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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Evan Harrington by George Meredith, v2
+#34 in our series by George Meredith
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+Title: Evan Harrington, v2
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+Author: George Meredith
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+Release Date: September, 2003 [Etext #4428]
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+This etext was produced by David Widger  <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+
+
+EVAN HARRINGTON
+
+By George Meredith
+
+
+
+BOOK 2.
+
+VIII.     INTRODUCES AN ECCENTRIC
+IX.       THE COUNTESS IN LOW SOCIETY
+X.        MY GENTLEMAN ON THE ROAD AGAIN
+XI.       DOINGS AT AN INN
+XII.      IN WHICH ALE IS SHOWN TO HAVE ONE QUALITY OF WINE
+XIII.     THE MATCH OF FALLOW FIELD AGAINST BECKLEY
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+INTRODUCES AN ECCENTRIC
+
+At the Aurora--one of those rare antiquated taverns, smelling of
+comfortable time and solid English fare, that had sprung up in the great
+coffee days, when taverns were clubs, and had since subsisted on the
+attachment of steady bachelor Templars there had been dismay, and even
+sorrow, for a month.  The most constant patron of the establishment--an
+old gentleman who had dined there for seven-and-twenty years, four days
+in the week, off dishes dedicated to the particular days, and had grown
+grey with the landlady, the cook, and the head-waiter--this old gentleman
+had abruptly withheld his presence.  Though his name, his residence, his
+occupation, were things only to be speculated on at the Aurora, he was
+very well known there, and as men are best to be known: that is to say,
+by their habits.  Some affection for him also was felt.  The landlady
+looked on him as a part of the house.  The cook and the waiter were
+accustomed to receive acceptable compliments from him monthly.  His
+precise words, his regular ancient jokes, his pint of Madeira and after-
+pint of Port, his antique bow to the landlady, passing out and in, his
+method of spreading his table-napkin on his lap and looking up at the
+ceiling ere he fell to, and how he talked to himself during the repast,
+and indulged in short chuckles, and the one look of perfect felicity that
+played over his features when he had taken his first sip of Port--these
+were matters it pained them at the Aurora to have to remember.
+
+For three weeks the resolution not to regard him as of the past was
+general.  The Aurora was the old gentleman's home.  Men do not play
+truant from home at sixty years of age.  He must, therefore, be seriously
+indisposed.  The kind heart of the landlady fretted to think he might
+have no soul to nurse and care for him; but she kept his corner near the
+fire-place vacant, and took care that his pint of Madeira was there.  The
+belief was gaining ground that he had gone, and that nothing but his
+ghost would ever sit there again.  Still the melancholy ceremony
+continued: for the landlady was not without a secret hope, that in spite
+of his reserve and the mystery surrounding him, he would have sent her a
+last word.  The cook and head-waiter, interrogated as to their dealings
+with the old gentleman, testified solemnly to the fact of their having
+performed their duty by him.  They would not go against their interests
+so much as to forget one of his ways, they said-taking oath, as it were,
+by their lower nature, in order to be credited: an instinct men have of
+one another.  The landlady could not contradict them, for the old
+gentleman had made no complaint; but then she called to memory that
+fifteen years back, in such and such a year, Wednesday's, dish had been,
+by shameful oversight, furnished him for Tuesday's, and he had eaten it
+quietly, but refused his Port; which pathetic event had caused alarm and
+inquiry, when the error was discovered, and apologized for, the old
+gentleman merely saying, 'Don't let it happen again.' Next day he drank
+his Port, as usual, and the wheels of the Aurora went smoothly.  The
+landlady was thus justified in averring that something had been done by
+somebody, albeit unable to point to anything specific.  Women, who are
+almost as deeply bound to habit as old gentlemen, possess more of its
+spiritual element, and are warned by dreams, omens, creepings of the
+flesh, unwonted chills, suicide of china, and other shadowing signs, when
+a break is to be anticipated, or, has occurred.  The landlady of the
+Aurora tavern was visited by none of these, and with that beautiful trust
+which habit gives, and which boastful love or vainer earthly qualities
+would fail in effecting, she ordered that the pint of Madeira should
+stand from six o'clock in the evening till seven--a small monument of
+confidence in him who was at one instant the 'poor old dear'; at another,
+the 'naughty old gad-about'; further, the 'faithless old-good-for-
+nothing'; and again, the 'blessed pet' of the landlady's parlour,
+alternately and indiscriminately apostrophized by herself, her sister,
+and daughter.
+
+On the last day of the month a step was heard coming up the long alley
+which led from the riotous scrambling street to the plentiful cheerful
+heart of the Aurora.  The landlady knew the step.  She checked the
+natural flutterings of her ribbons, toned down the strong simper that was
+on her lips, rose, pushed aside her daughter, and, as the step
+approached, curtsied composedly.  Old Habit lifted his hat, and passed.
+With the same touching confidence in the Aurora that the Aurora had in
+him, he went straight to his corner, expressed no surprise at his welcome
+by the Madeira, and thereby apparently indicated that his appearance
+should enjoy a similar immunity.
+
+As of old, he called 'Jonathan!' and was not to be disturbed till he did
+so.  Seeing that Jonathan smirked and twiddled his napkin, the old
+gentleman added, 'Thursday!'
+
+But Jonathan, a man, had not his mistress's keen intuition of the
+deportment necessitated by the case, or was incapable of putting the
+screw upon weak excited nature, for he continued to smirk, and was
+remarking how glad he was, he was sure, and something he had dared to
+think and almost to fear, when the old gentleman called to him, as if he
+were at the other end of the room, 'Will you order Thursday, or not,
+sir?'  Whereat Jonathan flew, and two or three cosy diners glanced up
+from their plates, or the paper, smiled, and pursued their capital
+occupation.
+
+'Glad to see me!' the old gentleman muttered, querulously.  'Of course,
+glad to see a customer!  Why do you tell me that?  Talk!  tattle!  might
+as well have a woman to wait--just!'
+
+He wiped his forehead largely with his handkerchief; as one whom Calamity
+hunted a little too hard in summer weather.
+
+'No tumbling-room for the wine, too!'
+
+That was his next grievance.  He changed the pint of Madeira from his
+left side to his right, and went under his handkerchief again,
+feverishly.  The world was severe with this old gentleman.
+
+'Ah!  clock wrong now!'
+
+He leaned back like a man who can no longer carry his burdens, informing
+Jonathan, on his coming up to place the roll of bread and firm butter,
+that he was forty seconds too fast, as if it were a capital offence, and
+he deserved to step into Eternity for outstripping Time.
+
+'But, I daresay, you don't understand the importance of a minute,' said
+the old gentleman, bitterly.  'Not you, or any of you.  Better if we had
+run a little ahead of your minute, perhaps--and the rest of you!  Do you
+think you can cancel the mischief that's done in the world in that
+minute, sir, by hurrying ahead like that?  Tell me !'
+
+Rather at a loss, Jonathan scanned the clock seriously, and observed that
+it was not quite a minute too fast.
+
+The old gentleman pulled out his watch.  He grunted that a lying clock
+was hateful to him; subsequently sinking into contemplation of his
+thumbs,--a sign known to Jonathan as indicative of the old gentleman's
+system having resolved, in spite of external outrages, to be fortified
+with calm to meet the repast.
+
+It is not fair to go behind an eccentric; but the fact was, this old
+gentleman was slightly ashamed of his month's vagrancy and cruel conduct,
+and cloaked his behaviour toward the Aurora, in all the charges he could
+muster against it.  He was very human, albeit an odd form of the race.
+
+Happily for his digestion of Thursday, the cook, warned by Jonathan, kept
+the old gentleman's time, not the Aurora's: and the dinner was correct;
+the dinner was eaten in peace; he began to address his plate vigorously,
+poured out his Madeira, and chuckled, as the familiar ideas engendered by
+good wine were revived in him.  Jonathan reported at the bar that the old
+gentleman was all right again.
+
+One would like here to pause, while our worthy ancient feeds, and indulge
+in a short essay on Habit, to show what a sacred and admirable thing it
+is that makes flimsy Time substantial, and consolidates his triple life.
+It is proof that we have come to the end of dreams and Time's delusions,
+and are determined to sit down at Life's feast and carve for ourselves.
+Its day is the child of yesterday, and has a claim on to-morrow.  Whereas
+those who have no such plan of existence and sum of their wisdom to show,
+the winds blow them as they list.  Consider, then, mercifully the wrath
+of him on whom carelessness or forgetfulness has brought a snap in the
+links of Habit.  You incline to scorn him because, his slippers
+misplaced, or asparagus not on his table the first day of a particular
+Spring month, he gazes blankly and sighs as one who saw the End.  To you
+it may appear small.  You call to him to be a man.  He is: but he is also
+an immortal, and his confidence in unceasing orderly progression is
+rudely dashed.
+
+But the old gentleman has finished his dinner and his Madeira, and says:
+'Now, Jonathan, "thock" the Port!'--his joke when matters have gone well:
+meant to express the sound of the uncorking, probably.  The habit of
+making good jokes is rare, as you know: old gentlemen have not yet
+attained to it: nevertheless Jonathan enjoys this one, which has seen a
+generation in and out, for he knows its purport to be, 'My heart is
+open.'
+
+And now is a great time with this old gentleman.  He sips, and in his
+eyes the world grows rosy, and he exchanges mute or monosyllable salutes
+here and there.  His habit is to avoid converse; but he will let a light
+remark season meditation.
+
+He says to Jonathan: 'The bill for the month.'
+
+'Yes, sir,' Jonathan replies.  'Would you not prefer, sir, to have the
+items added on to the month ensuing?'
+
+'I asked you for the bill of the month,' said the old gentleman, with an
+irritated voice and a twinkle in his eye.
+
+Jonathan bowed; but his aspect betrayed perplexity, and that perplexity
+was soon shared by the landlady for Jonathan said, he was convinced the
+old gentleman intended to pay for sixteen days, and the landlady could
+not bring her hand to charge him for more than two.  Here was the dilemma
+foreseen by the old gentleman, and it added vastly to the flavour of the
+Port.
+
+Pleasantly tickled, he sat gazing at his glass, and let the minutes fly.
+He knew the part he would act in his little farce.  If charged for the
+whole month, he would peruse the bill deliberately, and perhaps cry out
+'Hulloa?' and then snap at Jonathan for the interposition of a remark.
+But if charged for two days, he would wish to be told whether they were
+demented, those people outside, and scornfully return the bill to
+Jonathan.
+
+A slap on the shoulder, and a voice: 'Found you at last, Tom!' violently
+shattered the excellent plot, and made the old gentleman start.  He
+beheld Mr. Andrew Cogglesby.
+
+'Drinking Port, Tom?' said Mr. Andrew.  'I 'll join you': and he sat down
+opposite to him, rubbing his hands and pushing back his hair.
+
+Jonathan entering briskly with the bill, fell back a step, in alarm.  The
+old gentleman, whose inviolacy was thus rudely assailed, sat staring at
+the intruder, his mouth compressed, and three fingers round his glass,
+which it' was doubtful whether he was not going to hurl at him.
+
+'Waiter!' Mr. Andrew carelessly hailed, 'a pint of this Port, if you
+please.'
+
+Jonathan sought the countenance of the old gentleman.
+
+'Do you hear, sir?' cried the latter, turning his wrath on him.  'Another
+pint!'  He added: 'Take back the bill'; and away went Jonathan to relate
+fresh marvels to his mistress.
+
+Mr. Andrew then addressed the old gentleman in the most audacious manner.
+
+'Astonished to see me here, Tom?  Dare say you are.  I knew you came
+somewhere in this neighbourhood, and, as I wanted to speak to you very
+particularly, and you wouldn't be visible till Monday, why, I spied into
+two or three places, and here I am.'
+
+You might see they were brothers.  They had the same bushy eyebrows, the
+same healthy colour in their cheeks, the same thick shoulders, and brisk
+way of speaking, and clear, sharp, though kindly, eyes; only Tom was cast
+in larger proportions than Andrew, and had gotten the grey furniture of
+Time for his natural wear.  Perhaps, too, a cross in early life had a
+little twisted him, and set his mouth in a rueful bunch, out of which
+occasionally came biting things.  Mr. Andrew carried his head up, and
+eyed every man living with the benevolence of a patriarch, dashed with
+the impudence of a London sparrow.  Tom had a nagging air, and a trifle
+of acridity on his broad features.  Still, any one at a glance could have
+sworn they were brothers, and Jonathan unhesitatingly proclaimed it at
+the Aurora bar.
+
+Mr. Andrew's hands were working together, and at them, and at his face,
+the old gentleman continued to look with a firmly interrogating air.
+
+'Want to know what brings me, Tom?  I'll tell you presently.  Hot,--isn't
+it?'
+
+'What the deuce are you taking exercise for?' the old gentleman burst
+out, and having unlocked his mouth, he began to puff and alter his
+posture.
+
+'There you are, thawed in a minute!' said Mr. Andrew.  'What's an
+eccentric?  a child grown grey.  It isn't mine; I read it somewhere.
+Ah, here's the Port! good, I'll warrant.'
+
+Jonathan deferentially uncorked, excessive composure on his visage.  He
+arranged the table-cloth to a nicety, fixed the bottle with exactness,
+and was only sent scudding by the old gentleman's muttering of:
+'Eavesdropping pie!' followed by a short, 'Go!' and even then he must
+delay to sweep off a particular crumb.
+
+'Good it is!' said Mr. Andrew, rolling the flavour on his lips, as he put
+down his glass.  'I follow you in Port, Tom.  Elder brother !'
+
+The old gentleman also drank, and was mollified enough to reply: 'Shan't
+follow you in Parliament.'
+
+'Haven't forgiven that yet, Tom?'
+
+'No great harm done when you're silent.'
+
+'Capital Port!' said Mr. Andrew, replenishing the glasses.  'I ought to
+have inquired where they kept the best Port.  I might have known you'd
+stick by it.  By the way, talking of Parliament, there's talk of a new
+election for Fallow field.  You have a vote there.  Will you give it to
+Jocelyn?  There's talk of his standing.
+
+'If he'll wear petticoats, I'll give him my vote.'
+
+'There you go, Tom!'
+
+'I hate masquerades.  You're penny trumpets of the women.  That tattle
+comes from the bed-curtains.  When a petticoat steps forward I give it my
+vote, or else I button it up in my pocket.'
+
+This was probably one of the longest speeches he had ever delivered at
+the Aurora.  There was extra Port in it.  Jonathan, who from his place of
+observation noted the length of time it occupied, though he was unable to
+gather the context, glanced at Mr. Andrew with a sly satisfaction.  Mr.
+Andrew, laughing, signalled for another pint.
+
+'So you've come here for my vote, have you?' said Mr. Tom.
+
+'Why, no; not exactly that,' Mr. Andrew answered, blinking and passing it
+by.
+
+Jonathan brought the fresh pint, and Tom filled for himself, drank, and
+said emphatically, and with a confounding voice:
+
+'Your women have been setting you on me, sir!'
+
+Andrew protested that he was entirely mistaken.
+
+'You're the puppet of your women!'
+
+'Well, Tom, not in this instance.  Here's to the bachelors, and brother
+Tom at their head!'
+
+It seemed to be Andrew's object to help his companion to carry a certain
+quantity of Port, as if he knew a virtue it had to subdue him, and to
+have fixed on a particular measure that he should hold before he
+addressed him specially.  Arrived at this, he said:
+
+'Look here, Tom.  I know your ways.  I shouldn't have bothered you here;
+I never have before; but we couldn't very well talk it over in business
+hours; and besides you're never at the Brewery till Monday, and the
+matter's rather urgent.'
+
+'Why don't you speak like that in Parliament?' the old man interposed.
+
+'Because Parliament isn't my brother,' replied Mr. Andrew.  'You know,
+Tom, you never quite took to my wife's family.'
+
+'I'm not a match for fine ladies, Nan.'
+
+'Well, Harriet would have taken to you, Tom, and will now, if you 'll let
+her.  Of course, it 's a pity if she 's ashamed of--hem!  You found it
+out about the Lymport people, Tom, and, you've kept the secret and
+respected her feelings, and I thank you for it.  Women are odd in those
+things, you know.  She mustn't imagine I 've heard a whisper.  I believe
+it would kill her.'
+
+The old gentleman shook silently.
+
+'Do you want me to travel over the kingdom, hawking her for the daughter
+of a marquis?'
+
+'Now, don't joke, Tom.  I'm serious.  Are you not a Radical at heart?
+Why do you make such a set against the poor women?  What do we spring
+from?'
+
+'I take off my hat, Nan, when I see a cobbler's stall.'
+
+'And I, Tom, don't care a rush who knows it.  Homo--something; but we
+never had much schooling.  We 've thriven, and should help those we can.
+We've got on in the world .  .  .'
+
+'Wife come back from Lymport?' sneered Tom.
+
+Andrew hurriedly, and with some confusion, explained that she had not
+been able to go, on account of the child.
+
+'Account of the child!' his brother repeated, working his chin
+contemptuously.  'Sisters gone?'
+
+'They're stopping with us,' said Andrew, reddening.
+
+'So the tailor was left to the kites and the crows.  Ah! hum!' and Tom
+chuckled.
+
+'You're angry with me, Tom, for coming here,' said Andrew.  'I see what
+it is.  Thought how it would be!  You're offended, old Tom.'
+
+'Come where you like,' returned Tom, 'the place is open.  It's a fool
+that hopes for peace anywhere.  They sent a woman here to wait on me,
+this day month.'
+
+'That's a shame!' said Mr. Andrew, propitiatingly.  'Well, never mind,
+Tom: the women are sometimes in the way.--Evan went down to bury his
+father.  He's there now.  You wouldn't see him when he was at the
+Brewery, Tom.  He's--upon my honour!  he's a good young fellow.'
+
+'A fine young gentleman, I've no doubt, Nan.'
+
+'A really good lad, Tom.  No nonsense.  I've come here to speak to you
+about him.'
+
+Mr. Andrew drew a letter from his pocket, pursuing: 'Just throw aside
+your prejudices, and read this.  It's a letter I had from him this
+morning.  But first I must tell you how the case stands.'
+
+'Know more than you can tell me, Nan,' said Tom, turning over the flavour
+of a gulp of his wine.
+
+'Well, then, just let me repeat it.  He has been capitally educated; he
+has always been used to good society: well, we mustn't sneer at it: good
+society's better than bad, you'll allow.  He has refined tastes: well,
+you wouldn't like to live among crossing-sweepers, Tom.  He 's clever and
+accomplished, can speak and write in three languages: I wish I had his
+abilities.  He has good manners: well, Tom, you know you like them as
+well as anybody.  And now--but read for yourself.'
+
+'Yah!' went old Tom.  'The women have been playing the fool with him
+since he was a baby.  I read his rigmarole?  No.'
+
+Mr. Andrew shrugged his shoulders, and opened the letter, saying: 'Well,
+listen'; and then he coughed, and rapidly skimmed the introductory part.
+'Excuses himself for addressing me formally--poor boy!  Circumstances
+have altered his position towards the world found his father's affairs in
+a bad state: only chance of paying off father's debts to undertake
+management of business, and bind himself to so much a year.  But there,
+Tom, if you won't read it, you miss the poor young fellow's character.
+He says that he has forgotten his station: fancied he was superior to
+trade, but hates debt; and will not allow anybody to throw dirt at his
+father's name, while he can work to clear it; and will sacrifice his
+pride.  Come, Tom, that's manly, isn't it?  I call it touching, poor
+lad!'
+
+Manly it may have been, but the touching part of it was a feature missed
+in Mr. Andrew's hands.  At any rate, it did not appear favourably to
+impress Tom, whose chin had gathered its ominous puckers, as he inquired:
+
+'What's the trade?  he don't say.'
+
+Andrew added, with a wave of the hand: 'Out of a sort of feeling for his
+sisters--I like him for it.  Now what I want to ask you, Tom, is, whether
+we can't assist him in some way!  Why couldn't we take him into our
+office, and fix him there, eh?  If he works well--we're both getting old,
+and my brats are chicks--we might, by-and-by, give him a share.'
+
+'Make a brewer of him?  Ha! there'd be another mighty sacrifice for his
+pride!'
+
+'Come, come, Tom,' said Andrew, 'he's my wife's brother, and I'm yours;
+and--there, you know what women are.  They like to preserve appearances:
+we ought to consider them.'
+
+'Preserve appearances!' echoed Tom: 'ha! who'll do that for them better
+than a tailor?'
+
+Andrew was an impatient little man, fitter for a kind action than to
+plead a cause.  Jeering jarred on him; and from the moment his brother
+began it, he was of small service to Evan.  He flung back against the
+partition of the compound, rattling it to the disturbance of many a quiet
+digestion.
+
+'Tom,' he cried, 'I believe you're a screw!'
+
+'Never said I wasn't,' rejoined Tom, as he finished his glass.  'I 'm a
+bachelor, and a person--you're married, and an object.  I won't have the
+tailor's family at my coat-tails.'
+
+Do you mean to say, Tom, you don't like the young fellow?  The Countess
+says he's half engaged to an heiress; and he has a chance of appointments
+--of course, nothing may come of them.  But do you mean to say, you don't
+like him for what he has done?'
+
+Tom made his jaw disagreeably prominent.  ''Fraid I'm guilty of that
+crime.'
+
+'And you that swear at people pretending to be above their station!'
+exclaimed Andrew.  'I shall get in a passion.  I can't stand this.
+Here, waiter!  what have I to pay?'
+
+'Go,' cried the time-honoured guest of the Aurora to Jonathan advancing.
+
+Andrew pressed the very roots of his hair back from his red forehead,
+and sat upright and resolute, glancing at Tom.  And now ensued a curious
+scene of family blood.  For no sooner did elderly Tom observe this
+bantam-like demeanour of his brother, than he ruffled his feathers
+likewise, and looked down on him, agitating his wig over a prodigious
+frown.  Whereof came the following sharp colloquy; Andrew beginning:
+
+I 'll pay off the debts out of my own pocket.'
+
+'You can make a greater fool of yourself, then?'
+
+'He shan't be a tailor!'
+
+'He shan't be a brewer!'
+
+'I say he shall live like a gentleman!'
+
+'I say he shall squat like a Turk!'
+
+Bang went Andrew's hand on the table: 'I 've pledged my word, mind!'
+
+Tom made a counter demonstration: 'And I'll have my way!'
+
+'Hang it!  I can be as eccentric as you,' said Andrew.
+
+'And I as much a donkey as you, if I try hard,' said Tom.
+
+Something of the cobbler's stall followed this; till waxing furious, Tom
+sung out to Jonathan, hovering around them in watchful timidity, 'More
+Port!' and the words immediately fell oily on the wrath of the brothers;
+both commenced wiping their heads with their handkerchiefs the faces of
+both emerged and met, with a half-laugh: and, severally determined to
+keep to what they had spoken, there was a tacit accord between them to
+drop the subject.
+
+Like sunshine after smart rain, the Port shone on these brothers.  Like a
+voice from the pastures after the bellowing of the thunder, Andrew's
+voice asked: 'Got rid of that twinge of the gout, Tom?  Did you rub in
+that ointment?' while Tom replied: 'Ay.  How about that rheumatism of
+yours?  Have you tried that Indy oil?' receiving a like assurance.
+
+The remainder of the Port ebbed in meditation and chance remarks.  The
+bit of storm had done them both good; and Tom especially--the cynical,
+carping, grim old gentleman--was much improved by the nearer resemblance
+of his manner to Andrew's.
+
+Behind this unaffected fraternal concord, however, the fact that they
+were pledged to a race in eccentricity, was present.  They had been
+rivals before; and anterior to the date of his marriage, Andrew had done
+odd eclipsing things.  But Andrew required prompting to it; he required
+to be put upon his mettle.  Whereas, it was more nature with Tom: nature
+and the absence of a wife, gave him advantages over Andrew.  Besides, he
+had his character to maintain.  He had said the word: and the first
+vanity of your born eccentric is, that he shall be taken for infallible.
+
+Presently Andrew ducked his head to mark the evening clouds flushing over
+the court-yard of the Aurora.
+
+'Time to be off, Tom,' he said: 'wife at home.'
+
+'Ah!' Tom answered.  'Well, I haven't got to go to bed so early.'
+
+'What an old rogue you are, Tom!'  Andrew pushed his elbows forward on
+the table amiably. 'Gad, we haven't drunk wine together since--by George!
+we'll have another pint.'
+
+'Many as you like,' said Tom.
+
+Over the succeeding pint, Andrew, in whose veins the Port was merry,
+favoured his brother with an imitation of Major Strike, and indicated his
+dislike to that officer.  Tom informed him that Major Strike was
+speculating.
+
+'The ass eats at my table, and treats me with contempt.'
+
+'Just tell him that you're putting by the bones for him.  He 'll want
+'em.'
+
+Then Andrew with another glance at the clouds, now violet on a grey sky,
+said he must really be off.  Upon which Tom observed: 'Don't come here
+again.'
+
+'You old rascal, Tom !' cried Andrew, swinging over the table: 'it's
+quite jolly for us to be hob-a-nobbing together once more.  'Gad!--no, we
+won't though!  I promised--Harriet.  Eh?  What say, Tom?'
+
+'Nother pint, Nan?'
+
+Tom shook his head in a roguishly-cosy, irresistible way.  Andrew, from a
+shake of denial and resolve, fell into the same; and there sat the two
+brothers--a jolly picture.
+
+The hour was ten, when Andrew Cogglesby, comforted by Tom's remark, that
+he, Tom, had a wig, and that he, Andrew, would have a wigging, left the
+Aurora; and he left it singing a song.  Tom Cogglesby still sat at his
+table, holding before him Evan's letter, of which he had got possession;
+and knocking it round and round with a stroke of the forefinger, to the
+tune of, 'Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, 'pothecary, ploughboy, thief';
+each profession being sounded as a corner presented itself to the point
+of his nail.  After indulging in this species of incantation for some
+length of time, Tom Cogglesby read the letter from beginning to end, and
+called peremptorily for pen, ink, and paper.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE COUNTESS IN LOW SOCIETY
+
+By dint of stratagems worthy of a Court intrigue, the Countess de Saldar
+contrived to traverse the streets of Lymport, and enter the house where
+she was born, unsuspected and unseen, under cover of a profusion of lace
+and veil and mantilla, which only her heroic resolve to keep her beauties
+hidden from the profane townspeople could have rendered endurable beneath
+the fervid summer sun.  Dress in a foreign style she must, as without it
+she lost that sense of superiority, which was the only comfort to her in
+her tribulations.  The period of her arrival was ten days subsequent to
+the burial of her father.  She had come in the coach, like any common
+mortal, and the coachman, upon her request, had put her down at the
+Governor's house, and the guard had knocked at the door, and the servant
+had informed her that General Hucklebridge was not the governor of
+Lymport, nor did Admiral Combleman then reside in the town; which
+tidings, the coach then being out of sight, it did not disconcert the
+Countess to hear; and she reached her mother, having, at least, cut off
+communication with the object of conveyance.
+
+The Countess kissed her mother, kissed Mrs. Fiske, and asked sharply for
+Evan.  Mrs. Fiske let her know that Evan was in the house.
+
+'Where?' inquired the Countess.  'I have news of the utmost importance
+for him.  I must see him.'
+
+'Where is he, aunt?'  said Mrs. Fiske.  'In the shop, I think; I wonder
+he did not see you passing, Louisa.'
+
+The Countess went bolt down into a chair.
+
+'Go to him, Jane,' said Mrs. Mel.  'Tell him Louisa is here, and don't
+return.'
+
+Mrs. Fiske departed, and the Countess smiled.
+
+'Thank you, Mama!  you know I never could bear that odious, vulgar little
+woman.  Oh, the heat!  You talk of Portugal!  And, oh!  poor dear Papa!
+what I have suffered!'
+
+Flapping her laces for air, and wiping her eyes for sorrow, the Countess
+poured a flood of sympathy into her mother's ears and then said:
+
+'But you have made a great mistake, Mama, in allowing Evan to put his
+foot into that place.  He--beloved of an heiress!  Why, if an enemy
+should hear of it, it would ruin him--positively blast him--for ever.
+And that she loves him I have proof positive.  Yes; with all her
+frankness, the little thing cannot conceal that from me now.  She loves
+him!  And I desire you to guess, Mama, whether rivals will not abound?
+And what enemy so much to be dreaded as a rival?  And what revelation so
+awful as that he has stood in a--in a--boutique?'
+
+Mrs. Mel maintained her usual attitude for listening.  It had occurred to
+her that it might do no good to tell the grand lady, her daughter;
+of Evan's resolution, so she simply said, 'It is discipline for him,' and
+left her to speak a private word with the youth.
+
+Timidly the Countess inspected the furniture of the apartment, taking
+chills at the dingy articles she saw, in the midst of her heat.  That she
+should have sprung from this!  The thought was painful; still she could
+forgive Providence so much.  But should it ever be known she had sprung
+from this!  Alas!  she felt she never could pardon such a dire betrayal.
+She had come in good spirits, but the mention of Evan's backsliding had
+troubled her extremely, and though she did not say to herself, What was
+the benefit resulting from her father's dying, if Evan would be so base-
+minded? she thought the thing indefinitely, and was forming the words on
+her mouth, One Harrington in a shop is equal to all!  when Evan appeared
+alone.
+
+'Why, goodness gracious!  where's your moustache?' cried the Countess.
+
+'Gone the way of hair!' said Evan, coldly stooping to her forehead.
+
+'Such a distinction!' the Countess continued, reproachfully.  'Why, mon
+Dieu!  one could hardly tell you; as you look now, from the very
+commonest tradesman--if you were not rather handsome and something of a
+figure.  It's a disguise, Evan--do you know that?'
+
+'And I 've parted with it--that 's all,' said Evan.  'No more disguises
+for me!'
+
+The Countess immediately took his arm, and walked with him to a window.
+His face was certainly changed.  Murmuring that the air of Lymport was
+bad for him, and that he must leave it instantly, she bade him sit and
+attend to what she was about to say.
+
+While you have been here, degenerating, Evan, day by day--as you always
+do out of my sight--degenerating! no less a word!--I have been slaving in
+your interests.  Yes; I have forced the Jocelyns socially to acknowledge
+us.  I have not slept; I have eaten bare morsels.  Do abstinence and
+vigils clear the wits?  I know not!  but indeed they have enabled me to
+do more in a week than would suffice for a lifetime.  Hark to me.  I have
+discovered Rose's secret.  Si!  It is so!  Rose loves you.  You blush;
+you blush like a girl.  She loves you, and you have let yourself be seen
+in a shop!  Contrast me the two things.  Oh! in verity, dreadful as it
+is, one could almost laugh.  But the moment I lose sight of you, my
+instructions vanish as quickly as that hair on your superior lip, which
+took such time to perfect.  Alas!  you must grow it again immediately.
+Use any perfumer's contrivance.  Rowland!  I have great faith in Rowland.
+Without him, I believe, there would have been many bald women committing
+suicide!  You remember the bottle I gave to the Count de Villa Flor?
+"Countess," he said to me, "you have saved this egg-shell from a crack by
+helping to cover it"--for so he called his head--the top, you know, was
+beginning to shine like an egg.  And I do fear me he would have done it.
+Ah! you do not conceive what the dread of baldness is!  To a woman death
+--death is preferable to baldness!  Baldness is death!  And a wig--
+a wig!  Oh, horror! total extinction is better than to rise again in a
+wig!  But you are young, and play with hair.  But I was saying, I went to
+see the Jocelyns.  I was introduced to Sir Franks and his lady and the
+wealthy grandmother.  And I have an invitation for you, Evan--you
+unmannered boy, that you do not bow!  A gentle incline forward of the
+shoulders, and the eyes fixed softly, your upper lids drooping
+triflingly, as if you thanked with gentle sincerity, but were
+indifferent.  Well, well, if you will not!  An invitation for you to
+spend part of the autumn at Beckley Court, the ancestral domain, where
+there will be company the nobles of the land!  Consider that.  You say it
+was bold in me to face them after that horrible man committed us on board
+the vessel?  A Harrington is anything but a coward.  I did go and because
+I am devoted to your interests.  That very morning, I saw announced in
+the paper, just beneath poor Andrew's hand, as he held it up at the
+breakfasttable, reading it, I saw among the deaths, Sir Abraham
+Harrington, of Torquay, Baronet, of quinsy!  Twice that good man has come
+to my rescue!  Oh! I welcomed him as a piece of Providence!  I turned and
+said to Harriet, "I see they have put poor Papa in the paper."  Harriet
+was staggered.  I took the paper from Andrew, and pointed it to her.  She
+has no readiness.  She has had no foreign training.  She could not
+comprehend, and Andrew stood on tiptoe, and peeped.  He has a bad cough,
+and coughed himself black in the face.  I attribute it to excessive bad
+manners and his cold feelings.  He left the room.  I reproached Harriet.
+But, oh!  the singularity of the excellent fortune of such an event at
+such a time!  It showed that our Harrington-luck had not forsaken us.
+I hurried to the Jocelyns instantly.  Of course, it cleared away any
+suspicions aroused in them by that horrible man on board the vessel.
+And the tears I wept for Sir Abraham, Evan, in verity they were tears of
+deep and sincere gratitude!  What is your mouth knitting the corners at?
+Are you laughing?'
+
+Evan hastily composed his visage to the melancholy that was no
+counterfeit in him just then.
+
+'Yes,' continued the Countess, easily reassured, 'I shall ever feel a
+debt to Sir Abraham Harrington, of Torquay.  I dare say we are related to
+him.  At least he has done us more service than many a rich and titled
+relative.  No one supposes he would acknowledge poor Papa.  I can forgive
+him that, Evan!'  The Countess pointed out her finger with mournful and
+impressive majesty, 'As we look down on that monkey, people of rank and
+consideration in society look on what poor dear Papa was.'
+
+This was partly true, for Jacko sat on a chair, in his favourite
+attitude, copied accurately from the workmen of the establishment at
+their labour with needle and thread.  Growing cognizant of the infamy of
+his posture, the Countess begged Evan to drive him out of her sight, and
+took a sniff at her smelling-bottle.
+
+She went on: 'Now, dear Van, you would hear of your sweet Rose?'
+
+'Not a word!' Evan hastily answered.
+
+'Why, what does this indicate?  Whims!  Then you do love?'
+
+'I tell you, Louisa, I don't want to hear a word of any of them,' said
+Evan, with an angry gleam in his eyes.  'They are nothing to me, nor I to
+them.  I--my walk in life is not theirs.'
+
+'Faint heart!  faint heart!' the Countess lifted a proverbial forefinger.
+
+'Thank heaven, I shall have the consolation of not going about, and
+bowing and smirking like an impostor!' Evan exclaimed.
+
+There was a wider intelligence in the Countess's arrested gaze than she
+chose to fashion into speech.
+
+'I knew,' she said, 'I knew how the air of this horrible Lymport would
+act on you.  But while I live, Evan, you shall not sink in the sludge.
+You, with all the pains I have lavished on you! and with your presence!--
+for you have a presence, so rare among young men in this England!  You,
+who have been to a Court, and interchanged bows with duchesses, and I
+know not what besides--nay, I do not accuse you; but if you had not been
+a mere boy, and an English boy-poor Eugenia herself confessed to me that
+you had a look--a tender cleaving of the underlids--that made her catch
+her hand to her heart sometimes: it reminded her so acutely of false
+Belmarafa.  Could you have had a greater compliment than that?  You shall
+not stop here another day!'
+
+'True,' said Evan, 'for I'm going to London to-night.'
+
+'Not to London,' the Countess returned, with a conquering glance, 'but to
+Beckley Court-and with me.'
+
+'To London, Louisa, with Mr. Goren.'
+
+Again the Countess eyed him largely; but took, as it were, a side-path
+from her broad thought, saying: 'Yes, fortunes are made in London, if you
+would they should be rapid.'
+
+She meditated.  At that moment Dandy knocked at the door, and called
+outside: 'Please, master, Mr. Goren says there's a gentleman in the shop-
+wants to see you.'
+
+'Very well,' replied Evan, moving.  He was swung violently round.
+
+The Countess had clutched him by the arm.  A fearful expression was on
+her face.
+
+'Whither do you go?' she said.
+
+'To the shop, Louisa.'
+
+Too late to arrest the villanous word, she pulled at him.  'Are you quite
+insane?  Consent to be seen by a gentleman there?  What has come to you?
+You must be lunatic!  Are we all to be utterly ruined--disgraced?'
+
+'Is my mother to starve?' said Evan.
+
+'Absurd rejoinder!  No!  You should have sold everything here before
+this.  She can live with Harriet--she--once out of this horrible element
+--she would not show it.  But, Evan, you are getting away from me: you
+are not going?--speak!'
+
+'I am going,' said Evan.
+
+The Countess clung to him, exclaiming: 'Never, while I have the power to
+detain you!' but as he was firm and strong, she had recourse to her
+woman's aids, and burst into a storm of sobs on his shoulder--a scene of
+which Mrs. Mel was, for some seconds, a composed spectator.
+
+'What 's the matter now?' said Mrs. Mel.
+
+Evan impatiently explained the case.  Mrs. Mel desired her daughter to
+avoid being ridiculous, and making two fools in her family; and at the
+same time that she told Evan there was no occasion for him to go,
+contrived, with a look, to make the advice a command.  He, in that state
+of mind when one takes bitter delight in doing an abhorred duty, was
+hardly willing to be submissive; but the despair of the Countess reduced
+him, and for her sake he consented to forego the sacrifice of his pride
+which was now his sad, sole pleasure.  Feeling him linger, the Countess
+relaxed her grasp.  Hers were tears that dried as soon as they had served
+their end; and, to give him the full benefit of his conduct, she said:
+'I knew Evan would be persuaded by me.'
+
+Evan pitifully pressed her hand, and sighed.
+
+'Tea is on the table down-stairs,' said Mrs. Mel.  'I have cooked
+something for you, Louisa.  Do you sleep here to-night?'
+
+'Can I tell you, Mama?' murmured the Countess.  'I am dependent on our
+Evan.'
+
+'Oh!  well, we will eat first,' said Mrs. Mel, and they went to the table
+below, the Countess begging her mother to drop titles in designating her
+to the servants, which caused Mrs. Mel to say:
+
+'There is but one.  I do the cooking'; and the Countess, ever disposed to
+flatter and be suave, even when stung by a fact or a phrase, added:
+
+'And a beautiful cook you used to be, dear Mama!'
+
+At the table, awaiting them, sat Mrs. Wishaw, Mrs. Fiske, and Mr. Goren,
+who soon found themselves enveloped in the Countess's graciousness.  Mr.
+Goren would talk of trade, and compare Lymport business with London, and
+the Countess, loftily interested in his remarks, drew him out to disgust
+her brother.  Mrs. Wishaw, in whom the Countess at once discovered a
+frivolous pretentious woman of the moneyed trading class, she treated as
+one who was alive to society, and surveyed matters from a station in the
+world, leading her to think that she tolerated Mr. Goren, as a lady-
+Christian of the highest rank should tolerate the insects that toil for
+us.  Mrs. Fiske was not so tractable, for Mrs. Fiske was hostile and
+armed.  Mrs. Fiske adored the great Mel, and she had never loved Louisa.
+Hence, she scorned Louisa on account of her late behaviour toward her
+dead parent.  The Countess saw through her, and laboured to be friendly
+with her, while she rendered her disagreeable in the eyes of Mrs. Wishaw,
+and let Mrs. Wishaw perceive that sympathy was possible between them;
+manoeuvring a trifle too delicate, perhaps, for the people present, but
+sufficient to blind its keen-witted author to the something that was
+being concealed from herself, of which something, nevertheless, her
+senses apprehensively warned her: and they might have spoken to her wits,
+but that mortals cannot, unaided, guess, or will not, unless struck in
+the face by the fact, credit, what is to their minds the last horror.
+
+'I came down in the coach, quite accidental, with this gentleman,' said
+Mrs. Wishaw, fanning a cheek and nodding at Mr. Goren.  'I'm an old flame
+of dear Mel's.  I knew him when he was an apprentice in London.  Now,
+wasn't it odd?  Your mother--I suppose I must call you "my lady"?'
+
+The Countess breathed a tender 'Spare me,' with a smile that added,
+'among friends!'
+
+Mrs. Wishaw resumed: 'Your mother was an old flame of this gentleman's,
+I found out.  So there were two old flames, and I couldn't help thinking!
+But I was so glad to have seen dear Mel once more:
+
+'Ah!' sighed the Countess.
+
+'He was always a martial-looking man, and laid out, he was quite
+imposing.  I declare, I cried so, as it reminded me of when I couldn't
+have him, for he had nothing but his legs and arms--and I married Wishaw.
+But it's a comfort to think I have been of some service to dear, dear
+Mel!  for Wishaw 's a man of accounts and payments; and I knew Mel had
+cloth from him, and, the lady suggested bills delayed, with two or three
+nods, 'you know!  and I'll do my best for his son.'
+
+'You are kind,' said the Countess, smiling internally at the vulgar
+creature's misconception of Evan's requirements.
+
+'Did he ever talk much about Mary Fence?' asked Mrs. Wishaw.  '"Polly
+Fence," he used to say, "sweet Polly Fence!"'
+
+'Oh!  I think so.  Frequently,' observed the Countess.
+
+Mrs. Fiske primmed her mouth.  She had never heard the great Mel allude
+to the name of Fence.
+
+The Goren-croak was heard
+
+'Painters have painted out "Melchisedec" this afternoon.  Yes,--ah!
+In and out-as the saying goes.'
+
+Here was an opportunity to mortify the Countess.
+
+Mrs. Fiske placidly remarked: 'Have we the other put up in its stead?
+It 's shorter.'
+
+A twinge of weakness had made Evan request that the name of Evan
+Harrington should not decorate the shopfront till he had turned his back
+on it, for a time.  Mrs. Mel crushed her venomous niece.
+
+'What have you to do with such things?  Shine in your own affairs first,
+Ann, before you meddle with others.'
+
+Relieved at hearing that ' Melchisedec' was painted out, and unsuspicious
+of the announcement that should replace it, the Countess asked Mrs.
+Wishaw if she thought Evan like her dear Papa.
+
+'So like,' returned the lady, 'that I would not be alone with him yet,
+for worlds.  I should expect him to be making love to me: for, you know,
+my dear--I must be familiar--Mel never could be alone with you, without!
+It was his nature.  I speak of him before marriage.  But, if I can trust
+myself with him, I shall take charge of Mr. Evan, and show him some
+London society.'
+
+'That is indeed kind,' said the Countess, glad of a thick veil for the
+utterance of her contempt.  'Evan, though--I fear--will be rather
+engaged.  His friends, the Jocelyns of Beckley Court, will--I fear--
+hardly dispense with him and Lady Splenders--you know her?  the
+Marchioness of Splenders?  No?--by repute, at least: a most beautiful and
+most fascinating woman; report of him alone has induced her to say that
+Evan must and shall form a part of her autumnal gathering at Splenders
+Castle.  And how he is to get out of it, I cannot tell.  But I am sure
+his multitudinous engagements will not prevent his paying due court to
+Mistress Wishaw.'
+
+As the Countess intended, Mistress Wishaw's vanity was reproved, and her
+ambition excited: a pretty doublestroke, only possible to dexterous
+players.
+
+The lady rejoined that she hoped so, she was sure; and forthwith (because
+she suddenly seemed to possess him more than his son), launched upon
+Mel's incomparable personal attractions.  This caused the Countess to
+enlarge upon Evan's vast personal prospects.  They talked across each
+other a little, till the Countess remembered her breeding, allowed Mrs.
+Wishaw to run to an end in hollow exclamations, and put a finish to the
+undeclared controversy, by a traverse of speech, as if she were taking up
+the most important subject of their late colloquy.  'But Evan is not in
+his own hands--he is in the hands of a lovely young woman, I must tell
+you.  He belongs to her, and not to us.  You have heard of Rose Jocelyn,
+the celebrated heiress?'
+
+'Engaged?' Mrs. Wishaw whispered aloud.
+
+The Countess, an adept in the lie implied--practised by her, that she
+might not subject herself to future punishment (in which she was so
+devout a believer, that she condemned whole hosts to it)--deeply smiled.
+
+'Really !' said Mrs. Wishaw, and was about to inquire why Evan, with
+these brilliant expectations, could think of trade and tailoring, when
+the young man, whose forehead had been growing black, jumped up, and
+quitted them; thus breaking the harmony of the table; and as the Countess
+had said enough, she turned the conversation to the always welcome theme
+of low society.  She broached death and corpses; and became extremely
+interesting, and very sympathetic: the only difference between the
+ghostly anecdotes she related, and those of the other ladies, being that
+her ghosts were all of them titled, and walked mostly under the burden of
+a coronet.  For instance, there was the Portuguese Marquis de Col. He had
+married a Spanish wife, whose end was mysterious.  Undressing, on the
+night of the anniversary of her death, and on the point of getting into
+bed, he beheld the dead woman lying on her back before him.  All night
+long he had to sleep with this freezing phantom!  Regularly, every fresh
+anniversary, he had to endure the same penance, no matter where he might
+be, or in what strange bed.  On one occasion, when he took the live for
+the dead, a curious thing occurred, which the Countess scrupled less to
+relate than would men to hint at.  Ghosts were the one childish enjoyment
+Mrs. Mel allowed herself, and she listened to her daughter intently,
+ready to cap any narrative; but Mrs. Fiske stopped the flood.
+
+'You have improved on Peter Smithers, Louisa,' she said.
+
+The Countess turned to her mildly.
+
+'You are certainly thinking of Peter Smithers,' Mrs. Fiske continued,
+bracing her shoulders.  'Surely, you remember poor Peter, Louisa?  An old
+flame of your own!  He was going to kill himself, but married a
+Devonshire woman, and they had disagreeables, and SHE died, and he was
+undressing, and saw her there in the bed, and wouldn't get into it, and
+had the mattress, and the curtains, and the counterpanes, and everything
+burnt.  He told us it himself.  You must remember it, Louisa?'
+
+The Countess remembered nothing of the sort.  No doubt could exist of its
+having been the Portuguese Marquis de Col, because he had confided to her
+the whole affair, and indeed come to her, as his habit was, to ask her
+what he could possibly do, under the circumstances.  If Mrs. Fiske's
+friend, who married the Devonshire person, had seen the same thing, the
+coincidence was yet more extraordinary than the case.  Mrs. Fiske said it
+assuredly was, and glanced at her aunt, who, as the Countess now rose,
+declaring she must speak to Evan, chid Mrs. Fiske, and wished her and
+Peter Smithers at the bottom of the sea.
+
+'No, no, Mama,' said the Countess, laughing, 'that would hardly be
+proper,' and before Mrs. Fiske could reply, escaped to complain to Evan
+of the vulgarity of those women.
+
+She was not prepared for the burst of wrath with which Evan met her.
+'Louisa ,' said he, taking her wrist sternly, 'you have done a thing I
+can't forgive.  I find it hard to bear disgrace myself: I will not
+consent to bring it upon others.  Why did you dare to couple Miss
+Jocelyn's name with mine?'
+
+The Countess gave him out her arm's length.  'Speak on, Van,' she said,
+admiring him with a bright gaze.
+
+'Answer me, Louisa; and don't take me for a fool any more,' he pursued.
+'You have coupled Miss Jocelyn's name with mine, in company, and I insist
+now upon your giving me your promise to abstain from doing it anywhere,
+before anybody.'
+
+'If she saw you at this instant, Van,' returned the incorrigible
+Countess, 'would she desire it, think you?  Oh!  I must make you angry
+before her, I see that!  You have your father's frown.  You surpass him,
+for your delivery is more correct, and equally fluent.  And if a woman is
+momentarily melted by softness in a man, she is for ever subdued by
+boldness and bravery of mien.'
+
+Evan dropped her hand.  'Miss Jocelyn has done me the honour to call me
+her friend.  That was in other days.'  His lip quivered.  'I shall not
+see Miss Jocelyn again.  Yes; I would lay down my life for her; but
+that's idle talk.  No such chance will ever come to me.  But I can save
+her from being spoken of in alliance with me, and what I am, and I tell
+you, Louisa, I will not have it.'  Saying which, and while he looked
+harshly at her, wounded pride bled through his eyes.
+
+She was touched.  'Sit down, dear; I must explain to you, and make you
+happy against your will,' she said, in another voice, and an English
+accent.  'The mischief is done, Van.  If you do not want Rose Jocelyn to
+love you, you must undo it in your own way.  I am not easily deceived.
+On the morning I went to her house in town, she took me aside, and spoke
+to me.  Not a confession in words.  The blood in her cheeks, when I
+mentioned you, did that for her.  Everything about you she must know--how
+you bore your grief, and all.  And not in her usual free manner, but
+timidly, as if she feared a surprise, or feared to be wakened to the
+secret in her bosom she half suspects--"Tell him!"  she said, "I hope he
+will not forget me."'
+
+The Countess was interrupted by a great sob; for the picture of frank
+Rose Jocelyn changed, and soft, and, as it were, shadowed under a veil of
+bashful regard for him, so filled the young man with sorrowful
+tenderness, that he trembled, and was as a child.
+
+Marking the impression she had produced on him, and having worn off that
+which he had produced on her, the Countess resumed the art in her style
+of speech, easier to her than nature.
+
+'So the sweetest of Roses may be yours, dear Van; and you have her in a
+gold setting, to wear on your heart.  Are you not enviable?  I will not--
+no, I will not tell you she is perfect.  I must fashion the sweet young
+creature.  Though I am very ready to admit that she is much improved by
+this--shall I call it, desired consummation?'
+
+Evan could listen no more.  Such a struggle was rising in his breast: the
+effort to quench what the Countess had so shrewdly kindled; passionate
+desire to look on Rose but for one lightning flash: desire to look on
+her, and muffled sense of shame twin-born with it: wild love and leaden
+misery mixed: dead hopelessness and vivid hope.  Up to the neck in
+Purgatory, but his soul saturated with visions of Bliss!  The fair orb of
+Love was all that was wanted to complete his planetary state, and aloft
+it sprang, showing many faint, fair tracts to him, and piling huge
+darknesses.
+
+As if in search of something, he suddenly went from the room.
+
+'I have intoxicated the poor boy,' said the Countess, and consulted an
+attitude by the evening light in a mirror.  Approving the result, she
+rang for her mother, and sat with her till dark; telling her she could
+not and would not leave her dear Mama that night.  At the supper-table
+Evan did not appear, and Mr. Goren, after taking counsel of Mrs. Mel,
+dispersed the news that Evan was off to London.  On the road again, with
+a purse just as ill-furnished, and in his breast the light that sometimes
+leads gentlemen, as well as ladies, astray.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+MY GENTLEMAN ON THE ROAD AGAIN
+
+Near a milestone, under the moonlight, crouched the figure of a woman,
+huddled with her head against her knees, and careless hair falling to the
+summer's dust.  Evan came upon this sight within a few miles of
+Fallowfield.  At first he was rather startled, for he had inherited
+superstitious emotions from his mother, and the road was lone, the moon
+full.  He went up to her and spoke a gentle word, which provoked no
+reply.  He ventured to put his hand on her shoulder, continuing softly to
+address her.  She was flesh and blood.  Evan stooped his head to catch a
+whisper from her mouth, but nothing save a heavier fall of the breath she
+took, as of one painfully waking, was heard.
+
+A misery beyond our own is a wholesome picture for youth, and though we
+may not for the moment compare the deep with the lower deep, we, if we
+have a heart for outer sorrows, can forget ourselves in it.  Evan had
+just been accusing the heavens of conspiracy to disgrace him.  Those
+patient heavens had listened, as is their wont.  They had viewed and had
+not been disordered by his mental frenzies.  It is certainly hard that
+they do not come down to us, and condescend to tell us what they mean,
+and be dumb-foundered by the perspicuity of our arguments the argument,
+for instance, that they have not fashioned us for the science of the
+shears, and do yet impel us to wield them.  Nevertheless, they to whom
+mortal life has ceased to be a long matter perceive that our appeals for
+conviction are answered, now and then very closely upon the call.  When
+we have cast off the scales of hope and fancy, and surrender our claims
+on mad chance, it is given us to see that some plan is working out: that
+the heavens, icy as they are to the pangs of our blood, have been
+throughout speaking to our souls; and, according to the strength there
+existing, we learn to comprehend them.  But their language is an element
+of Time, whom primarily we have to know.
+
+Evan Harrington was young.  He wished not to clothe the generation.  What
+was to the remainder of the exiled sons of Adam simply the brand of
+expulsion from Paradise, was to him hell.  In his agony, anything less
+than an angel, soft-voiced in his path, would not have satisfied the poor
+boy, and here was this wretched outcast, and instead of being relieved,
+he was to act the reliever!
+
+Striving to rouse the desolate creature, he shook her slightly.  She now
+raised her head with a slow, gradual motion, like that of a wax-work,
+showing a white young face, tearless,-dreadfully drawn at the lips.
+After gazing at him, she turned her head mechanically to her shoulder, as
+to ask him why he touched her.  He withdrew his hand, saying:
+
+'Why are you here?  Pardon me; I want, if possible, to help you.'
+
+A light sprang in her eyes.  She jumped from the stone, and ran forward a
+step or two, with a gasp:
+
+'Oh, my God!  I want to go and drown myself.'
+
+Evan lingered behind her till he saw her body sway, and in a fit of
+trembling she half fell on his outstretched arm.  He led her to the
+stone, not knowing what on earth to do with her.  There was no sign of a
+house near; they were quite solitary; to all his questions she gave an
+unintelligible moan.  He had not the heart to leave her, so, taking a
+sharp seat on a heap of flints, thus possibly furnishing future
+occupation for one of his craftsmen, he waited, and amused himself by
+marking out diagrams with his stick in the thick dust.
+
+His thoughts were far away, when he heard, faintly uttered:
+
+'Why do you stop here?'
+
+'To help you.'
+
+'Please don't.  Let me be.  I can't be helped.'
+
+'My good creature,' said Evan, 'it 's quite impossible that I should
+leave you in this state.  Tell me where you were going when your illness
+seized you?'
+
+'I was going,' she commenced vacantly, 'to the sea--the water,'
+she added, with a shivering lip.
+
+The foolish youth asked her if she could be cold on such a night.
+
+'No, I'm not cold,' she replied, drawing closer over her lap the ends of
+a shawl which would in that period have been thought rather gaudy for her
+station.
+
+'You were going to Lymport?'
+
+'Yes,--Lymport's nearest, I think.'
+
+'And why were you out travelling at this hour?'
+
+She dropped her head, and began rocking to right and left.
+
+While they talked the noise of waggon-wheels was heard approaching.  Evan
+went into the middle of the road, and beheld a covered waggon, and a
+fellow whom he advanced to meet, plodding a little to the rear of the
+horses.  He proved kindly.  He was a farmer's man, he said, and was at
+that moment employed in removing the furniture of the farmer's son, who
+had failed as a corn-chandler in Lymport, to Hillford, which he expected
+to reach about morn.  He answered Evan's request that he would afford the
+young woman conveyance as far as Fallowfield:
+
+'Tak' her in?  That I will.
+
+'She won't hurt the harses,' he pursued, pointing his whip at the
+vehicle: 'there's my mate, Gearge Stoakes, he's in there, snorin' his
+turn.  Can't you hear 'n asnorin' thraugh the wheels?  I can; I've been
+laughin'!  He do snore that loud-Gearge do!'
+
+Proceeding to inform Evan how George Stokes had snored in that
+characteristic manner from boyhood, ever since he and George had slept in
+a hayloft together; and how he, kept wakeful and driven to distraction by
+George Stokes' nose, had been occasionally compelled, in sheer self-
+defence, madly to start up and hold that pertinacious alarum in tight
+compression between thumb and forefinger; and how George Stokes, thus
+severely handled, had burst his hold with a tremendous snort, as big as a
+bull, and had invariably uttered the exclamation, 'Hulloa!--same to you,
+my lad!' and rolled over to snore as fresh as ever;--all this with
+singular rustic comparisons, racy of the soil, and in raw Hampshire
+dialect, the waggoner came to a halt opposite the stone, and, while Evan
+strode to assist the girl, addressed himself to the great task of
+arousing the sturdy sleeper and quieting his trumpet, heard by all ears
+now that the accompaniment of the wheels was at an end.
+
+George, violently awakened, complained that it was before his time, to
+which he was true; and was for going off again with exalted contentment,
+though his heels had been tugged, and were dangling some length out of
+the machine; but his comrade, with a determined blow of the lungs, gave
+another valiant pull, and George Stokes was on his legs, marvelling at
+the world and man.  Evan had less difficulty with the girl.  She rose to
+meet him, put up her arms for him to clasp her waist, whispering sharply
+in an inward breath: 'What are you going to do with me?' and indifferent
+to his verbal response, trustingly yielded her limbs to his guidance.  He
+could see blood on her bitten underlip; as, with the help of the
+waggoner, he lifted her on the mattress, backed by a portly bundle, which
+the sagacity of Mr. Stokes had selected for his couch.
+
+The waggoner cracked his whip, laughing at George Stokes, who yawned and
+settled into a composed ploughswing, without asking questions; apparently
+resolved to finish his nap on his legs.
+
+'Warn't he like that Myzepper chap, I see at the circus, bound athert
+gray mare!' chuckled the waggoner.  'So he 'd 'a gone on, had ye 'a let
+'n.  No wulves waddn't wake Gearge till he 'd slept it out.  Then he 'd
+say, "marnin'!" to 'm.  Are ye 'wake now, Gearge?'
+
+The admirable sleeper preferred to be a quiet butt, and the waggoner
+leisurely exhausted the fun that was to be had out of him; returning to
+it with a persistency that evinced more concentration than variety in his
+mind.  At last Evan said: 'Your pace is rather slow.  They'll be shut up
+in Fallowfield.  I 'll go on ahead.  You'll find me at one of the inns-
+the Green Dragon.'
+
+In return for this speech, the waggoner favoured him with a stare,
+followed by the exclamation:
+
+'Oh, no!  dang that!'
+
+'Why, what's the matter?' quoth Evan.
+
+'You en't goin' to be off, for to leave me and Gearge in the lurch there,
+with that ther' young woman, in that ther' pickle!' returned the
+waggoner.
+
+Evan made an appeal to his reason, but finding that impregnable, he
+pulled out his scanty purse to guarantee his sincerity with an offer of
+pledgemoney.  The waggoner waved it aside.  He wanted no money, he said.
+
+'Look heer,' he went on; 'if you're for a start, I tells ye plain, I
+chucks that ther' young woman int' the road.'
+
+Evan bade him not to be a brute.
+
+'Nark and crop!' the waggoner doggedly ejaculated.
+
+Very much surprised that a fellow who appeared sound at heart, should
+threaten to behave so basely, Evan asked an explanation: upon which the
+waggoner demanded to know what he had eyes for: and as this query failed
+to enlighten the youth, he let him understand that he was a man of family
+experience, and that it was easy to tell at a glance that the complaint
+the young woman laboured under was one common to the daughters of Eve.
+He added that, should an emergency arise, he, though a family man, would
+be useless: that he always vacated the premises while those incidental
+scenes were being enacted at home; and that for him and George Stokes to
+be left alone with the young woman, why they would be of no more service
+to her than a couple of babies newborn themselves.  He, for his part, he
+assured Evan, should take to his heels, and relinquish waggon, and
+horses, and all; while George probably would stand and gape; and the end
+of it would be, they would all be had up for murder.  He diverged from
+the alarming prospect, by a renewal of the foregoing alternative to the
+gentleman who had constituted himself the young woman's protector.  If he
+parted company with them, they would immediately part company with the
+young woman, whose condition was evident.
+
+'Why, couldn't you tall that?' said the waggoner, as Evan, tingling at
+the ears, remained silent.
+
+'I know nothing of such things,' he answered, hastily, like one hurt.
+
+I have to repeat the statement, that he was a youth, and a modest one.
+He felt unaccountably, unreasonably, but horridly, ashamed.  The thought
+of his actual position swamped the sickening disgust at tailordom.
+Worse, then, might happen to us in this extraordinary world!  There was
+something more abhorrent than sitting with one's legs crossed, publicly
+stitching, and scoffed at!  He called vehemently to the waggoner to whip
+the horses, and hurry ahead into Fallowfield; but that worthy, whatever
+might be his dire alarms, had a regular pace, that was conscious of no
+spur: the reply of 'All right!' satisfied him at least; and Evan's chaste
+sighs for the appearance of an assistant petticoat round a turn of the
+road, were offered up duly, to the measure of the waggoner's steps.
+
+Suddenly the waggoner came to a halt, and said 'Blest if that Gearge
+bain't a snorin' on his pins!'
+
+Evan lingered by him with some curiosity, while the waggoner thumped his
+thigh to, 'Yes he be! no he bain't!' several times, in eager hesitation.
+
+'It's a fellow calling from the downs,' said Evan.
+
+'Ay, so!' responded the waggoner.  'Dang'd if I didn't think 'twere that
+Gearge of our'n.  Hark awhile.'
+
+At a repetition of the call, the waggoner stopped his team.  After a few
+minutes, a man appeared panting on the bank above them, down which he ran
+precipitately, knocked against Evan, apologized with the little breath
+that remained to him, and then held his hand as to entreat a hearing.
+Evan thought him half-mad; the waggoner was about to imagine him the
+victim of a midnight assault.  He undeceived them by requesting, in
+rather flowery terms, conveyance on the road and rest for his limbs.  It
+being explained to him that the waggon was already occupied, he comforted
+himself aloud with the reflection that it was something to be on the road
+again for one who had been belated, lost, and wandering over the downs
+for the last six hours.
+
+'Walcome to git in, when young woman gits out,' said the waggoner.  'I'll
+gi' ye my sleep on t' Hillford.'
+
+'Thanks, worthy friend,' returned the new comer.  'The state of the case
+is this--I'm happy to take from humankind whatsoever I can get.  If this
+gentleman will accept of my company, and my legs hold out, all will yet
+be well.'
+
+Though he did not wear a petticoat, Evan was not sorry to have him.  Next
+to the interposition of the Gods, we pray for human fellowship when we
+are in a mess.  So he mumbled politely, dropped with him a little to the
+rear, and they all stepped out to the crack of the waggoner's whip.
+
+'Rather a slow pace,' said Evan, feeling bound to converse.
+
+'Six hours on the downs makes it extremely suitable to me,' rejoined the
+stranger,
+
+'You lost your way?'
+
+'I did, sir.  Yes; one does not court those desolate regions wittingly.
+I am for life and society.  The embraces of Diana do not agree with my
+constitution.  If classics there be who differ from me, I beg them to
+take six hours on the downs alone with the moon, and the last prospect of
+bread and cheese, and a chaste bed, seemingly utterly extinguished.  I am
+cured of my romance.  Of course, when I say bread and cheese, I speak
+figuratively.  Food is implied.'
+
+Evan stole a glance at his companion.
+
+'Besides,' the other continued, with an inflexion of grandeur, 'for a man
+accustomed to his hunters, it is, you will confess, unpleasant--I speak'
+hypothetically--to be reduced to his legs to that extent that it strikes
+him shrewdly he will run them into stumps.'
+
+The stranger laughed.
+
+The fair lady of the night illumined his face, like one who recognized a
+subject.  Evan thought he knew the voice.  A curious struggle therein
+between native facetiousness and an attempt at dignity, appeared to Evan
+not unfamiliar; and the egregious failure of ambition and triumph of the
+instinct, helped him to join, the stranger in his mirth.
+
+'Jack Raikes?' he said: 'surely?'
+
+'The man!' it was answered to him.  'But you? and near our old school--
+Viscount Harrington?  These marvels occur, you see--we meet again by
+night.'
+
+Evan, with little gratification at the meeting, fell into their former
+comradeship; tickled by a recollection of his old schoolfellow's India-
+rubber mind.
+
+Mr. Raikes stood about a head under him.  He had extremely mobile
+features; thick, flexible eyebrows; a loose, voluble mouth; a ridiculous
+figure on a dandified foot.  He represented to you one who was rehearsing
+a part he wished to act before the world, and was not aware that he took
+the world into his confidence.
+
+How he had come there his elastic tongue explained in tropes and puns and
+lines of dramatic verse.  His patrimony spent, he at once believed
+himself an actor, and he was hissed off the stage of a provincial
+theatre.
+
+'Ruined, the last ignominy endured, I fled from the gay vistas of the
+Bench--for they live who would thither lead me! and determined, the day
+before the yesterday--what think'st thou? why to go boldly, and offer
+myself as Adlatus to blessed old Cudford!  Yes! a little Latin is all
+that remains to me, and I resolved, like the man I am, to turn, hic, hac,
+hoc, into bread and cheese, and beer: Impute nought foreign to me, in the
+matter of pride.'
+
+'Usher in our old school--poor old Jack!' exclaimed Evan.
+
+'Lieutenant in the Cudford Academy!' the latter rejoined.  'I walked the
+distance from London.  I had my interview with the respected principal.
+He gave me of mutton nearest the bone, which, they say, is sweetest; and
+on sweet things you should not regale in excess.  Endymion watched the
+sheep that bred that mutton!  He gave me the thin beer of our boyhood,
+that I might the more soberly state my mission.  That beer, my friend,
+was brewed by one who wished to form a study for pantomimic masks.  He
+listened with the gravity which is all his own to the recital of my
+career; he pleasantly compared me to Phaethon, congratulated the river
+Thames at my not setting it on fire in my rapid descent, and extended to
+me the three fingers of affectionate farewell.  "You an usher, a rearer
+of youth, Mr. Raikes?  Oh, no!  Oh, no!"  That was all I could get out of
+him.  'Gad!  he might have seen that I didn't joke with the mutton-bone.
+If I winced at the beer it was imperceptible.  Now a man who can do that
+is what I call a man in earnest.'
+
+'You've just come from Cudford?' said Evan.
+
+'Short is the tale, though long the way, friend Harrington.  From Bodley
+is ten miles to Beckley.  I walked them.  From Beckley is fifteen miles
+to Fallowfield.  Them I was traversing, when, lo! near sweet eventide a
+fair horsewoman riding with her groom at her horse's heels.  "Lady," says
+I, addressing her, as much out of the style of the needy as possible,
+"will you condescend to direct me to Fallowfield?"--"Are you going to the
+match?"  says she.  I answered boldly that I was.  "Beckley's in," says
+she, "and you'll be in time to see them out, if you cut across the downs
+there."  I lifted my hat--a desperate measure, for the brim won't bear
+much--but honour to women though we perish.  She bowed: I cut across the
+downs.  In fine, Harrington, old boy, I've been wandering among those
+downs for the last seven or eight hours.  I was on the point of turning
+my back on the road for the twentieth time, I believe when I heard your
+welcome vehicular music, and hailed you; and I ask you, isn't it luck for
+a fellow who hasn't got a penny in his pocket, and is as hungry as five
+hundred hunters, to drop on an old friend like this?'
+
+Evan answered with the question:
+
+'Where was it you said you met the young lady?'
+
+'In the first place, O Amadis!  I never said she was young.  You're on
+the scent, I see.'
+
+Nursing the fresh image of his darling in his heart's recesses, Evan, as
+they entered Fallowfield, laid the state of his purse before Jack, and
+earned anew the epithet of Amadis, when it came to be told that the
+occupant of the waggon was likewise one of its pensioners.
+
+Sleep had long held its reign in Fallowfield.  Nevertheless, Mr. Raikes,
+though blind windows alone looked on him, and nought foreign was to be
+imputed to him in the matter of pride, had become exceedingly solicitous
+concerning his presentation to the inhabitants of that quiet little
+country town; and while Evan and--the waggoner consulted the former with
+regard to the chances of procuring beds and supper, the latter as to his
+prospect of beer and a comfortable riddance of the feminine burden
+weighing on them all--Mr. Raikes was engaged in persuading his hat to
+assume something of the gentlemanly polish of its youth, and might have
+been observed now and then furtively catching up a leg to be dusted.  Ere
+the wheels of the waggon stopped he had gained that ease of mind which
+the knowledge that you have done all a man may do and circumstances
+warrant, establishes.  Capacities conscious of their limits may repose
+even proudly when they reach them; and, if Mr. Raikes had not quite the
+air of one come out of a bandbox, he at least proved to the discerning
+intelligence that he knew what sort of manner befitted that happy
+occasion, and was enabled by the pains he had taken to glance with a
+challenge at the sign of the hostelry, under which they were now ranked,
+and from which, though the hour was late, and Fallowfield a singularly
+somnolent little town, there issued signs of life approaching to
+festivity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+DOINGS AT AN INN
+
+What every traveller sighs to find, was palatably furnished by the Green
+Dragon of Fallowfield--a famous inn, and a constellation for wandering
+coachmen.  There pleasant smiles seasoned plenty, and the bill was gilded
+in a manner unknown to our days.  Whoso drank of the ale of the Green
+Dragon kept in his memory a place apart for it.  The secret, that to give
+a warm welcome is the breath of life to an inn, was one the Green Dragon
+boasted, even then, not to share with many Red Lions, or Cocks of the
+Morning, or Kings' Heads, or other fabulous monsters; and as if to show
+that when you are in the right track you are sure to be seconded, there
+was a friend of the Green Dragon, who, on a particular night of the year,
+caused its renown to enlarge to the dimensions of a miracle.  But that,
+for the moment, is my secret.
+
+Evan and Jack were met in the passage by a chambermaid.  Before either of
+them could speak, she had turned and fled, with the words:
+
+'More coming!' which, with the addition of 'My goodness me!' were echoed
+by the hostess in her recess.  Hurried directions seemed to be
+consequent, and then the hostess sallied out, and said, with a curtsey:
+
+'Please to step in, gentlemen.  This is the room, tonight.'
+
+Evan lifted his hat; and bowing, requested to know whether they could
+have a supper and beds.
+
+'Beds, Sir!' cried the hostess.  'What am I to do for beds!  Yes, beds
+indeed you may have, but bed-rooms--if you ask for them, it really is
+more than I can supply you with.  I have given up my own.  I sleep with
+my maid Jane to-night.'
+
+'Anything will do for us, madam,' replied Evan, renewing his foreign
+courtesy.  'But there is a poor young woman outside.'
+
+'Another!' The hostess instantly smiled down her inhospitable outcry.
+
+'She,' said Evan, 'must have a room to herself.  She is ill.'
+
+'Must is must, sir,' returned the gracious hostess.  'But I really
+haven't the means.'
+
+'You have bed-rooms, madam?'
+
+'Every one of them engaged, sir.'
+
+'By ladies, madam?'
+
+'Lord forbid, Sir!' she exclaimed with the honest energy of a woman who
+knew her sex.
+
+Evan bade Jack go and assist the waggoner to bring in the girl.  Jack,
+who had been all the time pulling at his wristbands, and settling his
+coat-collar by the dim reflection of a window of the bar, departed,
+after, on his own authority, assuring the hostess that fever was not the
+young woman's malady, as she protested against admitting fever into her
+house, seeing that she had to consider her guests.
+
+'We're open to all the world to-night, except fever,' said the hostess.
+'Yes,' she rejoined to Evan's order that the waggoner and his mate should
+be supplied with ale, 'they shall have as much as they can drink,' which
+is not a speech usual at inns, when one man gives an order for others,
+but Evan passed it by, and politely begged to be shown in to one of the
+gentlemen who had engaged bedrooms.
+
+'Oh! if you can persuade any of them, sir, I'm sure I've nothing to say,'
+observed the hostess.  'Pray, don't ask me to stand by and back it,
+that's all.'
+
+Had Evan been familiar with the Green Dragon, he would have noticed that
+the landlady, its presiding genius, was stiffer than usual; the rosy
+smile was more constrained, as if a great host had to be embraced, and
+were trying it to the utmost stretch.  There was, however, no asperity
+about her, and when she had led him to the door he was to enter to prefer
+his suit, and she had asked whether the young woman was quite common, and
+he had replied that he had picked her up on the road, and that she was
+certainly poor, the hostess said:
+
+'I 'm sure you're a very good gentleman, sir, and if I could spare your
+asking at all, I would.'
+
+With that she went back to encounter Mr. Raikes and his charge, and prime
+the waggoner and his mate.
+
+A noise of laughter and talk was stilled gradually, as Evan made his bow
+into a spacious room, wherein, as the tops of pines are seen swimming on
+the morning mist, about a couple of dozen guests of divers conditions sat
+partially revealed through wavy clouds of tobacco-smoke.  By their
+postures, which Evan's appearance by no means disconcerted, you read in a
+glance men who had been at ease for so many hours that they had no
+troubles in the world save the two ultimate perplexities of the British
+Sybarite, whose bed of roses is harassed by the pair of problems: first,
+what to do with his legs; secondly, how to imbibe liquor with the
+slightest possible derangement of those members subordinate to his upper
+structure.  Of old the Sybarite complained.  Not so our self-helpful
+islanders.  Since they could not, now that work was done and jollity the
+game, take off their legs, they got away from them as far as they might,
+in fashions original or imitative: some by thrusting them out at full
+length; some by cramping them under their chairs: while some, taking
+refuge in a mental effort, forgot them, a process to be recommended if it
+did not involve occasional pangs of consciousness to the legs of their
+neighbours.  We see in our cousins West of the great water, who are said
+to exaggerate our peculiarities, beings labouring under the same
+difficulty, and intent on its solution.  As to the second problem: that
+of drinking without discomposure to the subservient limbs: the company
+present worked out this republican principle ingeniously, but in a manner
+beneath the attention of the Muse.  Let Clio record that mugs and
+glasses, tobacco and pipes, were strewn upon the table.  But if the
+guests had arrived at that stage when to reach the arm, or arrange the
+person, for a sip of good stuff, causes moral debates, and presents to
+the mind impediments equal to what would be raised in active men by the
+prospect of a great excursion, it is not to be wondered at that the
+presence of a stranger produced no immediate commotion.  Two or three
+heads were half turned; such as faced him imperceptibly lifted their
+eyelids.
+
+'Good evening, sir,' said one who sat as chairman, with a decisive nod.
+
+'Good night, ain't it?' a jolly-looking old fellow queried of the
+speaker, in an under-voice.
+
+'Gad, you don't expect me to be wishing the gentleman good-bye, do you?'
+retorted the former.
+
+'Ha!  ha!  No, to be sure,' answered the old boy; and the remark was
+variously uttered, that 'Good night,' by a caprice of our language, did
+sound like it.
+
+'Good evening's "How d' ye do?"--"How are ye?"  Good night's "Be off, and
+be blowed to you,"' observed an interpreter with a positive mind; and
+another, whose intelligence was not so clear, but whose perceptions had
+seized the point, exclaimed: 'I never says it when I hails a chap; but,
+dash my buttons, if I mightn't 'a done, one day or another!  Queer!'
+
+The chairman, warmed by his joke, added, with a sharp wink: 'Ay; it would
+be queer, if you hailed "Good night" in the middle of the day!' and this
+among a company soaked in ripe ale, could not fail to run the electric
+circle, and persuaded several to change their positions; in the rumble of
+which, Evan's reply, if he had made any, was lost.  Few, however, were
+there who could think of him, and ponder on that glimpse of fun, at the
+same time; and he would have been passed over, had not the chairman said:
+'Take a seat, sir; make yourself comfortable.'
+
+'Before I have that pleasure,' replied Evan, 'I--'
+
+'I see where 'tis,' burst out the old boy who had previously superinduced
+a diversion: 'he's going to ax if he can't have a bed!'
+
+A roar of laughter, and 'Don't you remember this day last year?' followed
+the cunning guess.  For awhile explication was impossible; and Evan
+coloured, and smiled, and waited for them.
+
+'I was going to ask--'
+
+'Said so!' shouted the old boy, gleefully.
+
+'--one of the gentlemen who has engaged a bed-room to do me the extreme
+favour to step aside with me, and allow me a moment's speech with him.'
+
+Long faces were drawn, and odd stares were directed toward him, in reply.
+
+'I see where 'tis'; the old boy thumped his knee.  'Ain't it now?  Speak
+up, sir!  There's a lady in the case?'
+
+'I may tell you thus much,' answered Evan, 'that it is an unfortunate
+young woman, very ill, who needs rest and quiet.'
+
+'Didn't I say so?' shouted the old boy.
+
+But this time, though his jolly red jowl turned all round to demand a
+confirmation, it was not generally considered that he had divined so
+correctly.  Between a lady and an unfortunate young woman, there seemed
+to be a strong distinction, in the minds of the company.
+
+The chairman was the most affected by the communication.  His bushy
+eyebrows frowned at Evan, and he began tugging at the brass buttons of
+his coat, like one preparing to arm for a conflict.
+
+'Speak out, sir, if you please,' he said.  'Above board--no asides--no
+taking advantages.  You want me to give up my bed-room for the use of
+your young woman, sir?'
+
+Evan replied quietly: 'She is a stranger to me; and if you could see her,
+sir, and know her situation, I think she would move your pity.'
+
+'I don't doubt it, sir--I don't doubt it,' returned the chairman.  'They
+all move our pity.  That's how they get over us.  She has diddled you,
+and she would diddle me, and diddle us all-diddle the devil, I dare say,
+when her time comes.  I don't doubt it, sir.'
+
+To confront a vehement old gentleman, sitting as president in an assembly
+of satellites, requires command of countenance, and Evan was not
+browbeaten: he held him, and the whole room, from where he stood, under a
+serene and serious eye, for his feelings were too deeply stirred on
+behalf of the girl to let him think of himself.  That question of hers,
+'What are you going to do with me?' implying such helplessness and trust,
+was still sharp on his nerves.
+
+'Gentlemen,' he said, 'I humbly beg your pardon for disturbing you as I
+do.'
+
+But with a sudden idea that a general address on behalf of a particular
+demand must necessarily fail, he let his eyes rest on one there, whose
+face was neither stupid nor repellent, and who, though he did not look
+up, had an attentive, thoughtful cast about the mouth.
+
+'May I entreat a word apart with you, sir?'
+
+Evan was not mistaken in the index he had perused.  The gentleman seemed
+to feel that he was selected from the company, and slightly raising his
+head, carelessly replied: 'My bed is entirely at your disposal,' resuming
+his contemplative pose.
+
+On the point of thanking him, Evan advanced a step, when up started the
+irascible chairman.
+
+'I don't permit it!  I won't allow it!'  And before Evan could ask his
+reasons, he had rung the bell, muttering: 'They follow us to our inns,
+now, the baggages!  They must harry us at our inns!  We can't have peace
+and quiet at our inns!--'
+
+In a state of combustion, he cried out to the waiter:
+
+'Here, Mark, this gentleman has brought in a dirty wench: pack her up to
+my bed-room, and lock her in lock her in, and bring down the key.'
+
+Agreeably deceived in the old gentleman's intentions, Evan could not
+refrain from joining the murmured hilarity created by the conclusion of
+his order.  The latter glared at him, and added: 'Now, sir, you've done
+your worst.  Sit down, and be merry.'
+
+Replying that he had a friend outside, and would not fail to accept the
+invitation, Evan retired.  He was met by the hostess with the reproachful
+declaration on her lips, that she was a widow woman, wise in appearances,
+and that he had brought into her house that night work she did not
+expect, or bargain for.  Rather (since I must speak truth of my
+gentleman) to silence her on the subject, and save his ears, than to
+propitiate her favour towards the girl, Evan drew out his
+constitutionally lean purse, and dropped it in her hand, praying
+her to put every expense incurred to his charge.  She exclaimed:
+
+'If Dr. Pillie has his full sleep this night, I shall be astonished'; and
+Evan hastily led Jack into the passage to impart to him, that the extent
+of his resources was reduced to the smallest of sums in shillings.
+
+'I can beat my friend at that reckoning,' said Mr. Raikes; and they
+entered the room.
+
+Eyes were on him.  This had ever the effect of causing him to swell to
+monstrous proportions in the histrionic line.  Asking the waiter
+carelessly for some light supper dish, he suggested the various French,
+with 'not that?' and the affable naming of another.  'Nor that?  Dear me,
+we shall have to sup on chops, I believe!'
+
+Evan saw the chairman scrutinizing Raikes, much as he himself might have
+done, and he said: 'Bread and cheese for me.'
+
+Raikes exclaimed: 'Really?  Well, my lord, you lead, and your taste is
+mine!'
+
+A second waiter scudded past, and stopped before the chairman to say:
+'If you please, sir, the gentlemen upstairs send their compliments, and
+will be happy to accept.'
+
+'Ha!' was the answer.  'Thought better of it, have they!  Lay for three
+more, then.  Five more, I guess.' He glanced at the pair of intruders.
+
+Among a portion of the guests there had been a return to common talk, and
+one had observed that he could not get that 'Good Evening,' and 'Good
+Night,' out of his head which had caused a friend to explain the meaning
+of these terms of salutation to him: while another, of a philosophic
+turn, pursued the theme: 'You see, when we meets, we makes a night of it.
+So, when we parts, it's Good Night--natural!  ain't it?'  A proposition
+assented to, and considerably dilated on; but whether he was laughing at
+that, or what had aroused the fit, the chairman did not say.
+
+Gentle chuckles had succeeded his laughter by the time the bread and
+cheese appeared.
+
+In the rear of the provision came three young gentlemen, of whom the
+foremost lumped in, singing to one behind him, 'And you shall have little
+Rosey !'
+
+They were clad in cricketing costume, and exhibited the health and
+manners of youthful Englishmen of station.  Frolicsome young bulls
+bursting on an assemblage of sheep, they might be compared to.  The
+chairman welcomed them a trifle snubbingly.  The colour mounted to the
+cheeks of Mr. Raikes as he made incision in the cheese, under their eyes,
+knitting his brows fearfully, as if at hard work.
+
+The chairman entreated Evan to desist from the cheese; and, pulling out
+his watch, thundered: 'Time!'
+
+The company generally jumped on their legs; and, in the midst of a hum of
+talk and laughter, he informed Evan and Jack, that he invited them
+cordially to a supper up-stairs, and would be pleased if they would
+partake of it, and in a great rage if they would not.
+
+Raikes was for condescending to accept.
+
+Evan sprang up and cried: 'Gladly, sir,' and gladly would he have cast
+his cockney schoolmate to the winds, in the presence of these young
+cricketers; for he had a prognostication.
+
+The door was open, and the company of jolly yeomen, tradesmen, farmers,
+and the like, had become intent on observing all the ceremonies of
+precedence: not one would broaden his back on the other; and there was
+bowing, and scraping, and grimacing, till Farmer Broadmead was hailed
+aloud, and the old boy stepped forth, and was summarily pushed through:
+the chairman calling from the rear, 'Hulloa!  no names to-night!' to
+which was answered lustily: 'All right, Mr. Tom!' and the speaker was
+reproved with, 'There you go!  at it again!' and out and up they hustled.
+
+The chairman said quietly to Evan, as they were ascending the stairs:
+'We don't have names to-night; may as well drop titles.'  Which presented
+no peculiar meaning to Evan's mind, and he smiled the usual smile.
+
+To Raikes, at the door of the supper-room, the chairman repeated the
+same; and with extreme affability and alacrity of abnegation, the other
+rejoined, 'Oh, certainly!'
+
+No wonder that he rubbed his hands with more delight than aristocrats and
+people with gentlemanly connections are in the habit of betraying at the
+prospect of refection, for the release from bread and cheese was rendered
+overpoweringly glorious, in his eyes, by the bountiful contrast exhibited
+on the board before him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+IN WHICH ALE IS SHOWN TO HAVE ONE QUALITY OF WINE
+
+To proclaim that yon ribs of beef and yonder ruddy Britons have met, is
+to furnish matter for an hour's comfortable meditation.
+
+Digest the fact.  Here the Fates have put their seal to something Nature
+clearly devised.  It was intended; and it has come to pass.  A thing has
+come to pass which we feel to be right!  The machinery of the world,
+then, is not entirely dislocated: there is harmony, on one point, among
+the mysterious powers who have to do with us.
+
+Apart from its eloquent and consoling philosophy, the picture is
+pleasant.  You see two rows of shoulders resolutely set for action: heads
+in divers degrees of proximity to their plates: eyes variously twinkling,
+or hypocritically composed: chaps in vigorous exercise.  Now leans a
+fellow right back with his whole face to the firmament:  Ale is his
+adoration.  He sighs not till he sees the end of the mug.  Now from one a
+laugh is sprung; but, as if too early tapped, he turns off the cock, and
+primes himself anew.  Occupied by their own requirements, these Britons
+allow that their neighbours have rights: no cursing at waste of time is
+heard when plates have to be passed: disagreeable, it is still duty.
+Field-Marshal Duty, the Briton's chief star, shines here.  If one usurps
+more than his allowance of elbow-room, bring your charge against them
+that fashioned him: work away to arrive at some compass yourself.
+
+
+Now the mustard ceases to travel, and the salt: the guests have leisure
+to contemplate their achievements.  Laughs are more prolonged, and come
+from the depths.
+
+Now Ale, which is to Beef what Eve was to Adam, threatens to take
+possession of the field.  Happy they who, following Nature's direction,
+admitted not bright ale into their Paradise till their manhood was
+strengthened with beef.  Some, impatient, had thirsted; had satisfied
+their thirst; and the ale, the light though lovely spirit, with nothing
+to hold it down, had mounted to their heads; just as Eve will do when
+Adam is not mature: just as she did--Alas!
+
+Now, the ruins of the feast being removed, and a clear course left for
+the flow of ale, Farmer Broadmead, facing the chairman, rises.  He stands
+in an attitude of midway.  He speaks:
+
+'Gentlemen!  'Taint fust time you and I be met here, to salbrate this
+here occasion.  I say, not fust time, not by many a time, 'taint.  Well,
+gentlemen, I ain't much of a speaker, gentlemen, as you know.  Howsever,
+here I be.  No denyin' that.  I'm on my legs.  This here's a strange
+enough world, and a man 's a gentleman, I say, we ought for to be glad
+when we got 'm.  You know: I'm coming to it shortly.  I ain't much of a
+speaker, and if you wants somethin' new, you must ax elsewhere: but what
+I say is--Bang it!  here's good health and long life to Mr. Tom, up
+there!'
+
+'No names !' shouts the chairman, in the midst of a tremendous clatter.
+
+Farmer Broadmead moderately disengages his breadth from the seat.  He
+humbly axes pardon, which is accorded him with a blunt nod.
+
+Ale (to Beef what Eve was to Adam) circulates beneath a dazzling foam,
+fair as the first woman.
+
+Mr. Tom (for the breach of the rules in mentioning whose name on a night
+when identities are merged, we offer sincere apologies every other
+minute), Mr. Tom is toasted.  His parents, who selected that day sixty
+years ago, for his bow to be made to the world, are alluded to with
+encomiums, and float down to posterity on floods of liquid amber.
+
+But to see all the subtle merits that now begin to bud out from Mr. Tom,
+the chairman and giver of the feast; and also rightly to appreciate the
+speeches, we require to be enormously charged with Ale.  Mr. Raikes did
+his best to keep his head above the surface of the rapid flood.  He
+conceived the chairman in brilliant colours, and probably owing to the
+energy called for by his brain, the legs of the young man failed him
+twice, as he tried them.  Attention was demanded.  Mr. Raikes addressed
+the meeting.
+
+The three young gentlemen-cricketers had hitherto behaved with a certain
+propriety.  It did not offend Mr. Raikes to see them conduct themselves
+as if they were at a play, and the rest of the company paid actors.  He
+had likewise taken a position, and had been the first to laugh aloud at a
+particular slip of grammar; while his shrugs at the aspirates transposed
+and the pronunciation prevalent, had almost established a free-masonry
+between him and one of the three young gentlemen-cricketers-a fair-haired
+youth, with a handsome, reckless face, who leaned on the table,
+humorously eyeing the several speakers, and exchanging by-words and
+laughs with his friends on each side of him.
+
+But Mr. Raikes had the disadvantage of having come to the table empty in
+stomach--thirsty exceedingly; and, I repeat, that as, without experience,
+you are the victim of divinely given Eve, so, with no foundation to
+receive it upon, are you the victim of good sound Ale.  He very soon lost
+his head.  He would otherwise have seen that he must produce a
+wonderfully-telling speech if he was to keep the position he had taken,
+and had better not attempt one.  The three young cricketers were hostile
+from the beginning.  All of them leant forward, calling attention loudly
+laughing for the fun to come.
+
+'Gentlemen!' he said: and said it twice.  The gap was wide, and he said,
+'Gentlemen!' again.
+
+This commencement of a speech proves that you have made the plunge, but
+not that you can swim.  At a repetition of 'Gentlemen!' expectancy
+resolved into cynicism.
+
+'Gie'n a help,' sang out a son of the plough to a neighbour of the
+orator.
+
+'Hang it!' murmured another, 'we ain't such gentlemen as that comes to.'
+
+Mr. Raikes was politely requested to 'tune his pipe.'
+
+With a gloomy curiosity as to the results of Jack's adventurous
+undertaking, and a touch of anger at the three whose bearing throughout
+had displeased him, Evan regarded his friend.  He, too, had drunk, and
+upon emptiness.  Bright ale had mounted to his brain.  A hero should be
+held as sacred as the Grand Llama: so let no more be said than that he
+drank still, nor marked the replenishing of his glass.
+
+Raikes cleared his throat for a final assault: he had got an image, and
+was dashing off; but, unhappily, as if to make the start seem fair, he
+was guilty of his reiteration, 'Gentlemen.'
+
+Everybody knew that it was a real start this time, and indeed he had made
+an advance, and had run straight through half a sentence.  It was
+therefore manifestly unfair, inimical, contemptuous, overbearing, and
+base, for one of the three young cricketers at this period to fling back
+weariedly and exclaim: 'By the Lord; too many gentlemen here!'
+
+Evan heard him across the table.  Lacking the key of the speaker's
+previous conduct, the words might have passed.  As it was, they, to the
+ale-invaded head of a young hero, feeling himself the world's equal, and
+condemned nevertheless to bear through life the insignia of Tailordom,
+not unnaturally struck with peculiar offence.  There was arrogance, too,
+in the young man who had interposed.  He was long in the body, and, when
+he was not refreshing his sight by a careless contemplation of his
+finger-nails, looked down on his company at table, as one may do who
+comes from loftier studies.  He had what is popularly known as the nose
+of our aristocracy: a nose that much culture of the external graces, and
+affectation of suavity, are required to soften.  Thereto were joined thin
+lips and arched brows.  Birth it was possible he could boast, hardly
+brains.  He sat to the right of the fair-haired youth, who, with his
+remaining comrade, a quiet smiling fellow, appeared to be better liked by
+the guests, and had been hailed once or twice, under correction of the
+chairman, as Mr. Harry.  The three had distinguished one there by a few
+friendly passages; and this was he who had offered his bed to Evan for
+the service of the girl.  The recognition they extended to him did not
+affect him deeply.  He was called Drummond, and had his place near the
+chairmen, whose humours he seemed to relish.
+
+The ears of Mr. Raikes were less keen at the moment than Evan's, but his
+openness to ridicule was that of a man on his legs solus, amid a company
+sitting, and his sense of the same--when he saw himself the victim of it
+--acute.  His face was rather comic, and, under the shadow of
+embarrassment, twitching and working for ideas--might excuse a want of
+steadiness and absolute gravity in the countenances of others.
+
+The chairman's neighbour, Drummond, whispered him 'Laxley will get up a
+row with that fellow.'
+
+'It 's young Jocelyn egging him on,' said the chairman.
+
+'Um!' added Drummond: 'it's the friend of that talkative rascal that 's
+dangerous, if it comes to anything.'
+
+Mr. Raikes perceived that his host desired him to conclude.  So, lifting
+his voice and swinging his arm, he ended: 'Allow me to propose to you the
+Fly in Amber.  In other words, our excellent host embalmed in brilliant
+ale!  Drink him!  and so let him live in our memories for ever!'
+
+He sat down very well contented with himself, very little comprehended,
+and applauded loudly.
+
+'The Flyin' Number!' echoed Farmer Broadmead, confidently and with
+clamour; adding to a friend, when both had drunk the toast to the dregs,
+'But what number that be, or how many 'tis of 'em, dishes me!  But that
+'s ne'ther here nor there.'
+
+The chairman and host of the evening stood up to reply, welcomed by
+thunders--'There ye be, Mr. Tom! glad I lives to see ye!' and ' No
+names!' and 'Long life to him!'
+
+This having subsided, the chairman spoke, first nodding.  'You don't want
+many words, and if you do, you won't get 'em from me.'
+
+Cries of 'Got something better!' took up the blunt address.
+
+'You've been true to it, most of you.  I like men not to forget a
+custom.'
+
+'Good reason so to be,' and 'A jolly good custom,' replied to both
+sentences.
+
+'As to the beef, I hope you didn't find it tough: as to the ale--I know
+all about THAT!'
+
+'Aha!  good!' rang the verdict.
+
+'All I can say is, that this day next year it will be on the table, and I
+hope that every one of you will meet Tom--will meet me here punctually.
+I'm not a Parliament man, so that 'll do.'
+
+The chairman's breach of his own rules drowned the termination of his
+speech in an uproar.
+
+Re-seating himself, he lifted his glass, and proposed:
+'The Antediluvians!'
+
+Farmer Broadmead echoed: 'The Antediloovians !' appending, as a private
+sentiment, 'And dam rum chaps they were!'
+
+The Antediluvians, undoubtedly the toast of the evening, were
+enthusiastically drunk, and in an ale of treble brew.
+
+When they had quite gone down, Mr. Raikes ventured to ask for the reason
+of their receiving such honour from a posterity they had so little to do
+with.  He put the question mildly, but was impetuously snapped at by the
+chairman.
+
+'You respect men for their luck, sir, don't you?  Don't be a hypocrite,
+and say you don't--you do.  Very well: so do I.  That's why I drink "The
+Antediluvians"!'
+
+'Our worthy host here' (Drummond, gravely smiling, undertook to elucidate
+the case) 'has a theory that the constitutions of the Postdiluvians have
+been deranged, and their lives shortened, by the miasmas of the Deluge.
+I believe he carries it so far as to say that Noah, in the light of a
+progenitor, is inferior to Adam, owing to the shaking he had to endure in
+the ark, and which he conceives to have damaged the patriarch and the
+nervous systems of his sons.  It's a theory, you know.'
+
+'They lived close on a thousand years, hale, hearty--and no water!' said
+the chairman.
+
+'Well!' exclaimed one, some way down the table, a young farmer, red as a
+cock's comb: 'no fools they, eh, master?  Where there's ale, would you
+drink water, my hearty?' and back he leaned to enjoy the tribute to his
+wit; a wit not remarkable, but nevertheless sufficient in the noise it
+created to excite the envy of Mr. Raikes, who, inveterately silly when
+not engaged in a contest, now began to play on the names of the sons of
+Noah.
+
+The chairman lanced a keen light at him from beneath his bushy eyebrows.
+
+Before long he had again to call two parties to order. To Raikes, Laxley
+was a puppy: to Laxley, Mr. Raikes was a snob.  The antagonism was
+natural: ale did but put the match to the magazine.  But previous to an
+explosion, Laxley, who had observed Evan's disgust at Jack's exhibition
+of himself, and had been led to think, by his conduct and clothes in
+conjunction, that Evan was his own equal; a gentleman condescending to
+the society of a low-born acquaintance;--had sought with sundry
+propitiations, intelligent glances, light shrugs, and such like, to
+divide Evan from Jack.  He did this, doubtless, because he partly
+sympathized with Evan, and to assure him that he took a separate view of
+him.  Probably Evan was already offended, or he held to Jack, as a
+comrade should, or else it was that Tailordom and the pride of his
+accepted humiliation bellowed in his ears, every fresh minute: 'Nothing
+assume!' I incline to think that the more ale he drank the fiercer rebel
+he grew against conventional ideas of rank, and those class-barriers
+which we scorn so vehemently when we find ourselves kicking at them.
+Whatsoever the reason that prompted him, he did not respond to Laxley's
+advances; and Laxley, disregarding him, dealt with Raikes alone.
+
+In a tone plainly directed at him, he said: 'Well, Harry, tired of this?
+The agriculturals are good fun, but I can't stand much of the small
+cockney.  A blackguard who tries to make jokes out of the Scriptures
+ought to be kicked!'
+
+Harry rejoined, with wet lips: 'Wopping stuff, this ale!  Who's that you
+want to kick?'
+
+'Somebody who objects to his bray, I suppose,' Mr. Raikes struck in,
+across the table, negligently thrusting out his elbow to support his
+head.
+
+'Did you allude to me, sir?' Laxley inquired.
+
+'I alluded to a donkey, sir.' Raikes lifted his eyelids to the same level
+as Laxley's: 'a passing remark on that interesting animal.'
+
+His friend Harry now came into the ring to try a fall.
+
+'Are you an usher in a school?' he asked, meaning by his looks what men
+of science in fisticuffs call business.
+
+Mr. Raikes started in amazement.  He recovered as quickly.
+
+'No, sir, not quite; but I have no doubt I should be able to instruct you
+upon a point or two.'
+
+'Good manners, for instance?' remarked the third young cricketer, without
+disturbing his habitual smile.
+
+'Or what comes from not observing them,' said Evan, unwilling to have
+Jack over-matched.
+
+'Perhaps you'll give me a lesson now?' Harry indicated a readiness to
+rise for either of them.
+
+At this juncture the chairman interposed.
+
+'Harmony, my lads!--harmony to-night.'
+
+Farmer Broadmead, imagining it to be the signal for a song, returned:
+
+'All right, Mr.--- Mr. Chair!  but we an't got pipes in yet.  Pipes
+before harmony, you know, to-night.'
+
+The pipes were summoned forthwith.  System appeared to regulate the
+proceedings of this particular night at the Green Dragon.  The pipes
+charged, and those of the guests who smoked, well fixed behind them,
+celestial Harmony was invoked through the slowly curling clouds.  In
+Britain the Goddess is coy.  She demands pressure to appear, and great
+gulps of ale.  Vastly does she swell the chests of her island children,
+but with the modesty of a maid at the commencement.  Precedence again
+disturbed the minds of the company.  At last the red-faced young farmer
+led off with 'The Rose and the Thorn.' In that day Chloe still lived; nor
+were the amorous transports of Strephon quenched.  Mountainous inflation
+--mouse-like issue characterized the young farmer's first verse.
+Encouraged by manifest approbation he now told Chloe that he 'by Heaven!
+never would plant in that bosom a thorn,' with such a volume of sound as
+did indeed show how a lover's oath should be uttered in the ear of a
+British damsel to subdue her.
+
+'Good!' cried Mr. Raikes, anxious to be convivial.
+
+Subsiding into impertinence, he asked Laxley, 'Could you tip us a
+Strephonade, sir?  Rejoiced to listen to you, I'm sure!  Promise you my
+applause beforehand.'
+
+Harry replied hotly: 'Will you step out of the room with me a minute?'
+
+'Have you a confession to make?' quoth Jack, unmoved.  'Have you planted
+a thorn in the feminine flower-garden?  Make a clean breast of it at the
+table.  Confess openly and be absolved.'
+
+While Evan spoke a word of angry reproof to Raikes, Harry had to be
+restrained by his two friends.  The rest of the company looked on with
+curiosity; the mouth of the chairman was bunched.  Drummond had his eyes
+on Evan, who was gazing steadily at the three.  Suddenly 'The fellow
+isn't a gentleman!' struck the attention of Mr. Raikes with alarming
+force.
+
+Raikes--and it may be because he knew he could do more than Evan in this
+respect--vociferated: 'I'm the son of a gentleman!'
+
+Drummond, from the head of the table, saw that a diversion was
+imperative.  He leaned forward, and with a look of great interest said:
+
+'Are you?  Pray, never disgrace your origin, then.'
+
+'If the choice were offered me, I think I would rather have known his
+father,' said the smiling fellow, yawning, and rocking on his chair.
+
+'You would, possibly, have been exceedingly intimate--with his right
+foot,' said Raikes.
+
+The other merely remarked: 'Oh!  that is the language of the son of a
+gentleman.'
+
+The tumult of irony, abuse, and retort, went on despite the efforts of
+Drummond and the chairman.  It was odd; for at Farmer Broadmead's end of
+the table, friendship had grown maudlin: two were seen in a drowsy
+embrace, with crossed pipes; and others were vowing deep amity, and
+offering to fight the man that might desire it.
+
+'Are ye a friend?  or are ye a foe?' was heard repeatedly, and
+consequences to the career of the respondent, on his choice of
+affirmatives to either of these two interrogations, emphatically
+detailed.
+
+It was likewise asked, in reference to the row at the gentlemen's end:
+'Why doan' they stand up and have 't out?'
+
+'They talks, they speechifies--why doan' they fight for 't, and then be
+friendly?'
+
+'Where's the yarmony, Mr. Chair, I axes--so please ye?' sang out Farmer
+Broadmead.
+
+'Ay, ay!  Silence!' the chairman called.
+
+Mr. Raikes begged permission to pronounce his excuses, but lapsed into a
+lamentation for the squandering of property bequeathed to him by his
+respected uncle, and for which--as far as he was intelligible--he
+persisted in calling the three offensive young cricketers opposite to
+account.
+
+Before he could desist, Harmony, no longer coy, burst on the assembly
+from three different sources.  'A Man who is given to Liquor,' soared
+aloft with 'The Maid of sweet Seventeen,' who participated in the
+adventures of 'Young Molly and the Kicking Cow'; while the guests
+selected the chorus of the song that first demanded it.
+
+Evan probably thought that Harmony was herself only when she came single,
+or he was wearied of his fellows, and wished to gaze a moment on the
+skies whose arms were over and around his young beloved.  He went to the
+window and threw it up, and feasted his sight on the moon standing on the
+downs.  He could have wept at the bitter ignominy that severed him from
+Rose.  And again he gathered his pride as a cloak, and defied the world,
+and gloried in the sacrifice that degraded him.  The beauty of the night
+touched him, and mixed these feelings with mournfulness.  He quite forgot
+the bellow and clatter behind.  The beauty of the night, and heaven knows
+what treacherous hope in the depths of his soul, coloured existence
+warmly.
+
+He was roused from his reverie by an altercation unmistakeably fierce.
+
+Raikes had been touched on a tender point.  In reply to a bantering
+remark of his, Laxley had hummed over bits of his oration, amid the
+chuckles of his comrades.  Unfortunately at a loss for a biting retort,
+Raikes was reduced to that plain confession of a lack of wit; he offered
+combat.
+
+'I 'll tell you what,' said Laxley, 'I never soil my hands with a
+blackguard; and a fellow who tries to make fun of Scripture, in my
+opinion is one.  A blackguard--do you hear?  But, if you'll give me
+satisfactory proofs that you really are what I have some difficulty in
+believing the son of a gentleman--I 'll meet you when and where you
+please.'
+
+'Fight him, anyhow,' said Harry.  'I 'll take him myself after we finish
+the match to-morrow.'
+
+Laxley rejoined that Mr. Raikes must be left to him.
+
+'Then I'll take the other,' said Harry.  'Where is he?'
+
+Evan walked round to his place.
+
+'I am here,' he answered, 'and at your service.'
+
+'Will you fight?' cried Harry.
+
+There was a disdainful smile on Evan's mouth, as he replied: 'I must
+first enlighten you.  I have no pretensions to your blue blood, or
+yellow.  If, sir, you will deign to challenge a man who is not the son of
+a gentleman, and consider the expression of his thorough contempt for
+your conduct sufficient to enable you to overlook that fact, you may
+dispose of me.  My friend here has, it seems, reason to be proud of his
+connections.  That you may not subsequently bring the charge against me
+of having led you to "soil your hands"--as your friend there terms it--
+I, with all the willingness in the world to chastise you or him for your
+impertinence, must first give you a fair chance of escape, by telling you
+that my father was a tailor.'
+
+The countenance of Mr. Raikes at the conclusion of this speech was a
+painful picture.  He knocked the table passionately, exclaiming:
+
+'Who'd have thought it?'
+
+Yet he had known it.  But he could not have thought it possible for a man
+to own it publicly.
+
+Indeed, Evan could not have mentioned it, but for hot fury and the ale.
+It was the ale in him expelling truth; and certainly, to look at him,
+none would have thought it.
+
+'That will do,' said Laxley, lacking the magnanimity to despise the
+advantage given him, 'you have chosen the very best means of saving your
+skins.'
+
+'We 'll come to you when our supply of clothes runs short,' added Harry.
+'A snip!'
+
+'Pardon me !' said Evan, with his eyes slightly widening, 'but if you
+come to me, I shall no longer give you a choice of behaviour.  I wish you
+good-night, gentlemen.  I shall be in this house, and am to be found
+here, till ten o'clock to-morrow morning.  Sir,' he addressed the
+chairman, 'I must apologize to you for this interruption to your
+kindness, for which I thank you very sincerely.  It 's "good-night," now,
+sir,' he pursued, bowing, and holding out his hand, with a smile.
+
+The chairman grasped it: 'You're a hot-headed young fool, sir: you're an
+ill-tempered ferocious young ass.  Can't you see another young donkey
+without joining company in kicks-eh?  Sit down, and don't dare to spoil
+the fun any more.  You a tailor!  Who'll believe it?  You're a nobleman
+in disguise.  Didn't your friend say so?--ha! ha!  Sit down.' He pulled
+out his watch, and proclaiming that he was born into this world at the
+hour about to strike, called for a bumper all round.
+
+While such of the company as had yet legs and eyes unvanquished by the
+potency of the ale, stood up to drink and cheer, Mark, the waiter,
+scurried into the room, and, to the immense stupefaction of the chairman,
+and amusement of his guests, spread the news of the immediate birth of a
+little stranger on the premises, who was declared by Dr. Pillie to be a
+lusty boy, and for whom the kindly landlady solicited good luck to be
+drunk.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE MATCH OF FALLOW FIELD AGAINST BECKLEY
+
+The dramatic proportions to which ale will exalt the sentiments within
+us, and our delivery of them, are apt to dwindle and shrink even below
+the natural elevation when we look back on them from the hither shore of
+the river of sleep--in other words, wake in the morning: and it was with
+no very self-satisfied emotions that Evan, dressing by the full light of
+day, reviewed his share in the events of the preceding night.  Why, since
+he had accepted his fate, should he pretend to judge the conduct of
+people his superiors in rank?  And where was the necessity for him to
+thrust the fact of his being that abhorred social pariah down the throats
+of an assembly of worthy good fellows?  The answer was, that he had not
+accepted his fate: that he considered himself as good a gentleman as any
+man living, and was in absolute hostility with the prejudices of society.
+That was the state of the case: but the evaporation of ale in his brain
+caused him to view his actions from the humble extreme of that delightful
+liquor, of which the spirit had flown and the corpse remained.
+
+Having revived his system with soda-water, and finding no sign of his
+antagonist below, Mr. Raikes, to disperse the sceptical dimples on his
+friend's face, alluded during breakfast to a determination he had formed
+to go forth and show on the cricket-field.
+
+'For, you know,' he observed, 'they can't have any objection to fight
+one.'
+
+Evan, slightly colouring, answered: 'Why, you said up-stairs, you thought
+fighting duels disgraceful folly.'
+
+'So it is, so it is; everybody knows that,' returned Jack; 'but what can
+a gentleman do?'
+
+'Be a disgraceful fool, I suppose,' said Evan: and Raikes went on with
+his breakfast, as if to be such occasionally was the distinguished fate
+of a gentleman, of which others, not so happy in their birth, might well
+be envious.
+
+He could not help betraying that he bore in mind the main incidents of
+the festival over-night; for when he had inquired who it might be that
+had reduced his friend to wear mourning, and heard that it was his father
+(spoken by Evan with a quiet sigh), Mr. Raikes tapped an egg, and his
+flexible brows exhibited a whole Bar of contending arguments within.
+More than for the love of pleasure, he had spent his money to be taken
+for a gentleman.  He naturally thought highly of the position, having
+bought it.  But Raikes appreciated a capital fellow, and felt warmly to
+Evan, who, moreover, was feeding him.
+
+If not born a gentleman, this Harrington had the look of one, and was
+pleasing in female eyes, as the landlady, now present, bore witness,
+wishing them good morning, and hoping they had slept well.  She handed to
+Evan his purse, telling him she had taken it last night, thinking it
+safer for the time being in her pocket; and that the chairman of the
+feast paid for all in the Green Dragon up to twelve that day, he having
+been born between the hours, and liking to make certain: and that every
+year he did the same; and was a seemingly rough old gentleman, but as
+soft-hearted as a chicken.  His name must positively not be inquired, she
+said; to be thankful to him was to depart, asking no questions.
+
+'And with a dart in the bosom from those eyes--those eyes!' cried Jack,
+shaking his head at the landlady's resistless charms.
+
+'I hope you was not one of the gentlemen who came and disturbed us last
+night, Sir?' she turned on him sharply.
+
+Jack dallied with the imputation, but denied his guilt.
+
+'No; it wasn't your voice,' continued the landlady.  'A parcel of young
+puppies calling themselves gentlemen!  I know him.  It's that young Mr.
+Laxley: and he the nephew of a Bishop, and one of the Honourables! and
+then the poor gals get the blame.  I call it a shame, I do.  There's that
+poor young creature up-stairs-somebody's victim she is: and nobody's to
+suffer but herself, the little fool!'
+
+'Yes,' said Raikes.  'Ah! we regret these things in after life!' and he
+looked as if he had many gentlemanly burdens of the kind on his
+conscience.
+
+'It 's a wonder, to my mind,' remarked the landlady, when she had
+placidly surveyed Mr. Raikes, 'how young gals can let some of you men-
+folk mislead 'em.'
+
+She turned from him huffily, and addressed Evan:
+
+'The old gentleman is gone, sir.  He slept on a chair, breakfasted, and
+was off before eight.  He left word, as the child was born on his
+birthright, he'd provide for it, and pay the mother's bill, unless you
+claimed the right.  I'm afraid he suspected--what I never, never-no!  but
+by what I've seen of you--never will believe.  For you, I'd say, must be
+a gentleman, whatever your company.  She asks one favour of you, sir:--
+for you to go and let her speak to you once before you go away for good.
+She's asleep now, and mustn't be disturbed.  Will you do it, by-and-by?
+Please to comfort the poor creature, sir.'
+
+Evan consented.  I am afraid also it was the landlady's flattering speech
+made him, without reckoning his means, add that the young mother and her
+child must be considered under his care, and their expenses charged to
+him.  The landlady was obliged to think him a wealthy as well as a noble
+youth, and admiringly curtsied.
+
+Mr. John Raikes and Mr. Evan Harrington then strolled into the air, and
+through a long courtyard, with brewhouse and dairy on each side, and a
+pleasant smell of baking bread, and dogs winking in the sun, cats at the
+corners of doors, satisfied with life, and turkeys parading, and fowls,
+strutting cocks, that overset the dignity of Mr. Raikes by awakening his
+imitative propensities.  Certain white-capped women, who were washing in
+a tub, laughed, and one observed: 'He's for all the world like the little
+bantam cock stickin' 'self up in a crow against the Spaniar'.' And this,
+and the landlady's marked deference to Evan, induced Mr. Raikes
+contemptuously to glance at our national blindness to the true diamond,
+and worship of the mere plumes in which a person is dressed.
+
+They passed a pretty flower-garden, and entering a smooth-shorn meadow,
+beheld the downs beautifully clear under sunlight and slowly-sailing
+images of cloud.  At the foot of the downs, on a plain of grass, stood a
+white booth topped by a flag, which signalled that on that spot Fallow
+field and Beckley were contending.
+
+'A singular old gentleman!  A very singular old gentleman, that!' Raikes
+observed, following an idea that had been occupying him.  'We did wrong
+to miss him.  We ought to have waylaid him in the morning.  Never miss a
+chance, Harrington.'
+
+'What chance?' Evan inquired.
+
+'Those old gentlemen are very odd,' Jack pursued, 'very strange.  He
+wouldn't have judged me by my attire.  Admetus' flocks I guard, yet am a
+God!  Dress is nothing to those old cocks.  He's an eccentric.  I know
+it; I can see it.  He 's a corrective of Cudford, who is abhorrent to my
+soul.  To give you an instance, now, of what those old boys will do--I
+remember my father taking me, when I was quite a youngster, to a tavern
+he frequented, and we met one night just such an old fellow as this;
+and the waiter told us afterwards that he noticed me particularly.
+He thought me a very remarkable boy--predicted great things.  For some
+reason or other my father never took me there again.  I remember our
+having a Welsh rarebit there for supper, and when the waiter last night
+mentioned a rarebit, 'gad he started up before me.  I gave chase into my
+early youth.  However, my father never took me to meet the old fellow
+again.  I believe it lost me a fortune.'
+
+Evan's thoughts were leaping to the cricket-field, or he would have
+condoled with Mr. Raikes for a loss that evidently afflicted him still.
+
+Now, it must be told that the lady's-maid of Mrs. Andrew Cogglesby,
+borrowed temporarily by the Countess de Saldar for service at Beckley
+Court, had slept in charge of the Countess's boxes at the Green Dragon:
+the Countess having told her, with the candour of high-born dames to
+their attendants, that it would save expense; and that, besides, Admiral
+Combleman, whom she was going to see, or Sir Perkins Ripley (her father's
+old friend), whom she should visit if Admiral Combleman was not at his
+mansion-both were likely to have full houses, and she could not take them
+by storm.  An arrangement which left her upwards of twelve hours'
+liberty, seemed highly proper to Maria Conning, this lady's-maid, a very
+demure young person.  She was at her bed-room window, as Evan passed up
+the courtyard of the inn, and recognized him immediately.  'Can it be him
+they mean that's the low tradesman?' was Maria's mysterious exclamation.
+She examined the pair, and added: 'Oh, no.  It must be the tall one they
+mistook for the small one.  But Mr. Harrington ought not to demean
+himself by keeping company with such, and my lady should know of it.'
+
+My lady, alighting from the Lymport coach, did know of it, within a few
+minutes after Evan had quitted the Green Dragon, and turned pale, as
+high-born dames naturally do when they hear of a relative's disregard of
+the company he keeps.
+
+'A tailor, my lady!' said scornful Maria; and the Countess jumped and
+complained of a pin.
+
+'How did you hear of this, Conning?' she presently asked with composure.
+
+'Oh, my lady, he was tipsy last night, and kept swearing out loud he was
+a gentleman.'
+
+'Tipsy!' the Countess murmured in terror.  She had heard of inaccessible
+truths brought to light by the magic wand of alcohol.  Was Evan
+intoxicated, and his dreadful secret unlocked last night?
+
+'And who may have told you of this, Conning?' she asked.
+
+Maria plunged into one of the boxes, and was understood to say that
+nobody in particular had told her, but that among other flying matters it
+had come to her ears.
+
+'My brother is Charity itself,' sighed the Countess.  'He welcomes high
+or low.'
+
+'Yes, but, my lady, a, tailor!' Maria repeated, and the Countess,
+agreeing with her scorn as she did, could have killed her.  At least she
+would have liked to run a bodkin into her, and make her scream.  In her
+position she could not always be Charity itself: nor is this the required
+character for a high-born dame: so she rarely affected it.
+
+'Order a fly: discover the direction Mr. Harrington has taken; spare me
+further remarks,' she said; and Maria humbly flitted from her presence.
+
+When she was gone, the Countess covered her face with her hands.  'Even
+this creature would despise us!' she exclaimed.
+
+The young lady encountered by Mr. Raikes on the road to Fallow field, was
+wrong in saying that Beckley would be seen out before the shades of
+evening caught up the ball.  Not one, but two men of Beckley--the last
+two--carried out their bats, cheered handsomely by both parties.  The
+wickets pitched in the morning, they carried them in again, and plaudits
+renewed proved that their fame had not slumbered.  To stand before a
+field, thoroughly aware that every successful stroke you make is adding
+to the hoards of applause in store for you is a joy to your friends, an
+exasperation to your foes; I call this an exciting situation, and one as
+proud as a man may desire.  Then, again, the two last men of an eleven
+are twins: they hold one life between them; so that he who dies
+extinguishes the other.  Your faculties are stirred to their depths.  You
+become engaged in the noblest of rivalries: in defending your own, you
+fight for your comrade's existence.  You are assured that the dread of
+shame, if not emulation, is making him equally wary and alert.
+
+Behold, then, the two bold men of Beckley fighting to preserve one life.
+Under the shadow of the downs they stand, beneath a glorious day, and
+before a gallant company.  For there are ladies in carriages here, there
+are cavaliers; good county names may be pointed out.  The sons of first-
+rate families are in the two elevens, mingled with the yeomen and whoever
+can best do the business.  Fallow field and Beckley, without regard to
+rank, have drawn upon their muscle and science.  One of the bold men of
+Beckley at the wickets is Nick Frim, son of the gamekeeper at Beckley
+Court; the other is young Tom Copping, son of Squire Copping, of Dox
+Hall, in the parish of Beckley.  Last year, you must know, Fallow field
+beat.  That is why Nick Frim, a renowned out-hitter, good to finish a
+score brilliantly with a pair of threes, has taken to blocking, and Mr.
+Tom cuts with caution, though he loves to steal his runs, and is usually
+dismissed by his remarkable cunning.
+
+The field was ringing at a stroke of Nick Frim's, who had lashed out in
+his old familiar style at last, and the heavens heard of it, when Evan
+came into the circle of spectators.  Nick and Tom were stretching from
+post to post, might and main.  A splendid four was scored.  The field
+took breath with the heroes; and presume not to doubt that heroes they
+are.  It is good to win glory for your country; it is also good to win
+glory for your village.  A Member of Parliament, Sir George Lowton, notes
+this emphatically, from the statesman's eminence, to a group of gentlemen
+on horseback round a carriage wherein a couple of fair ladies reclined.
+
+'They didn't shout more at the news of the Battle of Waterloo.  Now this
+is our peculiarity, this absence of extreme centralization.  It must be
+encouraged.  Local jealousies, local rivalries, local triumphs--these are
+the strength of the kingdom.'
+
+'If you mean to say that cricket's a ----' the old squire speaking
+(Squire Uplift of Fallow field) remembered the saving presences, and
+coughed--'good thing, I'm one with ye, Sir George.  Encouraged, egad!
+They don't want much of that here.  Give some of your lean London straws
+a strip o' clean grass and a bit o' liberty, and you'll do 'em a
+service.'
+
+'What a beautiful hit!' exclaimed one of the ladies, languidly watching
+the ascent of the ball.
+
+'Beautiful, d' ye call it?' muttered the squire.
+
+The ball, indeed, was dropping straight into the hands of the long-hit-
+off.  Instantly a thunder rolled.  But it was Beckley that took the
+joyful treble--Fallow field the deeply--cursing bass.  The long-hit-off,
+he who never was known to miss a catch-butter-fingered beast!--he has let
+the ball slip through his fingers.
+
+Are there Gods in the air?  Fred Linnington, the unfortunate of Fallow
+field, with a whole year of unhappy recollection haunting him in
+prospect, ere he can retrieve his character--Fred, if he does not accuse
+the powers of the sky, protests that he cannot understand it, which means
+the same.
+
+Fallow field's defeat--should such be the result of the contest--
+he knows now will be laid at his door.  Five men who have bowled at the
+indomitable Beckleyans think the same.  Albeit they are Britons, it
+abashes them.  They are not the men they were.  Their bowling is as the
+bowling of babies; and see!  Nick, who gave the catch, and pretends he
+did it out of commiseration for Fallow field, the ball has flown from his
+bat sheer over the booth.  If they don't add six to the score, it will be
+the fault of their legs.  But no: they rest content with a fiver and
+cherish their wind.
+
+Yet more they mean to do, Success does not turn the heads of these
+Britons, as it would of your frivolous foreigners.
+
+And now small boys (who represent the Press here) spread out from the
+marking-booth, announcing foremost, and in larger type, as it were, quite
+in Press style, their opinion--which is, that Fallow field will get a
+jolly good hiding; and vociferating that Beckley is seventy-nine ahead,
+and that Nick Frim, the favourite of the field, has scored fifty-one to
+his own cheek.  The boys are boys of both villages: but they are British
+boys--they adore prowess.  The Fallow field boys wish that Nick Frim
+would come and live on their side; the boys of Beckley rejoice in
+possessing him.  Nick is the wicketkeeper of the Beckley eleven; long-
+limbed, wiry, keen of eye.  His fault as a batsman is, that he will be a
+slashing hitter.  He is too sensible of the joys of a grand spanking hit.
+A short life and a merry one, has hitherto been his motto.
+
+But there were reasons for Nick's rare display of skill.  That woman may
+have the credit due to her (and, as there never was a contest of which
+she did not sit at the springs, so is she the source of all superhuman
+efforts exhibited by men), be it told that Polly Wheedle is on the field;
+Polly, one of the upper housemaids of Beckley Court; Polly, eagerly
+courted by Fred Linnington, humbly desired by Nick Frim--a pert and
+blooming maiden--who, while her suitors combat hotly for an undivided
+smile, improves her holiday by instilling similar unselfish aspirations
+into the breasts of others.
+
+Between his enjoyment of society and the melancholy it engendered in his
+mind by reflecting on him the age and decrepitude of his hat, Mr. John
+Raikes was doubtful of his happiness for some time.  But as his taste for
+happiness was sharp, he, with a great instinct amounting almost to genius
+in its pursuit, resolved to extinguish his suspicion by acting the
+perfectly happy man.  To do this, it was necessary that he should have
+listeners: Evan was not enough, and was besides unsympathetic; he had not
+responded to Jack's cordial assurances of his friendship 'in spite of
+anything,' uttered before they came into the field.
+
+Heat and lustre were now poured from the sky, on whose soft blue a fleet
+of clouds sailed heavily.  Nick Frim was very wonderful, no doubt.  He
+deserved that the Gods should recline on those gold-edged cushions above,
+and lean over to observe him.  Nevertheless, the ladies were beginning to
+ask when Nick Frim would be out.  The small boys alone preserved their
+enthusiasm for Nick.  As usual, the men took a middle position.  Theirs
+was the pleasure of critics, which, being founded on the judgement, lasts
+long, and is without disappointment at the close.  It was sufficient that
+the ladies should lend the inspiration of their bonnets to this fine
+match.  Their presence on the field is another beautiful instance of the
+generous yielding of the sex simply to grace our amusement, and their
+acute perception of the part they have to play.
+
+Mr. Raikes was rather shy of them at first.  But his acting rarely
+failing to deceive himself, he began to feel himself the perfectly happy
+man he impersonated, and where there were ladies he went, and talked of
+days when he had creditably handled a bat, and of a renown in the annals
+of Cricket cut short by mysterious calamity.  The foolish fellow did not
+know that they care not a straw for cricketing fame.  His gaiety
+presently forsook him as quickly as it had come.  Instead of
+remonstrating at Evan's restlessness, it was he who now dragged Evan from
+spot to spot.  He spoke low and nervously.
+
+'We're watched !'
+
+There was indeed a man lurking near and moving as they moved, with a
+speculative air.  Writs were out against Raikes.  He slipped from his
+friend, saying:
+
+'Never mind me.  That old amphitryon's birthday hangs on till the
+meridian; you understand.  His table invites.  He is not unlikely to
+enjoy my conversation.  What mayn't that lead to?  Seek me there.'
+
+Evan strolled on, relieved by the voluntary departure of the weariful
+funny friend he would not shake off, but could not well link with.
+
+A long success is better when seen at a distance of time, and Nick Frim
+was beginning to suffer from the monotony of his luck.  Fallow field
+could do nothing with him.  He no longer blocked.  He lashed out at every
+ball, and far flew every ball that was bowled.  The critics saw, in this
+return to his old practices, promise of Nick's approaching extinction.
+The ladies were growing hot and weary.  The little boys gasped on the
+grass, but like cunning circulators of excitement, spread a report to
+keep it up, that Nick, on going to his wickets the previous day, had
+sworn an oath that he would not lay down his bat till he had scored a
+hundred.
+
+So they had still matter to agitate their youthful breasts, and Nick's
+gradual building up of tens, and prophecies and speculations as to his
+chances of completing the hundred, were still vehemently confided to the
+field, amid a general mopping of faces.
+
+Evan did become aware that a man was following him.  The man had not the
+look of a dreaded official.  His countenance was sun-burnt and open, and
+he was dressed in a countryman's holiday suit.  When Evan met his eyes,
+they showed perplexity.  Evan felt he was being examined from head to
+heel, but by one unaccustomed to his part, and without the courage to
+decide what he ought consequently to do while a doubt remained, though
+his inspection was verging towards a certainty in his mind.
+
+At last, somewhat annoyed that the man should continue to dog him
+wherever he moved, he turned on him and asked him what he wanted?
+
+'Be you a Muster Eav'n Harrington, Esquire?' the man drawled out in the
+rustic music of inquiry.
+
+'That is my name,' said Evan.
+
+'Ay,' returned the man, 'it's somebody lookin' like a lord, and has a
+small friend wi' shockin' old hat, and I see ye come out o' the Green
+Drag'n this mornin'--I don't reck'n there's e'er a mistaak, but I likes
+to make cock sure.  Be you been to Poortigal, sir?'
+
+'Yes,' answered Evan, 'I have been to Poortigal.'
+
+'What's the name o' the capital o' Portugal, sir?' The man looked
+immensely shrewd, and nodding his consent at the laughing reply, added:
+
+'And there you was born, sir?  You'll excuse my boldness, but I only does
+what's necessary.'
+
+Evan said he was not born there.
+
+'No, not born there.  That's good.  Now, sir, did you happen to be born
+anywheres within smell o' salt water?'
+
+'Yes,' answered Evan, 'I was born by the sea.'
+
+'Not far beyond fifty mile from Fall'field here, sir?'
+
+'Something less.'
+
+'All right.  Now I'm cock sure,' said the man.  'Now, if you'll have the
+kindness just to oblige me by--'he sped the words and the instrument
+jointly at Evan, takin' that there letter, I'll say good-bye, sir, and my
+work's done for the day.'
+
+Saying which, he left Evan with the letter in his hands.  Evan turned it
+over curiously.  It was addressed to 'Evan Harrington, Esquire, T---- of
+Lymport.'
+
+A voice paralyzed his fingers: the clear ringing voice of a young
+horsewoman, accompanied by a little maid on a pony, who galloped up to
+the carriage upon which Squire Uplift, Sir George Lowton, Hamilton
+Jocelyn, and other cavaliers, were in attendance.
+
+'Here I am at last, and Beckley's in still!  How d' ye do, Lady Racial?
+How d' ye do, Sir George.  How d' ye do, everybody.  Your servant,
+Squire!  We shall beat you.  Harry says we shall soon be a hundred a-head
+of you.  Fancy those boys!  they would sleep at Fallow field last night.
+How I wish you had made a bet with me, Squire.'
+
+'Well, my lass, it's not too late,' said the Squire, detaining her hand.
+
+'Oh, but it wouldn't be fair now.  And I'm not going to be kissed on the
+field, if you please, Squire.  Here, Dorry will do instead.  Dorry !
+come and be kissed by the Squire.'
+
+It was Rose, living and glowing; Rose, who was the brilliant young
+Amazon, smoothing the neck of a mettlesome gray cob.  Evan's heart
+bounded up to her, but his limbs were motionless.
+
+The Squire caught her smaller companion in his arms, and sounded a kiss
+upon both her cheeks; then settled her in the saddle, and she went to
+answer some questions of the ladies.  She had the same lively eyes as
+Rose; quick saucy lips, red, and open for prattle.  Rolls of auburn hair
+fell down her back, for being a child she was allowed privileges.  To
+talk as her thoughts came, as well as to wear her hair as it grew, was a
+special privilege of this young person, on horseback or elsewhere.
+
+'Now, I know what you want to ask me, Aunt Shorne.  Isn't it about my
+Papa?  He's not come, and he won't be able to come for a week.--Glad to
+be with Cousin Rosey?  I should think I am!  She's the nicest girl I ever
+could suppose.  She isn't a bit spoiled by Portugal; only browned; and
+she doesn't care for that; no more do I.  I rather like the sun when it
+doesn't freckle you.  I can't bear freckles, and I don't believe in milk
+for them.  People who have them are such a figure.  Drummond Forth has
+them, but he's a man, and it doesn't matter for a man to have freckles.
+How's my uncle Mel?  Oh, he's quite well.  I mean he has the gout in one
+of his fingers, and it's swollen so, it's just like a great fat fir cone!
+He can't write a bit, and rests his hand on a table.  He wants to have me
+made to write with my left hand as well as my right.  As if I was ever
+going to have the gout in one of my fingers!'
+
+Sir George Lowton observed to Hamilton Jocelyn, that Melville must take
+to his tongue now.
+
+'I fancy he will,' said Hamilton.  'My father won't give up his nominee;
+so I fancy he'll try Fallow field.  Of course, we go in for the
+agricultural interest; but there's a cantankerous old ruffian down here--
+a brewer, or something--he's got half the votes at his bidding.  We shall
+see.'
+
+'Dorothy, my dear child, are you not tired?' said Lady Racial.  'You are
+very hot.'
+
+'Yes, that's because Rose would tear along the road to get here in time,
+after we had left those tiresome Copping people, where she had to make a
+call.  "What a slow little beast your pony is, Dorry!"--she said that at
+least twenty times.'
+
+'Oh, you naughty puss!' cried Rose.  'Wasn't it, "Rosey, Rosey, I'm sure
+we shall be too late, and shan't see a thing: do come along as hard as
+you can"?'
+
+'I 'm sure it was not,' Miss Dorothy retorted, with the large eyes of
+innocence.  'You said you wanted to see Nick Frim keeping the wicket, and
+Ferdinand Laxley bowl.  And, oh!  you know something you said about
+Drummond Forth.'
+
+'Now, shall I tell upon you?' said Rose.
+
+'No, don't!' hastily replied the little woman, blushing.  And the
+cavaliers laughed out, and the ladies smiled, and Dorothy added: 'It
+isn't much, after all.'
+
+'Then, come; let's have it, or I shall be jealous,' said the Squire.
+
+'Shall I tell?' Rose asked slily.
+
+'It 's unfair to betray one of your sex, Rose,' remarked the sweetly-
+smiling lady.
+
+'Yes, Lady Racial--mayn't a woman have secrets?' Dorothy put it with
+great natural earnestness, and they all laughed aloud.  'But I know a
+secret of Rosey's,' continued Miss Dorothy, 'and if she tells upon me,
+I shall tell upon her.'
+
+'They're out!' cried Rose, pointing her whip at the wickets.  'Good night
+to Beckley!  Tom Copping 's run out.'
+
+Questions as to how it was done passed from mouth to mouth.  Questions as
+to whether it was fair sprang from Tom's friends, and that a doubt
+existed was certain: the whole field was seen converging toward the two
+umpires.
+
+Farmer Broadmead for Fallow field, Master Nat Hodges for Beckley.
+
+It really is a mercy there's some change in the game,' said Mrs. Shorne,
+waving her parasol.  'It 's a charming game, but it wants variety a
+little.  When do you return, Rose?'
+
+'Not for some time,' said Rose, primly.  'I like variety very well, but I
+don't seek it by running away the moment I've come.'
+
+'No, but, my dear,' Mrs. Shorne negligently fanned her face, 'you will
+have to come with us, I fear, when we go.  Your uncle accompanies us.
+I really think the Squire will, too; and Mr. Forth is no chaperon.  Even
+you understand that.'
+
+'Oh, I can get an old man--don't be afraid, said Rose.  'Or must I have
+and old woman, aunt?'
+
+The lady raised her eyelids slowly on Rose, and thought: ' If you were
+soundly whipped, my little madam, what a good thing it would be for you.'
+And that good thing Mrs. Shorne was willing to do for Rose. She turned
+aside, and received the salute of and unmistakable curate on foot.
+
+'Ah, Mr. Parsley, you lend your countenance to the game, then?'
+
+The curate observed that sound Churchmen unanimously supported the game.
+
+'Bravo!' cried Rose.  'How I like to hear you talk like that, Mr.
+Parsley.  I didn't think you had so much sense.  You and I will have a
+game together--single wicket.  We must play for something--what shall it
+be?'
+
+'Oh--for nothing,' the curate vacuously remarked.
+
+'That's for love, you rogue!' exclaimed the Squire.  'Come, come, none o'
+that, sir--ha! ha!'
+
+'Oh, very well; we'll play for love,' said Rose.
+
+'And I'll hold the stakes, my dear--eh?'
+
+'You dear old naughty Squire!--what do you mean?'
+
+Rose laughed.  But she had all the men surrounding her, and Mrs. Shorne
+talked of departing.
+
+Why did not Evan bravely march away?  Why, he asked himself, had he come
+on this cricket-field to be made thus miserable?  What right had such as
+he to look on Rose?  Consider, however, the young man's excuses.  He
+could not possibly imagine that a damsel who rode one day to a match,
+would return on the following day to see it finished: or absolutely know
+that unseen damsel to be Rose Jocelyn.  And if he waited, it was only to
+hear her sweet voice once again, and go for ever.  As far as he could
+fathom his hopes, they were that Rose would not see him: but the hopes of
+youth are deep.
+
+Just then a toddling small rustic stopped in front of Evan, and set up a
+howl for his 'fayther.' Evan lifted him high to look over people's heads,
+and discover his wandering parent.  The urchin, when he had settled to
+his novel position, surveyed the field, and shouting, 'Fayther, fayther !
+here I bes on top of a gentleman!  made lusty signs, which attracted not
+his father alone.  Rose sang out, 'Who can lend me a penny?' Instantly
+the curate and the squire had a race in their pockets.  The curate was
+first, but Rose favoured the squire, took his money with a nod and a
+smile, and rode at the little lad, to whom she was saying: 'Here, bonny
+boy, this will buy you--'
+
+She stopped and coloured.
+
+'Evan!'
+
+The child descended rapidly to the ground.
+
+A bow and a few murmured words replied to her.
+
+'Isn't this just like you, my dear Evan?  Shouldn't I know that whenever
+I met you, you would be doing something kind?  How did you come here?
+You were on your way to Beckley!'
+
+'To London,' said Evan.
+
+'To London!  and not coming over to see me--us?'
+
+Here the little fellow's father intervened to claim his offspring, and
+thank the lady and the gentleman: and, with his penny firmly grasped, he
+who had brought the lady and the gentleman together, was borne off a
+wealthy human creature.
+
+Before much further could be said between them, the Countess de Saldar
+drove up.
+
+'My dearest Rose!' and 'My dear Countess!' and 'Not Louisa, then?' and,
+'I am very glad to see you!' without attempting the endearing ' Louisa'-
+passed.
+
+The Countess de Saldar then admitted the presence of her brother.
+
+'Think !' said Rose.  'He talks of going on straight from here to
+London.'
+
+'That pretty pout will alone suffice to make him deviate, then,' said the
+Countess, with her sweetest open slyness.  'I am now on the point of
+accepting your most kind invitation.  Our foreign habits allow us to
+visit thus early!  He will come with me.'
+
+Evan tried to look firm, and speak as he was trying to look.  Rose fell
+to entreaty, and from entreaty rose to command; and in both was utterly
+fascinating to the poor youth.  Luxuriously--while he hesitated and dwelt
+on this and that faint objection--his spirit drank the delicious changes
+of her face.  To have her face before him but one day seemed so rich a
+boon to deny himself, that he was beginning to wonder at his constancy in
+refusal; and now that she spoke to him so pressingly, devoting her
+guileless eyes to him alone, he forgot a certain envious feeling that had
+possessed him while she was rattling among the other males--a doubt
+whether she ever cast a thought on Mr. Evan Harrington.
+
+'Yes; he will come,' cried Rose; 'and he shall ride home with me and my
+friend Drummond; and he shall have my groom's horse, if he doesn't mind.
+Bob can ride home in the cart with Polly, my maid; and he'll like that,
+because Polly's always good fun--when they're not in love with her.
+Then, of course, she torments them.'
+
+'Naturally,' said the Countess.
+
+Mr. Evan Harrington's final objection, based on his not having clothes,
+and so forth, was met by his foreseeing sister.
+
+'I have your portmanteau packed, in with me, my dear brother; Conning has
+her feet on it.  I divined that I should overtake you.'
+
+Evan felt he was in the toils.  After a struggle or two he yielded; and,
+having yielded, did it with grace.  In a moment, and with a power of
+self-compression equal to that of the adept Countess, he threw off his
+moodiness as easily as if it had been his Spanish mantle, and assumed a
+gaiety that made the Countess's eyes beam rapturously upon him, and was
+pleasing to Rose, apart from the lead in admiration the Countess had
+given her--not for the first time.  We mortals, the best of us, may be
+silly sheep in our likes and dislikes: where there is no premeditated or
+instinctive antagonism, we can be led into warm acknowledgement of merits
+we have not sounded.  This the Countess de Saldar knew right well.
+
+Rose now intimated her wish to perform the ceremony of introduction
+between her aunt and uncle present, and the visitors to Beckley Court.
+The Countess smiled, and in the few paces that separated the two groups,
+whispered to her brother: 'Miss Jocelyn, my dear.'
+
+The eye-glasses of the Beckley group were dropped with one accord.  The
+ceremony was gone through.  The softly-shadowed differences of a grand
+manner addressed to ladies, and to males, were exquisitely accomplished
+by the Countess de Saldar.
+
+'Harrington?  Harrington?' her quick ear caught on the mouth of Squire
+Uplift, scanning Evan.
+
+Her accent was very foreign, as she said aloud: 'We are entirely
+strangers to your game--your creecket.  My brother and myself are
+scarcely English.  Nothing save diplomacy are we adepts in!'
+
+'You must be excessively dangerous, madam,' said Sir George, hat in air.
+
+'Even in that, I fear, we are babes and sucklings, and might take many a
+lesson from you.  Will you instruct me in your creecket?  What are they
+doing now?  It seems very unintelligible--indistinct--is it not?'
+
+Inasmuch as Farmer Broadmead and Master Nat Hodges were surrounded by a
+clamorous mob, shouting both sides of the case, as if the loudest and
+longest-winded were sure to wrest a favourable judgement from those two
+infallible authorities on the laws of cricket, the noble game was
+certainly in a state of indistinctness.
+
+The squire came forward to explain, piteously entreated not to expect too
+much from a woman's inapprehensive wits, which he plainly promised (under
+eyes that had melted harder men) he would not.  His forbearance and
+bucolic gallantry were needed, for he had the Countess's radiant full
+visage alone.  Her senses were dancing in her right ear, which had heard
+the name of Lady Racial pronounced, and a voice respond to it from the
+carriage.
+
+Into what a pit had she suddenly plunged!  You ask why she did not drive
+away as fast as the horses would carry her, and fly the veiled head of
+Demogorgon obscuring valley and hill and the shining firmament, and
+threatening to glare destruction on her?  You do not know an intriguer.
+She relinquishes the joys of life for the joys of intrigue.  This is her
+element.  The Countess did feel that the heavens were hard on her.  She
+resolved none the less to fight her way to her object; for where so much
+had conspired to favour her--the decease of the generous Sir Abraham
+Harrington, of Torquay, and the invitation to Beckley Court--could she
+believe the heavens in league against her?  Did she not nightly pray to
+them, in all humbleness of body, for the safe issue of her cherished
+schemes?  And in this, how unlike she was to the rest of mankind!  She
+thought so; she relied on her devout observances; they gave her sweet
+confidence, and the sense of being specially shielded even when specially
+menaced.  Moreover, tell a woman to put back, when she is once clearly
+launched!  Timid as she may be, her light bark bounds to meet the
+tempest.  I speak of women who do launch: they are not numerous, but,
+to the wise, the minorities are the representatives.
+
+'Indeed, it is an intricate game!' said the Countess, at the conclusion
+of the squire's explanation, and leaned over to Mrs. Shorne to ask her if
+she thoroughly understood it.
+
+'Yes, I suppose I do,' was the reply; 'it--rather than the amusement they
+find in it.' This lady had recovered Mr. Parsley from Rose, but had only
+succeeded in making the curate unhappy, without satisfying herself.
+
+The Countess gave her the shrug of secret sympathy.
+
+'We must not say so,' she observed aloud--most artlessly, and fixed the
+squire with a bewitching smile, under which her heart beat thickly.  As
+her eyes travelled from Mrs. Shorne to the squire, she had marked Lady
+Racial looking singularly at Evan, who was mounting the horse of Bob the
+groom.
+
+'Fine young fellow, that,' said the squire to Lady Racial, as Evan rode
+off with Rose.
+
+'An extremely handsome, well-bred young man,' she answered.  Her eyes met
+the Countess's, and the Countess, after resting on their surface with an
+ephemeral pause, murmured: 'I must not praise my brother,' and smiled a
+smile which was meant to mean: 'I think with you, and thank you, and love
+you for admiring him.'
+
+Had Lady Racial joined the smile and spoken with animation afterwards,
+the Countess would have shuddered and had chills of dread.  As it was,
+she was passably content.  Lady Racial slightly dimpled her cheek, for
+courtesy's sake, and then looked gravely on the ground.  This was no
+promise; it was even an indication (as the Countess read her), of
+something beyond suspicion in the lady's mind; but it was a sign of
+delicacy, and a sign that her feelings had been touched, from which a
+truce might be reckoned on, and no betrayal feared.
+
+She heard it said that the match was for honour and glory.  A match of
+two days' duration under a broiling sun, all for honour and glory!  Was
+it not enough to make her despise the games of men?  For something better
+she played.  Her game was for one hundred thousand pounds, the happiness
+of her brother, and the concealment of a horror.  To win a game like that
+was worth the trouble.  Whether she would have continued her efforts,
+had she known that the name of Evan Harrington was then blazing on a
+shop-front in Lymport, I cannot tell.  The possessor of the name was in
+love, and did not reflect.
+
+Smiling adieu to the ladies, bowing to the gentlemen, and apprehending
+all the homage they would pour out to her condescending beauty when she
+had left them, the Countess's graceful hand gave the signal for Beckley.
+
+She stopped the coachman ere the wheels had rolled off the muffling turf,
+to enjoy one glimpse of Evan and Rose riding together, with the little
+maid on her pony in the rear.  How suitable they seemed! how happy! She
+had brought them together after many difficulties--might it not be?  It
+was surely a thing to be hoped for!
+
+Rose, galloping freshly, was saying to Evan: 'Why did you cut off your
+moustache?'
+
+He, neck and neck with her, replied: 'You complained of it in Portugal.'
+
+And she: 'Portugal's old times now to me--and I always love old times.
+I'm sorry!  And, oh, Evan! did you really do it for me?'
+
+And really, just then, flying through the air, close to the darling of
+his heart, he had not the courage to spoil that delicious question, but
+dallying with the lie, he looked in her eyes lingeringly.
+
+This picture the Countess contemplated.  Close to her carriage two young
+gentlemen-cricketers were strolling, while Fallow field gained breath to
+decide which men to send in first to the wickets.
+
+One of these stood suddenly on tiptoe, and pointing to the pair on
+horseback, cried, with the vivacity of astonishment:
+
+'Look there!  do you see that?  What the deuce is little Rosey doing with
+the tailor-fellow?'
+
+The Countess, though her cheeks were blanched, gazed calmly in
+Demogorgon's face, took a mental impression of the speaker, and again
+signalled for Beckley.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Adept in the lie implied
+Commencement of a speech proves that you have made the plunge
+Forty seconds too fast, as if it were a capital offence
+Friend he would not shake off, but could not well link with
+Habit, what a sacred and admirable thing it is
+He grunted that a lying clock was hateful to him
+He had his character to maintain
+I 'm a bachelor, and a person--you're married, and an object
+I take off my hat, Nan, when I see a cobbler's stall
+Incapable of putting the screw upon weak excited nature
+It's a fool that hopes for peace anywhere
+Men do not play truant from home at sixty years of age
+No great harm done when you're silent
+Taking oath, as it were, by their lower nature
+Tears that dried as soon as they had served their end
+That beautiful trust which habit gives
+That plain confession of a lack of wit; he offered combat
+The ass eats at my table, and treats me with contempt
+The grey furniture of Time for his natural wear
+You're the puppet of your women!
+What's an eccentric?  a child grown grey!
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Evan Harrington, v2
+by George Meredith
+
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