Tales and Novels, vol 3 | Page 4

little less in the world," retorted his lordship, "it would have been as well!"
"As well!--how flat!"
"Flatly then I have to inform you, Lady Delacour, that I will neither be contradicted nor laughed at--you understand me,--it would be as well, flat or not flat, my Lady Delacour, if your ladyship would attend more to your own conduct, and less to others!"
"To that of others--his lordship means, if he means any thing. Apropos, Belinda, did not you tell me Clarence Hervey is coming to town?--You have never seen him.--Well, I'll describe him to you by negatives. He is not a man who ever says any thing flat--he is not a man who must he wound up with half a dozen bottles of champaign before he can go--he is not a man who, when he does go, goes wrong, and won't be set right--he is not a man, whose whole consequence, if he were married, would depend on his wife--he is not a man, who, if he were married, would be so desperately afraid of being governed by his wife, that he would turn gambler, jockey, or sot, merely to show that he could govern himself."
"Go on, Lady Delacour," said his lordship, who had been in vain attempting to balance a spoon on the edge of his teacup during the whole of this speech, which was delivered with the most animated desire to provoke--"Go on, Lady Delacour--all I desire is, that you should go on; Clarence Hervey will be much obliged to you, and I am sure so shall I. Go on, my Lady Delacour--go on, and you'll oblige me."
"I never will oblige you, my lord, that you may depend upon," cried her ladyship, with a look of indignant contempt.
His lordship whistled, rang for his horses, and looked at his nails with a smile. Belinda, shocked and in a great confusion, rose to leave the room, dreading the gross continuance of this matrimonial dialogue.
"Mr. Hervey, my lady," said a footman, opening the door; and he was scarcely announced, when her ladyship went forward to receive him with an air of easy familiarity.--"Where have you buried yourself, Hervey, this age past?" cried she, shaking hands with him: "there's absolutely no living in this most stupid of all worlds without you.--Mr. Hervey--Miss Portman--but don't look as if you were half asleep, man--What are you dreaming of, Clarence? Why looks your grace so heavily to-day?"
"Oh! I have passed a miserable night," replied Clarence, throwing himself into an actor's attitude, and speaking in a fine tone of stage declamation.
"What was your dream, my lord? I pray you, tell me,"
said her ladyship in a similar tone.--Clarence went on--
"O Lord, methought what pain it was to dance! What dreadful noise of fiddles in my ears! What sights of ugly belles within my eyes! ----Then came wandering by, A shadow like a devil, with red hair, 'Dizen'd with flowers; and she bawl'd out aloud, Clarence is come; false, fleeting, perjured Clarence!"
"O, Mrs. Luttridge to the life!" cried Lady Delacour: "I know where you have been now, and I pity you--but sit down," said she, making room for him between Belinda and herself upon the sofa, "sit down here, and tell me what could take you to that odious Mrs. Luttridge's."
Mr. Hervey threw himself on the sofa; Lord Delacour whistled as before, and left the room without uttering a syllable.
"But my dream has made me forget myself strangely," said Mr. Hervey, turning to Belinda, and producing her bracelet: "Mrs. Stanhope promised me that if I delivered it safely, I should be rewarded with the honour of putting it on the owner's fair arm." A conversation now took place on the nature of ladies' promises--on fashionable bracelets--on the size of the arm of the Venus de Medici--on Lady Delacour's and Miss Portman's--on the thick legs of ancient statues--and on the various defects and absurdities of Mrs. Luttridge and her wig. On all these topics Mr. Hervey displayed much wit, gallantry, and satire, with so happy an effect, that Belinda, when he took leave, was precisely of her aunt's opinion, that he was a most uncommonly pleasant young man.
Clarence Hervey might have been more than a pleasant young man, if he had not been smitten with the desire of being thought superior in every thing, and of being the most admired person in all companies. He had been early flattered with the idea that he was a man of genius; and he imagined that, as such, he was entitled to be imprudent, wild, and eccentric. He affected singularity, in order to establish his claims to genius. He had considerable literary talents, by which he was distinguished at Oxford; but he was so dreadfully afraid of passing for a pedant, that when he came into the company of the idle and the ignorant, he