Under False Pretences. Sergeant Adeline
are the speaker. I have found that out. How are you, Kitty? Good evening, Miss Murray."
"How good of you to come to see us, Mr. Vivian!" said Mrs. Heron, in a low, sweetly-modulated voice, as she held out one long, white hand to her visitor. She re-arranged her draperies a little, and lay back gracefully when she had spoken. Rupert had never seen her do anything but lie on sofas in graceful attitudes since he first made her acquaintance. It was her métier. Nobody expected anything else from her except vague, theoretic talk, which she called philosophy. She had been Kitty's governess in days gone by. Mr. Heron, an artist of some repute, married her when he had been a widower for twelve months only. Since that time she had become the mother of three handsome, but decidedly noisy, children, and had lapsed by degrees into the life of a useless, fine lady, to whom household cares and the duties of a mother were mere drudgery, and were left to fall as much as possible on the shoulders of other people. Nevertheless, Mrs. Heron's selfishness was of a gentle and even loveable type. She was seldom out of humour, rarely worried or fretful; she was only persistently idle, and determined to consider herself in feeble health.
Vivian's acquaintance with the Herons dated from his first arrival in London, six years ago, when he boarded with them for a few months. The disorder of the household had proved too great a trial to his fastidious tastes to be borne for a longer space of time. He had, however, formed a firm friendship with the whole family, especially with Percival; and for the last three or four years the two young men had occupied rooms in the same house and virtually lived together. To anyone who knew the characters of the friends, their friendship was somewhat remarkable. Vivian's fault was an excess of polish and refinement; he attached unusual value to matters of mere taste and culture. Possibly this was the link which really attached him to Percival Heron, who was a man of considerable intellectual power, although possessed sometimes by a sort of irrepressible brusqueness and roughness of manner, with which he could make himself exceedingly disagreeable even to his friends. Percival was taller, stronger, broader about the shoulders, deeper in the chest, than Vivian—in fact, a handsomer man in all respects. Well-cut features, pale, but healthy-looking; brilliant, restless, dark eyes; thick brown hair and moustache; a well-knit, vigorous frame, which gave no sign as yet of the stoutness to which it inclined in later years, these were points that made his appearance undeniably striking and attractive. A physiognomist might, however, have found something to blame as well as to praise in his features. There was an ominous upright line between the dark brows, which surely told of a variable temper; the curl of the laughing lips, and the fall of the heavy moustache only half concealed a curious over-sensitiveness in the lines of the too mobile mouth. It was not the face of a great thinker nor of a great saint, but of a humorous, quick-witted, impatient man, of wide intelligence, and very irritable nervous organisation.
The air of genial hilarity which he could sometimes wear was doubtless attractive to a man of Vivian's reserved temperament. Percival's features beamed with good humour—he laughed with his whole heart when anything amused him. Vivian used to look at him in wonder sometimes, and think that Percival was more like a great overgrown boy than a man of eight-and-twenty. On the other hand, Percival said that Vivian was a prig.
Kitty, sitting at the tea-table, did not think so. She loved her brother very much, but she considered Mr. Vivian a hero, a demigod, something a little lower, perhaps, than the angels, but not very much. Kitty was only sixteen, which accounts, possibly, for her delusion on this subject. She was slim, and round, and white, with none of the usual awkwardness of her age about her. She had a well-set, graceful little head, and small, piquant features; her complexion had not much colour, but her pretty lips showed the smallest and pearliest of teeth when she smiled, and her dark eyes sparkled and danced under the thin, dark curve of her eyebrows and the shade of her long, curling lashes. Then her hair would not on any account lie straight, but disposed itself in dainty tendrils and love-locks over her forehead, which gave her almost a childish look, and was a serious trouble to Miss Kitty herself, who preferred her step-mother's abundant flaxen plaits, and did not know the charm that those soft rings of curling hair lent to her irregular, little face.
Vivian took a cup of tea from her with an indulgent smile, He liked Kitty extremely well. He lent her books sometimes, which she did not always read. I am afraid that he tried to form her mind. Kitty had a mind of her own, which did not want forming. Perhaps Percival Heron, was right when he said that Vivian was a prig. He certainly liked to lecture Kitty; and she used to look up at him with great, grave eyes when he was lecturing, and pretend to understand what he was saying. She very often did not understand a word; but Rupert never suspected that. He thought that Kitty was a very simple-minded little person.
"There was quite an argument going on when you appeared, Mr. Vivian," said Mrs. Heron, languidly. "It is sometimes a most difficult matter to decide what is right and what is wrong. I think you must decide for us."
"I am not skilled in casuistry," said Vivian, smiling. "Is Percival giving forth some of his heresies?"
"I was never less heretical in my life," cried Percival. "State your case, Bess; I'll give you the precedence."
Vivian turned towards the dark corner.
"It is Miss Murray's difficulty, is it?" he said, with a look of some interest. "I shall be glad to hear it."
The girl in the dark corner stirred a little uneasily, but she spoke with no trepidation of manner, and her voice was clear and cool.
"The question," she said, "is whether a man may write articles in a daily paper, advocating views which are not his own, simply because they are the views of the editor. I call it dishonesty."
"So do I," said Kitty, warmly.
"Dishonesty? Not a bit of it," rejoined Percival. "The writer is the mouthpiece of the paper, which advocates certain views; he sinks his individuality; he does not profess to explain his own opinions. Besides, after all, what is dishonesty? Why should people erect honesty into such a great virtue? It is like truth-telling and—peaches; nobody wants them out of their proper season; they are never good when they are forced."
"I don't see any analogy between truth-telling and peaches," said the calm voice from the corner.
"You tell the truth all the year round, don't you, Bess?" said Kitty, with a little malice.
"But we are mortal, and don't attempt to practice exotic virtues," said Percival, mockingly. "I see no reason why I should not flourish upon what is called dishonesty, just as I see no reason why I should not tell lies. It is only the diseased sensibility of modern times which condemns either."
"Modern times?" said Vivian. "I have heard of a commandment——"
"Good Heavens!" said Percival, throwing back his handsome head, "Vivian is going to be didactic! I think this conversation has lasted quite long enough. Elizabeth, consider yourself worsted in the argument, and contest the point no longer."
"There has been no argument," said Elizabeth. "There has been assertion on your part, and indignation on ours; that is all."
"Then am I to consider myself worsted?" asked Percival. But he got no answer. Presently, however, he burst out with renewed vigour.
"Right and wrong! What does it mean? I hate the very sound of the words. What is right to me is wrong to you, and vice versa. It's all a matter of convention. 'Now, who shall arbitrate? as Browning says—
'Now, who shall arbitrate?
Ten men love what I hate,
Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;
Ten, who in ears and eyes
Match me; we all surmise,
They, this thing, and I, that; whom shall my soul believe?"
The lines rang out boldly upon the listeners' ears. Percival was one of the few men who can venture to recite poetry without making themselves ridiculous. He continued hotly—
"There is neither truth nor falsehood in the world, and those who aver that there is are either impostors or dupes."
"Ah," said Vivian, "you remind me of Bacon's celebrated sentence—'Many there