet these very circumstances had perhaps gone against her ambition; for your quiet little plain woman, provoking no envy, slips into coteries, when a handsome, flaunting lady—whom, once seen in your drawing-room, can be no more over-looked than a scarlet poppy amidst a violet bed—is pretty sure to be weeded out as ruthlessly as a poppy would be in a similar position.
Mr. Avenel was sitting by the fire, rather moodily, his hands in his pockets, and whistling to himself. To say truth, that active mind of his was very much bored in London, at least during the fore part of the day. He hailed Randal’s entrance with a smile of relief, and rising and posting himself before the fire—a coat tail under each arm—he scarcely allowed Randal to shake hands with Mrs. Avenel, and pat the child on the head, murmuring, “Beautiful creature!” (Randal was ever civil to children,—that sort of wolf in sheep’s clothing always is; don’t be taken in, O you foolish young mothers!)—Dick, I say, scarcely allowed his visitor these preliminary courtesies, before he plunged far beyond depth of wife and child into the political ocean. “Things now were coming right,—a vile oligarchy was to be destroyed. British respectability and British talent were to have fair play.” To have heard him you would have thought the day fixed for the millennium! “And what is more,” said Avenel, bringing down the fist of his right hand upon the palm of his left, “if there is to be a new parliament, we must have new men; not worn-out old brooms that never sweep clean, but men who understand how to govern the country, Sir. I INTEND TO COME IN MYSELF!”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Avenel, hooking in a word at last, “I am sure, Mr. Leslie, you will think I did right. I persuaded Mr. Avenel that, with his talents and property, he ought, for the sake of his country, to make a sacrifice; and then you know his opinions now are all the fashion, Mr. Leslie; formerly they would have been called shocking and vulgar!”
Thus saying, she looked with fond pride at Dick’s comely face, which at that moment, however, was all scowl and frown. I must do justice to Mrs. Avenel; she was a weak woman, silly in some things, and a cunning one in others, but she was a good wife as wives go. Scotch women generally are. “Bother!” said Dick. “What do women know about politics? I wish you’d mind the child,—it is crumpling up and playing almighty smash with that flim-flam book, which cost me one pound one.”
Mrs. Avenel submissively bowed her head, and removed the Annual from the hands of the young destructive; the destructive set up a squall, as destructives usually do when they don’t have their own way. Dick clapped his hand to his ears. “Whe-e-ew, I can’t stand this; come and take a walk, Leslie: I want stretching!” He stretched himself as he spoke, first half-way up to the ceiling, and then fairly out of the room.
Randal, with his May Fair manner, turned towards Mrs. Avenel as if to apologize for her husband and himself.
“Poor Richard!” said she, “he is in one of his humours,—all men have them. Come and see me again soon. When does Almack’s open?”
“Nay, I ought to ask you that question,—you who know everything that goes on in our set,” said the young serpent. Any tree planted in “our set,” if it had been but a crab-tree, would have tempted Mr. Avenel’s Eve to jump at its boughs.
“Are you coming, there?” cried Dick, from the foot of the stairs.
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