He believed--although it must be added that he had not quite the courage to declare it--in the doctrine of wild oats, and thought it a useful preventive of superfluous fears.
If Mr. Wentworth and Charlotte and Mr. Brand would only apply it in Clifford's case, they would be happier; and Acton thought it a pity they should not be happier.
They took the boy's misdemeanors too much to heart; they talked to him too solemnly; they frightened and bewildered him.
Of course there was the great standard of morality, which forbade that a man should get tipsy, play at billiards for money, or cultivate his sensual consciousness; but what fear was there that poor Clifford was going to run a tilt at any great standard?
It had, however, never occurred to Acton to dedicate the Baroness Munster to the redemption of a refractory collegian.
The instrument, here, would have seemed to him quite too complex for the operation. Felix, on the other hand, had spoken in obedience to the belief that the more charming a woman is the more numerous, literally, are her definite social uses.
Eugenia herself, as we know, had plenty of leisure to enumerate her uses.
As I have had the honor of intimating, she had come four thousand miles to seek her fortune; and it is not to be supposed that after this great effort she could neglect any apparent aid to advancement.
It is my misfortune that in attempting to describe in a short compass the deportment of this remarkable woman I am obliged to express things rather brutally. I feel this to be the case, for instance, when I say that she had primarily detected such an aid to advancement in the person of Robert Acton, but that she had afterwards remembered that a prudent archer has always a second bowstring.
Eugenia was a woman of finely-mingled motive, and her intentions were never sensibly gross. She had a sort of aesthetic ideal for Clifford which seemed to her a disinterested reason for taking him in hand. It was very well for a fresh-colored young gentleman to be ingenuous; but Clifford, really, was crude.
With such a pretty face he ought to have prettier manners.
She would teach him that, with a beautiful name, the expectation of a large property, and, as they said in Europe, a social position, an only son should know how to carry himself.
Once Clifford had begun to come and see her by himself and for himself, he came very often. He hardly knew why he should come; he saw her almost every evening at his father's house; he had nothing particular to say to her. She was not a young girl, and fellows of his age called only upon young girls.
He exaggerated her age; she seemed to him an old woman; it was happy that the Baroness, with all her intelligence, was incapable of guessing this. But gradually it struck Clifford that visiting old women might be, if not a natural, at least, as they say of some articles of diet, an acquired taste.
The Baroness was certainly a very amusing old woman; she talked to him as no lady--and indeed no gentleman--had ever talked to him before.
"You should go to Europe and make the tour," she said to him one afternoon.
"Of course, on leaving college you will go."
"I don't want to go," Clifford declared. "I know some fellows who have been to Europe. They say you can have better fun here."
"That depends. It depends upon your idea of fun.
Your friends probably were not introduced."
"Introduced?" Clifford demanded.
"They had no opportunity of going into society; they formed no relations."
This was one of a certain number of words that the Baroness often pronounced in the French manner.
"They went to a ball, in Paris; I know that," said Clifford.
"Ah, there are balls and balls; especially in Paris. No, you must go, you know; it is not a thing from which you can dispense yourself.
You need it."
"Oh, I 'm very well," said Clifford. "I 'm not sick."
"I don't mean for your health, my poor child. I mean for your manners. "
"I have n't got any manners!" growled Clifford.
"Precisely. You don't mind my assenting to that, eh?" asked the Baroness with a smile. "You must go to Europe and get a few. You can get them better there. It is a pity you might not have come while I was living in--in Germany. I would have introduced you; I had a charming little circle.
You would perhaps have been rather young; but the younger one begins, I think, the better. Now, at any rate, you have no time to lose, and when I return you must immediately come to me."
All this, to Clifford's apprehension, was a great mixture--his beginning young, Eugenia's return to Europe, his being introduced to her charming little circle.
What was he to begin, and what was her little circle?
His ideas about her marriage had a good deal of vagueness; but they were in so far definite as that he felt it to be a matter not to be freely mentioned. He sat and looked all round the room; he supposed she was alluding in some way to her marriage.
"Oh, I don't want to go to Germany," he said; it seemed to him the most convenient thing to say.
She looked at him a while, smiling with her lips, but not with her eyes.
"You have scruples?" she asked.
"Scruples?" said Clifford.
"You young people, here, are very singular; one does n't know where to expect you. When you are not extremely improper you are so terribly proper. I dare say you think that, owing to my irregular marriage, I live with loose people.
You were never more mistaken. I have been all the more particular."
"Oh, no," said Clifford, honestly distressed. "I never thought such a thing as that."