第31章

Threadgall straightway brought in her late husband as usual, without mentioning that he was dead.Anatomy she described as the Professor's favourite recreation in his leisure hours.As ill-luck would have it, Mr.Candy, sitting opposite (who knew nothing of the deceased gentleman), heard her.Being the most polite of men, he seized the opportunity of assisting the Professor's anatomical amusements on the spot.

`They have got some remarkably fine skeletons lately at the College of Surgeons,' says Mr.Candy, across the table, in a loud cheerful voice.

`I strongly recommend the Professor, ma'am, when he next has an hour to spare, to pay them a visit.'

You might have heard a pin fall.The company (out of respect to the Professor's memory) all sat speechless.I was behind Mrs.Threadgall at the time, plying her confidentially with a glass of hock.She dropped her head, and said in a very low voice, `My beloved husband is no more.'

Unluckily Mr.Candy, hearing nothing, and miles away from suspecting the truth, went on across the table louder and politer than ever.

`The Professor may not be aware,' says he, `that the card of a member of the College will admit him, on any day but Sunday, between the hours of ten and four.'

Mrs.Threadgall dropped her head right into her tucker, and, in a lower voice still, repeated the solemn words, `My beloved husband is no more.'

I winked hard at Mr.Candy across the table.Miss Rachel touched his arm.My lady looked unutterable things at him.Quite useless! On he went, with a cordiality that there was no stopping anyhow.`I shall be delighted,'

says he, `to send the Professor my card, if you will oblige me by mentioning his present address.'

`His present address, sir, is the grave ,' says Mrs.Threadgall, suddenly losing her temper, and speaking with an emphasis and fury that made the glasses ring again.`The Professor has been dead these ten years.'

`Oh, good heavens!' says Mr.Candy.Excepting the Bouncers, who burst out laughing, such a blank now fell on the company, that they might all have been going the way of the Professor, and hailing as he did from the direction of the grave.

So much for Mr.Candy.The rest of them were nearly as provoking in their different ways as the doctor himself.When they ought to have spoken, they didn't speak; or when they did speak they were perpetually at cross purposes.Mr.Godfrey, though so eloquent in public, declined to exert himself in private.Whether he was sulky, or whether he was bashful, after his discomfiture in the rose-garden, I can't say.He kept all his talk for the private ear of the lady (a member of our family) who sat next to him.She was one of his committee-women--a spiritually minded person, with a fine show of collar-bone and a pretty taste in champagne; liked it dry, you understand, and plenty of it.Being close behind these two at the sideboard, I can testify, from what I heard pass between them, that the company lost a good deal of very improving conversation, which I caught up while drawing the corks, and carving the mutton, and so forth.What they said about their Charities I didn't hear.When I had time to listen to them, they had got a long way beyond their women to be confined, and their women to be rescued, and were disputing on serious subjects.Religion (I understand Mr.Godfrey to say, between the corks and the carving) meant love.And love meant religion.

And earth was heaven a little the worse for wear.And heaven was earth, done up again to look like new.Earth had some very objectionable people in it; but, to make amends for that, all the women in heaven would be members of a prodigious committee that never quarrelled, with all the men in attendance on them as ministering angels.Beautiful! beautiful! But why the mischief did Mr.Godfrey keep it all to his lady and himself?

Mr.Franklin again--surely, you will say, Mr.Franklin stirred the company up into making a pleasant evening of it?

Nothing of the sort! He had quite recovered himself, and he was in wonderful force and spirits, Penelope having informed him, I suspect, of Mr.Godfrey's reception in the rose-garden.But, talk as he might, nine times out of ten he pitched on the wrong subject, or he addressed himself to the wrong person; the end of it being that he offended some, and puzzled all of them.

That foreign training of his--those French and German and Italian sides of him, to which I have already alluded--came out, at my lady's hospitable board, in a most bewildering manner.

What do you think, for instance, of his discussing the lengths to which a married woman might let her admiration go for a man who was not her husband, and putting it in his clear-headed witty French way to the maiden aunt of the Vicar of Frizinghall? What do you think, when he shifted to the German side, of his telling the lord of the manor, while that great authority on cattle was quoting his experience in the breeding of bulls, that experience, properly understood, counted for nothing, and that the proper way to breed bulls was to look deep into your own mind, evolve out of it the idea of a perfect bull, and produce him? What do you say, when our county member, growing hot, at cheese and salad time, about the spread of democracy in England, burst out as follows: `If we once lose our ancient safeguards, Mr.Blake, I beg to ask you, what have we got left?'--what do you say to Mr.Franklin answering, from the Italian point of view: `We have got three things left, sir--Love, Music, and Salad'? He not only terrified the company with such outbreaks as these, but, when the English side of him turned up in due course, he lost his foreign smoothness; and, getting on the subject of the medical profession, said such downright things in ridicule of doctors, that he actually put good-humoured little Mr.Candy in a rage.