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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Evan Harrington, Complete, by George Meredith
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Evan Harrington, Complete
+
+Author: George Meredith
+
+Release Date: January 17, 2002 [eBook #4434]
+[Most recently updated: December 20, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: David Widger
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EVAN HARRINGTON ***
+
+
+
+
+EVAN HARRINGTON
+
+By George Meredith
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+ CHAPTER I. ABOVE BUTTONS
+ CHAPTER II. THE HERITAGE OF THE SON
+ CHAPTER III. THE DAUGHTERS OF THE SHEARS
+ CHAPTER IV. ON BOARD THE JOCASTA
+ CHAPTER V. THE FAMILY AND THE FUNERAL
+ CHAPTER VI. MY GENTLEMAN ON THE ROAD
+ CHAPTER VII. MOTHER AND SON
+ CHAPTER VIII. INTRODUCES AN ECCENTRIC
+ CHAPTER IX. THE COUNTESS IN LOW SOCIETY
+ CHAPTER X. MY GENTLEMAN ON THE ROAD AGAIN
+ CHAPTER XI. DOINGS AT AN INN
+ CHAPTER XII. IN WHICH ALE IS SHOWN TO HAVE ONE QUALITY OF WINE
+ CHAPTER XIII. THE MATCH OF FALLOW FIELD AGAINST BECKLEY
+ CHAPTER XIV. THE COUNTESS DESCRIBES THE FIELD OF ACTION
+ CHAPTER XV. A CAPTURE
+ CHAPTER XVI. LEADS TO A SMALL SKIRMISH BETWEEN ROSE AND EVAN
+ CHAPTER XVII. IN WHICH EVAN WRITES HIMSELF TAILOR
+ CHAPTER XVIII. IN WHICH EVAN CALLS HIMSELF GENTLEMAN
+ CHAPTER XIX. SECOND DESPATCH OF THE COUNTESS
+ CHAPTER XX. BREAK-NECK LEAP
+ CHAPTER XXI. TRIBULATIONS AND TACTICS OF THE COUNTESS
+ CHAPTER XXII. IN WHICH THE DAUGHTERS OF THE GREAT MEL HAVE TO DIGEST HIM AT DINNER
+ CHAPTER XXIII. TREATS OF A HANDKERCHIEF
+ CHAPTER XXIV. THE COUNTESS MAKES HERSELF FELT
+ CHAPTER XXV. IN WHICH THE STREAM FLOWS MUDDY AND CLEAR
+ CHAPTER XXVI. MRS. MEL MAKES A BED FOR HERSELF AND FAMILY
+ CHAPTER XXVII. EXHIBITS ROSE’S GENERALSHIP; EVAN’S PERFORMANCE ON THE SECOND FIDDLE; AND THE WRETCHEDNESS OF THE COUNTESS
+ CHAPTER XXVIII. TOM COGGLESEY’S PROPOSITION
+ CHAPTER XXIX. PRELUDE TO AN ENGAGEMENT
+ CHAPTER XXX. THE BATTLE OF THE BULL-DOGS. PART I.
+ CHAPTER XXXI. THE BATTLE OF THE BULL-DOGS. PART II.
+ CHAPTER XXXII. IN WHICH EVAN’S LIGHT BEGINS TO TWINKLE AGAIN
+ CHAPTER XXXIII. THE HERO TAKES HIS RANK IN THE ORCHESTRA
+ CHAPTER XXXIV. A PAGAN SACRIFICE
+ CHAPTER XXXV. ROSE WOUNDED
+ CHAPTER XXXVI. BEFORE BREAKFAST
+ CHAPTER XXXVII. THE RETREAT FROM BECKLEY
+ CHAPTER XXXVIII. IN WHICH WE HAVE TO SEE IN THE DARK
+ CHAPTER XXXIX. IN THE DOMAIN OF TAILORDOM
+ CHAPTER XL. IN WHICH THE COUNTESS STILL SCENTS GAME
+ CHAPTER XLI. REVEALS AN ABOMINABLE PLOT OF THE BROTHERS COGGLESBY
+ CHAPTER XLII. JULIANA
+ CHAPTER XLIII. ROSE
+ CHAPTER XLIV. CONTAINS A WARNING TO ALL CONSPIRATORS
+ CHAPTER XLV. IN WHICH THE SHOP BECOMES THE CENTRE OF ATTRACTION
+ CHAPTER XLVI. A LOVERS’ PARTING
+ CHAPTER XLVII. A YEAR LATER, THE COUNTESS DE SALDAR DE SANCORVO TO HER SISTER CAROLINE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+ABOVE BUTTONS
+
+
+Long after the hours when tradesmen are in the habit of commencing
+business, the shutters of a certain shop in the town of
+Lymport-on-the-Sea remained significantly closed, and it became known
+that death had taken Mr. Melchisedec Harrington, and struck one off the
+list of living tailors. The demise of a respectable member of this
+class does not ordinarily create a profound sensation. He dies, and his
+equals debate who is to be his successor: while the rest of them who
+have come in contact with him, very probably hear nothing of his great
+launch and final adieu till the winding up of cash-accounts; on which
+occasions we may augur that he is not often blessed by one or other of
+the two great parties who subdivide this universe. In the case of Mr.
+Melchisedec it was otherwise. This had been a grand man, despite his
+calling, and in the teeth of opprobrious epithets against his craft. To
+be both generally blamed, and generally liked, evinces a peculiar
+construction of mortal. Mr. Melchisedec, whom people in private called
+the great Mel, had been at once the sad dog of Lymport, and the pride
+of the town. He was a tailor, and he kept horses; he was a tailor, and
+he had gallant adventures; he was a tailor, and he shook hands with his
+customers. Finally, he was a tradesman, and he never was known to have
+sent in a bill. Such a personage comes but once in a generation, and,
+when he goes, men miss the man as well as their money.
+
+That he was dead, there could be no doubt. Kilne, the publican
+opposite, had seen Sally, one of the domestic servants, come out of the
+house in the early morning and rush up the street to the doctor’s,
+tossing her hands; and she, not disinclined to dilute her grief, had,
+on her return, related that her master was then at his last gasp, and
+had refused, in so many words, to swallow the doctor.
+
+“‘I won’t swallow the doctor!’ he says, ‘I won’t swallow the doctor!’”
+Sally moaned. “‘I never touched him,’ he says, ‘and I never will.’”
+
+Kilne angrily declared, that in his opinion, a man who rejected
+medicine in extremity, ought to have it forced down his throat: and
+considering that the invalid was pretty deeply in Kilne’s debt, it
+naturally assumed the form of a dishonest act on his part; but Sally
+scornfully dared any one to lay hand on her master, even for his own
+good. “For,” said she, “he’s got his eyes awake, though he do lie so
+helpless. He marks ye!”
+
+“Ah! ah!” Kilne sniffed the air. Sally then rushed back to her duties.
+
+“Now, there’s a man!” Kilne stuck his hands in his pockets and began
+his meditation: which, however, was cut short by the approach of his
+neighbour Barnes, the butcher, to whom he confided what he had heard,
+and who ejaculated professionally, “Obstinate as a pig!” As they stood
+together they beheld Sally, a figure of telegraph, at one of the
+windows, implying that all was just over.
+
+“Amen!” said Barnes, as to a matter-of-fact affair.
+
+Some minutes after, the two were joined by Grossby, the confectioner,
+who listened to the news, and observed:
+
+“Just like him! I’d have sworn he’d never take doctor’s stuff”; and,
+nodding at Kilne, “liked his medicine best, eh?”
+
+“Had a-hem!—good lot of it,” muttered Kilne, with a suddenly serious
+brow.
+
+“How does he stand on your books?” asked Barnes.
+
+Kilne shouldered round, crying: “Who the deuce is to know?”
+
+“I don’t,” Grossby sighed. “In he comes with his ‘Good morning,
+Grossby, fine day for the hunt, Grossby,’ and a ten-pound note. ‘Have
+the kindness to put that down in my favour, Grossby.’ And just as I am
+going to say, ‘Look here,—this won’t do,’ he has me by the collar, and
+there’s one of the regiments going to give a supper party, which he’s
+to order; or the Admiral’s wife wants the receipt for that pie; or in
+comes my wife, and there’s no talking of business then, though she may
+have been bothering about his account all the night beforehand.
+Something or other! and so we run on.”
+
+“What I want to know,” said Barnes, the butcher, “is where he got his
+tenners from?”
+
+Kilne shook a sagacious head: “No knowing!”
+
+“I suppose we shall get something out of the fire?” Barnes suggested.
+
+“That depends!” answered the emphatic Kilne.
+
+“But, you know, if the widow carries on the business,” said Grossby,
+“there’s no reason why we shouldn’t get it all, eh?”
+
+“There ain’t two that can make clothes for nothing, and make a profit
+out of it,” said Kilne.
+
+“That young chap in Portugal,” added Barnes, “he won’t take to
+tailoring when he comes home. D’ye think he will?”
+
+Kilne muttered: “Can’t say!” and Grossby, a kindly creature in his way,
+albeit a creditor, reverting to the first subject of their discourse,
+ejaculated, “But what a one he was!—eh?”
+
+“Fine!—to look on,” Kilne assented.
+
+“Well, he was like a Marquis,” said Barnes.
+
+Here the three regarded each other, and laughed, though not loudly.
+They instantly checked that unseemliness, and Kilne, as one who rises
+from the depths of a calculation with the sum in his head, spoke quite
+in a different voice:
+
+“Well, what do you say, gentlemen? shall we adjourn? No use standing
+here.”
+
+By the invitation to adjourn, it was well understood by the committee
+Kilne addressed, that they were invited to pass his threshold, and
+partake of a morning draught. Barnes, the butcher, had no objection
+whatever, and if Grossby, a man of milder make, entertained any, the
+occasion and common interests to be discussed, advised him to waive
+them. In single file these mourners entered the publican’s house, where
+Kilne, after summoning them from behind the bar, on the important
+question, what it should be? and receiving, first, perfect acquiescence
+in his views as to what it should be, and then feeble suggestions of
+the drink best befitting that early hour and the speaker’s particular
+constitution, poured out a toothful to each, and one to himself.
+
+“Here’s to him, poor fellow!” said Kilne; and was deliberately echoed
+twice.
+
+“Now, it wasn’t that,” Kilne pursued, pointing to the bottle in the
+midst of a smacking of lips, “that wasn’t what got him into
+difficulties. It was expensive luckshries. It was being above his
+condition. Horses! What’s a tradesman got to do with horses? Unless
+he’s retired! Then he’s a gentleman, and can do as he likes. It’s no
+use trying to be a gentleman if you can’t pay for it. It always ends
+bad. Why, there was he, consorting with gentlefolks—gay as a lark! Who
+has to pay for it?”
+
+Kilne’s fellow-victims maintained a rather doleful tributary silence.
+
+“I’m not saying anything against him now,” the publican further
+observed. “It’s too late. And there! I’m sorry he’s gone, for one. He
+was as kind a hearted a man as ever breathed. And there! perhaps it was
+just as much my fault; I couldn’t say ‘No’ to him,—dash me, if I
+could!”
+
+Lymport was a prosperous town, and in prosperity the much-despised
+British tradesman is not a harsh, he is really a well-disposed, easy
+soul, and requires but management, manner, occasional instalments—just
+to freshen the account—and a surety that he who debits is on the spot,
+to be a right royal king of credit. Only the account must never drivel.
+“Stare aut crescere” appears to be his feeling on that point, and the
+departed Mr. Melchisedec undoubtedly understood him there; for the
+running on of the account looked deplorable and extraordinary now that
+Mr. Melchisedec was no longer in a position to run on with it, and it
+was precisely his doing so which had prevented it from being brought to
+a summary close long before.
+
+Both Barnes, the butcher, and Grossby, the confectioner, confessed that
+they, too, found it hard ever to say “No” to him, and, speaking
+broadly, never could.
+
+“Except once,” said Barnes, “when he wanted me to let him have a ox to
+roast whole out on the common, for the Battle of Waterloo. I stood out
+against him on that. ‘No, no,’ says I, ‘I’ll joint him for ye, Mr.
+Harrington. You shall have him in joints, and eat him at home’;—ha!
+ha!”
+
+“Just like him!” said Grossby, with true enjoyment of the princely
+disposition that had dictated the patriotic order.
+
+“Oh!—there!” Kilne emphasized, pushing out his arm across the bar, as
+much as to say, that in anything of such a kind, the great Mel never
+had a rival.
+
+“That ‘Marquis’ affair changed him a bit,” said Barnes.
+
+“Perhaps it did, for a time,” said Kilne. “What’s in the grain, you
+know. He couldn’t change. He would be a gentleman, and nothing’d stop
+him.”
+
+“And I shouldn’t wonder but what that young chap out in Portugal’ll
+want to be one, too; though he didn’t bid fair to be so fine a man as
+his father.”
+
+“More of a scholar,” remarked Kilne. “That I call his worst
+fault—shilly-shallying about that young chap. I mean his.” Kilne
+stretched a finger toward the dead man’s house. “First, the young
+chap’s to be sent into the Navy; then it’s the Army; then he’s to be a
+judge, and sit on criminals; then he goes out to his sister in
+Portugal; and now there’s nothing but a tailor open to him, as I see,
+if we’re to get our money.”
+
+“Ah! and he hasn’t got too much spirit to work to pay his father’s
+debts,” added Barnes. “There’s a business there to make any man’s
+fortune—properly _di_rected, _I_ say. But, I suppose, like father like
+son, he’ll becoming the Marquis, too. He went to a gentleman’s school,
+and he’s had foreign training. I don’t know what to think about it. His
+sisters over there—they were fine women.”
+
+“Oh! a fine family, every one of ’em! and married well!” exclaimed the
+publican.
+
+“I never had the exact rights of that ‘Marquis’ affair,” said Grossby;
+and, remembering that he had previously laughed knowingly when it was
+alluded to, pursued: “Of course I heard of it at the time, but how did
+he behave when he was blown upon?”
+
+Barnes undertook to explain; but Kilne, who relished the narrative
+quite as well, and was readier, said: “Look here! I’ll tell you. I had
+it from his own mouth one night when he wasn’t—not quite himself. He
+was coming down King William Street, where he stabled his horse, you
+know, and I met him. He’d been dining out-somewhere out over
+Fallowfield, I think it was; and he sings out to me, ‘Ah! Kilne, my
+good fellow!’ and I, wishing to be equal with him, says, ‘A fine night,
+my lord!’ and he draws himself up—he smelt of good company—says he,
+‘Kilne! I’m not a lord, as you know, and you have no excuse for
+mistaking me for one, sir!’ So I pretended I had mistaken him, and then
+he tucked his arm under mine, and said, ‘You’re no worse than your
+betters, Kilne. They took me for one at Squire Uplift’s to-night, but a
+man who wishes to pass off for more than he is, Kilne, and impose upon
+people, he says, ‘he’s contemptible, Kilne! contemptible!’ So that, you
+know, set me thinking about ‘Bath’ and the ‘Marquis,’ and I couldn’t
+help smiling to myself, and just let slip a question whether he had
+enlightened them a bit. ‘Kilne,’ said he, ‘you’re an honest man, and a
+neighbour, and I’ll tell you what happened. The Squire,’ he says,
+‘likes my company, and I like his table. Now the Squire’d never do a
+dirty action, but the Squire’s nephew, Mr. George Uplift, he can’t
+forget that I earn my money, and once or twice I have had to correct
+him.’ And I’ll wager Mel did it, too! Well, he goes on: ‘There was
+Admiral Sir Jackson Racial and his lady, at dinner, Squire Falco of
+Bursted, Lady Barrington, Admiral Combleman—our admiral, that was; “Mr.
+This and That”, I forget their names—and other ladies and gentlemen
+whose acquaintance I was not honoured with.’ You know his way of
+talking. ‘And there was a goose on the table,’ he says; and, looking
+stern at me, ‘Don’t laugh yet!’ says he, like thunder. ‘Well, he goes
+on: Mr. George caught my eye across the table, and said, so as not to
+be heard by his uncle, “If that bird was rampant, you would see your
+own arms, Marquis.”’ And Mel replied, quietly for him to hear, “And as
+that bird is couchant, Mr. George, you had better look to your sauce.”
+Couchant means squatting, you know. That’s heraldry! Well, that wasn’t
+bad sparring of Mel’s. But, bless you! he was never taken aback, and
+the gentlefolks was glad enough to get him to sit down amongst ’em. So,
+says Mr. George, ‘I know you’re a fire-eater, Marquis,’ and his dander
+was up, for he began marquising Mel, and doing the mock polite at such
+a rate, that, by-and-by, one of the ladies who didn’t know Mel called
+him ‘my lord’ and ‘his lordship.’ ‘And,’ says Mel, ‘I merely bowed to
+her, and took no notice.’ So that passed off: and there sits Mel
+telling his anecdotes, as grand as a king. And, by-and-by, young Mr.
+George, who hadn’t forgiven Mel, and had been pulling at the bottle
+pretty well, he sings out, ‘It’s Michaelmas! the death of the goose!
+and I should like to drink the Marquis’s health!’ and he drank it
+solemn. But, as far as I can make out, the women part of the company
+was a little in the dark. So Mel waited till there was a sort of a
+pause, and then speaks rather loud to the Admiral, ‘By the way, Sir
+Jackson, may I ask you, has the title of Marquis anything to do with
+tailoring?’ Now Mel was a great favourite with the Admiral, and with
+his lady, too, they say—and the Admiral played into his hands, you see,
+and, says he, ‘I’m not aware that it has, Mr. Harrington.’ And he
+begged for to know why he asked the question—called him, ‘Mister,’ you
+understand. So Mel said, and I can see him now, right out from his
+chest he spoke, with his head up—‘When I was a younger man, I had the
+good taste to be fond of good society, and the bad taste to wish to
+appear different from what I was in it’: that’s Mel speaking; everybody
+was listening; so he goes on: ‘I was in the habit of going to Bath in
+the season, and consorting with the gentlemen I met there on terms of
+equality; and for some reason that I am quite guiltless of,’ says Mel,
+‘the hotel people gave out that I was a Marquis in disguise; and, upon
+my honour, ladies and gentlemen—I was young then, and a fool—I could
+not help imagining I looked the thing. At all events, I took upon
+myself to act the part, and with some success, and considerable
+gratification; for, in my opinion,’ says Mel, ‘no real Marquis ever
+enjoyed his title so much as I did. One day I was in my shop—No. 193,
+Main Street, Lymport—and a gentleman came in to order his outfit. I
+received his directions, when suddenly he started back, stared at me,
+and exclaimed:
+
+“My dear Marquis! I trust you will pardon me for having addressed you
+with so much familiarity.” I recognized in him one of my Bath
+acquaintances. That circumstance, ladies and gentlemen, has been a
+lesson to me. Since that time I have never allowed a false impression
+with regard to my position to exist. I desire,’ says Mel, smiling, ‘to
+have my exact measure taken everywhere; and if the Michaelmas bird is
+to be associated with me, I am sure I have no objection; all I can say
+is, that I cannot justify it by letters patent of nobility.’ That’s how
+Mel put it. Do you think they thought worse of him? I warrant you he
+came out of it in flying colours. Gentlefolks like straight-forwardness
+in their inferiors—that’s what they do. Ah!” said Kilne, meditatively,
+“I see him now, walking across the street in the moonlight, after he’d
+told me that. A fine figure of a man! and there ain’t many Marquises to
+match him.”
+
+To this Barnes and Grossby, not insensible to the merits of the recital
+they had just given ear to, agreed. And with a common voice of praise
+in the mouths of his creditors, the dead man’s requiem was sounded.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+THE HERITAGE OF THE SON
+
+
+Toward evening, a carriage drove up to the door of the muted house, and
+the card of Lady Racial, bearing a hurried line in pencil, was handed
+to the widow.
+
+It was when you looked upon her that you began to comprehend how great
+was the personal splendour of the husband who could eclipse such a
+woman. Mrs. Harrington was a tall and a stately dame. Dressed in the
+high waists of the matrons of that period, with a light shawl drawn
+close over her shoulders and bosom, she carried her head well; and her
+pale firm features, with the cast of immediate affliction on them, had
+much dignity: dignity of an unrelenting physical order, which need not
+express any remarkable pride of spirit. The family gossips who, on both
+sides, were vain of this rare couple, and would always descant on their
+beauty, even when they had occasion to slander their characters, said,
+to distinguish them, that Henrietta Maria had a Port, and Melchisedec a
+Presence: and that the union of a Port and a Presence, and such a Port
+and such a Presence, was so uncommon, that you might search England
+through and you would not find another, not even in the highest ranks
+of society. There lies some subtle distinction here; due to the minute
+perceptions which compel the gossips of a family to coin phrases that
+shall express the nicest shades of a domestic difference. By a Port,
+one may understand them to indicate something unsympathetically
+impressive; whereas a Presence would seem to be a thing that directs
+the most affable appeal to our poor human weaknesses. His Majesty King
+George IV., for instance, possessed a Port: Beau Brummel wielded a
+Presence. Many, it is true, take a Presence to mean no more than a
+shirt-frill, and interpret a Port as the art of walking erect. But this
+is to look upon language too narrowly.
+
+On a more intimate acquaintance with the couple, you acknowledge the
+aptness of the fine distinction. By birth Mrs. Harrington had claims to
+rank as a gentlewoman. That is, her father was a lawyer of Lymport. The
+lawyer, however, since we must descend the genealogical tree, was known
+to have married his cook, who was the lady’s mother. Now Mr.
+Melchisedec was mysterious concerning his origin; and, in his cups,
+talked largely and wisely of a great Welsh family, issuing from a line
+of princes; and it is certain that he knew enough of their history to
+have instructed them on particular points of it. He never could think
+that his wife had done him any honour in espousing him; nor was she the
+woman to tell him so. She had married him for love, rejecting various
+suitors, Squire Uplift among them, in his favour. Subsequently she had
+committed the profound connubial error of transferring her affections,
+or her thoughts, from him to his business, which, indeed, was much in
+want of a mate; and while he squandered the guineas, she patiently
+picked up the pence. They had not lived unhappily. He was constantly
+courteous to her. But to see the Port at that sordid work considerably
+ruffled the Presence—put, as it were, the peculiar division between
+them; and to behave toward her as the same woman who had attracted his
+youthful ardours was a task for his magnificent mind, and may have
+ranked with him as an indemnity for his general conduct, if his
+reflections ever stretched so far. The townspeople of Lymport were
+correct in saying that his wife, and his wife alone, had, as they
+termed it, kept him together. Nevertheless, now that he was dead, and
+could no longer be kept together, they entirely forgot their respect
+for her, in the outburst of their secret admiration for the popular
+man. Such is the constitution of the inhabitants of this dear Island of
+Britain, so falsely accused by the Great Napoleon of being a nation of
+shopkeepers. Here let any one proclaim himself Above Buttons, and act
+on the assumption, his fellows with one accord hoist him on their
+heads, and bear him aloft, sweating, and groaning, and cursing, but
+proud of him! And if he can contrive, or has any good wife at home to
+help him, to die without going to the dogs, they are, one may say,
+unanimous in crying out the same eulogistic funeral oration as that
+commenced by Kilne, the publican, when he was interrupted by Barnes,
+the butcher, “Now, there’s a man!—”
+
+Mrs. Harrington was sitting in her parlour with one of her married
+nieces, Mrs. Fiske, and on reading Lady Racial’s card she gave word for
+her to be shown up into the drawing-room. It was customary among Mrs.
+Harrington’s female relatives, who one and all abused and adored the
+great Mel, to attribute his shortcomings pointedly to the ladies; which
+was as much as if their jealous generous hearts had said that he was
+sinful, but that it was not his fault. Mrs. Fiske caught the card from
+her aunt, read the superscription, and exclaimed: “The idea! At least
+she might have had the decency! She never set her foot in the house
+before—and right enough too! What can she want now? I decidedly would
+refuse to see her, aunt!”
+
+The widow’s reply was simply, “Don’t be a fool, Ann!”
+
+Rising, she said: “Here, take poor Jacko, and comfort him till I come
+back.”
+
+Jacko was a middle-sized South American monkey, and had been a pet of
+her husband’s. He was supposed to be mourning now with the rest of the
+family. Mrs. Fiske received him on a shrinking lap, and had found time
+to correct one of his indiscretions before she could sigh and say, in
+the rear of her aunt’s retreating figure, “I certainly never would let
+myself down so”; but Mrs. Harrington took her own counsel, and Jacko
+was of her persuasion, for he quickly released himself from Mrs.
+Fiske’s dispassionate embrace, and was slinging his body up the
+balusters after his mistress.
+
+“Mrs. Harrington,” said Lady Racial, very sweetly swimming to meet her
+as she entered the room, “I have intruded upon you, I fear, in
+venturing to call upon you at such a time?”
+
+The widow bowed to her, and begged her to be seated.
+
+Lady Racial was an exquisitely silken dame, in whose face a winning
+smile was cut, and she was still sufficiently youthful not to be
+accused of wearing a flower too artificial.
+
+“It was so sudden! so sad!” she continued. “We esteemed him so much. I
+thought you might be in need of sympathy, and hoped I might—Dear Mrs.
+Harrington! can you bear to speak of it?”
+
+“I can tell you anything you wish to hear, my lady,” the widow replied.
+Lady Racial had expected to meet a woman much more like what she
+conceived a tradesman’s wife would be: and the grave reception of her
+proffer of sympathy slightly confused her. She said:
+
+“I should not have come, at least not so early, but Sir Jackson, my
+husband, thought, and indeed I imagined—You have a son, Mrs.
+Harrington? I think his name is—”
+
+“Evan, my lady.”
+
+“Evan. It was of him we have been speaking. I imagined that is, we
+thought, Sir Jackson might—you will be writing to him, and will let him
+know we will use our best efforts to assist him in obtaining some
+position worthy of his—superior to—something that will secure him from
+the harassing embarrassments of an uncongenial employment.”
+
+The widow listened to this tender allusion to the shears without a
+smile of gratitude. She replied: “I hope my son will return in time to
+bury his father, and he will thank you himself, my lady.”
+
+“He has no taste for—a—for anything in the shape of trade, has he, Mrs.
+Harrington?”
+
+“I am afraid not, my lady.”
+
+“Any position—a situation—that of a clerk even—would be so much better
+for him!”
+
+The widow remained impassive.
+
+“And many young gentlemen I know, who are clerks, and are enabled to
+live comfortably, and make a modest appearance in society; and your
+son, Mrs. Harrington, he would find it surely an improvement upon—many
+would think it a step for him.”
+
+“I am bound to thank you for the interest you take in my son, my lady.”
+
+“Does it not quite suit your views, Mrs. Harrington?” Lady Racial was
+surprised at the widow’s manner.
+
+“If my son had only to think of himself, my lady.”
+
+“Oh! but of course,”—the lady understood her now—“of course! You cannot
+suppose, Mrs. Harrington, but that I should anticipate he would have
+you to live with him, and behave to you in every way as a dutiful son,
+surely?
+
+“A clerk’s income is not very large, my lady.”
+
+“No; but enough, as I have said, and with the management you would
+bring, Mrs. Harrington, to produce a modest, respectable maintenance.
+My respect for your husband, Mrs. Harrington, makes me anxious to press
+my services upon you.” Lady Racial could not avoid feeling hurt at the
+widow’s want of common gratitude.
+
+“A clerk’s income would not be more than £100 a year, my lady.”
+
+“To begin with—no; certainly not more.” The lady was growing brief.
+
+“If my son puts by the half of that yearly, he can hardly support
+himself and his mother, my lady.”
+
+“Half of that yearly, Mrs. Harrington?”
+
+“He would have to do so, and be saddled till he dies, my lady.”
+
+“I really cannot see why.”
+
+Lady Racial had a notion of some excessive niggardly thrift in the
+widow, which was arousing symptoms of disgust.
+
+Mrs. Harrington quietly said: “There are his father’s debts to pay, my
+lady.”
+
+“His father’s debts!”
+
+“Under £5000, but above £4000, my lady.”
+
+“Five thousand pounds! Mrs. Harrington!” The lady’s delicately gloved
+hand gently rose and fell. “And this poor young man”—she pursued.
+
+“My son will have to pay it, my lady.”
+
+For a moment the lady had not a word to instance. Presently she
+remarked: “But, Mrs. Harrington, he is surely under no legal
+obligation?”
+
+“He is only under the obligation not to cast disrespect on his father’s
+memory, my lady; and to be honest, while he can.”
+
+“But, Mrs. Harrington! surely! what can the poor young man do?”
+
+“He will pay it, my lady.”
+
+“But how, Mrs. Harrington?”
+
+“There is his father’s business, my lady.”
+
+His father’s business! Then must the young man become a tradesman in
+order to show respect for his father? Preposterous! That was the lady’s
+natural inward exclamation. She said, rather shrewdly, for one who knew
+nothing of such things: “But a business which produces debts so
+enormous, Mrs. Harrington!”
+
+The widow replied: “My son will have to conduct it in a different way.
+It would be a very good business, conducted properly, my lady.”
+
+“But if he has no taste for it, Mrs. Harrington? If he is altogether
+superior to it?”
+
+For the first time during the interview, the widow’s inflexible
+countenance was mildly moved, though not to any mild expression.
+
+“My son will have not to consult his tastes,” she observed: and seeing
+the lady, after a short silence, quit her seat, she rose likewise, and
+touched the fingers of the hand held forth to her, bowing.
+
+“You will pardon the interest I take in your son,” said Lady Racial. “I
+hope, indeed, that his relatives and friends will procure him the means
+of satisfying the demands made upon him.”
+
+“He would still have to pay them, my lady,” was the widow’s answer.
+
+“Poor young man! indeed I pity him!” sighed her visitor. “You have
+hitherto used no efforts to persuade him to take such a step,—Mrs.
+Harrington?”
+
+“I have written to Mr. Goren, who was my husband’s fellow-apprentice in
+London, my lady; and he is willing to instruct him in cutting, and
+measuring, and keeping accounts.”
+
+Certain words in this speech were obnoxious to the fine ear of Lady
+Racial, and she relinquished the subject.
+
+“Your husband, Mrs. Harrington—I should so much have wished!—he did not
+pass away in—in pain!”
+
+“He died very calmly, my lady.”
+
+“It is so terrible, so disfiguring, sometimes. One dreads to see!—one
+can hardly distinguish! I have known cases where death was dreadful!
+But a peaceful death is very beautiful! There is nothing shocking to
+the mind. It suggests heaven! It seems a fulfilment of our prayers!”
+
+“Would your ladyship like to look upon him?” said the widow.
+
+Lady Racial betrayed a sudden gleam at having her desire thus
+intuitively fathomed.
+
+“For one moment, Mrs. Harrington! We esteemed him so much! May I?”
+
+The widow responded by opening the door, and leading her into the
+chamber where the dead man lay.
+
+At that period, when threats of invasion had formerly stirred up the
+military fire of us Islanders, the great Mel, as if to show the great
+Napoleon what character of being a British shopkeeper really was, had,
+by remarkable favour, obtained a lieutenancy of militia dragoons: in
+the uniform of which he had revelled, and perhaps, for the only time in
+his life, felt that circumstances had suited him with a perfect fit.
+However that may be, his solemn final commands to his wife, Henrietta
+Maria, on whom he could count for absolute obedience in such matters,
+had been, that as soon as the breath had left his body, he should be
+taken from his bed, washed, perfumed, powdered, and in that uniform
+dressed and laid out; with directions that he should be so buried at
+the expiration of three days, that havoc in his features might be
+hidden from men. In this array Lady Racial beheld him. The curtains of
+the bed were drawn aside. The beams of evening fell soft through the
+blinds of the room, and cast a subdued light on the figure of the
+vanquished warrior. The Presence, dumb now for evermore, was sadly
+illumined for its last exhibition. But one who looked closely might
+have seen that Time had somewhat spoiled that perfect fit which had
+aforetime been his pride; and now that the lofty spirit had departed,
+there had been extreme difficulty in persuading the sullen excess of
+clay to conform to the dimensions of those garments. The upper part of
+the chest alone would bear its buttons, and across one portion of the
+lower limbs an ancient seam had started; recalling an incident to them
+who had known him in his brief hour of glory. For one night, as he was
+riding home from Fallowfield, and just entering the gates of the town,
+a mounted trooper spurred furiously past, and slashing out at him,
+gashed his thigh. Mrs. Melchisedec found him lying at his door in a not
+unwonted way; carried him up-stairs in her arms, as she had done many a
+time before, and did not perceive his condition till she saw the blood
+on her gown. The cowardly assailant was never discovered; but Mel was
+both gallant and had, in his military career, the reputation of being a
+martinet. Hence, divers causes were suspected. The wound failed not to
+mend, the trousers were repaired: Peace about the same time was made,
+and the affair passed over.
+
+Looking on the fine head and face, Lady Racial saw nothing of this. She
+had not looked long before she found covert employment for her
+handkerchief. The widow standing beside her did not weep, or reply to
+her whispered excuses at emotion; gazing down on his mortal length with
+a sort of benignant friendliness; aloof, as one whose duties to that
+form of flesh were well-nigh done. At the feet of his master, Jacko,
+the monkey, had jumped up, and was there squatted, with his legs
+crossed, very like a tailor! The imitative wretch had got a towel, and
+as often as Lady Racial’s handkerchief travelled to her eyes, Jacko’s
+peery face was hidden, and you saw his lithe skinny body doing grief’s
+convulsions till, tired of this amusement, he obtained possession of
+the warrior’s helmet, from a small round table on one side of the bed;
+a calque of the barbarous military-Georgian form, with a huge knob of
+horse-hair projecting over the peak; and under this, trying to adapt it
+to his rogue’s head, the tricksy image of Death extinguished himself.
+
+All was very silent in the room. Then the widow quietly disengaged
+Jacko, and taking him up, went to the door, and deposited him outside.
+During her momentary absence, Lady Racial had time to touch the dead
+man’s forehead with her lips, unseen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+THE DAUGHTERS OF THE SHEARS
+
+
+Three daughters and a son were left to the world by Mr. Melchisedec.
+Love, well endowed, had already claimed to provide for the daughters:
+first in the shape of a lean Marine subaltern, whose days of
+obscuration had now passed, and who had come to be a major of that
+corps: secondly, presenting his addresses as a brewer of distinction:
+thirdly, and for a climax, as a Portuguese Count: no other than the
+Senor Silva Diaz, Conde de Saldar: and this match did seem a far more
+resplendent one than that of the two elder sisters with Major Strike
+and Mr. Andrew Cogglesby. But the rays of neither fell visibly on
+Lymport. These escaped Eurydices never reappeared, after being once
+fairly caught away from the gloomy realms of Dis, otherwise Trade. All
+three persons of singular beauty, a certain refinement, some Port, and
+some Presence, hereditarily combined, they feared the clutch of that
+fell king, and performed the widest possible circles around him. Not
+one of them ever approached the house of her parents. They were dutiful
+and loving children, and wrote frequently; but of course they had to
+consider their new position, and their husbands, and their husbands’
+families, and the world, and what it would say, if to it the dreaded
+rumour should penetrate! Lymport gossips, as numerous as in other
+parts, declared that the foreign nobleman would rave in an
+extraordinary manner, and do things after the outlandish fashion of his
+country: for from him, there was no doubt, the shop had been most
+successfully veiled, and he knew not of Pluto’s close relationship to
+his lovely spouse.
+
+The marriages had happened in this way. Balls are given in country
+towns, where the graces of tradesmen’s daughters may be witnessed and
+admired at leisure by other than tradesmen: by occasional country
+gentlemen of the neighbourhood, with light minds: and also by small
+officers: subalterns wishing to do tender execution upon man’s fair
+enemy, and to find a distraction for their legs. The classes of our
+social fabric have, here and there, slight connecting links, and
+provincial public balls are one of these. They are dangerous, for Cupid
+is no respecter of class-prejudice; and if you are the son of a retired
+tea-merchant, or of a village doctor, or of a half-pay captain, or of
+anything superior, and visit one of them, you are as likely to receive
+his shot as any shopboy. Even masquerading lords at such places, have
+been known to be slain outright; and although Society allows to its
+highest and dearest to save the honour of their families, and heal
+their anguish, by indecorous compromise, you, if you are a trifle below
+that mark, must not expect it. You must absolutely give yourself for
+what you hope to get. Dreadful as it sounds to philosophic ears, you
+must marry. This, having danced with Caroline Harrington, the gallant
+Lieutenant Strike determined to do. Nor, when he became aware of her
+father’s occupation, did he shrink from his resolve. After a month’s
+hard courtship, he married her straight out of her father’s house. That
+he may have all the credit due to him, it must be admitted that he did
+not once compare, or possibly permit himself to reflect on, the
+dissimilarity in their respective ranks, and the step he had taken
+downward, till they were man and wife: and then not in any great
+degree, before Fortune had given him his majority; an advance the good
+soldier frankly told his wife he did not owe to her. If we may be
+permitted to suppose the colonel of a regiment on friendly terms with
+one of his corporals, we have an estimate of the domestic life of Major
+and Mrs. Strike. Among the garrison males, his comrades, he passed for
+a disgustingly jealous brute.
+
+The ladies, in their pretty language, signalized him as a “finick.”
+
+Now, having achieved so capital a marriage, Caroline, worthy creature,
+was anxious that her sisters should not be less happy, and would have
+them to visit her, in spite of her husband’s protests.
+
+“There can be no danger,” she said, for she was in fresh quarters, far
+from the nest of contagion. The lieutenant himself ungrudgingly
+declared that, looking on the ladies, no one for an instant could
+suspect; and he saw many young fellows ready to be as great fools as he
+had been: another voluntary confession he made to his wife; for the
+candour of which she thanked him, and pointed out that it seemed to run
+in the family; inasmuch as Mr. Andrew Cogglesby, his rich relative, had
+seen and had proposed for Harriet. The lieutenant flatly said he would
+never allow it. In fact he had hitherto concealed the non-presentable
+portion of his folly very satisfactorily from all save the mess-room,
+and Mr. Andrew’s passion was a severe dilemma to him. It need scarcely
+be told that his wife, fortified by the fervid brewer, defeated him
+utterly. What was more, she induced him to be an accomplice in
+deception. For though the lieutenant protested that he washed his hands
+of it, and that it was a fraud and a snare, he certainly did not avow
+the condition of his wife’s parents to Mr. Andrew, but alluded to them
+in passing as “the country people.” He supposed “the country people”
+must be asked, he said. The brewer offered to go down to them. But the
+lieutenant drew an unpleasant picture of the country people, and his
+wife became so grave at the proposal, that Mr. Andrew said he wanted to
+marry the lady and not the “country people,” and if she would have him,
+there he was. There he was, behaving with a particular and sagacious
+kindness to the raw lieutenant since Harriet’s arrival. If the
+lieutenant sent her away, Mr. Andrew would infallibly pursue her, and
+light on a discovery. Twice cursed by Love, twice the victim of
+tailordom, our excellent Marine gave away Harriet Harrington in
+marriage to Mr. Andrew Cogglesby.
+
+Thus Joy clapped hands a second time, and Horror deepened its shadows.
+
+From higher ground it was natural that the remaining sister should take
+a bolder flight. Of the loves of the fair Louisa Harrington and the
+foreign Count, and how she first encountered him in the brewer’s
+saloons, and how she, being a humorous person, laughed at his “loaf”
+for her, and wore the colours that pleased him, and kindled and soothed
+his jealousy, little is known beyond the fact that she espoused the
+Count, under the auspices of the affluent brewer, and engaged that her
+children should be brought up in the faith of the Catholic Church:
+which Lymport gossips called, paying the Devil for her pride.
+
+The three sisters, gloriously rescued by their own charms, had now to
+think of their one young brother. How to make him a gentleman! That was
+their problem.
+
+Preserve him from tailordom—from all contact with trade—they must;
+otherwise they would be perpetually linked to the horrid thing they
+hoped to outlive and bury. A cousin of Mr. Melchisedec’s had risen to
+be an Admiral and a knight for valiant action in the old war, when men
+could rise. Him they besought to take charge of the youth, and make a
+distinguished seaman of him. He courteously declined. They then
+attacked the married Marine—Navy or Army being quite indifferent to
+them as long as they could win for their brother the badge of one
+Service, “When he is a gentleman at once!” they said, like those who
+see the end of their labours. Strike basely pretended to second them.
+It would have been delightful to him, of course, to have the tailor’s
+son messing at the same table, and claiming him when he pleased with a
+familiar “Ah, brother!” and prating of their relationship everywhere.
+Strike had been a fool: in revenge for it he laid out for himself a
+masterly career of consequent wisdom. The brewer—uxorious Andrew
+Cogglesby—might and would have bought the commission. Strike laughed at
+the idea of giving money for what could be got for nothing. He told
+them to wait.
+
+In the meantime Evan, a lad of seventeen, spent the hours not devoted
+to his positive profession—that of gentleman—in the offices of the
+brewery, toying with big books and balances, which he despised with the
+combined zeal of the sucking soldier and emancipated tailor.
+
+Two years passed in attendance on the astute brother-in-law, to whom
+Fortune now beckoned to come to her and gather his laurels from the
+pig-tails. About the same time the Countess sailed over from Lisbon on
+a visit to her sister Harriet (in reality, it was whispered in the
+Cogglesby saloons, on a diplomatic mission from the Court of Lisbon;
+but that could not be made ostensible). The Countess narrowly examined
+Evan, whose steady advance in his profession both her sisters praised.
+
+“Yes,” said the Countess, in a languid alien accent. “He has something
+of his father’s carriage—something. Something of his delivery—his
+readiness.”
+
+It was a remarkable thing that these ladies thought no man on earth
+like their father, and always cited him as the example of a perfect
+gentleman, and yet they buried him with one mind, and each mounted
+guard over his sepulchre, to secure his ghost from an airing.
+
+“He can walk, my dears, certainly, and talk—a little. Tête-à-tête, I do
+not say. I should think there he would be—a stick! All you English are.
+But what sort of a bow has he got, I ask you? How does he enter a room?
+And, then his smile! his laugh! He laughs like a horse—absolutely!
+There’s no music in his smile. Oh! you should see a Portuguese nobleman
+smile. Oh! Dios! honeyed, my dears! But Evan has it not. None of you
+English have. You go so.”
+
+The Countess pressed a thumb and finger to the sides of her mouth, and
+set her sisters laughing.
+
+“I assure you, no better! not a bit! I faint in your society. I ask
+myself—Where am I? Among what boors have I fallen? But Evan is no worse
+than the rest of you; I acknowledge that. If he knew how to dress his
+shoulders properly, and to direct his eyes—Oh! the eyes! you should see
+how a Portuguese nobleman can use his eyes! Soul! my dears, soul! Can
+any of you look the unutterable without being absurd! You look so.”
+
+And the Countess hung her jaw under heavily vacuous orbits, something
+as a sheep might yawn.
+
+“But I acknowledge that Evan is no worse than the rest of you,” she
+repeated. “If he understood at all the management of his eyes and
+mouth! But that’s what he cannot possibly learn in England—not
+possibly! As for your poor husband, Harriet! one really has to remember
+his excellent qualities to forgive him, poor man! And that stiff
+bandbox of a man of yours, Caroline!” addressing the wife of the
+Marine, “he looks as if he were all angles and sections, and were taken
+to pieces every night and put together in the morning. He may be a good
+soldier—good anything you will—but, Dios! to be married to that! He is
+not civilized. None of you English are. You have no place in the
+drawing-room. You are like so many intrusive oxen—absolutely! One of
+your men trod on my toe the other night, and what do you think the
+creature did? Jerks back, then the half of him forward—I thought he was
+going to break in two—then grins, and grunts, ‘Oh! ’m sure, beg pardon,
+’m sure!’ I don’t know whether he didn’t say, MA’AM!”
+
+The Countess lifted her hands, and fell away in laughing horror. When
+her humour, or her feelings generally, were a little excited, she spoke
+her vernacular as her sisters did, but immediately subsided into the
+deliberate delicately-syllabled drawl.
+
+“Now that happened to me once at one of our great Balls,” she pursued.
+“I had on one side of me the Duchesse Eugenia de Formosa de
+Fontandigua; on the other sat the Countess de Pel, a widow. And we were
+talking of the ices that evening. Eugenia, you must know, my dears, was
+in love with the Count Belmaraña. I was her sole confidante. The
+Countess de Pel—a horrible creature! Oh! she was the Duchess’s
+determined enemy—would have stabbed her for Belmaraña, one of the most
+beautiful men! Adored by every woman! So we talked ices, Eugenic and
+myself, quite comfortably, and that horrible De Pel had no idea in
+life! Eugenia had just said, ‘This ice sickens me! I do not taste the
+flavour of the vanille.’ I answered, ‘It is here! It must—it cannot but
+be here! You love the flavour of the vanille?’ With her exquisite
+smile, I see her now saying, ‘Too well! it is necessary to me! I live
+on it!’—when up he came. In his eagerness, his foot just effleured my
+robe. Oh! I never shall forget! In an instant he was down on one knee
+it was so momentary that none saw it but we three, and done with
+ineffable grace. ‘Pardon!’ he said, in his sweet Portuguese; ‘Pardon!’
+looking up—the handsomest man I ever beheld; and when I think of that
+odious wretch the other night, with his ‘Oh! ’m sure, beg pardon, ’m
+sure! ’pon my honour!’ I could have kicked him—I could, indeed!”
+
+Here the Countess laughed out, but relapsed into:
+
+“Alas! that Belmaraña should have betrayed that beautiful trusting
+creature to De Pel. Such scandal! a duel!—the Duke was wounded. For a
+whole year Eugenia did not dare to appear at Court, but had to remain
+immured in her country-house, where she heard that Belmaraña had
+married De Pel! It was for her money, of course. Rich as Croesus, and
+as wicked as the black man below! as dear papa used to say. By the way,
+weren’t we talking of Evan? Ah,—yes!”
+
+And so forth. The Countess was immensely admired, and though her
+sisters said that she was “foreignized” overmuch, they clung to her
+desperately. She seemed so entirely to have eclipsed tailordom, or
+“Demogorgon,” as the Countess was pleased to call it. Who could suppose
+this grand-mannered lady, with her coroneted anecdotes and delicious
+breeding, the daughter of that thing? It was not possible to suppose
+it. It seemed to defy the fact itself.
+
+They congratulated her on her complete escape from Demogorgon. The
+Countess smiled on them with a lovely sorrow.
+
+“Safe from the whisper, my dears; the ceaseless dread? If you knew what
+I have to endure! I sometimes envy you. ’Pon my honour, I sometimes
+wish I had married a fishmonger! Silva, indeed, is a most excellent
+husband. Polished! such polish as you know not of in England. He has a
+way—a wriggle with his shoulders in company—I cannot describe it to
+you; so slight! so elegant! and he is all that a woman could desire.
+But who could be safe in any part of the earth, my dears, while papa
+will go about so, and behave so extraordinarily? I was at dinner at
+your English embassy a month ago, and there was Admiral Combleman, then
+on the station off Lisbon, Sir Jackson Racial’s friend, who was the
+Admiral at Lymport formerly. I knew him at once, and thought, oh! what
+shall I do! My heart was like a lump of lead. I would have given worlds
+that we might one of us have smothered the other! I had to sit beside
+him—it always happens! Thank heaven! he did not identify me. And then
+he told an anecdote of Papa. It was the dreadful old ‘Bath’ story. I
+thought I should have died. I could not but fancy the Admiral
+suspected. Was it not natural? And what do you think I had the audacity
+to do? I asked him coolly, whether the Mr. Harrington he mentioned was
+not the son of Sir Abraham Harrington, of Torquay,—the gentleman who
+lost his yacht in the Lisbon waters last year? I brought it on myself.
+“Gentleman, ma’am,—MA’AM!” says the horrid old creature, laughing,
+“gentleman! he’s a —— I cannot speak it: I choke!” And then he began
+praising Papa. Dios! what I suffered. But, you know, I can keep my
+countenance, if I perish. I am a Harrington as much as any of us!”
+
+And the Countess looked superb in the pride with which she said she was
+what she would have given her hand not to be. But few feelings are
+single on this globe, and junction of sentiments need not imply unity
+in our yeasty compositions.
+
+“After it was over—my supplice,” continued the Countess, “I was
+questioned by all the ladies—I mean our ladies—not your English. They
+wanted to know how I could be so civil to that intolerable man. I
+gained a deal of credit, my dears. I laid it all on—Diplomacy.” The
+Countess laughed bitterly. “Diplomacy bears the burden of it all. I
+pretended that Combleman could be useful to Silva! Oh! what hypocrites
+we all are!”
+
+The ladies listening could not gainsay this favourite claim of
+universal brotherhood among the select who wear masks instead of faces.
+
+With regard to Evan, the Countess had far outstripped her sisters in
+her views. A gentleman she had discovered must have one of two things—a
+title or money. He might have all the breeding in the world; he might
+be as good as an angel; but without a title or money he was under
+eclipse almost total. On a gentleman the sun must shine. Now, Evan had
+no title, no money. The clouds were thick above the youth. To gain a
+title he would have to scale aged mountains. There was one break in his
+firmament through which the radiant luminary might be assisted to cast
+its beams on him still young. That divine portal was matrimony. If he
+could but make a rich marriage he would blaze transfigured; all would
+be well! And why should not Evan marry an heiress, as well as another?
+
+“I know a young creature who would exactly suit him,” said the
+Countess. “She is related to the embassy, and is in Lisbon now. A
+charming child—just sixteen! Dios! how the men rave about her! and she
+isn’t a beauty,—there’s the wonder; and she is a little too gauche—too
+English in her habits and ways of thinking; likes to be admired, of
+course, but doesn’t know yet how to set about getting it. She rather
+scandalizes our ladies, but when you know her!—She will have, they say,
+a hundred thousand pounds in her own right! Rose Jocelyn, the daughter
+of Sir Franks, and that eccentric Lady Jocelyn. She is with her uncle,
+Melville, the celebrated diplomate though, to tell you the truth, we
+turn him round our fingers, and spin him as the boys used to do the
+cockchafers. I cannot forget our old Fallowfield school-life, you see,
+my dears. Well, Rose Jocelyn would just suit Evan. She is just of an
+age to receive an impression. And I would take care she did. Instance
+me a case where I have failed?
+
+“Or there is the Portuguese widow, the Rostral. She’s thirty,
+certainly; but she possesses millions! Estates all over the kingdom,
+and the sweetest creature. But, no. Evan would be out of the way there,
+certainly. But—our women are very nice: they have the dearest, sweetest
+ways: but I would rather Evan did not marry one of them. And then
+there’s the religion!”
+
+This was a sore of the Countess’s own, and she dropped a tear in coming
+across it.
+
+“No, my dears, it shall be Rose Jocelyn!” she concluded: “I will take
+Evan over with me, and see that he has opportunities. It shall be Rose,
+and then I can call her mine; for in verity I love the child.”
+
+It is not my part to dispute the Countess’s love for Miss Jocelyn; and
+I have only to add that Evan, unaware of the soft training he was to
+undergo, and the brilliant chance in store for him, offered no
+impediment to the proposition that he should journey to Portugal with
+his sister (whose subtlest flattery was to tell him that she should not
+be ashamed to own him there); and ultimately, furnished with cash for
+the trip by the remonstrating brewer, went.
+
+So these Parcae, daughters of the shears, arranged and settled the
+young man’s fate. His task was to learn the management of his mouth,
+how to dress his shoulders properly, and to direct his eyes—rare
+qualities in man or woman, I assure you; the management of the mouth
+being especially admirable, and correspondingly difficult. These
+achieved, he was to place his battery in position, and win the heart
+and hand of an heiress.
+
+Our comedy opens with his return from Portugal, in company with Miss
+Rose, the heiress; the Honourable Melville Jocelyn, the diplomate; and
+the Count and Countess de Saldar, refugees out of that explosive little
+kingdom.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+ON BOARD THE JOCASTA
+
+
+From the Tagus to the Thames the Government sloop-of-war, Jocasta, had
+made a prosperous voyage, bearing that precious freight, a removed
+diplomatist and his family; for whose uses let a sufficient vindication
+be found in the exercise he affords our crews in the science of
+seamanship. She entered our noble river somewhat early on a fine July
+morning. Early as it was, two young people, who had nothing to do with
+the trimming or guiding of the vessel, stood on deck, and watched the
+double-shore, beginning to embrace them more and more closely as they
+sailed onward. One, a young lady, very young in manner, wore a black
+felt hat with a floating scarlet feather, and was clad about the
+shoulders in a mantle of foreign style and pattern. The other you might
+have taken for a wandering Don, were such an object ever known; so
+simply he assumed the dusky sombrero and dangling cloak, of which one
+fold was flung across his breast and drooped behind him. The line of an
+adolescent dark moustache ran along his lip, and only at intervals
+could you see that his eyes were blue and of the land he was nearing.
+For the youth was meditative, and held his head much down. The young
+lady, on the contrary, permitted an open inspection of her countenance,
+and seemed, for the moment at least, to be neither caring nor thinking
+of what kind of judgement would be passed on her. Her pretty nose was
+up, sniffing the still salt breeze with vivacious delight.
+
+“Oh!” she cried, clapping her hands, “there goes a dear old English
+gull! How I have wished to see him! I haven’t seen one for two years
+and seven months. When I’m at home, I’ll leave my window open all
+night, just to hear the rooks, when they wake in the morning. There
+goes another!”
+
+She tossed up her nose again, exclaiming:
+
+“I’m sure I smell England nearer and nearer! I smell the fields, and
+the cows in them. I’d have given anything to be a dairy-maid for half
+an hour! I used to lie and pant in that stifling air among those stupid
+people, and wonder why anybody ever left England. Aren’t you glad to
+come back?”
+
+This time the fair speaker lent her eyes to the question, and shut her
+lips; sweet, cold, chaste lips she had: a mouth that had not yet
+dreamed of kisses, and most honest eyes.
+
+The young man felt that they were not to be satisfied by his own, and
+after seeking to fill them with a doleful look, which was immediately
+succeeded by one of superhuman indifference, he answered:
+
+“Yes! We shall soon have to part!” and commenced tapping with his foot
+the cheerful martyr’s march.
+
+Speech that has to be hauled from the depths usually betrays the
+effort. Listening an instant to catch the import of this cavernous gasp
+upon the brink of sound, the girl said:
+
+“Part? what do you mean?”
+
+Apparently it required a yet vaster effort to pronounce an explanation.
+The doleful look, the superhuman indifference, were repeated in due
+order: sound, a little more distinct, uttered the words:
+
+“We cannot be as we have been, in England!” and then the cheerful
+martyr took a few steps farther.
+
+“Why, you don’t mean to say you’re going to give me up, and not be
+friends with me, because we’ve come back to England?” cried the girl in
+a rapid breath, eyeing him seriously.
+
+Most conscientiously he did not mean it! but he replied with the
+quietest negative.
+
+“No?” she mimicked him. “Why do you say ‘No’ like that? Why are you so
+mysterious, Evan? Won’t you promise me to come and stop with us for
+weeks? Haven’t you said we would ride, and hunt, and fish together, and
+read books, and do all sorts of things?”
+
+He replied with the quietest affirmative.
+
+“Yes? What does ‘Yes!’ mean?” She lifted her chest to shake out the
+dead-alive monosyllable, as he had done. “Why are you so singular this
+morning, Evan? Have I offended you? You are so touchy!”
+
+The slur on his reputation for sensitiveness induced the young man to
+attempt being more explicit.
+
+“I mean,” he said, hesitating; “why, we must part. We shall not see
+each other every day. Nothing more than that.” And away went the
+cheerful martyr in sublimest mood.
+
+“Oh! and that makes you, sorry?” A shade of archness was in her voice.
+
+The girl waited as if to collect something in her mind, and was now a
+patronizing woman.
+
+“Why, you dear sentimental boy! You don’t suppose we could see each
+other every day for ever?”
+
+It was perhaps the cruelest question that could have been addressed to
+the sentimental boy from her mouth. But he was a cheerful martyr!
+
+“You dear Don Doloroso!” she resumed. “I declare if you are not just
+like those young Portugals this morning; and over there you were such a
+dear English fellow; and that’s why I liked you so much! Do change! Do,
+please, be lively, and yourself again. Or mind; I’ll call you Don
+Doloroso, and that shall be your name in England. See
+there!—that’s—that’s? what’s the name of that place? Hoy! Mr. Skerne!”
+She hailed the boatswain, passing, “Do tell me the name of that place.”
+
+Mr. Skerne righted about to satisfy her minutely, and then coming up to
+Evan, he touched his hat, and said:
+
+“I mayn’t have another opportunity—we shall be busy up there—of
+thankin’ you again, sir, for what you did for my poor drunken brother
+Bill, and you may take my word I won’t forget it, sir, if he does; and
+I suppose he’ll be drowning his memory just as he was near drowning
+himself.”
+
+Evan muttered something, grimaced civilly, and turned away. The girl’s
+observant brows were moved to a faintly critical frown, and nodding
+intelligently to the boatswain’s remark, that the young gentleman did
+not seem quite himself, now that he was nearing home, she went up to
+Evan, and said:
+
+“I’m going to give you a lesson in manners, to be quits with you.
+Listen, sir. Why did you turn away so ungraciously from Mr. Skerne,
+while he was thanking you for having saved his brother’s life? Now
+there’s where you’re too English. Can’t you bear to be thanked?”
+
+“I don’t want to be thanked because I can swim,” said Evan.
+
+“But it is not that. Oh, how you trifle!” she cried. “There’s nothing
+vexes me so much as that way you have. Wouldn’t my eyes have sparkled
+if anybody had come up to me to thank me for such a thing? I would let
+them know how glad I was to have done such a thing! Doesn’t it make
+them happier, dear Evan?”
+
+“My dear Miss Jocelyn!”
+
+“What?”
+
+The honest grey eyes fixed on him, narrowed their enlarged lids. She
+gazed before her on the deck, saying:
+
+“I’m sure I can’t understand you. I suppose it’s because I’m a girl,
+and I never shall till I’m a woman. Heigho!”
+
+A youth who is engaged in the occupation of eating his heart, cannot
+shine to advantage, and is as much a burden to himself as he is an
+enigma to others. Evan felt this; but he could do nothing and say
+nothing; so he retired deeper into the folds of the Don, and remained
+picturesque and scarcely pleasant.
+
+They were relieved by a summons to breakfast from below.
+
+She brightened and laughed. “Now, what will you wager me, Evan, that
+the Countess doesn’t begin:
+
+‘Sweet child! how does she this morning? blooming?’ when she kisses
+me?”
+
+Her capital imitation of his sister’s manner constrained him to join in
+her laugh, and he said:
+
+“I’ll back against that, I get three fingers from your uncle, and
+‘Morrow, young sir!’”
+
+Down they ran together, laughing; and, sure enough, the identical words
+of the respective greetings were employed, which they had to enjoy with
+all the discretion they could muster.
+
+Rose went round the table to her little cousin Alec, aged seven, kissed
+his reluctant cheek, and sat beside him, announcing a sea appetite and
+great capabilities, while Evan silently broke bread. The Count de
+Saldar, a diminutive tawny man, just a head and neck above the
+tablecloth, sat sipping chocolate and fingering dry toast, which he
+would now and then dip in jelly, and suck with placidity, in the
+intervals of a curt exchange of French with the wife of the Hon.
+Melville, a ringleted English lady, or of Portuguese with the Countess;
+who likewise sipped chocolate and fingered dry toast, and was
+mournfully melodious. The Hon. Melville, as became a tall islander,
+carved beef, and ate of it, like a ruler of men. Beautiful to see was
+the compassionate sympathy of the Countess’s face when Rose offered her
+plate for a portion of the world-subjugating viand, as who should say:
+“Sweet child! thou knowest not yet of sorrows, thou canst ballast thy
+stomach with beef!” In any other than an heiress, she would probably
+have thought: “This is indeed a disgusting little animal, and most
+unfeminine conduct!”
+
+Rose, unconscious of praise or blame, rivalled her uncle in enjoyment
+of the fare, and talked of her delight in seeing England again, and
+anything that belonged to her native land. Mrs. Melville perceived that
+it pained the refugee Countess, and gave her the glance intelligible;
+but the Countess never missed glances, or failed to interpret them. She
+said:
+
+“Let her. I love to hear the sweet child’s prattle.”
+
+“It was fortunate” (she addressed the diplomatist) “that we touched at
+Southampton and procured fresh provision!”
+
+“Very lucky for US!” said he, glaring shrewdly between a mouthful.
+
+The Count heard the word “Southampton,” and wished to know how it was
+comprised. A passage of Portuguese ensued, and then the Countess said:
+
+“Silva, you know, desired to relinquish the vessel at Southampton. He
+does not comprehend the word ‘expense,’ but” (she shook a dumb Alas!)
+“I must think of that for him now!”
+
+“Oh! always avoid expense,” said the Hon. Melville, accustomed to be
+paid for by his country.
+
+“At what time shall we arrive, may I ask, do you think?” the Countess
+gently inquired.
+
+The watch of a man who had his eye on Time was pulled out, and she was
+told it might be two hours before dark. Another reckoning, keenly
+balanced, informed the company that the day’s papers could be expected
+on board somewhere about three o’clock in the afternoon.
+
+“And then,” said the Hon. Melville, nodding general gratulation, “we
+shall know how the world wags.”
+
+How it had been wagging the Countess’s straining eyes under closed
+eyelids were eloquent of.
+
+“Too late, I fear me, to wait upon Lord Livelyston to-night?” she
+suggested.
+
+“To-night?” The Hon. Melville gazed blank astonishment at the notion.
+“Oh! certainly, too late tonight. A-hum! I think, madam, you had better
+not be in too great a hurry to see him. Repose a little. Recover your
+fatigue.”
+
+“Oh!” exclaimed the Countess, with a beam of utter confidence in him,
+“I shall be too happy to place myself in your hands—believe me.”
+
+This was scarcely more to the taste of the diplomatist. He put up his
+mouth, and said, blandly:
+
+“I fear—you know, madam, I must warn you beforehand—I, personally, am
+but an insignificant unit over here, you know; I, personally, can’t
+guarantee much assistance to you—not positive. What I can do—of course,
+very happy!” And he fell to again upon the beef.
+
+“Not so very insignificant!” said the Countess, smiling, as at a softly
+radiant conception of him.
+
+“Have to bob and bow like the rest of them over here,” he added, proof
+against the flattery.
+
+“But that you will not forsake Silva, I am convinced,” said the
+Countess; and, paying little heed to his brief “Oh! what I can do,”
+continued: “For over here, in England, we are almost friendless. My
+relations—such as are left of them—are not in high place.” She turned
+to Mrs. Melville, and renewed the confession with a proud humility.
+“Truly, I have not a distant cousin in the Cabinet!”
+
+Mrs. Melville met her sad smile, and returned it, as one who understood
+its entire import.
+
+“My brother-in-law—my sister, I think, you know—married a—a brewer! He
+is rich; but, well! such was her taste! My brother-in-law is indeed in
+Parliament, and he—”
+
+“Very little use, seeing he votes with the opposite party,” the
+diplomatist interrupted her.
+
+“Ah! but he will not,” said the Countess, serenely. “I can trust with
+confidence that, if it is for Silva’s interest, he will assuredly so
+dispose of his influence as to suit the desiderations of his family,
+and not in any way oppose his opinions to the powers that would
+willingly stoop to serve us!”
+
+It was impossible for the Hon. Melville to withhold a slight grimace at
+his beef, when he heard this extremely alienized idea of the nature of
+a member of the Parliament of Great Britain. He allowed her to enjoy
+her delusion, as she pursued:
+
+“No. So much we could offer in repayment. It is little! But this, in
+verity, is a case. Silva’s wrongs have only to be known in England, and
+I am most assured that the English people will not permit it. In the
+days of his prosperity, Silva was a friend to England, and England
+should not—should not—forget it now. Had we money! But of that arm our
+enemies have deprived us: and, I fear, without it we cannot hope to
+have the justice of our cause pleaded in the English papers. Mr.
+Redner, you know, the correspondent in Lisbon, is a sworn foe to Silva.
+And why but because I would not procure him an invitation to Court! The
+man was so horridly vulgar; his gloves were never clean; I had to hold
+a bouquet to my nose when I talked to him. That, you say, was my fault!
+Truly so. But what woman can be civil to a low-bred, pretentious,
+offensive man?”
+
+Mrs. Melville, again appealed to, smiled perfect sympathy, and said, to
+account for his character:
+
+“Yes. He is the son of a small shopkeeper of some kind, in Southampton,
+I hear.”
+
+“A very good fellow in his way,” said her husband.
+
+“Oh! I can’t bear that class of people,” Rose exclaimed. “I always keep
+out of their way. You can always tell them.”
+
+The Countess smiled considerate approbation of her exclusiveness and
+discernment. So sweet a smile!
+
+“You were on deck early, my dear?” she asked Evan, rather abruptly.
+
+Master Alec answered for him: “Yes, he was, and so was Rose. They made
+an appointment, just as they used to do under the oranges.”
+
+“Children!” the Countess smiled to Mrs. Melville.
+
+“They always whisper when I’m by,” Alec appended.
+
+“Children!” the Countess’s sweetened visage entreated Mrs. Melville to
+re-echo; but that lady thought it best for the moment to direct Rose to
+look to her packing, now that she had done breakfast.
+
+“And I will take a walk with my brother on deck,” said the Countess.
+“Silva is too harassed for converse.”
+
+The parties were thus divided. The silent Count was left to meditate on
+his wrongs in the saloon; and the diplomatist, alone with his lady,
+thought fit to say to her, shortly: “Perhaps it would be as well to
+draw away from these people a little. We’ve done as much as we could
+for them, in bringing them over here. They may be trying to compromise
+us. That woman’s absurd. She’s ashamed of the brewer, and yet she wants
+to sell him—or wants us to buy him. Ha! I think she wants us to send a
+couple of frigates, and threaten bombardment of the capital, if they
+don’t take her husband back, and receive him with honours.”
+
+“Perhaps it would be as well,” said Mrs. Melville. “Rose’s invitation
+to him goes for nothing.”
+
+“Rose? inviting the Count? down to Hampshire?” The diplomatist’s brows
+were lifted.
+
+“No, I mean the other,” said the diplomatist’s wife.
+
+“Oh! the young fellow! very good young fellow. Gentlemanly. No harm in
+him.”
+
+“Perhaps not,” said the diplomatist’s wife.
+
+“You don’t suppose he expects us to keep him on, or provide for him
+over here—eh?”
+
+The diplomatist’s wife informed him that such was not her thought, that
+he did not understand, and that it did not matter; and as soon as the
+Hon. Melville saw that she was brooding something essentially feminine,
+and which had no relationship to the great game of public life,
+curiosity was extinguished in him.
+
+On deck the Countess paced with Evan, and was for a time pleasantly
+diverted by the admiration she could, without looking, perceive that
+her sorrow-subdued graces had aroused in the breast of a susceptible
+naval lieutenant. At last she spoke:
+
+“My dear! remember this. Your last word to Mr. Jocelyn will be: ‘I will
+do myself the honour to call upon my benefactor early.’ To Rose you
+will say: ‘Be assured, Miss Jocelyn “Miss Jocelyn—” I shall not fail in
+hastening to pay my respects to your family in Hampshire.’ You will
+remember to do it, in the exact form I speak it.”
+
+Evan laughed: “What! call him benefactor to his face? I couldn’t do
+it.”
+
+“Ah! my child!”
+
+“Besides, he isn’t a benefactor at all. His private secretary died, and
+I stepped in to fill the post, because nobody else was handy.”
+
+“And tell me of her who pushed you forward, Evan?”
+
+“My dear sister, I’m sure I’m not ungrateful.”
+
+“No; but headstrong: opinionated. Now these people will endeavour—Oh! I
+have seen it in a thousand little things—they wish to shake us off.
+Now, if you will but do as I indicate! Put your faith in an older head,
+Evan. It is your only chance of society in England. For your
+brother-in-law—I ask you, what sort of people will you meet at the
+Cogglesbys? Now and then a nobleman, very much out of his element. In
+short, you have fed upon a diet which will make you to distinguish, and
+painfully to know the difference! Indeed! Yes, you are looking about
+for Rose. It depends upon your behaviour now, whether you are to see
+her at all in England. Do you forget? You wished once to inform her of
+your origin. Think of her words at the breakfast this morning!”
+
+The Countess imagined she had produced an impression. Evan said: “Yes,
+and I should have liked to have told her this morning that I’m myself
+nothing more than the son of a—”
+
+“Stop! cried his sister, glancing about in horror. The admiring
+lieutenant met her eye. Blandishingly she smiled on him: “Most
+beautiful weather for a welcome to dear England?” and passed with
+majesty.
+
+“Boy!” she resumed, “are you mad?”
+
+“I hate being such a hypocrite, madam.”
+
+“Then you do not love her, Evan?”
+
+This may have been dubious logic, but it resulted from a clear sequence
+of ideas in the lady’s head. Evan did not contest it.
+
+“And assuredly you will lose her, Evan. Think of my troubles! I have to
+intrigue for Silva; I look to your future; I smile, Oh heaven! how do I
+not smile when things are spoken that pierce my heart! This morning at
+the breakfast!”
+
+Evan took her hand, and patted it.
+
+“What is your pity?” she sighed.
+
+“If it had not been for you, my dear sister, I should never have held
+my tongue.”
+
+“You are not a Harrington! You are a Dawley!” she exclaimed,
+indignantly.
+
+Evan received the accusation of possessing more of his mother’s spirit
+than his father’s in silence.
+
+“You would not have held your tongue,” she said, with fervid severity:
+“and you would have betrayed yourself! and you would have said you were
+that! and you in that costume! Why, goodness gracious! could you bear
+to appear so ridiculous?”
+
+The poor young man involuntarily surveyed his person. The pains of an
+impostor seized him. The deplorable image of the Don making confession
+became present to his mind. It was a clever stroke of this female
+intriguer. She saw him redden grievously, and blink his eyes; and not
+wishing to probe him so that he would feel intolerable disgust at his
+imprisonment in the Don, she continued:
+
+“But you have the sense to see your duties, Evan. You have an excellent
+sense, in the main. No one would dream—to see you. You did not, I must
+say, you did not make enough of your gallantry. A Portuguese who had
+saved a man’s life, Evan, would he have been so boorish? You behaved as
+if it was a matter of course that you should go overboard after
+anybody, in your clothes, on a dark night. So, then, the Jocelyns took
+it. I barely heard one compliment to you. And Rose—what an effect it
+should have had on her! But, owing to your manner, I do believe the
+girl thinks it nothing but your ordinary business to go overboard after
+anybody, in your clothes, on a dark night. ’Pon my honour, I believe
+she expects to see you always dripping!” The Countess uttered a burst
+of hysterical humour. “So you miss your credit. That inebriated sailor
+should really have been gold to you. Be not so young and thoughtless.”
+
+The Countess then proceeded to tell him how foolishly he had let slip
+his great opportunity. A Portuguese would have fixed the young lady
+long before. By tender moonlight, in captivating language, beneath the
+umbrageous orange-groves, a Portuguese would have accurately calculated
+the effect of the perfume of the blossom on her sensitive nostrils, and
+know the exact moment when to kneel, and declare his passion
+sonorously.
+
+“Yes,” said Evan, “one of them did. She told me.”
+
+“She told you? And you—what did you do?”
+
+“Laughed at him with her, to be sure.”
+
+“Laughed at him! She told you, and you helped her to laugh at love!
+Have you no perceptions? Why did she tell you?”
+
+“Because she thought him such a fool, I suppose.”
+
+“You never will know a woman,” said the Countess, with contempt.
+
+Much of his worldly sister at a time was more than Evan could bear.
+Accustomed to the symptoms of restiveness, she finished her discourse,
+enjoyed a quiet parade up and down under the gaze of the lieutenant,
+and could find leisure to note whether she at all struck the inferior
+seamen, even while her mind was absorbed by the multiform troubles and
+anxieties for which she took such innocent indemnification.
+
+The appearance of the Hon. Melville Jocelyn on deck, and without his
+wife, recalled her to business. It is a peculiarity of female
+diplomatists that they fear none save their own sex. Men they regard as
+their natural prey: in women they see rival hunters using their own
+weapons. The Countess smiled a slowly-kindling smile up to him, set her
+brother adrift, and delicately linked herself to Evan’s benefactor.
+
+“I have been thinking,” she said, “knowing your kind and most
+considerate attentions, that we may compromise you in England.”
+
+He at once assured her he hoped not, he thought not at all.
+
+“The idea is due to my brother,” she went on; “for I—women know so
+little!—and most guiltlessly should we have done so. My brother perhaps
+does not think of us foremost; but his argument I can distinguish. I
+can see, that were you openly to plead Silva’s cause, you might bring
+yourself into odium, Mr. Jocelyn; and heaven knows I would not that!
+May I then ask, that in England we may be simply upon the same footing
+of private friendship?”
+
+The diplomatist looked into her uplifted visage, that had all the
+sugary sparkles of a crystallized preserved fruit of the Portugal
+clime, and observed, confidentially, that, with every willingness in
+the world to serve her, he did think it would possibly be better, for a
+time, to be upon that footing, apart from political considerations.
+
+“I was very sure my brother would apprehend your views,” said the
+Countess. “He, poor boy! his career is closed. He must sink into a
+different sphere. He will greatly miss the intercourse with you and
+your sweet family.”
+
+Further relieved, the diplomatist delivered a high opinion of the young
+gentleman, his abilities, and his conduct, and trusted he should see
+him frequently.
+
+By an apparent sacrifice, the lady thus obtained what she wanted.
+
+Near the hour speculated on by the diplomatist, the papers came on
+board, and he, unaware how he had been manoeuvred for lack of a wife at
+his elbow, was quickly engaged in appeasing the great British hunger
+for news; second only to that for beef, it seems, and equally
+acceptable salted when it cannot be had fresh.
+
+Leaving the devotee of statecraft with his legs crossed, and his face
+wearing the cognizant air of one whose head is above the waters of
+events, to enjoy the mighty meal of fresh and salted at discretion, the
+Countess dived below.
+
+Meantime the Jocasta, as smoothly as before she was ignorant of how the
+world wagged, slipped up the river with the tide; and the sun hung red
+behind the forest of masts, burnishing a broad length of the serpentine
+haven of the nations of the earth. A young Englishman returning home
+can hardly look on this scene without some pride of kinship. Evan stood
+at the fore part of the vessel. Rose, in quiet English attire, had
+escaped from her aunt to join him, singing in his ears, to spur his
+senses: “Isn’t it beautiful? Isn’t it beautiful? Dear old England!”
+
+“What do you find so beautiful?” he asked.
+
+“Oh, you dull fellow! Why the ships, and the houses, and the smoke, to
+be sure.”
+
+“The ships? Why, I thought you despised trade, mademoiselle?”
+
+“And so I do. That is, not trade, but tradesmen. Of course, I mean
+shopkeepers.”
+
+“It’s they who send the ships to and fro, and make the picture that
+pleases you, nevertheless.”
+
+“Do they?” said she, indifferently, and then with a sort of fervour,
+“Why do you always grow so cold to me whenever we get on this subject?”
+
+“I cold?” Evan responded. The incessant fears of his diplomatic sister
+had succeeded in making him painfully jealous of this subject. He
+turned it off. “Why, our feelings are just the same. Do you know what I
+was thinking when you came up? I was thinking that I hoped I might
+never disgrace the name of an Englishman.”
+
+“Now, that’s noble!” cried the girl. “And I’m sure you never will. Of
+an English gentleman, Evan. I like that better.”
+
+“Would you rather be called a true English lady than a true English
+woman, Rose?”
+
+“Don’t think I would, my dear,” she answered, pertly; “but ‘gentleman’
+always means more than ‘man’ to me.”
+
+“And what’s a gentleman, mademoiselle?”
+
+“Can’t tell you, Don Doloroso. Something you are, sir,” she added,
+surveying him.
+
+Evan sucked the bitter and the sweet of her explanation. His sister in
+her anxiety to put him on his guard, had not beguiled him to forget his
+real state.
+
+His sister, the diplomatist and his lady, the refugee Count, with
+ladies’ maids, servants, and luggage, were now on the main-deck, and
+Master Alec, who was as good as a newspaper correspondent for private
+conversations, put an end to the colloquy of the young people. They
+were all assembled in a circle when the vessel came to her moorings.
+The diplomatist glutted with news, and thirsting for confirmations; the
+Count dumb, courteous, and quick-eyed; the honourable lady complacent
+in the consciousness of boxes well packed; the Countess breathing
+mellifluous long-drawn adieux that should provoke invitations. Evan and
+Rose regarded each other.
+
+The boat to convey them on shore was being lowered, and they were
+preparing to move forward. Just then the vessel was boarded by a
+stranger.
+
+“Is that one of the creatures of your Customs? I did imagine we were
+safe from them,” exclaimed the Countess.
+
+The diplomatist laughingly requested her to save herself anxiety on
+that score, while under his wing. But she had drawn attention to the
+intruder, who was seen addressing one of the midshipmen. He was a man
+in a long brown coat and loose white neckcloth, spectacles on nose,
+which he wore considerably below the bridge and peered over, as if
+their main use were to sight his eye; a beaver hat, with broadish brim,
+on his head. A man of no station, it was evident to the ladies at once,
+and they would have taken no further notice of him had he not been seen
+stepping toward them in the rear of the young midshipman.
+
+The latter came to Evan, and said: “A fellow of the name of Goren wants
+you. Says there’s something the matter at home.”
+
+Evan advanced, and bowed stiffly.
+
+Mr. Goren held out his hand. “You don’t remember me, young man? I cut
+out your first suit for you when you were breeched, though! Yes-ah!
+Your poor father wouldn’t put his hand to it. Goren!”
+
+Embarrassed, and not quite alive to the chapter of facts this name
+should have opened to him, Evan bowed again.
+
+“Goren!” continued the possessor of the name. He had a cracked voice,
+that when he spoke a word of two syllables, commenced with a lugubrious
+crow, and ended in what one might have taken for a curious question.
+
+“It is a bad business brings me, young man. I’m not the best messenger
+for such tidings. It’s a black suit, young man! It’s your father!”
+
+The diplomatist and his lady gradually edged back but Rose remained
+beside the Countess, who breathed quick, and seemed to have lost her
+self-command.
+
+Thinking he was apprehended, Mr. Goren said: “I’m going down to-night
+to take care of the shop. He’s to be buried in his old uniform. You had
+better come with me by the night-coach, if you would see the last of
+him, young man.”
+
+Breaking an odd pause that had fallen, the Countess cried aloud,
+suddenly:
+
+“In his uniform!”
+
+Mr. Goren felt his arm seized and his legs hurrying him some paces into
+isolation. “Thanks! thanks!” was murmured in his ear. “Not a word more.
+Evan cannot bear it. Oh! you are good to have come, and we are
+grateful. My father! my father!”
+
+She had to tighten her hand and wrist against her bosom to keep herself
+up. She had to reckon in a glance how much Rose had heard, or divined.
+She had to mark whether the Count had understood a syllable. She had to
+whisper to Evan to hasten away with the horrible man.
+
+She had to enliven his stunned senses, and calm her own. And with
+mournful images of her father in her brain, the female Spartan had to
+turn to Rose, and speculate on the girl’s reflective brows, while she
+said, as over a distant relative, sadly, but without distraction: “A
+death in the family!” and preserved herself from weeping her heart out,
+that none might guess the thing who did not positively know it. Evan
+touched the hand of Rose without meeting her eyes. He was soon cast off
+in Mr. Goren’s boat. Then the Countess murmured final adieux; twilight
+under her lids, but yet a smile, stately, affectionate, almost genial.
+Rose, her sweet Rose, she must kiss. She could have slapped Rose for
+appearing so reserved and cold. She hugged Rose, as to hug oblivion of
+the last few minutes into her. The girl leant her cheek, and bore the
+embrace, looking on her with a kind of wonder.
+
+Only when alone with the Count, in the brewer’s carriage awaiting her
+on shore, did the lady give a natural course to her grief; well knowing
+that her Silva would attribute it to the darkness of their common
+exile. She wept: but in the excess of her misery, two words of
+strangely opposite signification, pronounced by Mr. Goren; two words
+that were at once poison and antidote, sang in her brain; two words
+that painted her dead father from head to foot, his nature and his
+fortune: these were the Shop, and the Uniform.
+
+Oh! what would she not have given to have seen and bestowed on her
+beloved father one last kiss! Oh! how she hoped that her inspired echo
+of Uniform, on board the Jocasta, had drowned the memory, eclipsed the
+meaning, of that fatal utterance of Shop!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+THE FAMILY AND THE FUNERAL
+
+
+It was the evening of the second day since the arrival of the black
+letter in London from Lymport, and the wife of the brewer and the wife
+of the Major sat dropping tears into one another’s laps, in expectation
+of their sister the Countess. Mr. Andrew Cogglesby had not yet returned
+from his office. The gallant Major had gone forth to dine with General
+Sir George Frebuter, the head of the Marines of his time. It would have
+been difficult for the Major, he informed his wife, to send in an
+excuse to the General for non-attendance, without entering into
+particulars; and that he should tell the General he could not dine with
+him, because of the sudden decease of a tailor, was, as he let his wife
+understand, and requested her to perceive, quite out of the question.
+So he dressed himself carefully, and though peremptory with his wife
+concerning his linen, and requiring natural services from her in the
+button department, and a casual expression of contentment as to his
+ultimate make-up, he left her that day without any final injunctions to
+occupy her mind, and she was at liberty to weep if she pleased, a
+privilege she did not enjoy undisturbed when he was present; for the
+warrior hated that weakness, and did not care to hide his contempt for
+it.
+
+Of the three sisters, the wife of the Major was, oddly enough, the one
+who was least inveterately solicitous of concealing the fact of her
+parentage. Reticence, of course, she had to study with the rest; the
+Major was a walking book of reticence and the observances; he
+professed, also, in company with herself alone, to have had much
+trouble in drilling her to mark and properly preserve them. She had no
+desire to speak of her birthplace. But, for some reason or other, she
+did not share her hero’s rather petulant anxiety to keep the curtain
+nailed down on that part of her life which preceded her entry into the
+ranks of the Royal Marines. Some might have thought that those fair
+large blue eyes of hers wandered now and then in pleasant unambitious
+walks behind the curtain, and toyed with little flowers of palest
+memory. Utterly tasteless, totally wanting in discernment, not to say
+gratitude, the Major could not presume her to be; and yet his wits
+perceived that her answers and the conduct she shaped in accordance
+with his repeated protests and long-reaching apprehensions of what he
+called danger, betrayed acquiescent obedience more than the connubial
+sympathy due to him. Danger on the field the Major knew not of; he did
+not scruple to name the word in relation to his wife. For, as he told
+her, should he, some day, as in the chapter of accidents might occur,
+sally into the street a Knight Companion of the Bath and become known
+to men as Sir Maxwell Strike, it would be decidedly disagreeable for
+him to be blown upon by a wind from Lymport. Moreover she was the
+mother of a son. The Major pointed out to her the duty she owed her
+offspring. Certainly the protecting aegis of his rank and title would
+be over the lad, but she might depend upon it any indiscretion of hers
+would damage him in his future career, the Major assured her. Young
+Maxwell must be considered.
+
+For all this, the mother and wife, when the black letter found them in
+the morning at breakfast, had burst into a fit of grief, and faltered
+that she wept for a father. Mrs. Andrew, to whom the letter was
+addressed, had simply held the letter to her in a trembling hand. The
+Major compared their behaviour, with marked encomiums of Mrs. Andrew.
+Now this lady and her husband were in obverse relative positions. The
+brewer had no will but his Harriet’s. His esteem for her combined the
+constitutional feelings of an insignificantly-built little man for a
+majestic woman, and those of a worthy soul for the wife of his bosom.
+Possessing, or possessed by her, the good brewer was perfectly happy.
+She, it might be thought, under these circumstances, would not have
+minded much his hearing what he might hear. It happened, however, that
+she was as jealous of the winds of Lymport as the Major himself; as
+vigilant in debarring them from access to the brewery as now the
+Countess could have been. We are not dissecting human nature suffice
+it, therefore, from a mere glance at the surface, to say, that just as
+moneyed men are careful of their coin, women who have all the
+advantages in a conjunction, are miserly in keeping them, and shudder
+to think that one thing remains hidden, which the world they move in
+might put down pityingly in favour of their spouse, even though to the
+little man ’twere naught. She assumed that a revelation would diminish
+her moral stature; and certainly it would not increase that of her
+husband. So no good could come of it. Besides, Andrew knew, his whole
+conduct was a tacit admission, that she had condescended in giving him
+her hand. The features of their union might not be changed altogether
+by a revelation, but it would be a shock to her.
+
+Consequently, Harriet tenderly rebuked Caroline, for her outcry at the
+breakfast-table; and Caroline, the elder sister, who had not since
+marriage grown in so free an air, excused herself humbly, and the two
+were weeping when the Countess joined them and related what she had
+just undergone.
+
+Hearing of Caroline’s misdemeanour, however, Louisa’s eyes rolled aloft
+in a paroxysm of tribulation. It was nothing to Caroline; it was
+comparatively nothing to Harriet; but the Count knew not Louisa had a
+father: believed that her parents had long ago been wiped out. And the
+Count was by nature inquisitive: and if he once cherished a suspicion
+he was restless; he was pointed in his inquiries: he was pertinacious
+in following out a clue: there never would be peace with him! And then,
+as they were secure in their privacy, Louisa cried aloud for her
+father, her beloved father! Harriet wept silently. Caroline alone
+expressed regret that she had not set eyes on him from the day she
+became a wife.
+
+“How could we, dear?” the Countess pathetically asked, under drowning
+lids.
+
+“Papa did not wish it,” sobbed Mrs. Andrew.
+
+“I never shall forgive myself!” said the wife of the Major, drying her
+cheeks. Perhaps it was not herself whom she felt she never could
+forgive.
+
+Ah! the man their father was! Incomparable Melchisedec! he might well
+be called. So generous! so lordly! When the rain of tears would subside
+for a moment, one would relate an anecdote or childish reminiscence of
+him, and provoke a more violent outburst.
+
+“Never, among the nobles of any land, never have I seen one like him!”
+exclaimed the Countess, and immediately requested Harriet to tell her
+how it would be possible to stop Andrew’s tongue in Silva’s presence.
+
+“At present, you know, my dear, they may talk as much as they like—they
+can’t understand one another one bit.”
+
+Mrs. Cogglesby comforted her by the assurance that Andrew had received
+an intimation of her wish for silence everywhere and toward everybody;
+and that he might be reckoned upon to respect it, without demanding a
+reason for the restriction. In other days Caroline and Louisa had a
+little looked down on Harriet’s alliance with a dumpy man—a brewer—and
+had always kind Christian compassion for him if his name were
+mentioned. They seemed now, by their silence, to have a happier
+estimate of Andrew’s qualities.
+
+While the three sisters sat mingling their sorrows and alarms, their
+young brother was making his way to the house. As he knocked at the
+door he heard his name pronounced behind him, and had no difficulty in
+recognizing the worthy brewer.
+
+“What, Van, my boy! how are you? Quite a foreigner! By George, what a
+hat!”
+
+Mr. Andrew bounced back two or three steps to regard the dusky
+sombrero.
+
+“How do you do, sir?” said Evan.
+
+“Sir to you!” Mr. Andrew briskly replied. “Don’t they teach you to give
+your fist in Portugal, eh? I’ll ‘sir’ you. Wait till I’m Sir Andrew,
+and then ‘sir’ away. You do speak English still, Van, eh? Quite jolly,
+my boy?”
+
+Mr. Andrew rubbed his hands to express that state in himself. Suddenly
+he stopped, blinked queerly at Evan, grew pensive, and said, “Bless my
+soul! I forgot.”
+
+The door opened, Mr. Andrew took Evan’s arm, murmured a “hush!” and
+trod gently along the passage to his library.
+
+“We’re safe here,” he said. “There—there’s something the matter
+up-stairs. The women are upset about something. Harriet—” Mr. Andrew
+hesitated, and branched off: “You’ve heard we’ve got a new baby?”
+
+Evan congratulated him; but another inquiry was in Mr. Andrew’s aspect,
+and Evan’s calm, sad manner answered it.
+
+“Yes,”—Mr. Andrew shook his head dolefully—“a splendid little chap! a
+rare little chap! a we can’t help these things, Van! They will happen.
+Sit down, my boy.”
+
+Mr. Andrew again interrogated Evan with his eyes.
+
+“My father is dead,” said Evan.
+
+“Yes!” Mr. Andrew nodded, and glanced quickly at the ceiling, as if to
+make sure that none listened overhead. “My parliamentary duties will
+soon be over for the season,” he added, aloud; pursuing, in an
+under-breath:
+
+“Going down to-night, Van?”
+
+“He is to be buried to-morrow,” said Evan.
+
+“Then, of course, you go. Yes: quite right. Love your father and
+mother! always love your father and mother! Old Tom and I never knew
+ours. Tom’s quite well-same as ever. I’ll,” he rang the bell, “have my
+chop in here with you. You must try and eat a bit, Van. Here we are,
+and there we go. Old Tom’s wandering for one of his weeks. You’ll see
+him some day. He ain’t like me. No dinner to-day, I suppose, Charles?”
+
+This was addressed to the footman. He announced:
+
+“Dinner to-day at half-past six, as usual, sir,” bowed, and retired.
+
+Mr. Andrew pored on the floor, and rubbed his hair back on his head.
+“An odd world!” was his remark.
+
+Evan lifted up his face to sigh: “I’m almost sick of it!”
+
+“Damn appearances!” cried Mr. Andrew, jumping on his legs.
+
+The action cooled him.
+
+“I’m sorry I swore,” he said. “Bad habit! The Major’s here—you know
+that?” and he assumed the Major’s voice, and strutted in imitation of
+the stalwart marine. “Major—a—Strike! of the Royal Marines! returned
+from China! covered with glory!—a hero, Van! We can’t expect him to be
+much of a mourner. And we shan’t have him to dine with us to-day—that’s
+something.” He sank his voice: “I hope the widow’ll bear it.”
+
+“I hope to God my mother is well!” Evan groaned.
+
+“That’ll do,” said Mr. Andrew. “Don’t say any more.”
+
+As he spoke, he clapped Evan kindly on the back.
+
+A message was brought from the ladies, requiring Evan to wait on them.
+He returned after some minutes.
+
+“How do you think Harriet’s looking?” asked Mr. Andrew. And, not
+waiting for an answer, whispered,
+
+“Are they going down to the funeral, my boy?”
+
+Evan’s brow was dark, as he replied: “They are not decided.”
+
+“Won’t Harriet go?”
+
+“She is not going—she thinks not.”
+
+“And the Countess—Louisa’s upstairs, eh?—will she go?”
+
+“She cannot leave the Count—she thinks not.”
+
+“Won’t Caroline go? Caroline can go. She—he—I mean—Caroline can go?”
+
+“The Major objects. She wishes to.”
+
+Mr. Andrew struck out his arm, and uttered, “the Major!”—a compromise
+for a loud anathema. But the compromise was vain, for he sinned again
+in an explosion against appearances.
+
+“I’m a brewer, Van. Do you think I’m ashamed of it? Not while I brew
+good beer, my boy!—not while I brew good beer! They don’t think worse
+of me in the House for it. It isn’t ungentlemanly to brew good beer,
+Van. But what’s the use of talking?”
+
+Mr. Andrew sat down, and murmured, “Poor girl! poor girl!”
+
+The allusion was to his wife; for presently he said: “I can’t see why
+Harriet can’t go. What’s to prevent her?”
+
+Evan gazed at him steadily. Death’s levelling influence was in Evan’s
+mind. He was ready to say why, and fully.
+
+Mr. Andrew arrested him with a sharp “Never mind! Harriet does as she
+likes. I’m accustomed to—hem! what she does is best, after all. She
+doesn’t interfere with my business, nor I with hers. Man and wife.”
+
+Pausing a moment or so, Mr. Andrew intimated that they had better be
+dressing for dinner. With his hand on the door, which he kept closed,
+he said, in a businesslike way, “You know, Van, as for me, I should be
+very willing—only too happy—to go down and pay all the respect I
+could.” He became confused, and shot his head from side to side,
+looking anywhere but at Evan. “Happy now and to-morrow, to do anything
+in my power, if Harriet—follow the funeral—one of the family—anything I
+could do: but—a—we’d better be dressing for dinner.” And out the
+enigmatic little man went.
+
+Evan partly divined him then. But at dinner his behaviour was
+perplexing. He was too cheerful. He pledged the Count. He would have
+the Portuguese for this and that, and make Anglican efforts to repeat
+it, and laugh at his failures. He would not see that there was a father
+dead. At a table of actors, Mr. Andrew overdid his part, and was the
+worst. His wife could not help thinking him a heartless little man.
+
+The poor show had its term. The ladies fled to the boudoir sacred to
+grief. Evan was whispered that he was to join them when he might,
+without seeming mysterious to the Count. Before he reached them, they
+had talked tearfully over the clothes he should wear at Lymport,
+agreeing that his present foreign apparel, being black, would be
+suitable, and would serve almost as disguise, to the inhabitants at
+large; and as Evan had no English wear, and there was no time to
+procure any for him, that was well. They arranged exactly how long he
+should stay at Lymport, whom he should visit, the manner he should
+adopt toward the different inhabitants. By all means he was to avoid
+the approach of the gentry. For hours Evan, in a trance, half
+stupefied, had to listen to the Countess’s directions how he was to
+comport himself in Lymport.
+
+“Show that you have descended among them, dear Van, but are not of
+them. Our beautiful noble English poet expresses it so. You have come
+to pay the last mortal duties, which they will respect, if they are not
+brutes, and attempt no familiarities. Allow none: gently, but firmly.
+Imitate Silva. You remember, at Dona Risbonda’s ball? When he met the
+Comte de Dartigues, and knew he was to be in disgrace with his Court on
+the morrow? Oh! the exquisite shade of difference in Silva’s behaviour
+towards the Comte. So finely, delicately perceptible to the Comte, and
+not a soul saw it but that wretched Frenchman! He came to me: ‘Madame,’
+he said, ‘is a question permitted?’ I replied, ‘As many as you please,
+M. le Comte, but no answers promised.’ He said: ‘May I ask if the
+Courier has yet come in?’—‘Nay, M. le Comte,’ I replied, ‘this is
+diplomacy. Inquire of me, or better, give me an opinion on the new
+glacé silk from Paris.’—‘Madame,’ said he, bowing, ‘I hope Paris may
+send me aught so good, or that I shall grace half so well.’ I smiled,
+‘You shall not be single in your hopes, M. le Comte. The gift would be
+base that you did not embellish.’ He lifted his hands, French-fashion:
+‘Madame, it is that I have received the gift.’—‘Indeed! M. le
+Comte.’—‘Even now from the Count de Saldar, your husband.’ I looked
+most innocently, ‘From my husband, M. le Comte?’—‘From him, Madame. A
+portrait. An Ambassador without his coat! The portrait was a finished
+performance.’ I said: ‘And may one beg the permission to inspect
+it?’—‘Mais,’ said he, laughing: ‘were it you alone, it would be a
+privilege to me.’ I had to check him. ‘Believe me, M. le Comte, that
+when I look upon it, my praise of the artist will be extinguished by my
+pity for the subject.’ He should have stopped there; but you cannot
+have the last word with a Frenchman—not even a woman. Fortunately the
+Queen just then made her entry into the saloon, and his mot on the
+charity of our sex was lost. We bowed mutually, and were separated.”
+(The Countess employed her handkerchief.) “Yes, dear Van! that is how
+you should behave. Imply things. With dearest Mama, of course, you are
+the dutiful son. Alas! you must stand for son and daughters. Mama has
+so much sense! She will understand how sadly we are placed. But in a
+week I will come to her for a day, and bring you back.”
+
+So much his sister Louisa. His sister Harriet offered him her house for
+a home in London, thence to project his new career. His sister Caroline
+sought a word with him in private, but only to weep bitterly in his
+arms, and utter a faint moan of regret at marriages in general. He
+loved this beautiful creature the best of his three sisters (partly, it
+may be, because he despised her superior officer), and tried with a few
+smothered words to induce her to accompany him: but she only shook her
+fair locks and moaned afresh. Mr. Andrew, in the farewell squeeze of
+the hand at the street-door, asked him if he wanted anything. He
+negatived the requirement of anything whatever, with an air of careless
+decision, though he was aware that his purse barely contained more than
+would take him the distance, but the instincts of this amateur
+gentleman were very fine and sensitive on questions of money. His
+family had never known him beg for a shilling, or admit his necessity
+for a penny: nor could he be made to accept money unless it was thrust
+into his pocket. Somehow his sisters had forgotten this peculiarity of
+his. Harriet only remembered it when too late.
+
+“But I dare say Andrew has supplied him,” she said.
+
+Andrew being interrogated, informed her what had passed between them.
+
+“And you think a Harrington would confess he wanted money!” was her
+scornful exclamation. “Evan would walk—he would die rather. It was
+treating him like a mendicant.”
+
+Andrew had to shrink in his brewer’s skin.
+
+By some fatality all who were doomed to sit and listen to the Countess
+de Saldar, were sure to be behindhand in an appointment.
+
+When the young man arrived at the coach-office, he was politely
+informed that the vehicle, in which a seat had been secured for him,
+was in close alliance with time and tide, and being under the same
+rigid laws, could not possibly have waited for him, albeit it had
+stretched a point to the extent of a pair of minutes, at the urgent
+solicitation of a passenger.
+
+“A gentleman who speaks so, sir,” said a volunteer mimic of the office,
+crowing and questioning from his throat in Goren’s manner. “Yok! yok!
+That was how he spoke, sir.”
+
+Evan reddened, for it brought the scene on board the Jocasta vividly to
+his mind. The heavier business obliterated it. He took counsel with the
+clerks of the office, and eventually the volunteer mimic conducted him
+to certain livery stables, where Evan, like one accustomed to command,
+ordered a chariot to pursue the coach, received a touch of the hat for
+a lordly fee, and was soon rolling out of London.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+MY GENTLEMAN ON THE ROAD
+
+
+The postillion had every reason to believe that he carried a real
+gentleman behind him; in other words, a purse long and liberal. He
+judged by all the points he knew of: a firm voice, a brief commanding
+style, an apparent indifference to expense, and the inexplicable minor
+characteristics, such as polished boots, and a striking wristband, and
+so forth, which will show a creature accustomed to step over the heads
+of men. He had, therefore, no particular anxiety to part company, and
+jogged easily on the white highway, beneath a moon that walked high and
+small over marble clouds.
+
+Evan reclined in the chariot, revolving his sensations. In another mood
+he would have called, them thoughts, perhaps, and marvelled at their
+immensity. The theme was Love and Death. One might have supposed, from
+his occasional mutterings at the pace regulated by the postillion, that
+he was burning with anxiety to catch the flying coach. He had forgotten
+it: forgotten that he was giving chase to anything. A pair of wondering
+feminine eyes pursued him, and made him fret for the miles to throw a
+thicker veil between him and them. The serious level brows of Rose
+haunted the poor youth; and reflecting whither he was tending, and to
+what sight, he had shadowy touches of the holiness there is in death,
+from which came a conflict between the imaged phantoms of his father
+and of Rose, and he sided against his love with some bitterness. His
+sisters, weeping for their father and holding aloof from his ashes,
+Evan swept from his mind. He called up the man his father was: the
+kindliness, the readiness, the gallant gaiety of the great Mel. Youths
+are fascinated by the barbarian virtues; and to Evan, under present
+influences, his father was a pattern of manhood. He asked himself: Was
+it infamous to earn one’s bread? and answered it very strongly in his
+father’s favour. The great Mel’s creditors were not by to show him
+another feature of the case.
+
+Hitherto, in passive obedience to the indoctrination of the Countess,
+Evan had looked on tailors as the proscribed race of modern society. He
+had pitied his father as a man superior to his fate; but despite the
+fitfully honest promptings with Rose (tempting to him because of the
+wondrous chivalry they argued, and at bottom false probably as the
+hypocrisy they affected to combat), he had been by no means sorry that
+the world saw not the spot on himself. Other sensations beset him now.
+Since such a man was banned by the world, which was to be despised?
+
+The clear result of Evan’s solitary musing was to cast a sort of halo
+over Tailordom. Death stood over the pale dead man, his father, and
+dared the world to sneer at him. By a singular caprice of fancy, Evan
+had no sooner grasped this image, than it was suggested that he might
+as well inspect his purse, and see how much money he was master of.
+
+Are you impatient with this young man? He has little character for the
+moment. Most youths are like Pope’s women; they have no character at
+all. And indeed a character that does not wait for circumstances to
+shape it, is of small worth in the race that must be run. To be set too
+early, is to take the work out of the hands of the Sculptor who
+fashions men. Happily a youth is always at school, and if he was shut
+up and without mark two or three hours ago, he will have something to
+show you now: as I have seen blooming seaflowers and other graduated
+organisms, when left undisturbed to their own action. Where the Fates
+have designed that he shall present his figure in a story, this is sure
+to happen.
+
+To the postillion Evan was indebted for one of his first lessons.
+
+About an hour after midnight pastoral stillness and the moon begat in
+the postillion desire for a pipe. Daylight prohibits the dream of it to
+mounted postillions. At night the question is more human, and allows
+appeal. The moon smiles assentingly, and smokers know that she really
+lends herself to the enjoyment of tobacco.
+
+The postillion could remember gentlemen who did not object: who had
+even given him cigars. Turning round to see if haply the present inmate
+of the chariot might be smoking, he observed a head extended from the
+window.
+
+“How far are we?” was inquired.
+
+The postillion numbered the milestones passed.
+
+“Do you see anything of the coach?”
+
+“Can’t say as I do, sir.”
+
+He was commanded to stop. Evan jumped out.
+
+“I don’t think I’ll take you any farther,” he said.
+
+The postillion laughed to scorn the notion of his caring how far he
+went. With a pipe in his mouth, he insinuatingly remarked, he could jog
+on all night, and throw sleep to the dogs. Fresh horses at Hillford;
+fresh at Fallowfield: and the gentleman himself would reach Lymport
+fresh in the morning.
+
+“No, no; I won’t take you any farther,” Evan repeated.
+
+“But what do it matter, sir?” urged the postillion.
+
+“I’d rather go on as I am. I—a—made no arrangement to take you the
+whole way.”
+
+“Oh!” cried the postillion, “don’t you go troublin’ yourself about
+that, sir. Master knows it’s touch-and-go about catchin’ the coach. I’m
+all right.”
+
+So infatuated was the fellow in the belief that he was dealing with a
+perfect gentleman—an easy pocket!
+
+Now you would not suppose that one who presumes he has sufficient,
+would find a difficulty in asking how much he has to pay. With an
+effort, indifferently masked, Evan blurted:
+
+“By the way, tell me—how much—what is the charge for the distance we’ve
+come?”
+
+There are gentlemen-screws: there are conscientious gentlemen. They
+calculate, and remonstrating or not, they pay. The postillion would
+rather have had to do with the gentleman royal, who is above base
+computation; but he knew the humanity in the class he served, and with
+his conception of Evan only partially dimmed, he remarked:
+
+“Oh-h-h! that won’t hurt you, sir. Jump along in,—settle that
+by-and-by.”
+
+But when my gentleman stood fast, and renewed the demand to know the
+exact charge for the distance already traversed, the postillion
+dismounted, glanced him over, and speculated with his fingers tipping
+up his hat. Meantime Evan drew out his purse, a long one, certainly,
+but limp. Out of this drowned-looking wretch the last spark of life was
+taken by the sum the postillion ventured to name; and if paying your
+utmost farthing without examination of the charge, and cheerfully
+stepping out to walk fifty miles, penniless, constituted a postillion’s
+gentleman, Evan would have passed the test. The sight of poverty,
+however, provokes familiar feelings in poor men, if you have not had
+occasion to show them you possess particular qualities. The
+postillion’s eye was more on the purse than on the sum it surrendered.
+
+“There,” said Evan, “I shall walk. Good night.” And he flung his cloak
+to step forward.
+
+“Stop a bit, sir!” arrested him.
+
+The postillion rallied up sideways, with an assumption of genial
+respect. “I didn’t calc’late myself in that there amount.”
+
+Were these words, think you, of a character to strike a young man hard
+on the breast, send the blood to his head, and set up in his heart a
+derisive chorus? My gentleman could pay his money, and keep his footing
+gallantly; but to be asked for a penny beyond what he possessed; to be
+seen beggared, and to be claimed a debtor-aleck! Pride was the one
+developed faculty of Evan’s nature. The Fates who mould us, always work
+from the main-spring. I will not say that the postillion stripped off
+the mask for him, at that instant completely; but he gave him the first
+true glimpse of his condition. From the vague sense of being an
+impostor, Evan awoke to the clear fact that he was likewise a fool.
+
+It was impossible for him to deny the man’s claim, and he would not
+have done it, if he could. Acceding tacitly, he squeezed the ends of
+his purse in his pocket, and with a “Let me see,” tried his waistcoat.
+Not too impetuously; for he was careful of betraying the horrid
+emptiness till he was certain that the powers who wait on gentlemen had
+utterly forsaken him. They had not. He discovered a small coin, under
+ordinary circumstances not contemptible; but he did not stay to
+reflect, and was guilty of the error of offering it to the postillion.
+
+The latter peered at it in the centre of his palm; gazed queerly in the
+gentleman’s face, and then lifting the spit of silver for the disdain
+of his mistress, the moon, he drew a long breath of regret at the
+original mistake he had committed, and said:
+
+“That’s what you’re goin’ to give me for my night’s work?”
+
+The powers who wait on gentlemen had only helped the pretending youth
+to try him. A rejection of the demand would have been infinitely wiser
+and better than this paltry compromise. The postillion would have
+fought it: he would not have despised his fare.
+
+How much it cost the poor pretender to reply, “It’s the last farthing I
+have, my man,” the postillion could not know.
+
+“A scabby sixpence?” The postillion continued his question.
+
+“You heard what I said,” Evan remarked.
+
+The postillion drew another deep breath, and holding out the coin at
+arm’s length:
+
+“Well, sir!” he observed, as one whom mental conflict has brought to
+the philosophy of the case, “now, was we to change places, I couldn’t
+a’ done it! I couldn’t a’ done it!” he reiterated, pausing
+emphatically.
+
+“Take it, sir!” he magnanimously resumed; “take it! You rides when you
+can, and you walks when you must. Lord forbid I should rob such a
+gentleman as you!”
+
+One who feels a death, is for the hour lifted above the satire of
+postillions. A good genius prompted Evan to avoid the silly squabble
+that might have ensued and made him ridiculous. He took the money,
+quietly saying, “Thank you.”
+
+Not to lose his vantage, the postillion, though a little staggered by
+the move, rejoined: “Don’t mention it.”
+
+Evan then said: “Good night, my man. I won’t wish, for your sake, that
+we changed places. You would have to walk fifty miles to be in time for
+your father’s funeral. Good night.”
+
+“You are it to look at!” was the postillion’s comment, seeing my
+gentleman depart with great strides. He did not speak offensively;
+rather, it seemed, to appease his conscience for the original mistake
+he had committed, for subsequently came, “My oath on it, I don’t get
+took in again by a squash hat in a hurry!”
+
+Unaware of the ban he had, by a sixpenny stamp, put upon an unoffending
+class, Evan went ahead, hearing the wheels of the chariot still
+dragging the road in his rear. The postillion was in a dissatisfied
+state of mind. He had asked and received more than his due. But in the
+matter of his sweet self, he had been choused, as he termed it. And my
+gentleman had baffled him, he could not quite tell how; but he had been
+got the better of; his sarcasms had not stuck, and returned to rankle
+in the bosom of their author. As a Jew, therefore, may eye an erewhile
+bondsman who has paid the bill, but stands out against excess of
+interest on legal grounds, the postillion regarded Evan, of whom he was
+now abreast, eager for a controversy.
+
+“Fine night,” said the postillion, to begin, and was answered by a
+short assent. “Lateish for a poor man to be out—don’t you think sir,
+eh?”
+
+“I ought to think so,” said Evan, mastering the shrewd unpleasantness
+he felt in the colloquy forced on him.
+
+“Oh, you! you’re a gentleman!” the postillion ejaculated.
+
+“You see I have no money.”
+
+“Feel it, too, sir.”
+
+“I am sorry you should be the victim.”
+
+“Victim!” the postillion seized on an objectionable word. “I ain’t no
+victim, unless you was up to a joke with me, sir, just now. Was that
+the game?”
+
+Evan informed him that he never played jokes with money, or on men.
+
+“Cause it looks like it, sir, to go to offer a poor chap sixpence.” The
+postillion laughed hollow from the end of his lungs. “Sixpence for a
+night’s work! It is a joke, if you don’t mean it for one. Why, do you
+know, sir, I could go—there, I don’t care where it is!—I could go
+before any magistrate livin’, and he’d make ye pay. It’s a charge, as
+custom is, and he’d make ye pay. Or p’rhaps you’re a goin’ on my
+generosity, and’ll say, he gev back that sixpence! Well! I shouldn’t a’
+thought a gentleman’d make that his defence before a magistrate. But
+there, my man! if it makes ye happy, keep it. But you take my advice,
+sir. When you hires a chariot, see you’ve got the shiners. And don’t
+you go never again offerin’ a sixpence to a poor man for a night’s
+work. They don’t like it. It hurts their feelin’s. Don’t you forget
+that, sir. Lay that up in your mind.”
+
+Now the postillion having thus relieved himself, jeeringly asked
+permission to smoke a pipe. To which Evan said, “Pray, smoke, if it
+pleases you.” And the postillion, hardly mollified, added, “The baccy’s
+paid for,” and smoked.
+
+As will sometimes happen, the feelings of the man who had spoken out
+and behaved doubtfully, grew gentle and Christian, whereas those of the
+man whose bearing under the trial had been irreproachable were much the
+reverse. The postillion smoked—he was a lord on his horse; he beheld my
+gentleman trudging in the dust. Awhile he enjoyed the contrast,
+dividing his attention between the footfarer and moon. To have had the
+last word is always a great thing; and to have given my gentleman a
+lecture, because he shunned a dispute, also counts. And then there was
+the poor young fellow trudging to his father’s funeral! The postillion
+chose to remember that now. In reality, he allowed, he had not very
+much to complain of, and my gentleman’s courteous avoidance of
+provocation (the apparent fact that he, the postillion, had humbled him
+and got the better of him, equally, it may be), acted on his fine
+English spirit. I should not like to leave out the tobacco in this good
+change that was wrought in him. However, he presently astonished Evan
+by pulling up his horses, and crying that he was on his way to Hillford
+to bait, and saw no reason why he should not take a lift that part of
+the road, at all events. Evan thanked him briefly, but declined, and
+paced on with his head bent.
+
+“It won’t cost you nothing—not a sixpence!” the postillion sang out,
+pursuing him. “Come, sir! be a man! I ain’t a hintin’ at anything—jump
+in.”
+
+Evan again declined, and looked out for a side path to escape the
+fellow, whose bounty was worse to him than his abuse, and whose mention
+of the sixpence was unlucky.
+
+“Dash it!” cried the postillion, “you’re going down to a funeral—I
+think you said your father’s, sir—you may as well try and get there
+respectable—as far as I go. It’s one to me whether you’re in or out;
+the horses won’t feel it, and I do wish you’d take a lift and welcome.
+It’s because you’re too much of a gentleman to be beholden to a poor
+man, I suppose!”
+
+Evan’s young pride may have had a little of that base mixture in it,
+and certainly he would have preferred that the invitation had not been
+made to him; but he was capable of appreciating what the rejection of a
+piece of friendliness involved, and as he saw that the man was sincere,
+he did violence to himself, and said: “Very well; then I’ll jump in.”
+
+The postillion was off his horse in a twinkling, and trotted his bandy
+legs to undo the door, as to a gentleman who paid. This act of service
+Evan valued.
+
+“Suppose I were to ask you to take the sixpence now?” he said, turning
+round, with one foot on the step.
+
+“Well, sir,” the postillion sent his hat aside to answer. “I don’t want
+it—I’d rather not have it; but there! I’ll take it—dash the sixpence!
+and we’ll cry quits.”
+
+Evan, surprised and pleased with him, dropped the bit of money in his
+hand, saying: “It will fill a pipe for you. While you’re smoking it,
+think of me as in your debt. You’re the only man I ever owed a penny
+to.”
+
+The postillion put it in a side pocket apart, and observed: “A sixpence
+kindly meant is worth any crown-piece that’s grudged—that it is! In you
+jump, sir. It’s a jolly night!”
+
+Thus may one, not a conscious sage, play the right tune on this human
+nature of ours: by forbearance, put it in the wrong; and then, by not
+refusing the burden of an obligation, confer something better. The
+instrument is simpler than we are taught to fancy. But it was doubtless
+owing to a strong emotion in his soul, as well as to the stuff he was
+made of, that the youth behaved as he did. We are now and then above
+our own actions; seldom on a level with them. Evan, I dare say, was
+long in learning to draw any gratification from the fact that he had
+achieved without money the unparalleled conquest of a man. Perhaps he
+never knew what immediate influence on his fortune this episode
+effected.
+
+At Hillford they went their different ways. The postillion wished him
+good speed, and Evan shook his hand. He did so rather abruptly, for the
+postillion was fumbling at his pocket, and evidently rounding about a
+proposal in his mind.
+
+My gentleman has now the road to himself. Money is the clothing of a
+gentleman: he may wear it well or ill. Some, you will mark, carry great
+quantities of it gracefully: some, with a stinted supply, present a
+decent appearance: very few, I imagine, will bear inspection, who are
+absolutely stripped of it. All, save the shameless, are toiling to
+escape that trial. My gentleman, treading the white highway across the
+solitary heaths, that swell far and wide to the moon, is, by the
+postillion, who has seen him, pronounced no sham. Nor do I think the
+opinion of any man worthless, who has had the postillion’s authority
+for speaking. But it is, I am told, a finer test to embellish much
+gentleman-apparel, than to walk with dignity totally unadorned. This
+simply tries the soundness of our faculties: that tempts them in
+erratic directions. It is the difference between active and passive
+excellence. As there is hardly any situation, however, so interesting
+to reflect upon as that of a man without a penny in his pocket, and a
+gizzard full of pride, we will leave Mr. Evan Harrington to what fresh
+adventures may befall him, walking toward the funeral plumes of the
+firs, under the soft midsummer flush, westward, where his father lies.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+MOTHER AND SON
+
+
+Rare as epic song is the man who is thorough in what he does. And
+happily so; for in life he subjugates us, and he makes us bondsmen to
+his ashes. It was in the order of things that the great Mel should be
+borne to his final resting-place by a troop of creditors. You have seen
+(since the occasion demands a pompous simile) clouds that all day cling
+about the sun, and, in seeking to obscure him, are compelled to blaze
+in his livery at fall of night they break from him illumined, hang
+mournfully above him, and wear his natural glories long after he is
+gone. Thus, then, these worthy fellows, faithful to him to the dust,
+fulfilled Mel’s triumphant passage amongst them, and closed his career.
+
+To regale them when they returned, Mrs. Mel, whose mind was not intent
+on greatness, was occupied in spreading meat and wine. Mrs. Fiske
+assisted her, as well as she could, seeing that one hand was entirely
+engaged by her handkerchief. She had already stumbled, and dropped a
+glass, which had brought on her sharp condemnation from her aunt, who
+bade her sit down, or go upstairs to have her cry out, and then return
+to be serviceable.
+
+“Oh! I can’t help it!” sobbed Mrs. Fiske. “That he should be carried
+away, and none of his children to see him the last time! I can
+understand Louisa—and Harriet, too, perhaps? But why could not
+Caroline? And that they should be too fine ladies to let their brother
+come and bury his father. Oh! it does seem——”
+
+Mrs. Fiske fell into a chair, and surrendered to grief.
+
+“Where is the cold tongue?” said Mrs. Mel to Sally, the maid, in a
+brief under-voice.
+
+“Please mum, Jacko——!”
+
+“He must be whipped. You are a careless slut.”
+
+“Please, I can’t think of everybody and everything, and poor master——”
+
+Sally plumped on a seat, and took sanctuary under her apron. Mrs. Mel
+glanced at the pair, continuing her labour.
+
+“Oh, aunt, aunt!” cried Mrs. Fiske, “why didn’t you put it off for
+another day, to give Evan a chance?”
+
+“Master’d have kept another two days, he would!” whimpered Sally.
+
+“Oh, aunt! to think!” cried Mrs. Fiske.
+
+“And his coffin not bearin’ of his spurs!” whimpered Sally.
+
+Mrs. Mel interrupted them by commanding Sally to go to the
+drawing-room, and ask a lady there, of the name of Mrs. Wishaw, whether
+she would like to have some lunch sent up to her. Mrs. Fiske was
+requested to put towels in Evan’s bedroom.
+
+“Yes, aunt, if you’re not infatuated!” said Mrs. Fiske, as she prepared
+to obey; while Sally, seeing that her public exhibition of sorrow and
+sympathy could be indulged but an instant longer, unwound herself for a
+violent paroxysm, blurting between stops:
+
+“If he’d ony’ve gone to his last bed comfortable!... If he’d ony’ve
+been that decent as not for to go to his last bed with his clothes on!
+... If he’d ony’ve had a comfortable sheet!... It makes a woman feel
+cold to think of him full dressed there, as if he was goin’ to be a
+soldier on the Day o’ Judgement!”
+
+To let people speak was a maxim of Mrs. Mel’s, and a wise one for any
+form of society when emotions are very much on the surface. She
+continued her arrangements quietly, and, having counted the number of
+plates and glasses, and told off the guests on her fingers, she, sat
+down to await them.
+
+The first one who entered the room was her son.
+
+“You have come,” said Mrs. Mel, flushing slightly, but otherwise
+outwardly calm.
+
+“You didn’t suppose I should stay away from you, mother?”
+
+Evan kissed her cheek.
+
+“I knew you would not.”
+
+Mrs. Mel examined him with those eyes of hers that compassed objects in
+a single glance. She drew her finger on each side of her upper lip, and
+half smiled, saying:
+
+“That won’t do here.”
+
+“What?” asked Evan, and proceeded immediately to make inquiries about
+her health, which she satisfied with a nod.
+
+“You saw him lowered, Van?”
+
+“Yes, mother.”
+
+“Then go and wash yourself, for you are dirty, and then come and take
+your place at the head of the table.”
+
+“Must I sit here, mother?”
+
+“Without a doubt—you must. You know your room. Quick!”
+
+In this manner their first interview passed.
+
+Mrs. Fiske rushed in to exclaim:
+
+“So, you were right, aunt—he has come. I met him on the stairs. Oh! how
+like dear uncle Mel he looks, in the militia, with that moustache. I
+just remember him as a child; and, oh, what a gentleman he is!”
+
+At the end of the sentence Mrs. Mel’s face suddenly darkened: she said,
+in a deep voice:
+
+“Don’t dare to talk that nonsense before him, Ann.”
+
+Mrs. Fiske looked astonished.
+
+“What have I done, aunt?”
+
+“He shan’t be ruined by a parcel of fools,” said Mrs. Mel. “There, go!
+Women have no place here.”
+
+“How the wretches can force themselves to touch a morsel, after this
+morning!” Mrs. Fiske exclaimed, glancing at the table.
+
+“Men must eat,” said Mrs. Mel.
+
+The mourners were heard gathering outside the door. Mrs. Fiske escaped
+into the kitchen. Mrs. Mel admitted them into the parlour, bowing much
+above the level of many of the heads that passed her.
+
+Assembled were Messrs. Barnes, Kilne, and Grossby, whom we know; Mr.
+Doubleday, the ironmonger; Mr. Joyce, the grocer; Mr. Perkins, commonly
+called Lawyer Perkins; Mr. Welbeck, the pier-master of Lymport;
+Bartholomew Fiske; Mr. Coxwell, a Fallowfield maltster, brewer, and
+farmer; creditors of various dimensions, all of them. Mr. Goren coming
+last, behind his spectacles.
+
+“My son will be with you directly, to preside,” said Mrs. Mel. “Accept
+my thanks for the respect you have shown my husband. I wish you good
+morning.”
+
+“Morning, ma’am,” answered several voices, and Mrs. Mel retired.
+
+The mourners then set to work to relieve their hats of the appendages
+of crape. An undertaker’s man took possession of the long black cloaks.
+The gloves were generally pocketed.
+
+“That’s my second black pair this year,” said Joyce.
+
+“They’ll last a time to come. I don’t need to buy gloves while
+neighbours pop off.”
+
+“Undertakers’ gloves seem to me as if they’re made for mutton fists,”
+remarked Welbeck; upon which Kilne nudged Barnes, the butcher, with a
+sharp “Aha!” and Barnes observed:
+
+“Oh! I never wear ’em—they does for my boys on Sundays. I smoke a pipe
+at home.”
+
+The Fallowfield farmer held his length of crape aloft and inquired:
+“What shall do with this?”
+
+“Oh, you keep it,” said one or two.
+
+Coxwell rubbed his chin. “Don’t like to rob the widder.”
+
+“What’s left goes to the undertaker?” asked Grossby.
+
+“To be sure,” said Barnes; and Kilne added: “It’s a job”: Lawyer
+Perkins ejaculating confidently, “Perquisites of office, gentlemen;
+perquisites of office!” which settled the dispute and appeased every
+conscience.
+
+A survey of the table ensued. The mourners felt hunger, or else thirst;
+but had not, it appeared, amalgamated the two appetites as yet. Thirst
+was the predominant declaration; and Grossby, after an examination of
+the decanters, unctuously deduced the fact, which he announced, that
+port and sherry were present.
+
+“Try the port,” said Kilne.
+
+“Good?” Barnes inquired.
+
+A very intelligent “I ought to know,” with a reserve of regret at the
+extension of his intimacy with the particular vintage under that roof,
+was winked by Kilne.
+
+Lawyer Perkins touched the arm of a mourner about to be experimental on
+Kilne’s port—
+
+“I think we had better wait till young Mr. Harrington takes the table,
+don’t you see?”
+
+“Yes,-ah!” croaked Goren. “The head of the family, as the saying goes!”
+
+“I suppose we shan’t go into business to-day?” Joyce carelessly
+observed.
+
+Lawyer Perkins answered:
+
+“No. You can’t expect it. Mr. Harrington has led me to anticipate that
+he will appoint a day. Don’t you see?”
+
+“Oh! I see,” returned Joyce. “I ain’t in such a hurry. What’s he
+doing?”
+
+Doubleday, whose propensities were waggish, suggested “shaving,” but
+half ashamed of it, since the joke missed, fell to as if he were
+soaping his face, and had some trouble to contract his jaw.
+
+The delay in Evan’s attendance on the guests of the house was caused by
+the fact that Mrs. Mel had lain in wait for him descending, to warn him
+that he must treat them with no supercilious civility, and to tell him
+partly the reason why. On hearing the potential relations in which they
+stood toward the estate of his father, Evan hastily and with the
+assurance of a son of fortune, said they should be paid.
+
+“That’s what they would like to hear,” said Mrs. Mel. “You may just
+mention it when they’re going to leave. Say you will fix a day to meet
+them.”
+
+“Every farthing!” pursued Evan, on whom the tidings were beginning to
+operate. “What! debts? my poor father!”
+
+“And a thumping sum, Van. You will open your eyes wider.”
+
+“But it shall be paid, mother,—it shall be paid. Debts? I hate them.
+I’d slave night and day to pay them.”
+
+Mrs. Mel spoke in a more positive tense: “And so will I, Van. Now, go.”
+
+It mattered little to her what sort of effect on his demeanour her
+revelation produced, so long as the resolve she sought to bring him to
+was nailed in his mind; and she was a woman to knock and knock again,
+till it was firmly fixed there. With a strong purpose, and no plans,
+there were few who could resist what, in her circle, she willed; not
+even a youth who would gaily have marched to the scaffold rather than
+stand behind a counter. A purpose wedded to plans may easily suffer
+shipwreck; but an unfettered purpose that moulds circumstances as they
+arise, masters us, and is terrible. Character melts to it, like metal
+in the steady furnace. The projector of plots is but a miserable
+gambler and votary of chances. Of a far higher quality is the will that
+can subdue itself to wait, and lay no petty traps for opportunity.
+Poets may fable of such a will, that it makes the very heavens conform
+to it; or, I may add, what is almost equal thereto, one who would be a
+gentleman, to consent to be a tailor. The only person who ever held in
+his course against Mrs. Mel, was Mel,—her husband; but, with him, she
+was under the physical fascination of her youth, and it never left her.
+In her heart she barely blamed him. What he did, she took among other
+inevitable matters.
+
+The door closed upon Evan, and waiting at the foot, of the stairs a
+minute to hear how he was received, Mrs. Mel went to the kitchen and
+called the name of Dandy, which brought out an ill-built, low-browed,
+small man, in a baggy suit of black, who hopped up to her with a surly
+salute. Dandy was a bird Mrs. Mel had herself brought down, and she had
+for him something of a sportsman’s regard for his victim. Dandy was the
+cleaner of boots and runner of errands in the household of Melchisedec,
+having originally entered it on a dark night by the cellar. Mrs. Mel,
+on that occasion, was sleeping in her dressing-gown, to be ready to
+give the gallant night-hawk, her husband, the service he might require
+on his return to the nest. Hearing a suspicious noise below, she rose,
+and deliberately loaded a pair of horse-pistols, weapons Mel had worn
+in his holsters in the heroic days gone; and with these she stepped
+downstairs straight to the cellar, carrying a lantern at her girdle.
+She could not only load, but present and fire. Dandy was foremost in
+stating that she called him forth steadily, three times, before the
+pistol was discharged. He admitted that he was frightened, and
+incapable of speech, at the apparition of the tall, terrific woman.
+After the third time of asking he had the ball lodged in his leg and
+fell. Mrs. Mel was in the habit of bearing heavier weights than Dandy.
+She made no ado about lugging him to a chamber, where, with her own
+hands (for this woman had some slight knowledge of surgery, and was
+great in herbs and drugs) she dressed his wound, and put him to bed;
+crying contempt (ever present in Dandy’s memory) at such a poor
+creature undertaking the work of housebreaker. Taught that he really
+was a poor creature for the work, Dandy, his nursing over, begged to be
+allowed to stop and wait on Mrs. Mel; and she who had, like many strong
+natures, a share of pity for the objects she despised, did not cast him
+out. A jerk in his gait, owing to the bit of lead Mrs. Mel had dropped
+into him, and a little, perhaps, to her self-satisfied essay in
+surgical science on his person, earned him the name he went by.
+
+When her neighbours remonstrated with her for housing a reprobate, Mrs.
+Mel would say: “Dandy is well-fed and well-physicked: there’s no harm
+in Dandy”; by which she may have meant that the food won his gratitude,
+and the physic reduced his humours. She had observed human nature. At
+any rate, Dandy was her creature; and the great Mel himself rallied her
+about her squire.
+
+“When were you drunk last?” was Mrs. Mel’s address to Dandy, as he
+stood waiting for orders.
+
+He replied to it in an altogether injured way:
+
+“There, now; you’ve been and called me away from my dinner to ask me
+that. Why, when I had the last chance, to be sure.”
+
+“And you were at dinner in your new black suit?”
+
+“Well,” growled Dandy, “I borrowed Sally’s apron. Seems I can’t please
+ye.”
+
+Mrs. Mel neither enjoined nor cared for outward forms of respect, where
+she was sure of complete subserviency. If Dandy went beyond the limits,
+she gave him an extra dose. Up to the limits he might talk as he
+pleased, in accordance with Mrs. Mel’s maxim, that it was a necessary
+relief to all talking creatures.
+
+“Now, take off your apron,” she said, “and wash your hands, dirty pig,
+and go and wait at table in there”; she pointed to the parlour-door:
+“Come straight to me when everybody has left.”
+
+“Well, there I am with the bottles again,” returned Dandy. “It’s your
+fault this time, mind! I’ll come as straight as I can.”
+
+Dandy turned away to perform her bidding, and Mrs. Mel ascended to the
+drawing-room to sit with Mrs. Wishaw, who was, as she told all who
+chose to hear, an old flame of Mel’s, and was besides, what Mrs. Mel
+thought more of, the wife of Mel’s principal creditor, a wholesale
+dealer in cloth, resident in London.
+
+The conviviality of the mourners did not disturb the house. Still, men
+who are not accustomed to see the colour of wine every day, will sit
+and enjoy it, even upon solemn occasions, and the longer they sit the
+more they forget the matter that has brought them together. Pleading
+their wives and shops, however, they released Evan from his miserable
+office late in the afternoon.
+
+His mother came down to him,—and saying, “I see how you did the
+journey—you walked it,” told him to follow her.
+
+“Yes, mother,” Evan yawned, “I walked part of the way. I met a fellow
+in a gig about ten miles out of Fallowfield, and he gave me a lift to
+Flatsham. I just reached Lymport in time, thank Heaven! I wouldn’t have
+missed that! By the way, I’ve satisfied these men.”
+
+“Oh!” said Mrs. Mel.
+
+“They wanted—one or two of them—what a penance it is to have to sit
+among those people an hour!—they wanted to ask me about the business,
+but I silenced them. I told them to meet me here this day week.”
+
+Mrs. Mel again said “Oh!” and, pushing into one of the upper rooms,
+“Here’s your bedroom, Van, just as you left it.”
+
+“Ah, so it is,” muttered Evan, eyeing a print. “The Douglas and the
+Percy: ‘he took the dead man by the hand.’ What an age it seems since I
+last saw that. There’s Sir Hugh Montgomery on horseback—he hasn’t
+moved. Don’t you remember my father calling it the Battle of
+Tit-for-Tat? Gallant Percy! I know he wished he had lived in those days
+of knights and battles.”
+
+“It does not much signify whom one has to make clothes for,” observed
+Mrs. Mel. Her son happily did not mark her.
+
+“I think we neither of us were made for the days of pence and pounds,”
+he continued. “Now, mother, sit down, and talk to me about him. Did he
+mention me? Did he give me his blessing? I hope he did not suffer. I’d
+have given anything to press his hand,” and looking wistfully at the
+Percy lifting the hand of Douglas dead, Evan’s eyes filled with big
+tears.
+
+“He suffered very little,” returned Mrs. Mel, “and his last words were
+about you.”
+
+“What were they?” Evan burst out.
+
+“I will tell you another time. Now undress, and go to bed. When I talk
+to you, Van, I want a cool head to listen. You do nothing but yawn
+yard-measures.”
+
+The mouth of the weary youth instinctively snapped short the abhorred
+emblem.
+
+“Here, I will help you, Van.”
+
+In spite of his remonstrances and petitions for talk, she took off his
+coat and waistcoat, contemptuously criticizing the cloth of foreign
+tailors and their absurd cut.
+
+“Have you heard from Louisa?” asked Evan.
+
+“Yes, yes—about your sisters by-and-by. Now, be good, and go to bed.”
+
+She still treated him like a boy, whom she was going to force to the
+resolution of a man.
+
+Dandy’s sleeping-room was on the same floor as Evan’s. Thither, when
+she had quitted her son, she directed her steps. She had heard Dandy
+tumble up-stairs the moment his duties were over, and knew what to
+expect when the bottles had been in his way; for drink made Dandy
+savage, and a terror to himself. It was her command to him that, when
+he happened to come across liquor, he should immediately seek his
+bedroom and bolt the door, and Dandy had got the habit of obeying her.
+On this occasion he was vindictive against her, seeing that she had
+delivered him over to his enemy with malice prepense. A good deal of
+knocking, and summoning of Dandy by name, was required before she was
+admitted, and the sight of her did not delight him, as he testified.
+
+“I’m drunk!” he bawled. “Will that do for ye?”
+
+Mrs. Mel stood with her two hands crossed above her apron-string,
+noting his sullen lurking eye with the calm of a tamer of beasts.
+
+“You go out of the room; I’m drunk!” Dandy repeated, and pitched
+forward on the bed-post, in the middle of an oath.
+
+She understood that it was pure kindness on Dandy’s part to bid her go
+and be out of his reach; and therefore, on his becoming so abusive as
+to be menacing, she, without a shade of anger, and in the most
+unruffled manner, administered to him the remedy she had reserved, in
+the shape of a smart box on the ear, which sent him flat to the floor.
+He rose, after two or three efforts, quite subdued.
+
+“Now, Dandy, sit on the edge of the bed.”
+
+Dandy sat on the extreme edge, and Mrs. Mel pursued:
+
+“Now, Dandy, tell me what your master said at the table.”
+
+“Talked at ’em like a lord, he did,” said Dandy, stupidly consoling the
+boxed ear.
+
+“What were his words?”
+
+Dandy’s peculiarity was, that he never remembered anything save when
+drunk, and Mrs. Mel’s dose had rather sobered him. By degrees,
+scratching at his head haltingly, he gave the context.
+
+“‘Gentlemen, I hear for the first time, you’ve claims against my poor
+father. Nobody shall ever say he died, and any man was the worse for
+it. I’ll meet you next week, and I’ll bind myself by law. Here’s Lawyer
+Perkins. No; Mr. Perkins. I’ll pay off every penny. Gentlemen, look
+upon me as your debtor, and not my father.’”
+
+Delivering this with tolerable steadiness, Dandy asked, “Will that do?”
+
+“That will do,” said Mrs. Mel. “I’ll send you up some tea presently.
+Lie down, Dandy.”
+
+The house was dark and silent when Evan, refreshed by his rest,
+descended to seek his mother. She was sitting alone in the parlour.
+With a tenderness which Mrs. Mel permitted rather than encouraged, Evan
+put his arm round her neck, and kissed her many times. One of the
+symptoms of heavy sorrow, a longing for the signs of love, made Evan
+fondle his mother, and bend over her yearningly. Mrs. Mel said once:
+“Dear Van; good boy!” and quietly sat through his caresses.
+
+“Sitting up for me, mother?” he whispered.
+
+“Yes, Van; we may as well have our talk out.”
+
+“Ah!” he took a chair close by her side, “tell me my father’s last
+words.”
+
+“He said he hoped you would never be a tailor.”
+
+Evan’s forehead wrinkled up. “There’s not much fear of that, then!”
+
+His mother turned her face on him, and examined him with a rigorous
+placidity; all her features seeming to bear down on him. Evan did not
+like the look.
+
+“You object to trade, Van?”
+
+“Yes, decidedly, mother—hate it; but that’s not what I want to talk to
+you about. Didn’t my father speak of me much?”
+
+“He desired that you should wear his militia sword, if you got a
+commission.”
+
+“I have rather given up hope of the Army,” said Evan.
+
+Mrs. Mel requested him to tell her what a colonel’s full pay amounted
+to; and again, the number of years it required, on a rough calculation,
+to attain that grade. In reply to his statement she observed: “A tailor
+might realize twice the sum in a quarter of the time.”
+
+“What if he does—double, or treble?” cried Evan, impetuously; and to
+avoid the theme, and cast off the bad impression it produced on him, he
+rubbed his hands, and said: “I want to talk to you about my prospects,
+mother.”
+
+“What are they?” Mrs. Mel inquired.
+
+The severity of her mien and sceptical coldness of her speech caused
+him to inspect them suddenly, as if she had lent him her eyes. He put
+them by, till the gold should recover its natural shine, saying: “By
+the way, mother, I’ve written the half of a History of Portugal.”
+
+“Have you?” said Mrs. Mel. “For Louisa?”
+
+“No, mother, of course not: to sell it. Albuquerque! what a splendid
+fellow he was!”
+
+Informing him that he knew she abominated foreign names, she said: “And
+your prospects are, writing Histories of Portugal?”
+
+“No, mother. I was going to tell you, I expect a Government
+appointment. Mr. Jocelyn likes my work—I think he likes me. You know, I
+was his private secretary for ten months.”
+
+“You write a good hand,” his mother interposed.
+
+“And I’m certain I was born for diplomacy.”
+
+“For an easy chair, and an ink-dish before you, and lacqueys behind.
+What’s to be your income, Van?”
+
+Evan carelessly remarked that he must wait and see.
+
+“A very proper thing to do,” said Mrs. Mel; for now that she had fixed
+him to some explanation of his prospects, she could condescend in her
+stiff way to banter.
+
+Slightly touched by it, Evan pursued, half laughing, as men do who wish
+to propitiate common sense on behalf of what seems tolerably absurd:
+“It’s not the immediate income, you know, mother: one thinks of one’s
+future. In the diplomatic service, as Louisa says, you come to be known
+to Ministers gradually, I mean. That is, they hear of you; and if you
+show you have some capacity—Louisa wants me to throw it up in time, and
+stand for Parliament. Andrew, she thinks, would be glad to help me to
+his seat. Once in Parliament, and known to Ministers, you—your career
+is open to you.”
+
+In justice to Mr. Evan Harrington, it must be said, he built up this
+extraordinary card-castle to dazzle his mother’s mind: he had lost his
+right grasp of her character for the moment, because of an undefined
+suspicion of something she intended, and which sent him himself to take
+refuge in those flimsy structures; while the very altitude he reached
+beguiled his imagination, and made him hope to impress hers.
+
+Mrs. Mel dealt it one fillip. “And in the meantime how are you to live,
+and pay the creditors?”
+
+Though Evan answered cheerfully, “Oh, they will wait, and I can live on
+anything,” he was nevertheless floundering on the ground amid the ruins
+of the superb edifice; and his mother, upright and rigid, continuing,
+“You can live on anything, and they will wait, and call your father a
+rogue,” he started, grievously bitten by one of the serpents of earth.
+
+“Good heaven, mother! what are you saying?”
+
+“That they will call your father a rogue, and will have a right to,”
+said the relentless woman.
+
+“Not while I live!” Evan exclaimed.
+
+“You may stop one mouth with your fist, but you won’t stop a dozen,
+Van.”
+
+Evan jumped up and walked the room.
+
+“What am I to do?” he cried. “I will pay everything. I will bind myself
+to pay every farthing. What more can I possibly do?”
+
+“Make the money,” said Mrs. Mel’s deep voice.
+
+Evan faced her: “My dear mother, you are very unjust and inconsiderate.
+I have been working and doing my best. I promise—what do the debts
+amount to?”
+
+“Something like £5000 in all, Van.”
+
+“Very well.” Youth is not alarmed by the sound of big sums. “Very
+well—I will pay it.”
+
+Evan looked as proud as if he had just clapped down the full amount on
+the table.
+
+“Out of the History of Portugal, half written, and the prospect of a
+Government appointment?”
+
+Mrs. Mel raised her eyelids to him.
+
+“In time—in time, mother!”
+
+“Mention your proposal to the creditors when you meet them this day
+week,” she said.
+
+Neither of them spoke for several minutes. Then Evan came close to her,
+saying:
+
+“What is it you want of me, mother?”
+
+“I want nothing, Van—I can support myself.”
+
+“But what would you have me do, mother?”
+
+“Be honest; do your duty, and don’t be a fool about it.”
+
+“I will try,” he rejoined. “You tell me to make the money. Where and
+how can I make it? I am perfectly willing to work.”
+
+“In this house,” said Mrs. Mel; and, as this was pretty clear speaking,
+she stood up to lend her figure to it.
+
+“Here?” faltered Evan. “What! be a ——”
+
+“Tailor!” The word did not sting her tongue.
+
+“I? Oh, that’s quite impossible!” said Evan. And visions of leprosy,
+and Rose shrinking her skirts from contact with him, shadowed out and
+away in his mind.
+
+“Understand your choice!” Mrs. Mel imperiously spoke. “What are brains
+given you for? To be played the fool with by idiots and women? You have
+£5000 to pay to save your father from being called a rogue. You can
+only make the money in one way, which is open to you. This business
+might produce a thousand pounds a-year and more. In seven or eight
+years you may clear your father’s name, and live better all the time
+than many of your bankrupt gentlemen. You have told the creditors you
+will pay them. Do you think they’re gaping fools, to be satisfied by a
+History of Portugal? If you refuse to take the business at once, they
+will sell me up, and quite right too. Understand your choice. There’s
+Mr. Goren has promised to have you in London a couple of months, and
+teach you what he can. He is a kind friend. Would any of your gentlemen
+acquaintance do the like for you? Understand your choice. You will be a
+beggar—the son of a rogue—or an honest man who has cleared his father’s
+name!”
+
+During this strenuously uttered allocution, Mrs. Mel, though her chest
+heaved but faintly against her crossed hands, showed by the dilatation
+of her eyes, and the light in them, that she felt her words. There is
+that in the aspect of a fine frame breathing hard facts, which, to a
+youth who has been tumbled headlong from his card-castles and airy
+fabrics, is masterful, and like the pressure of a Fate. Evan drooped
+his head.
+
+“Now,” said Mrs. Mel, “you shall have some supper.”
+
+Evan told her he could not eat.
+
+“I insist upon your eating,” said Mrs. Mel; “empty stomachs are foul
+counsellors.”
+
+“Mother! do you want to drive me mad?” cried Evan.
+
+She looked at him to see whether the string she held him by would bear
+the slight additional strain: decided not to press a small point.
+
+“Then go to bed and sleep on it,” she said—sure of him—and gave her
+cheek for his kiss, for she never performed the operation, but kept her
+mouth, as she remarked, for food and speech, and not for slobbering
+mummeries.
+
+Evan returned to his solitary room. He sat on the bed and tried to
+think, oppressed by horrible sensations of self-contempt, that caused
+whatever he touched to sicken him.
+
+There were the Douglas and the Percy on the wall. It was a happy and a
+glorious time, was it not, when men lent each other blows that killed
+outright; when to be brave and cherish noble feelings brought honour;
+when strength of arm and steadiness of heart won fortune; when the fair
+stars of earth—sweet women—wakened and warmed the love of squires of
+low degree. This legacy of the dead man’s hand! Evan would have paid it
+with his blood; but to be in bondage all his days to it; through it to
+lose all that was dear to him; to wear the length of a loathed
+existence!—we should pardon a young man’s wretchedness at the prospect,
+for it was in a time before our joyful era of universal equality. Yet
+he never cast a shade of blame upon his father.
+
+The hours moved on, and he found himself staring at his small candle,
+which struggled more and more faintly with the morning light, like his
+own flickering ambition against the facts of life.
+
+
+
+
+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 Fallowfield. 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 breakfast-table, 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 Belmaraña. 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, Garge 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—Garge 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 Garge till he’d slept it out. Then he’d say,
+‘marnin’!’ to ’m. Are ye ’wake now, Garge?”
+
+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 Garge 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 Garge
+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
+Garge 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
+Fallowfield 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 Fallowfield,
+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. Fallowfield 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, Fallowfield 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 Fallowfield) 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—Fallowfield 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
+Fallowfield, 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.
+
+Fallowfield’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 Fallowfield, 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 Fallowfield 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 Fallowfield 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. Fallowfield
+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 Fallowfield 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 Fallowfield. 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 Fallowfield, 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
+an 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 an 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 Fallowfield 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+THE COUNTESS DESCRIBES THE FIELD OF ACTION
+
+
+Now, to clear up a point or two: You may think the Comic Muse is
+straining human nature rather toughly in making the Countess de Saldar
+rush open-eyed into the jaws of Demogorgon, dreadful to her. She has
+seen her brother pointed out unmistakeably as the tailor-fellow. There
+is yet time to cast him off or fly with him. Is it her extraordinary
+heroism impelling her onward, or infatuated rashness? or is it her mere
+animal love of conflict?
+
+The Countess de Saldar, like other adventurers, has her star. They who
+possess nothing on earth, have a right to claim a portion of the
+heavens. In resolute hands, much may be done with a star. As it has
+empires in its gift, so may it have heiresses. The Countess’s star had
+not blinked balefully at her. That was one reason why she went straight
+on to Beckley.
+
+Again: the Countess was a born general. With her star above, with
+certain advantages secured, with battalions of lies disciplined and
+zealous, and with one clear prize in view, besides other undeveloped
+benefits dimly shadowing forth, the Countess threw herself headlong
+into the enemy’s country.
+
+But, that you may not think too highly of this lady, I must add that
+the trivial reason was the exciting cause—as in many great enterprises.
+This was nothing more than the simple desire to be located, if but for
+a day or two, on the footing of her present rank, in the English
+country-house of an offshoot of our aristocracy. She who had moved in
+the first society of a foreign capital—who had married a Count, a
+minister of his sovereign, had enjoyed delicious high-bred badinage
+with refulgent ambassadors, could boast the friendship of duchesses,
+and had been the amiable receptacle of their pardonable follies; she
+who, moreover, heartily despised things English:—this lady experienced
+thrills of proud pleasure at the prospect of being welcomed at a
+third-rate English mansion. But then, that mansion was Beckley Court.
+We return to our first ambitions, as to our first loves not that they
+are dearer to us,—quit that delusion: our ripened loves and mature
+ambitions are probably closest to our hearts, as they deserve to be—but
+we return to them because our youth has a hold on us which it asserts
+whenever a disappointment knocks us down. Our old loves (with the bad
+natures I know in them) are always lurking to avenge themselves on the
+new by tempting us to a little retrograde infidelity. A schoolgirl in
+Fallowfield, the tailor’s daughter, had sighed for the bliss of Beckley
+Court. Beckley Court was her Elysium ere the ardent feminine brain
+conceived a loftier summit. Fallen from that attained eminence, she
+sighed anew for Beckley Court. Nor was this mere spiritual longing; it
+had its material side. At Beckley Court she could feel her foreign
+rank. Moving with our nobility as an equal, she could feel that the
+short dazzling glitter of her career was not illusory, and had left her
+something solid; not coin of the realm exactly, but yet gold. She could
+not feel this in the Cogglesby saloons, among pitiable
+bourgeoises—middle-class people daily soiled by the touch of tradesmen.
+They dragged her down. Their very homage was a mockery.
+
+Let the Countess have due credit for still allowing Evan to visit
+Beckley Court to follow up his chance. If Demogorgon betrayed her
+there, the Count was her protector: a woman rises to her husband. But a
+man is what he is, and must stand upon that. She was positive Evan had
+committed himself in some manner. As it did not suit her to think so,
+she at once encouraged an imaginary conversation, in which she took the
+argument that it was quite impossible Evan could have been so mad, and
+others instanced his youth, his wrongheaded perversity, his ungenerous
+disregard for his devoted sister, and his known weakness: she replying,
+that undoubtedly they were right so far: but that he could not have
+said he himself was that horrible thing, because he was nothing of the
+sort: which faith in Evan’s stedfast adherence to facts, ultimately
+silenced the phantom opposition, and gained the day.
+
+With admiration let us behold the Countess de Saldar alighting on the
+gravel sweep of Beckley Court, the footman and butler of the enemy
+bowing obsequious welcome to the most potent visitor Beckley Court has
+ever yet embraced.
+
+The despatches of a general being usually acknowledged to be the safest
+sources from which the historian of a campaign can draw, I proceed to
+set forth a letter of the Countess de Saldar, forwarded to her sister,
+Harriet Cogglesby, three mornings after her arrival at Beckley Court;
+and which, if it should prove false in a few particulars, does
+nevertheless let us into the state of the Countess’s mind, and gives
+the result of that general’s first inspection of the field of action.
+The Countess’s epistolary English does small credit to her Fallowfield
+education; but it is feminine, and flows more than her ordinary speech.
+Besides, leaders of men have always notoriously been above the honours
+of grammar. “MY DEAREST HARRIET,
+
+“Your note awaited me. No sooner my name announced, than servitors in
+yellow livery, with powder and buckles started before me, and bowing
+one presented it on a salver. A venerable butler—most impressive! led
+the way. In future, my dear, let it be de Saldar de Sancorvo. That is
+our title by rights, and it may as well be so in England. English
+Countess is certainly best. Always put the de. But let us be
+systematic, as my poor Silva says. He would be in the way here, and had
+better not come till I see something he can do. Silva has great
+reliance upon me. The farther he is from Lymport, my dear!—and imagine
+me, Harriet, driving through Fallowfield to Beckley Court! I gave one
+peep at Dubbins’s, as I passed. The school still goes on. I saw three
+little girls skipping, and the old swing-pole. SEMINARY FOR YOUNG
+LADIES as bright as ever! I should have liked to have kissed the
+children and given them bonbons and a holiday.
+
+“How sparing you English are of your crests and arms! I fully expected
+to see the Jocelyns’ over my bed; but no—four posts totally without
+ornament! Sleep, indeed, must be the result of dire fatigue in such a
+bed. The Jocelyn crest is a hawk in jesses. The Elburne arms are, Or,
+three falcons on a field, vert. How heraldry reminds me of poor Papa!
+the evenings we used to spend with him, when he stayed at home,
+studying it so diligently under his directions! We never shall again!
+Sir Franks Jocelyn is the third son of Lord Elburne, made a Baronet for
+his patriotic support of the Ministry in a time of great trouble. The
+people are sometimes grateful, my dear. Lord Elburne is the fourteenth
+of his line—originally simple country squires. They talk of the Roses,
+but we need not go so very far back as that. I do not quite understand
+why a Lord’s son should condescend to a Baronetcy. Precedence of some
+sort for his lady, I suppose. I have yet to learn whether she ranks by
+his birth, or his present title. If so, a young Baronetcy cannot
+possibly be a gain. One thing is certain. She cares very little about
+it. She is most eccentric. But remember what I have told you. It will
+be serviceable when you are speaking of the family.
+
+“The dinner-hour, six. It would no doubt be full seven in Town. I am
+convinced you are half-an-hour too early. I had the post of honour to
+the right of Sir Franks. Evan to the right of Lady Jocelyn. Most
+fortunately he was in the best of spirits—quite brilliant. I saw the
+eyes of that sweet Rose glisten. On the other side of me sat my pet
+diplomatist, and I gave him one or two political secrets which
+astonished him. Of course, my dear, I was wheedled out of them. His
+contempt for our weak intellects is ineffable. But a woman must now and
+then ingratiate herself at the expense of her sex. This is perfectly
+legitimate. Tory policy at the table. The Opposition, as Andrew says,
+not represented. So to show that we were human beings, we differed
+among ourselves, and it soon became clear to me that Lady Jocelyn is
+the rankest of Radicals. My secret suspicion is, that she is a person
+of no birth whatever, wherever her money came from. A fine woman—yes;
+still to be admired, I suppose, by some kind of men; but totally
+wanting in the essentially feminine attractions.
+
+“There was no party, so to say. I will describe the people present,
+beginning with the insignifacants.
+
+“First, Mr. Parsley, the curate of Beckley. He eats everything at
+table, and agrees with everything. A most excellent orthodox young
+clergyman. Except that he was nearly choked by a fish-bone, and could
+not quite conceal his distress—and really Rose should have repressed
+her desire to laugh till the time for our retirement—he made no
+sensation. I saw her eyes watering, and she is not clever in turning it
+off. In that nobody ever equalled dear Papa. I attribute the attack
+almost entirely to the tightness of the white neck-cloths the young
+clergymen of the Established Church wear. But, my dear, I have lived
+too long away from them to wish for an instant the slightest change in
+anything they think, say, or do. The mere sight of this young man was
+most refreshing to my spirit. He may be the shepherd of a flock, this
+poor Mr. Parsley, but he is a sheep to one young person.
+
+“Mr. Drummond Forth. A great favourite of Lady Jocelyn’s; an old
+friend. He went with them to the East. Nothing improper. She is too
+cold for that. He is fair, with regular features, very self-possessed,
+and ready—your English notions of gentlemanly. But none of your men
+treat a woman as a woman. We are either angels, or good fellows, or
+heaven knows what that is bad. No exquisite delicacy, no insinuating
+softness, mixed with respect, none of that hovering over the border, as
+Papa used to say, none of that happy indefiniteness of manner which
+seems to declare ‘I would love you if I might,’ or ‘I do, but I dare
+not tell,’ even when engaged in the most trivial attentions—handing a
+footstool, remarking on the soup, etc. You none of you know how to meet
+a woman’s smile, or to engage her eyes without boldness—to slide off
+them, as it were, gracefully. Evan alone can look between the eyelids
+of a woman. I have had to correct him, for to me he quite exposes the
+state of his heart towards dearest Rose. She listens to Mr. Forth with
+evident esteem. In Portugal we do not understand young ladies having
+male friends.
+
+“Hamilton Jocelyn—all politics. The stiff Englishman. Not a shade of
+manners. He invited me to drink wine. Before I had finished my bow his
+glass was empty—the man was telling an anecdote of Lord Livelyston! You
+may be sure, my dear, I did not say I had seen his lordship.
+
+“Seymour Jocelyn, Colonel of Hussars. He did nothing but sigh for the
+cold weather, and hunting. All I envied him was his moustache for Evan.
+Will you believe that the ridiculous boy has shaved!
+
+“Then there is Melville, my dear diplomatist; and here is another
+instance of our Harrington luck. He has the gout in his right hand; he
+can only just hold knife and fork, and is interdicted Port-wine and
+penmanship. The dinner was not concluded before I had arranged that
+Evan should resume (gratuitously, you know) his post of secretary to
+him. So here is Evan fixed at Beckley Court as long as Melville stays.
+Talking of him, I am horrified suddenly. They call him the great Mel!
+
+“Sir Franks is most estimable, I am sure, as a man, and redolent of
+excellent qualities—a beautiful disposition, very handsome. He has just
+as much and no more of the English polish one ordinarily meets. When he
+has given me soup or fish, bowed to me over wine, and asked a
+conventional question, he has done with me. I should imagine his
+opinions to be extremely good, for they are not a multitude.
+
+“Then his lady—but I have not grappled with her yet. Now for the women,
+for I quite class her with the opposite sex.
+
+“You must know that before I retired for the night, I induced Conning
+to think she had a bad head-ache, and Rose lent me her lady’s-maid—they
+call the creature Polly. A terrible talker. She would tell all about
+the family. Rose has been speaking of Evan. It would have looked better
+had she been quiet—but then she is so English!”
+
+Here the Countess breaks off to say, that from where she is writing,
+she can see Rose and Evan walking out to the cypress avenue, and that
+no eyes are on them; great praise being given to the absence of
+suspicion in the Jocelyn nature.
+
+The communication is resumed the night of the same day.
+
+“Two days at Beckley Court are over, and that strange sensation I had
+of being an intruder escaped from Dubbins’s, and expecting every
+instant the old schoolmistress to call for me, and expose me, and take
+me to the dark room, is quite vanished, and I feel quite at home, quite
+happy. Evan is behaving well. Quite the young nobleman. With the women
+I had no fear of him; he is really admirable with the men—easy, and
+talks of sport and politics, and makes the proper use of Portugal. He
+has quite won the heart of his sister. Heaven smiles on us, dearest
+Harriet!
+
+“We must be favoured, my dear, for Evan is very
+troublesome—distressingly inconsiderate! I left him for a day—remaining
+to comfort poor Mama—and on the road he picked up an object he had
+known at school, and this creature, in shameful garments, is seen in
+the field where Rose and Evan are riding—in a dreadful hat—Rose might
+well laugh at it!—he is seen running away from an old apple woman,
+whose fruit he had consumed without means to liquidate; but, of course,
+he rushes bolt up to Evan before all his grand company, and claims
+acquaintance, and Evan was base enough to acknowledge him! He
+disengaged himself so far well by tossing his purse to the wretch, but
+if he knows not how to _cut_, I assure him it will be his ruin.
+Resolutely he must cast the dust off his shoes, or he will be dragged
+down to their level. By the way, as to hands and feet, comparing him
+with the Jocelyn men, he has every mark of better blood. Not a question
+about it. As Papa would say—We have Nature’s proof.
+
+“Looking out on a beautiful lawn, and the moon, and all sorts of trees,
+I must now tell you about the ladies here.
+
+“Conning undid me to-night. While Conning remains unattached, Conning
+is likely to be serviceable. If Evan, would only give her a crumb, she
+would be his most faithful dog. I fear he cannot be induced, and
+Conning will be snapped up by somebody else. You know how susceptible
+she is behind her primness—she will be of no use on earth, and I shall
+find excuse to send her back immediately. After all, her appearance
+here was all that was wanted.
+
+“Mrs. Melville and her dreadful juvenile are here, as you may
+imagine—the complete Englishwoman. I smile on her, but I could laugh.
+To see the crow’s-feet under her eyes on her white skin, and those
+ringlets, is really too ridiculous. Then there is a Miss Carrington,
+Lady Jocelyn’s cousin, aged thirty-two—if she has not tampered with the
+register of her birth. I should think her equal to it. Between dark and
+fair. Always in love with some man, Conning tells me she hears. Rose’s
+maid, Polly, hinted the same. She has a little money.
+
+“But my sympathies have been excited by a little cripple—a niece of
+Lady Jocelyn’s and the favourite grand-daughter of the rich old Mrs.
+Bonner—also here—Juliana Bonner. Her age must be twenty. You would take
+her for ten. In spite of her immense expectations, the Jocelyns hate
+her. They can hardly be civil to her. It is the poor child’s temper.
+She has already begun to watch dear Evan—certainly the handsomest of
+the men here as yet, though I grant you, they are well-grown men, these
+Jocelyns, for an untravelled Englishwoman. I fear, dear Harriet, we
+have been dreadfully deceived about Rose. The poor child has not, in
+her own right, much more than a tenth part of what we supposed, I fear.
+It was that Mrs. Melville. I have had occasion to notice her quiet
+boasts here. She said this morning, ‘when Mel is in the Ministry’—he is
+not yet in Parliament! I feel quite angry with the woman, and she is
+not so cordial as she might be. I have her profile very frequently
+while I am conversing with her.
+
+“With Grandmama Bonner I am excellent good friends,—venerable silver
+hair, high caps, etc. More of this most interesting Juliana Bonner
+by-and-by. It is clear to me that Rose’s fortune is calculated upon the
+dear invalid’s death! Is not that harrowing? It shocks me to think of
+it.
+
+“Then there is Mrs. Shorne. She is a Jocelyn—and such a history! She
+married a wealthy manufacturer—bartered her blood for his money, and he
+failed, and here she resides, a bankrupt widow, petitioning any man
+that may be willing for his love _and_ a decent home. _And_—I say in
+charity.
+
+“Mrs. Shorne comes here to-morrow. She is at present with—guess, my
+dear!—with Lady Racial. Do not be alarmed. I have met Lady Racial. She
+heard Evan’s name, and by that and the likeness I saw she knew at once,
+and I saw a truce in her eyes. She gave me a tacit assurance of it—she
+was engaged to dine here yesterday, and put it off—probably to grant us
+time for composure. If she comes I do not fear her. Besides, has she
+not reasons? Providence may have designed her for a staunch ally—I will
+not say, confederate.
+
+“Would that Providence had fixed this beautiful mansion five hundred
+miles from L——, though it were in a desolate region! And that reminds
+me of the Madre. She is in health. She always will be overbearingly
+robust till the day we are bereft of her. There was some secret in the
+house when I was there, which I did not trouble to penetrate. That
+little Jane F—— was there—not improved.
+
+“Pray, be firm about Torquay. Estates mortgaged, but hopes of saving a
+remnant of the property. Third son! Don’t commit yourself there. We
+dare not baronetize him. You need not speak it—imply. More can be done
+that way.
+
+“And remember, dear Harriet, that you must manage Andrew so that we may
+positively promise his vote to the Ministry on all questions when
+Parliament next assembles. I understood from Lord Livelyston, that
+Andrew’s vote would be thought much of. A most amusing nobleman! He
+pledged himself to nothing! But we are above such a thing as a
+commercial transaction. He must countenance Silva. Women, my dear, have
+sent out armies—why not fleets? Do not spare me your utmost aid in my
+extremity, my dearest sister.
+
+“As for Strike, I refuse to speak of him. He is insufferable and next
+to useless. How can one talk with any confidence of relationship with a
+Major of Marines? When I reflect on what he is, and his conduct to
+Caroline, I have inscrutable longings to slap his face. Tell dear Carry
+her husband’s friend—the chairman or something of that wonderful
+company of Strike’s—you know—the Duke of Belfield is coming here. He is
+a blood-relation of the Elburnes, therefore of the Jocelyns. It will
+not matter at all. Breweries, I find, are quite in esteem in your
+England. It was highly commendable in his Grace to visit you. Did he
+come to see the Major of Marines? Caroline is certainly the loveliest
+woman I ever beheld, and I forgive her now the pangs of jealousy she
+used to make me feel.
+
+“Andrew, I hope, has received the most kind invitations of the
+Jocelyns. He must come. Melville must talk with him about the votes of
+his abominable brother in Fallowfield. We must elect Melville and have
+the family indebted to us. But pray be careful that Andrew speaks not a
+word to his odious brother about our location here. It would set him
+dead against these hospitable Jocelyns. It will perhaps be as well,
+dear Harriet, if you do not accompany Andrew. You would not be able to
+account for him quite thoroughly. Do as you like—I do but advise, and
+you know I may be trusted—for our sakes, dear one! I am working for
+Carry to come with Andrew. Beautiful women always welcome. A
+prodigy!—if they wish to astonish the Duke. Adieu! Heaven bless your
+babes!”
+
+The night passes, and the Countess pursues:
+
+“Awakened by your fresh note from a dream of Evan on horseback, and a
+multitude hailing him Count Jocelyn for Fallowfield! A morning dream.
+They might desire that he should change his name; but ‘Count’ is
+preposterous, though it may conceal something.
+
+“You say Andrew will come, and talk of his bringing Caroline. Anything
+to give our poor darling a respite from her brute. You deserve great
+credit for your managing of that dear little good-natured piece of
+obstinate man. I will at once see to prepare dear Caroline’s welcome,
+and trust her stay may be prolonged in the interest of common humanity.
+They have her story here already.
+
+“Conning has come in, and says that young Mr. Harry Jocelyn will be
+here this morning from Fallowfield, where he has been cricketing. The
+family have not spoken of him in my hearing. He is not, I think, in
+good odour at home—a scapegrace. Rose’s maid, Polly, quite flew out
+when I happened to mention him, and broke one of my laces. These
+English maids are domesticated savage animals.
+
+“My chocolate is sent up, exquisitely concocted, in plate of the purest
+quality—lovely little silver cups! I have already quite set the fashion
+for the ladies to have chocolate in bed. The men, I hear, complain that
+there is no lady at the breakfast-table. They have Miss Carrington to
+superintend. I read, in the subdued satisfaction of her eyes
+(completely without colour), how much she thanks me and the institution
+of chocolate in bed. Poor Miss Carrington is no match for her
+opportunities. One may give them to her without dread.
+
+“It is ten on the Sabbath morn. The sweet churchbells are ringing. It
+seems like a dream. There is nothing but the religion attaches me to
+England; but that—is not that everything? How I used to sigh on Sundays
+to hear them in Portugal!
+
+“I have an idea of instituting toilette-receptions. They will not
+please Miss Carrington so well.
+
+“Now to the peaceful village church, and divine worship. Adieu, my
+dear. I kiss my fingers to Silva. Make no effort to amuse him. He is
+always occupied. Bread!—he asks no more. Adieu! Carry will be invited
+with your little man.... You unhappily unable.... She, the sister I
+pine to see, to show her worthy of my praises. Expectation and
+excitement! Adieu!”
+
+Filled with pleasing emotions at the thought of the service in the
+quiet village church, and worshipping in the principal pew, under the
+blazonry of the Jocelyn arms, the Countess sealed her letter and
+addressed it, and then examined the name of Cogglesby; which plebeian
+name, it struck her, would not sound well to the menials of Beckley
+Court. While she was deliberating what to do to conceal it, she heard,
+through her open window, the voices of some young men laughing. She
+beheld her brother pass these young men, and bow to them. She beheld
+them stare at him without at all returning his salute, and then one of
+them—the same who had filled her ears with venom at Fallowfield—turned
+to the others and laughed outrageously, crying—
+
+“By Jove! this comes it strong. Fancy the snipocracy here—eh?”
+
+What the others said the Countess did not wait to hear. She put on her
+bonnet hastily, tried the effect of a peculiar smile in the mirror, and
+lightly ran down-stairs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+A CAPTURE
+
+
+The three youths were standing in the portico when the Countess
+appeared among them. She singled out him who was specially obnoxious to
+her, and sweetly inquired the direction to the village post. With the
+renowned gallantry of his nation, he offered to accompany her, but
+presently, with a different exhibition of the same, proposed that they
+should spare themselves the trouble by dropping the letter she held
+prominently, in the bag.
+
+“Thanks,” murmured the Countess, “I will go.” Upon which his eager air
+subsided, and he fell into an awkward silent march at her side, looking
+so like the victim he was to be, that the Countess could have emulated
+his power of laughter.
+
+“And you are Mr. Harry Jocelyn, the very famous cricketer?”
+
+He answered, glancing back at his friends, that he was, but did not
+know about the “famous.”
+
+“Oh! but I saw you—I saw you hit the ball most beautifully, and dearly
+wished my brother had an equal ability. Brought up in the Court of
+Portugal, he is barely English. There they have no manly sports. You
+saw him pass you?”
+
+“Him! Who?” asked Harry.
+
+“My brother, on the lawn, this moment. Your sweet sister’s friend. Your
+uncle Melville’s secretary.”
+
+“What’s his name?” said Harry, in blunt perplexity.
+
+The Countess repeated his name, which in her pronunciation was
+“Hawington,” adding, “That was my brother. I am his sister. Have you
+heard of the Countess de Saldar?”
+
+“Countess!” muttered Harry. “Dash it! here’s a mistake.”
+
+She continued, with elegant fan-like motion of her gloved fingers:
+“They say there is a likeness between us. The dear Queen of Portugal
+often remarked it, and in her it was a compliment to me, for she
+thought my brother a model! You I should have known from your extreme
+resemblance to your lovely young sister.”
+
+Coarse food, but then Harry was a youthful Englishman; and the Countess
+dieted the vanity according to the nationality. With good wine to wash
+it down, one can swallow anything. The Countess lent him her eyes for
+that purpose; eyes that had a liquid glow under the dove—like drooping
+lids. It was a principle of hers, pampering our poor sex with swinish
+solids or the lightest ambrosia, never to let the accompanying cordial
+be other than of the finest quality. She knew that clowns, even more
+than aristocrats, are flattered by the inebriation of delicate
+celestial liquors.
+
+“Now,” she said, after Harry had gulped as much of the dose as she
+chose to administer direct from the founts, “you must accord me the
+favour to tell me all about yourself, for I have heard much of you, Mr.
+Harry Jocelyn, and you have excited my woman’s interest. Of me you know
+nothing.”
+
+“Haven’t I?” cried Harry, speaking to the pitch of his new warmth. “My
+uncle Melville goes on about you tremendously—makes his wife as jealous
+as fire. How could I tell that was your brother?”
+
+“Your uncle has deigned to allude to me?” said the Countess,
+meditatively. “But not of him—of you, Mr. Harry! What does he say?”
+
+“Says you’re so clever you ought to be a man.”
+
+“Ah! generous!” exclaimed the Countess. “The idea, I think, is novel to
+him. Is it not?”
+
+“Well, I believe, from what I hear, he didn’t back you for much over in
+Lisbon,” said veracious Harry.
+
+“I fear he is deceived in me now. I fear I am but a woman—I am not to
+be ‘backed.’ But you are not talking of yourself.”
+
+“Oh! never mind me,” was Harry’s modest answer.
+
+“But I do. Try to imagine me as clever as a man, and talk to me of your
+doings. Indeed I will endeavour to comprehend you.”
+
+Thus humble, the Countess bade him give her his arm. He stuck it out
+with abrupt eagerness.
+
+“Not against my cheek.” She laughed forgivingly. “And you need not
+start back half-a-mile,” she pursued with plain humour: “and please do
+not look irresolute and awkward—It is not necessary,” she added.
+“There!”; and she settled her fingers on him, “I am glad I can find one
+or two things to instruct you in. Begin. You are a great cricketer.
+What else?”
+
+Ay! what else? Harry might well say he had no wish to talk of himself.
+He did not know even how to give his arm to a lady! The first flattery
+and the subsequent chiding clashed in his elated soul, and caused him
+to deem himself one of the blest suddenly overhauled by an inspecting
+angel and found wanting: or, in his own more accurate style of
+reflection, “What a rattling fine woman this is, and what a deuce of a
+fool she must think me!”
+
+The Countess leaned on his arm with dainty languor.
+
+“You walk well,” she said.
+
+Harry’s backbone straightened immediately.
+
+“No, no; I do not want you to be a drill-sergeant. Can you not be told
+you are perfect without seeking to improve, vain boy? You can cricket,
+and you can walk, and will very soon learn how to give your arm to a
+lady. I have hopes of you. Of your friends, from whom I have ruthlessly
+dragged you, I have not much. Am I personally offensive to them, Mr.
+Harry? I saw them let my brother pass without returning his bow, and
+they in no way acknowledged my presence as I passed. Are they
+gentlemen?”
+
+“Yes,” said Harry, stupefied by the question. “One’s Ferdinand Laxley,
+Lord Laxley’s son, heir to the title; the other’s William Harvey, son
+of the Chief Justice—both friends of mine.”
+
+“But not of your manners,” interposed the Countess. “I have not so much
+compunction as I ought to have in divorcing you from your associates
+for a few minutes. I think I shall make a scholar of you in one or two
+essentials. You do want polish. Have I not a right to take you in hand?
+I have defended you already.”
+
+“Me?” cried Harry.
+
+“None other than Mr. Harry Jocelyn. Will he vouchsafe to me his pardon?
+It has been whispered in my ears that his ambition is to be the Don
+Juan of a country district, and I have said for him, that however
+grovelling his undirected tastes, he is too truly noble to plume
+himself upon the reputation they have procured him. Why did I defend
+you? Women, you know, do not shrink from Don Juans—even provincial Don
+Juans—as they should, perhaps, for their own sakes! You are all of you
+dangerous, if a woman is not strictly on her guard. But you will
+respect your champion, will you not?”
+
+Harry was about to reply with wonderful briskness. He stopped, and
+murmured boorishly that he was sure he was very much obliged.
+
+Command of countenance the Countess possessed in common with her sex.
+Those faces on which we make them depend entirely, women can entirely
+control. Keenly sensible to humour as the Countess was, her face sidled
+up to his immovably sweet. Harry looked, and looked away, and looked
+again. The poor fellow was so profoundly aware of his foolishness that
+he even doubted whether he was admired.
+
+The Countess trifled with his English nature; quietly watched him bob
+between tugging humility and airy conceit, and went on:
+
+“Yes! I will trust you, and that is saying very much, for what
+protection is a brother? I am alone here—defenceless!”
+
+Men, of course, grow virtuously zealous in an instant on behalf of the
+lovely dame who tells them bewitchingly, she is alone and defenceless,
+with pitiful dimples round the dewy mouth that entreats their
+guardianship and mercy!
+
+The provincial Don Juan found words—a sign of clearer sensations
+within. He said:
+
+“Upon my honour, I’d look after you better than fifty brothers!”
+
+The Countess eyed him softly, and then allowed herself the luxury of a
+laugh.
+
+“No, no! it is not the sheep, it is the wolf I fear.”
+
+And she went through a bit of the concluding portion of the drama of
+Little Red Riding Hood very prettily, and tickled him so that he became
+somewhat less afraid of her.
+
+“Are you truly so bad as report would have you to be, Mr. Harry?” she
+asked, not at all in the voice of a censor.
+
+“Pray don’t think me—a—anything you wouldn’t have me,” the youth
+stumbled into an apt response.
+
+“We shall see,” said the Countess, and varied her admiration for the
+noble creature beside her with gentle ejaculations on the beauty of the
+deer that ranged the park of Beckley Court, the grand old oaks and
+beeches, the clumps of flowering laurel, and the rich air swarming
+Summer.
+
+She swept out her arm. “And this most magnificent estate will be yours?
+How happy will she be who is led hither to reside by you, Mr. Harry!”
+
+“Mine? No; there’s the bother,” he answered, with unfeigned chagrin.
+“Beckley isn’t Elburne property, you know. It belongs to old Mrs.
+Bonner, Rose’s grandmama.”
+
+“Oh!” interjected the Countess, indifferently.
+
+“I shall never get it—no chance,” Harry pursued. “Lost my luck with the
+old lady long ago.” He waxed excited on a subject that drew him from
+his shamefacedness. “It goes to Juley Bonner, or to Rosey; it’s a
+toss-up which. If I’d stuck up to Juley, I might have had a pretty fair
+chance. They wanted me to, that’s why I scout the premises. But fancy
+Juley Bonner!”
+
+“You couldn’t, upon your honour!” rhymed the Countess. (And Harry let
+loose a delighted “Ha! ha!” as at a fine stroke of wit.) “Are we
+enamoured of a beautiful maiden, Senor Harry?”
+
+“Not a bit,” he assured her eagerly. “I don’t know any girl. I don’t
+care for ’em. I don’t, really.”
+
+The Countess impressively declared to him that he must be guided by
+her; and that she might the better act his monitress, she desired to
+hear the pedigree of the estate, and the exact relations in which it at
+present stood toward the Elburne family.
+
+Glad of any theme he could speak on, Harry informed her that Beckley
+Court was bought by his grandfather Bonner from the proceeds of a
+successful oil speculation.
+
+“So we ain’t much on that side,” he said.
+
+“Oil!” was the Countess’s weary exclamation. “I imagined Beckley Court
+to be your ancestral mansion. Oil!”
+
+Harry deprecatingly remarked that oil was money.
+
+“Yes,” she replied; “but you are not one to mix oil with your Elburne
+blood. Let me see—oil! That, I conceive, is grocery. So, you are
+grocers on one side!”
+
+“Oh, come! hang it!” cried Harry, turning red.
+
+“Am I leaning on the grocer’s side, or on the lord’s?”
+
+Harry felt dreadfully taken down. “One ranks with one’s father,” he
+said.
+
+“Yes,” observed the Countess; “but you should ever be careful not to
+expose the grocer. When I beheld my brother bow to you, and that your
+only return was to stare at him in that singular way, I was not aware
+of this, and could not account for it.”
+
+I declare I’m very sorry,” said Harry, with a nettled air. “Do just let
+me tell you how it happened. We were at an inn, where there was an odd
+old fellow gave a supper; and there was your brother, and another
+fellow—as thorough an upstart as I ever met, and infernally impudent.
+He got drinking, and wanted to fight us. Now I see it! Your brother, to
+save his friend’s bones, said he was a tailor! Of course no gentleman
+could fight a tailor; and it blew over with my saying we’d order our
+clothes of him.”
+
+“Said he was a—!” exclaimed the Countess, gazing blankly.
+
+“I don’t wonder at your feeling annoyed,” returned Harry. “I saw him
+with Rosey next day, and began to smell a rat then, but Laxley won’t
+give up the tailor. He’s as proud as Lucifer. He wanted to order a suit
+of your brother to-day; but I said—not while he’s in the house, however
+he came here.”
+
+The Countess had partially recovered. They were now in the village
+street, and Harry pointed out the post-office.
+
+“Your divination with regard to my brother’s most eccentric behaviour
+was doubtless correct,” she said. “He wished to succour his wretched
+companion. Anywhere—it matters not to him what!—he allies himself with
+miserable mortals. He is the modern Samaritan. You should thank him for
+saving you an encounter with some low creature.”
+
+Swaying the letter to and fro, she pursued archly: “I can read your
+thoughts. You are dying to know to whom this dear letter is addressed!”
+
+Instantly Harry, whose eyes had previously been quite empty of
+expression, glanced at the letter wistfully.
+
+Shall I tell you?”
+
+“Yes, do.”
+
+“It’s to somebody I love.”
+
+“Are you in love then?” was his disconcerted rejoinder.
+
+“Am I not married?”
+
+“Yes; but every woman that’s married isn’t in love with her husband,
+you know.”
+
+“Oh! Don Juan of the provinces!” she cried, holding the seal of the
+letter before him in playful reproof. “Fie!”
+
+“Come! who is it?” Harry burst out.
+
+“I am not, surely, obliged to confess my correspondence to you?
+Remember!” she laughed lightly. “He already assumes the airs of a lord
+and master! You are rapid, Mr. Harry.”
+
+“Won’t you really tell me?” he pleaded.
+
+She put a corner of the letter in the box. “Must I?”
+
+All was done with the archest elegance: the bewildering condescension
+of a Goddess to a boor.
+
+“I don’t say you must, you know: but I should like to see it,” returned
+Harry.
+
+“There!” She showed him a glimpse of “Mrs.,” cleverly concealing
+plebeian “Cogglesby,” and the letter slid into darkness. “Are you
+satisfied?”
+
+“Yes,” said Harry, wondering why he felt a relief at the sight of
+“Mrs.” written on a letter by a lady he had only known half an hour.
+
+“And now,” said she, “I shall demand a boon of you, Mr. Harry. Will it
+be accorded?”
+
+She was hurriedly told that she might count upon him for whatever she
+chose to ask; and after much trifling and many exaggerations of the
+boon in question, he heard that she had selected him as her cavalier
+for the day, and that he was to consent to accompany her to the village
+church.
+
+“Is it so great a request, the desire that you should sit beside a
+solitary lady for so short a space?” she asked, noting his rueful
+visage.
+
+Harry assured her he would be very happy, but hinted at the bother of
+having to sit and listen to that fool of a Parsley: again assuring her,
+and with real earnestness, which the lady now affected to doubt, that
+he would be extremely happy.
+
+“You know, I haven’t been there for ages,” he explained.
+
+“I hear it!” she sighed, aware of the credit his escort would bring her
+in Beckley, and especially with Harry’s grandmama Bonner.
+
+They went together to the village church. The Countess took care to be
+late, so that all eyes beheld her stately march up the aisle, with her
+captive beside her.
+
+Nor was her captive less happy than he professed he would be. Charming
+comic side-play, at the expense of Mr. Parsley, she mingled with
+exceeding devoutness, and a serious attention to Mr. Parsley’s
+discourse. In her heart this lady really thought her confessed daily
+sins forgiven her by the recovery of the lost sheep to Mr. Parsley’s
+fold. The results of this small passage of arms were, that Evan’s
+disclosure at Fallowfield was annulled in the mind of Harry Jocelyn,
+and the latter gentleman became the happy slave of the Countess de
+Saldar.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+LEADS TO A SMALL SKIRMISH BETWEEN ROSE AND EVAN
+
+
+Lady Jocelyn belonged properly to that order which the Sultans and the
+Roxalanas of earth combine to exclude from their little games, under
+the designation of blues, or strong-minded women: a kind, if genuine,
+the least dangerous and staunchest of the sex, as poor fellows learn
+when the flippant and the frail fair have made mummies of them. She had
+the frankness of her daughter, the same direct eyes and firm step: a
+face without shadows, though no longer bright with youth. It may be
+charged to her as one of the errors of her strong mind, that she
+believed friendship practicable between men and women, young or old.
+She knew the world pretty well, and was not amazed by extraordinary
+accidents; but as she herself continued to be an example of her faith:
+we must presume it natural that her delusion should cling to her. She
+welcomed Evan as her daughter’s friend, walked half-way across the room
+to meet him on his introduction to her, and with the simple words, “I
+have heard of you,” let him see that he stood upon his merits in her
+house. The young man’s spirit caught something of hers even in their
+first interview, and at once mounted to that level. Unconsciously he
+felt that she took, and would take him, for what he was, and he rose to
+his worth in the society she presided over. A youth like Evan could not
+perceive, that in loving this lady’s daughter, and accepting the place
+she offered him, he was guilty of a breach of confidence; or reflect,
+that her entire absence of suspicion imposed upon him a corresponding
+honesty toward her. He fell into a blindness. Without dreaming for a
+moment that she designed to encourage his passion for Rose, he yet
+beheld himself in the light she had cast on him; and, received as her
+daughter’s friend, it seemed to him not so utterly monstrous that he
+might be her daughter’s lover. A haughty, a grand, or a too familiar
+manner, would have kept his eyes clearer on his true condition. Lady
+Jocelyn spoke to his secret nature, and eclipsed in his mind the
+outward aspects with which it was warring. To her he was a gallant
+young man, a fit companion for Rose, and when she and Sir Franks said,
+and showed him, that they were glad to know him, his heart swam in a
+flood of happiness they little suspected.
+
+This was another of the many forms of intoxication to which
+circumstances subjected the poor lover. In Fallowfield, among
+impertinent young men, Evan’s pride proclaimed him a tailor. At Beckley
+Court, acted on by one genuine soul, he forgot it, and felt elate in
+his manhood. The shades of Tailordom dispersed like fog before the full
+South-west breeze. When I say he forgot it, the fact was present enough
+to him, but it became an outward fact: he had ceased to feel it within
+him. It was not a portion of his being, hard as Mrs. Mel had struck to
+fix it. Consequently, though he was in a far worse plight than when he
+parted with Rose on board the Jocasta, he felt much less of an impostor
+now. This may have been partly because he had endured his struggle with
+the Demogorgon the Countess painted to him in such frightful colours,
+and found him human after all; but it was mainly owing to the hearty
+welcome Lady Jocelyn had extended to him as the friend of Rose.
+
+Loving Rose, he nevertheless allowed his love no tender liberties. The
+eyes of a lover are not his own; but his hands and lips are, till such
+time as they are claimed. The sun must smile on us with peculiar warmth
+to woo us forth utterly—pluck our hearts out. Rose smiled on many. She
+smiled on Drummond Forth, Ferdinand Laxley, William Harvey, and her
+brother Harry; and she had the same eyes for all ages. Once, previous
+to the arrival of the latter three, there was a change in her look, or
+Evan fancied it. They were going to ride out together, and Evan, coming
+to his horse on the gravel walk, saw her talking with Drummond Forth.
+He mounted, awaiting her, and either from a slight twinge of jealousy,
+or to mark her dainty tread with her riding-habit drawn above her
+heels, he could not help turning his head occasionally. She listened to
+Drummond with attention, but presently broke from him, crying: “It’s an
+absurdity. Speak to them yourself—I shall not.”
+
+On the ride that day, she began prattling of this and that with the
+careless glee that became her well, and then sank into a reverie.
+Between-whiles her eyes had raised tumults in Evan’s breast by dropping
+on him in a sort of questioning way, as if she wished him to speak, or
+wished to fathom something she would rather have unspoken. Ere they had
+finished their ride, she tossed off what burden may have been on her
+mind as lightly as a stray lock from her shoulders. He thought that the
+singular look recurred. It charmed him too much for him to speculate on
+it.
+
+The Countess’s opportune ally, the gout, which had reduced the Hon.
+Melville Jocelyn’s right hand to a state of uselessness, served her
+with her brother equally: for, having volunteered his services to the
+invalided diplomatist, it excused his stay at Beckley Court to himself,
+and was a mask to his intimacy with Rose, besides earning him the
+thanks of the family. Harry Jocelyn, released from the wing of the
+Countess, came straight to him, and in a rough kind of way begged Evan
+to overlook his rudeness.
+
+“You took us all in at Fallowfield, except Drummond,” he said.
+“Drummond would have it you were joking. I see it now. And you’re a
+confoundedly clever fellow into the bargain, or you wouldn’t be
+quill-driving for Uncle Mel. Don’t be uppish about it—will you?”
+
+“You have nothing to fear on that point,” said Evan. With which promise
+the peace was signed between them. Drummond and William Harvey were
+cordial, and just laughed over the incident. Laxley, however, held
+aloof. His retention of ideas once formed befitted his rank and
+station. Some trifling qualms attended Evan’s labours with the
+diplomatist; but these were merely occasioned by the iteration of a
+particular phrase. Mr. Goren, an enthusiastic tailor, had now and then
+thrown out to Evan stirring hints of an invention he claimed: the
+discovery of a Balance in Breeches: apparently the philosopher’s stone
+of the tailor craft, a secret that should ensure harmony of outline to
+the person and an indubitable accommodation to the most difficult legs.
+
+Since Adam’s expulsion, it seemed, the tailors of this wilderness had
+been in search of it. But like the doctors of this wilderness, their
+science knew no specific: like the Babylonian workmen smitten with
+confusion of tongues, they had but one word in common, and that word
+was “cut.” Mr. Goren contended that to cut was not the key of the
+science: but to find a Balance was. An artistic admirer of the frame of
+man, Mr. Goren was not wanting in veneration for the individual who had
+arisen to do it justice. He spoke of his Balance with supreme
+self-appreciation. Nor less so the Honourable Melville, who professed
+to have discovered the Balance of Power, at home and abroad. It was a
+capital Balance, but inferior to Mr. Goren’s. The latter gentleman
+guaranteed a Balance with motion: whereas one step not only upset the
+Honourable Melville’s, but shattered the limbs of Europe. Let us admit,
+that it is easier to fit a man’s legs than to compress expansive
+empires.
+
+Evan enjoyed the doctoring of kingdoms quite as well as the
+diplomatist. It suited the latent grandeur of soul inherited by him
+from the great Mel. He liked to prop Austria and arrest the Czar, and
+keep a watchful eye on France; but the Honourable Melville’s
+deep-mouthed phrase conjured up to him a pair of colossal legs
+imperiously demanding their Balance likewise. At first the image scared
+him. In time he was enabled to smile it into phantom vagueness. The
+diplomatist diplomatically informed him, it might happen that the
+labours he had undertaken might be neither more nor less than education
+for a profession he might have to follow. Out of this, an ardent
+imagination, with the Countess de Saldar for an interpreter, might
+construe a promise of some sort. Evan soon had high hopes. What though
+his name blazed on a shop-front? The sun might yet illumine him to
+honour!
+
+Where a young man is getting into delicate relations with a young
+woman, the more of his sex the better—they serve as a blind; and the
+Countess hailed fresh arrivals warmly. There was Sir John Loring,
+Dorothy’s father, who had married the eldest of the daughters of Lord
+Elburne. A widower, handsome, and a flirt, he capitulated to the
+Countess instantly, and was played off against the provincial Don Juan,
+who had reached that point with her when youths of his description make
+bashful confidences of their successes, and receive delicious chidings
+for their naughtiness—rebukes which give immeasurable rebounds. Then
+came Mr. Gordon Graine, with his daughter, Miss Jenny Graine, an early
+friend of Rose’s, and numerous others. For the present, Miss Isabella
+Current need only be chronicled among the visitors—a sprightly maid
+fifty years old, without a wrinkle to show for it—the Aunt Bel of fifty
+houses where there were young women and little boys. Aunt Bel had quick
+wit and capital anecdotes, and tripped them out aptly on a sparkling
+tongue with exquisite instinct for climax and when to strike for a
+laugh. No sooner had she entered the hall than she announced the
+proximate arrival of the Duke of Belfield at her heels, and it was
+known that his Grace was as sure to follow as her little dog, who was
+far better paid for his devotion.
+
+The dinners at Beckley Court had hitherto been rather languid to those
+who were not intriguing or mixing young love with the repast. Miss
+Current was an admirable neutral, sent, as the Countess fervently
+believed, by Providence. Till now the Countess had drawn upon her own
+resources to amuse the company, and she had been obliged to restrain
+herself from doing it with that unctuous feeling for rank which warmed
+her Portuguese sketches in low society and among her sisters. She
+retired before Miss Current and formed audience, glad of a relief to
+her inventive labour. While Miss Current and her ephemerals lightly
+skimmed the surface of human life, the Countess worked in the depths.
+Vanities, passions, prejudices beneath the surface, gave her full
+employment. How naturally poor Juliana Bonner was moved to mistake
+Evan’s compassion for a stronger sentiment! The Countess eagerly
+assisted Providence to shuffle the company into their proper places.
+Harry Jocelyn was moodily happy, but good; greatly improved in the eyes
+of his grandmama Bonner, who attributed the change to the Countess, and
+partly forgave her the sinful consent to the conditions of her
+love-match with the foreign Count, which his penitent wife had
+privately confessed to that strict Churchwoman.
+
+“Thank Heaven that you have no children,” Mrs. Bonner had said; and the
+Countess humbly replied:
+
+“It is indeed my remorseful consolation!”
+
+“Who knows that it is not your punishment?” added Mrs. Bonner; the
+Countess weeping.
+
+She went and attended morning prayers in Mrs. Bonner’s apartments,
+alone with the old lady. “To make up for lost time in Catholic
+Portugal!” she explained it to the household.
+
+On the morning after Miss Current had come to shape the party, most of
+the inmates of Beckley Court being at breakfast, Rose gave a lead to
+the conversation.
+
+“Aunt Bel! I want to ask you something. We’ve been making bets about
+you. Now, answer honestly, we’re all friends. Why did you refuse all
+your offers?”
+
+“Quite simple, child,” replied the unabashed ex-beauty. “A matter of
+taste. I liked twenty shillings better than a sovereign.”
+
+Rose looked puzzled, but the men laughed, and Rose exclaimed:
+
+“Now I see! How stupid I am! You mean, you may have friends when you
+are not married. Well, I think that’s the wisest, after all. You don’t
+lose them, do you? Pray, Mr. Evan, are you thinking Aunt Bel might
+still alter her mind for somebody, if she knew his value?”
+
+“I was presuming to hope there might be a place vacant among the
+twenty,” said Evan, slightly bowing to both. “Am I pardoned?”
+
+“I like you!” returned Aunt Bel, nodding at him. “Where do you come
+from? A young man who’ll let himself go for small coin’s a jewel worth
+knowing.”
+
+“Where do I come from?” drawled Laxley, who had been tapping an egg
+with a dreary expression.
+
+“Aunt Bel spoke to Mr. Harrington,” said Rose, pettishly.
+
+“Asked him where he came from,” Laxley continued his drawl. “He didn’t
+answer, so I thought it polite for another of the twenty to strike in.”
+
+“I must thank you expressly,” said Evan, and achieved a cordial bow.
+
+Rose gave Evan one of her bright looks, and then called the attention
+of Ferdinand Laxley to the fact that he had lost a particular bet made
+among them.
+
+“What bet?” asked Laxley. “About the profession?”
+
+A stream of colour shot over Rose’s face. Her eyes flew nervously from
+Laxley to Evan, and then to Drummond. Laxley appeared pleased as a man
+who has made a witty sally: Evan was outwardly calm, while Drummond
+replied to the mute appeal of Rose, by saying:
+
+“Yes; we’ve all lost. But who could hit it? The lady admits no
+sovereign in our sex.”
+
+“So you’ve been betting about me?” said Aunt Bel. “I’ll settle the
+dispute. Let him who guessed ‘Latin’ pocket the stakes, and, if I guess
+him, let him hand them over to me.”
+
+“Excellent!” cried Rose. “One did guess ‘Latin,’ Aunt Bel! Now, tell us
+which one it was.”
+
+“Not you, my dear. You guessed ‘temper.’”
+
+“No! you dreadful Aunt Bel!”
+
+“Let me see,” said Aunt Bel, seriously. “A young man would not marry a
+woman with Latin, but would not guess it the impediment. Gentlemen
+moderately aged are mad enough to slip their heads under any yoke, but
+see the obstruction. It was a man of forty guessed ‘Latin.’ I request
+the Hon. Hamilton Everard Jocelyn to confirm it.”
+
+Amid laughter and exclamations Hamilton confessed himself the man who
+had guessed Latin to be the cause of Miss Current’s remaining an old
+maid; Rose, crying:
+
+“You really are too clever, Aunt Bel!”
+
+A divergence to other themes ensued, and then Miss Jenny Graine said:
+“Isn’t Juley learning Latin? I should like to join her while I’m here.”
+
+“And so should I,” responded Rose. “My friend Evan is teaching her
+during the intervals of his arduous diplomatic labours. Will you take
+us into your class, Evan?”
+
+“Don’t be silly, girls,” interposed Aunt Bel. “Do you want to graduate
+for my state with your eyes open?”
+
+Evan objected his poor qualifications as a tutor, and Aunt Bel
+remarked, that if Juley learnt Latin at all, she should have regular
+instruction.
+
+“I am quite satisfied,” said Juley, quietly.
+
+“Of course you are,” Rose snubbed her cousin. “So would anybody be. But
+Mama really was talking of a tutor for Juley, if she could find one.
+There’s a school at Bodley; but that’s too far for one of the men to
+come over.”
+
+A school at Bodley! thought Evan, and his probationary years at the
+Cudford Establishment rose before him; and therewith, for the first
+time since his residence at Beckley, the figure of John Raikes.
+
+“There’s a friend of mine,” he said, aloud, “I think if Lady Jocelyn
+does wish Miss Bonner to learn Latin thoroughly, he would do very well
+for the groundwork and would be glad of the employment. He is very
+poor.”
+
+“If he’s poor, and a friend of yours, Evan, we’ll have him,” said Rose:
+“we’ll ride and fetch him.”
+
+“Yes,” added Miss Carrington, “that must be quite sufficient
+qualification.”
+
+Juliana was not gazing gratefully at Evan for his proposal.
+
+Rose asked the name of Evan’s friend. “His name is Raikes,” answered
+Evan. “I don’t know where he is now. He may be at Fallowfield. If Lady
+Jocelyn pleases, I will ride over to-day and see.”
+
+“My dear Evan!” cried Rose, “you don’t mean that absurd figure we saw
+on the cricket-field?” She burst out laughing. “Oh! what fun it will
+be! Let us have him here by all means.”
+
+“I shall not bring him to be laughed at,” said Evan.
+
+“I will remember he is your friend,” Rose returned demurely; and again
+laughed, as she related to Jenny Graine the comic appearance Mr. Raikes
+had presented.
+
+Laxley waited for a pause, and then said: “I have met this Mr. Raikes.
+As a friend of the family, I should protest against his admission here
+in any office whatever into the upper part of the house, at least. He
+is not a gentleman.”
+
+We don’t want teachers to be gentlemen,” observed Rose.
+
+“This fellow is the reverse,” Laxley pronounced, and desired Harry to
+confirm it; but Harry took a gulp of coffee.
+
+“Oblige me by recollecting that I have called him a friend of mine,”
+said Evan.
+
+Rose murmured to him: “Pray forgive me! I forgot.” Laxley hummed
+something about “taste.” Aunt Bel led from the theme by a lively
+anecdote.
+
+After breakfast the party broke into knots, and canvassed Laxley’s
+behaviour to Evan, which was generally condemned. Rose met the young
+men strolling on the lawn; and, with her usual bluntness, accused
+Laxley of wishing to insult her friend.
+
+“I speak to him—do I not?” said Laxley. “What would you have more? I
+admit the obligation of speaking to him when I meet him in your house.
+Out of it—that’s another matter.”
+
+“But what is the cause for your conduct to him, Ferdinand?”
+
+“By Jove!” cried Harry, “I wonder he puts up with it: I wouldn’t. I’d
+have a shot with you, my boy.”
+
+“Extremely honoured,” said Laxley. “But neither you nor I care to fight
+tailors.”
+
+“Tailors!” exclaimed Rose. There was a sharp twitch in her body, as if
+she had been stung or struck.
+
+“Look here, Rose,” said Laxley; “I meet him, he insults me, and to get
+out of the consequences tells me he’s the son of a tailor, and a tailor
+himself; knowing that it ties my hands. Very well, he puts himself hors
+de combat to save his bones. Let him unsay it, and choose whether he’ll
+apologize or not, and I’ll treat him accordingly. At present I’m not
+bound to do more than respect the house I find he has somehow got
+admission to.”
+
+“It’s clear it was that other fellow,” said Harry, casting a
+side-glance up at the Countess’s window.
+
+Rose looked straight at Laxley, and abruptly turned on her heel.
+
+In the afternoon, Lady Jocelyn sent a message to Evan that she wished
+to see him. Rose was with her mother. Lady Jocelyn had only to say,
+that if he thought his friend a suitable tutor for Miss Bonner, they
+would be happy to give him the office at Beckley Court. Glad to
+befriend poor Jack, Evan gave the needful assurances, and was requested
+to go and fetch him forthwith. When he left the room, Rose marched out
+silently beside him.
+
+“Will you ride over with me, Rose?” he said, though scarcely anxious
+that she should see Mr. Raikes immediately.
+
+The singular sharpness of her refusal astonished him none the less.
+
+“Thank you, no; I would rather not.”
+
+A lover is ever ready to suspect that water has been thrown on the fire
+that burns for him in the bosom of his darling. Sudden as the change
+was, it was very decided. His sensitive ears were pained by the absence
+of his Christian name, which her lips had lavishly made sweet to him.
+He stopped in his walk.
+
+“You spoke of riding to Fallowfield. Is it possible you don’t want me
+to bring my friend here? There’s time to prevent it.”
+
+Judged by the Countess de Saldar, the behaviour of this well-born
+English maid was anything but well-bred. She absolutely shrugged her
+shoulders and marched a-head of him into the conservatory, where she
+began smelling at flowers and plucking off sere leaves.
+
+In such cases a young man always follows; as her womanly instinct must
+have told her, for she expressed no surprise when she heard his voice
+two minutes after.
+
+“Rose! what have I done?”
+
+“Nothing at all,” she said, sweeping her eyes over his a moment, and
+resting them on the plants.
+
+“I must have uttered something that has displeased you.”
+
+“No.”
+
+Brief negatives are not re-assuring to a lover’s uneasy mind.
+
+“I beg you—Be frank with me, Rose!”
+
+A flame of the vanished fire shone in her face, but subsided, and she
+shook her head darkly.
+
+“Have you any objection to my friend?”
+
+Her fingers grew petulant with an orange leaf. Eyeing a spot on it, she
+said, hesitatingly:
+
+“Any friend of yours I am sure I should like to help. But—but I wish
+you wouldn’t associate with that—that kind of friend. It gives people
+all sorts of suspicions.”
+
+Evan drew a sharp breath.
+
+The voices of Master Alec and Miss Dorothy were heard shouting on the
+lawn. Alec gave Dorothy the slip and approached the conservatory on
+tip-toe, holding his hand out behind him to enjoin silence and secrecy.
+The pair could witness the scene through the glass before Evan spoke.
+
+“What suspicions?” he asked.
+
+Rose looked up, as if the harshness of his tone pleased her.
+
+“Do you like red roses best, or white?” was her answer, moving to a
+couple of trees in pots.
+
+“Can’t make up your mind?” she continued, and plucked both a white and
+red rose, saying: “There! choose your colour by-and-by,” and ask Juley
+to sew the one you choose in your button-hole.”
+
+She laid the roses in his hand, and walked away. She must have known
+that there was a burden of speech on his tongue. She saw him move to
+follow her, but this time she did not linger, and it may be inferred
+that she wished to hear no more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+IN WHICH EVAN WRITES HIMSELF TAILOR
+
+
+The only philosophic method of discovering what a young woman means,
+and what is in her mind, is that zigzag process of inquiry conducted by
+following her actions, for she can tell you nothing, and if she does
+not want to know a particular matter, it must be a strong beam from the
+central system of facts that shall penetrate her. Clearly there was a
+disturbance in the bosom of Rose Jocelyn, and one might fancy that
+amiable mirror as being wilfully ruffled to confuse a thing it was
+asked by the heavens to reflect: a good fight fought by all young
+people at a certain period, and now and then by an old fool or two. The
+young it seasons and strengthens; the old it happily kills off; and
+thus, what is, is made to work harmoniously with what we would have be.
+
+After quitting Evan, Rose hied to her friend Jenny Graine, and in the
+midst of sweet millinery talk, darted the odd question, whether
+baronets or knights ever were tradesmen: to which Scottish Jenny,
+entirely putting aside the shades of beatified aldermen and the
+illustrious list of mayors that have welcomed royalty, replied that it
+was a thing quite impossible. Rose then wished to know if tailors were
+thought worse of than other tradesmen. Jenny, premising that she was no
+authority, stated she imagined she had heard that they were.
+
+“Why?” said Rose, no doubt because she was desirous of seeing justice
+dealt to that class. But Jenny’s bosom was a smooth reflector of facts
+alone.
+
+Rose pondered, and said with compressed eagerness, “Jenny, do you think
+you could ever bring yourself to consent to care at all for anybody
+ever talked of as belonging to them? Tell me.”
+
+Now Jenny had come to Beckley Court to meet William Harvey: she was
+therefore sufficiently soft to think she could care for him whatever
+his origin were, and composed in the knowledge that no natal stigma was
+upon him to try the strength of her affection. Designing to generalize,
+as women do (and seem tempted to do most when they are secretly
+speaking from their own emotions), she said, shyly moving her
+shoulders, with a forefinger laying down the principle:
+
+“You know, my dear, if one esteemed such a person very very much, and
+were quite sure, without any doubt, that he liked you in return—that
+is, completely liked you, and was quite devoted, and made no
+concealment—I mean, if he was very superior, and like other men—you
+know what I mean—and had none of the cringing ways some of them have—I
+mean; supposing him gay and handsome, taking—”
+
+“Just like William,” Rose cut her short; and we may guess her to have
+had some one in her head for her to conceive that Jenny must be
+speaking of any one in particular.
+
+A young lady who can have male friends, as well as friends of her own
+sex, is not usually pressing and secret in her confidences, possibly
+because such a young lady is not always nursing baby-passions, and does
+not require her sex’s coddling and posseting to keep them alive. With
+Rose love will be full grown when it is once avowed, and will know
+where to go to be nourished.
+
+“Merely an idea I had,” she said to Jenny, who betrayed her mental
+pre-occupation by putting the question for the questions last.
+
+Her Uncle Melville next received a visit from the restless young woman.
+To him she spoke not a word of the inferior classes, but as a special
+favourite of the diplomatist’s, begged a gift of him for her proximate
+birthday. Pushed to explain what it was, she said, “It’s something I
+want you to do for a friend of mine, Uncle Mel.”
+
+The diplomatist instanced a few of the modest requests little maids
+prefer to people they presume to have power to grant.
+
+“No, it’s nothing nonsensical,” said Rose; “I want you to get my friend
+Evan an appointment. You can if you like, you know, Uncle Mel, and it’s
+a shame to make him lose his time when he’s young and does his work so
+well—that you can’t deny! Now, please, be positive, Uncle Mel. You know
+I hate—I have no faith in your ‘nous verrons’. Say you will, and at
+once.”
+
+The diplomatist pretended to have his weather-eye awakened.
+
+“You seem very anxious about feathering the young fellow’s nest,
+Rosey?”
+
+“There,” cried Rose, with the maiden’s mature experience of us, “isn’t
+that just like men? They never can believe you can be entirely
+disinterested!”
+
+“Hulloa!” the diplomatist sung out, “I didn’t say anything, Rosey.”
+
+She reddened at her hastiness, but retrieved it by saying:
+
+“No, but you listen to your wife; you know you do, Uncle Mel; and now
+there’s Aunt Shorne and the other women, who make you think just what
+they like about me, because they hate Mama.”
+
+“Don’t use strong words, my dear.”
+
+“But it’s abominable!” cried Rose. “They asked Mama yesterday what
+Evan’s being here meant? Why, of course, he’s your secretary, and my
+friend, and Mama very properly stopped them, and so will I! As for me,
+I intend to stay at Beckley, I can tell you, dear old boy.” Uncle Mel
+had a soft arm round his neck, and was being fondled. “And I’m not
+going to be bred up to go into a harem, you may be sure.”
+
+The diplomatist whistled, “You talk your mother with a vengeance,
+Rosey.”
+
+“And she’s the only sensible woman I know,” said Rose. “Now promise
+me—in earnest. Don’t let them mislead you, for you know you’re quite a
+child, out of your politics, and I shall take you in hand myself. Why,
+now, think, Uncle Mel! wouldn’t any girl, as silly as they make me out,
+hold her tongue—not talk of him, as I do; and because I really do feel
+for him as a friend. See the difference between me and Juley!”
+
+It was a sad sign if Rose was growing a bit of a hypocrite, but this
+instance of Juliana’s different manner of showing her feelings toward
+Evan would have quieted suspicion in shrewder men, for Juliana watched
+Evan’s shadow, and it was thought by two or three at Beckley Court,
+that Evan would be conferring a benefit on all by carrying off the
+romantically-inclined but little presentable young lady.
+
+The diplomatist, with a placid “Well, well!” ultimately promised to do
+his best for Rose’s friend, and then Rose said, “Now I leave you to the
+Countess,” and went and sat with her mother and Drummond Forth. The
+latter was strange in his conduct to Evan. While blaming Laxley’s
+unmannered behaviour, he seemed to think Laxley had grounds for it, and
+treated Evan with a sort of cynical deference that had, for the last
+couple of days, exasperated Rose.
+
+“Mama, you must speak to Ferdinand,” she burst upon the conversation,
+“Drummond is afraid to—he can stand by and see my friend insulted.
+Ferdinand is insufferable with his pride—he’s jealous of everybody who
+has manners, and Drummond approves him, and I will not bear it.”
+
+Lady Jocelyn hated household worries, and quietly remarked that the
+young men must fight it out together.
+
+“No, but it’s your duty to interfere, Mama,” said Rose; “and I know you
+will when I tell you that Ferdinand declares my friend Evan is a
+tradesman—beneath his notice. Why, it insults me!”
+
+Lady Jocelyn looked out from a lofty window on such veritable squabbles
+of boys and girls as Rose revealed.
+
+“Can’t you help them to run on smoothly while they’re here?” she said
+to Drummond, and he related the scene at the Green Dragon.
+
+“I think I heard he was the son of Sir Something Harrington, Devonshire
+people,” said Lady Jocelyn.
+
+“Yes, he is,” cried Rose, “or closely related. I’m sure I understood
+the Countess that it was so. She brought the paper with the death in it
+to us in London, and shed tears over it.”
+
+“She showed it in the paper, and shed tears over it?” said Drummond,
+repressing an inclination to laugh. “Was her father’s title given in
+full?”
+
+“Sir Abraham Harrington, replied Rose. “I think she said father, if the
+word wasn’t too common-place for her.”
+
+“You can ask old Tom when he comes, if you are anxious to know,” said
+Drummond to her ladyship. “His brother married one of the sisters. By
+the way, he’s coming, too. He ought to clear up the mystery.”
+
+“Now you’re sneering, Drummond,” said Rose: “for you know there’s no
+mystery to clear up.”
+
+Drummond and Lady Jocelyn began talking of old Tom Cogglesby, whom, it
+appeared, the former knew intimately, and the latter had known.
+
+“The Cogglesbys are sons of a cobbler, Rose,” said Lady Jocelyn. “You
+must try and be civil to them.”
+
+“Of course I shall, Mama,” Rose answered seriously.
+
+“And help the poor Countess to bear their presence as well as
+possible,” said Drummond. “The Harringtons have had to mourn a dreadful
+mesalliance. Pity the Countess!”
+
+“Oh! the Countess! the Countess!” exclaimed Rose to Drummond’s pathetic
+shake of the head. She and Drummond were fully agreed about the
+Countess; Drummond mimicking the lady: “In verity, she is most
+mellifluous!” while Rose sugared her lips and leaned gracefully forward
+with “De Saldar, let me petition you—since we must endure our
+title—since it is not to be your Louisa?” and her eyes sought the
+ceiling, and her hand slowly melted into her drapery, as the Countess
+was wont to effect it.
+
+Lady Jocelyn laughed, but said: “You’re too hard upon the Countess. The
+female euphuist is not to be met with every day. It’s a different kind
+from the Precieuse. She is not a Precieuse. She has made a capital
+selection of her vocabulary from Johnson, and does not work it badly,
+if we may judge by Harry and Melville. Euphuism—[affectation D.W.]—in
+‘woman’ is the popular ideal of a Duchess. She has it by nature, or she
+has studied it: and if so, you must respect her abilities.”
+
+“Yes—Harry!” said Rose, who was angry at a loss of influence over her
+rough brother, “any one could manage Harry! and Uncle Mel’s a goose.
+You should see what a ‘female euphuist’ Dorry is getting. She says in
+the Countess’s hearing: ‘Rose! I should in verity wish to play, if it
+were pleasing to my sweet cousin?’ I’m ready to die with laughing. I
+don’t do it, Mama.”
+
+The Countess, thus being discussed, was closeted with old Mrs. Bonner:
+not idle. Like Hannibal in Italy, she had crossed her Alps in attaining
+Beckley Court, and here in the enemy’s country the wary general found
+herself under the necessity of throwing up entrenchments to fly to in
+case of defeat. Sir Abraham Harrington of Torquay, who had helped her
+to cross the Alps, became a formidable barrier against her return.
+
+Meantime Evan was riding over to Fallowfield, and as he rode under
+black visions between the hedgeways crowned with their hop-garlands, a
+fragrance of roses saluted his nostril, and he called to mind the red
+and the white the peerless representative of the two had given him, and
+which he had thrust sullenly in his breast-pocket and he drew them out
+to look at them reproachfully and sigh farewell to all the roses of
+life, when in company with them he found in his hand the forgotten
+letter delivered to him on the cricket-field the day of the memorable
+match. He smelt at the roses, and turned the letter this way and that.
+His name was correctly worded on the outside. With an odd reluctance to
+open it, he kept trifling over the flowers, and then broke the broad
+seal, and these are the words that met his eyes:
+
+“Mr. EVAN HARRINGTON.
+
+“You have made up your mind to be a tailor, instead of a Tomnoddy.
+You’re right. Not too many men in the world—plenty of nincompoops.
+
+“Don’t be made a weathercock of by a parcel of women. I want to find a
+man worth something. If you go on with it, you shall end by riding in
+your carriage, and cutting it as fine as any of them. I’ll take care
+your belly is not punished while you’re about it.
+
+“From the time your name is over your shop, I give you £300 per annum.
+
+“Or stop. There’s nine of you. They shall have £40. per annum apiece, 9
+times 40, eh? That’s better than £300., if you know how to reckon.
+Don’t you wish it was ninety-nine tailors to a man! I could do that
+too, and it would not break me; so don’t be a proud young ass, or I’ll
+throw my money to the geese. Lots of them in the world. How many geese
+to a tailor?
+
+“Go on for five years, and I double it.
+
+“Give it up, and I give you up.
+
+“No question about me. The first tailor can be paid his £40 in advance,
+by applying at the offices of Messrs. Grist, Gray’s Inn Square, Gray’s
+Inn. Let him say he is tailor No. 1, and show this letter, signed
+Agreed, with your name in full at bottom. This will do—money will be
+paid—no questions one side or other. So on—the whole nine. The end of
+the year they can give a dinner to their acquaintance. Send in bill to
+Messrs. Grist.
+
+“The advice to you to take the cash according to terms mentioned is
+advice of
+
+“A FRIEND.
+
+“P.S. You shall have your wine. Consult among yourselves, and carry it
+by majority what wine it’s to be. Five carries it. Dozen and half per
+tailor, per annum—that’s the limit.”
+
+It was certainly a very hot day. The pores of his skin were prickling,
+and his face was fiery; and yet he increased his pace, and broke into a
+wild gallop for a mile or so; then suddenly turned his horse’s head
+back for Beckley. The secret of which evolution was, that he had caught
+the idea of a plotted insult of Laxley’s in the letter, for when the
+blood is up we are drawn the way the tide sets strongest, and Evan was
+prepared to swear that Laxley had written the letter, because he was
+burning to chastise the man who had injured him with Rose.
+
+Sure that he was about to confirm his suspicion, he read it again,
+gazed upon Beckley Court in the sultry light, and turned for
+Fallowfield once more, devising to consult Mr. John Raikes on the
+subject.
+
+The letter had a smack of crabbed age hardly counterfeit. The savour of
+an old eccentric’s sour generosity was there. Evan fell into bitter
+laughter at the idea of Rose glancing over his shoulder and asking him
+what nine of him to a man meant. He heard her clear voice pursuing him.
+He could not get away from the mocking sound of Rose beseeching him to
+instruct her on that point. How if the letter were genuine? He began to
+abhor the sight and touch of the paper, for it struck division cold as
+death between him and his darling. He saw now the immeasurable hopes
+his residence at Beckley had lured him to. Rose had slightly awakened
+him: this letter was blank day to his soul. He saw the squalid shop,
+the good, stern, barren-spirited mother, the changeless drudgery, the
+existence which seemed indeed no better than what the ninth of a man
+was fit for. The influence of his mother came on him once more. Dared
+he reject the gift if true? No spark of gratitude could he feel, but
+chained, dragged at the heels of his fate, he submitted to think it
+true; resolving the next moment that it was a fabrication and a trap:
+but he flung away the roses.
+
+As idle as a painted cavalier upon a painted drop-scene, the figure of
+Mr. John Raikes was to be observed leaning with crossed legs against a
+shady pillar of the Green Dragon; eyeing alternately, with an
+indifference he did not care to conceal, the assiduous pecking in the
+dust of some cocks and hens that had strayed from the yard of the inn,
+and the sleepy blinking in the sun of an old dog at his feet: nor did
+Evan’s appearance discompose the sad sedateness of his demeanour.
+
+“Yes; I am here still,” he answered Evan’s greeting, with a flaccid
+gesture. “Don’t excite me too much. A little at a time. I can’t bear
+it!”
+
+“How now? What is it now, Jack?” said Evan.
+
+Mr. Raikes pointed at the dog. “I’ve made a bet with myself he won’t
+wag his tail within the next ten minutes. I beg of you, Harrington, to
+remain silent for both our sakes.”
+
+Evan was induced to look at the dog, and the dog looked at him, and
+gently moved his tail.
+
+“I’ve lost!” cried Raikes, in languid anguish. “He’s getting excited.
+He’ll go mad. We’re not accustomed to this in Fallowfield.”
+
+Evan dismounted, and was going to tell him the news he had for him,
+when his attention was distracted by the sight of Rose’s maid, Polly
+Wheedle, splendidly bonneted, who slipped past them into the inn, after
+repulsing Jack’s careless attempt to caress her chin; which caused him
+to tell Evan that he could not get on without the society of
+intellectual women.
+
+Evan called a boy to hold the horse.
+
+“Have you seen her before, Jack?”
+
+Jack replied: “Once. Your pensioner up-stairs she comes to visit. I do
+suspect there kinship is betwixt them. Ay! one might swear them
+sisters. She’s a relief to the monotony of the petrified street—the old
+man with the brown-gaitered legs and the doubled-up old woman with the
+crutch. I heard the London horn this morning.”
+
+Evan thrust the letter in his hands, telling him to read and form an
+opinion on it, and went in the track of Miss Wheedle.
+
+Mr. Raikes resumed his station against the pillar, and held the letter
+out on a level with his thigh. Acting (as it was his nature to do off
+the stage), he had not exaggerated his profound melancholy. Of a light
+soil and with a tropical temperament, he had exhausted all lively
+recollection of his brilliant career, and, in the short time since Evan
+had parted with him, sunk abjectly down into the belief that he was
+fixed in Fallowfield for life. His spirit pitied for agitation and
+events. The horn of the London coach had sounded distant metropolitan
+glories in the ears of the exile in rustic parts.
+
+Sighing heavily, Raikes opened the letter, in simple obedience to the
+wishes of his friend; for he would have preferred to stand
+contemplating his own state of hopeless stagnation. The sceptical
+expression he put on when he had read the letter through must not
+deceive us. John Raikes had dreamed of a beneficent eccentric old
+gentleman for many years: one against whom, haply, he had bumped in a
+crowded thoroughfare, and had with cordial politeness begged pardon of;
+had then picked up his walking-stick; restored it, venturing a witty
+remark; retired, accidentally dropping his card-case; subsequently, to
+his astonishment and gratification, receiving a pregnant missive from
+that old gentleman’s lawyer. Or it so happened that Mr. Raikes met the
+old gentleman at a tavern, and, by the exercise of a signal dexterity,
+relieved him from a bone in his throat, and reluctantly imparted his
+address on issuing from the said tavern. Or perhaps it was a lonely
+highway where the old gentleman walked, and John Raikes had his name in
+the papers for a deed of heroism, nor was man ungrateful. Since he had
+eaten up his uncle, this old gentleman of his dreams walked in town and
+country—only, and alas! Mr. Raikes could never encounter him in the
+flesh. The muscles of his face, therefore, are no index to the real
+feelings of the youth when he had thoroughly mastered the contents of
+the letter, and reflected that the dream of his luck—his angelic old
+gentleman—had gone and wantonly bestowed himself upon Evan Harrington,
+instead of the expectant and far worthier John Raikes. Worthier
+inasmuch as he gave him credence for existing long ere he knew of him
+and beheld him manifest.
+
+Raikes retreated to the vacant parlour of the Green Dragon, and there
+Evan found him staring at the unfolded letter, his head between his
+cramped fists, with a contraction of his mouth. Evan was troubled by
+what he had seen up-stairs, and did not speak till Jack looked up and
+said, “Oh, there you are.”
+
+“Well, what do you think, Jack?”
+
+“Yes—it’s all right,” Raikes rejoined in most matter-of-course tone,
+and then he stepped to the window, and puffed a very deep breath
+indeed, and glanced from the straight line of the street to the
+heavens, with whom, injured as he was, he felt more at home now that he
+knew them capable of miracles.
+
+“Is it a bad joke played upon me?” said Evan.
+
+Raikes upset a chair. “It’s quite childish. You’re made a gentleman for
+life, and you ask if it’s a joke played upon you! It’s maddening!
+There—there goes my hat!”
+
+With a vehement kick, Mr. Raikes despatched his ancient head-gear to
+the other end of the room, saying that he must have some wine, and
+would; and disdainful was his look at Evan, when the latter attempted
+to reason him into economy. He ordered the wine; drank a glass, which
+coloured a new mood in him; and affecting a practical manner, said:
+
+“I confess I have been a little hurt with you, Harrington. You left me
+stranded on the desert isle. I thought myself abandoned. I thought I
+should never see anything but the lengthening of an endless bill on my
+landlady’s face—my sole planet. I was resigned till I heard my friend
+‘to-lool!’ this morning. He kindled recollection. But, this is a tidy
+Port, and that was a delectable sort of young lady that you were riding
+with when we parted last! She laughs like the true metal. I suppose you
+know it’s the identical damsel I met the day before, and owe it to for
+my run on the downs—I’ve a compliment ready made for her.”
+
+“You think that letter written in good faith?” said Evan.
+
+“Look here.” Mr. Raikes put on a calmness. “You got up the other night,
+and said you were a tailor—a devotee of the cabbage and the goose. Why
+the notion didn’t strike me is extraordinary—I ought to have known my
+man. However, the old gentleman who gave the supper—he’s evidently one
+of your beastly rich old ruffianly republicans—spent part of his time
+in America, I dare say. Put two and two together.”
+
+But as Harrington desired plain prose, Mr. Raikes tamed his imagination
+to deliver it. He pointed distinctly at the old gentleman who gave the
+supper as the writer of the letter. Evan, in return, confided to him
+his history and present position, and Mr. Raikes, without cooling to
+his fortunate friend, became a trifle patronizing.
+
+“You said your father—I think I remember at old Cudford’s—was a cavalry
+officer, a bold dragoon?”
+
+“I did,” replied Evan. “I told a lie.”
+
+“We knew it; but we feared your prowess, Harrington.”
+
+Then they talked over the singular letter uninterruptedly, and Evan,
+weak among his perplexities of position and sentiment: wanting money
+for the girl up-stairs, for this distasteful comrade’s bill at the
+Green Dragon, and for his own immediate requirements, and with the bee
+buzzing of Rose in his ears: “She despises you,” consented in a
+desperation ultimately to sign his name to it, and despatch Jack
+forthwith to Messrs. Grist.
+
+“You’ll find it’s an imposition,” he said, beginning less to think it
+so, now that his name was put to the hated monstrous thing; which also
+now fell to pricking at curiosity. For he was in the early steps of his
+career, and if his lady, holding to pride, despised him—as, he was
+tortured into the hypocrisy of confessing, she justly might, why, then,
+unless he was the sport of a farceur, here seemed a gilding of the path
+of duty: he could be serviceable to friends. His claim on fair young
+Rose’s love had grown in the short while so prodigiously asinine that
+it was a minor matter to constitute himself an old eccentric’s puppet.
+
+“No more an imposition than it’s 50 of Virgil,” quoth the rejected
+usher.
+
+“It smells of a plot,” said Evan.
+
+“It’s the best joke that will be made in my time,” said Mr. Raikes,
+rubbing his hands.
+
+“And now listen to your luck,” said Evan; “I wish mine were like it!”
+and Jack heard of Lady Jocelyn’s offer. He heard also that the young
+lady he was to instruct was an heiress, and immediately inspected his
+garments, and showed the sacred necessity there was for him to refit in
+London, under the hands of scientific tailors. Evan wrote him an
+introduction to Mr. Goren, counted out the contents of his purse (which
+Jack had reduced in his study of the pastoral game of skittles, he
+confessed), and calculated in a niggardly way, how far it would go to
+supply the fellow’s wants; sighing, as he did it, to think of Jack
+installed at Beckley Court, while Jack, comparing his luck with Evan’s,
+had discovered it to be dismally inferior.
+
+“Oh, confound those bellows you keep blowing!” he exclaimed. “I wish to
+be decently polite, Harrington, but you annoy me. Excuse me, pray, but
+the most unexampled case of a lucky beggar that ever was known—and to
+hear him panting and ready to whimper!—it’s outrageous. You’ve only to
+put up your name, and there you are—an independent gentleman! By Jove!
+this isn’t such a dull world. John Raikes! thou livest in times. I feel
+warm in the sun of your prosperity, Harrington. Now listen to me.
+Propound thou no inquiries anywhere about the old fellow who gave the
+supper. Humour his whim—he won’t have it. All Fallowfield is paid to
+keep him secret; I know it for a fact. I plied my rustic friends every
+night. ‘Eat you yer victuals, and drink yer beer, and none o’ yer
+pryin’s and peerin’s among we!’ That’s my rebuff from Farmer Broadmead.
+And that old boy knows more than he will tell. I saw his cunning old
+eye on-cock. Be silent, Harrington. Let discretion be the seal of thy
+luck.”
+
+“You can reckon on my silence,” said Evan. “I believe in no such folly.
+Men don’t do these things.”
+
+“Ha!” went Mr. Raikes contemptuously.
+
+Of the two he was the foolisher fellow; but quacks have cured
+incomprehensible maladies, and foolish fellows have an instinct for
+eccentric actions.
+
+Telling Jack to finish the wine, Evan rose to go.
+
+“Did you order the horse to be fed?”
+
+“Did I order the feeding of the horse?” said Jack, rising and yawning.
+“No, I forgot him. Who can think of horses now?”
+
+“Poor brute!” muttered Evan, and went out to see to him.
+
+The ostler had required no instructions to give the horse a feed of
+corn. Evan mounted, and rode out of the yard to where Jack was
+standing, bare-headed, in his old posture against the pillar, of which
+the shade had rounded, and the evening sun shone full on him over a
+black cloud. He now looked calmly gay.
+
+“I’m laughing at the agricultural Broadmead!” he said: “‘None o’ yer
+pryin’s and peerin’s!’ He thought my powers of amusing prodigious.
+‘Dang ’un, he do maak a chap laugh!’ Well, Harrington, that sort of
+homage isn’t much, I admit.”
+
+Raikes pursued: “There’s something in a pastoral life, after all.”
+
+“Pastoral!” muttered Evan. “I was speaking of you at Beckley, and hope
+when you’re there you won’t make me regret my introduction of you. Keep
+your mind on old Cudford’s mutton-bone.”
+
+“I perfectly understood you,” said Jack. “I’m Presumed to be in luck.
+Ingratitude is not my fault—I’m afraid ambition is!”
+
+“Console yourself with it or what you can get till we meet—here or in
+London. But the Dragon shall be the address for both of us,” Evan said,
+and nodded, trotting off.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+IN WHICH EVAN CALLS HIMSELF GENTLEMAN
+
+
+The young cavalier perused that letter again in memory. Genuine, or a
+joke of the enemy, it spoke wakening facts to him. He leapt from the
+spell Rose had encircled him with. Strange that he should have rushed
+into his dream with eyes open! But he was fully awake now. He would
+speak his last farewell to her, and so end the earthly happiness he
+paid for in deep humiliation, and depart into that gray cold mist where
+his duty lay. It is thus that young men occasionally design to burst
+from the circle of the passions, and think that they have done it, when
+indeed they are but making the circle more swiftly. Here was Evan
+mouthing his farewell to Rose, using phrases so profoundly humble, that
+a listener would have taken them for bitter irony. He said adieu to
+her,—pronouncing it with a pathos to melt scornful princesses. He tried
+to be honest, and was as much so as his disease permitted.
+
+The black cloud had swallowed the sun; and turning off to the short cut
+across the downs, Evan soon rode between the wind and the storm. He
+could see the heavy burden breasting the beacon-point, round which
+curled leaden arms, and a low internal growl saluted him advancing. The
+horse laid back his ears. A last gust from the opposing quarter shook
+the furzes and the clumps of long pale grass, and straight fell columns
+of rattling white rain, and in a minute he was closed in by a hissing
+ring. Men thus pelted abandon without protest the hope of retaining a
+dry particle of clothing on their persons. Completely drenched, the
+track lost, everything in dense gloom beyond the white enclosure that
+moved with him, Evan flung the reins to the horse, and curiously
+watched him footing on; for physical discomfort balanced his mental
+perturbation, and he who had just been chafing was now quite calm.
+
+Was that a shepherd crouched under the thorn? The place betokened a
+shepherd, but it really looked like a bundle of the opposite sex; and
+it proved to be a woman gathered up with her gown over her head.
+Apparently, Mr. Evan Harrington was destined for these encounters. The
+thunder rolled as he stopped by her side and called out to her. She
+heard him, for she made a movement, but without sufficiently
+disengaging her head of its covering to show him a part of her face.
+
+Bellowing against the thunder, Evan bade her throw back her garment,
+and stand and give him up her arms, that he might lift her on the horse
+behind him.
+
+There came a muffled answer, on a big sob, as it seemed. And as if
+heaven paused to hear, the storm was mute.
+
+Could he have heard correctly? The words he fancied he had heard sobbed
+were:
+
+“Best bonnet.”
+
+The elements hereupon crashed deep and long from end to end, like a
+table of Titans passing a jest.
+
+Rain-drops, hard as hail, were spattering a pool on her head. Evan
+stooped his shoulder, seized the soaked garment, and pulled it back,
+revealing the features of Polly Wheedle, and the splendid bonnet in
+ruins—all limp and stained.
+
+Polly blinked at him penitentially.
+
+“Oh, Mr. Harrington; oh, ain’t I punished!” she whimpered.
+
+In truth, the maid resembled a well-watered poppy.
+
+Evan told her to stand up close to the horse, and Polly stood up close,
+looking like a creature that expected a whipping. She was suffering,
+poor thing, from that abject sense of the lack of a circumference,
+which takes the pride out of women more than anything. Note, that in
+all material fashions, as in all moral observances, women demand a
+circumference, and enlarge it more and more as civilization advances.
+Respect the mighty instinct, however mysterious it seem.
+
+“Oh, Mr. Harrington, don’t laugh at me,” said Polly.
+
+Evan assured her that he was seriously examining her bonnet.
+
+“It’s the bonnet of a draggletail,” said Polly, giving up her arms, and
+biting her under-lip for the lift.
+
+With some display of strength, Evan got the lean creature up behind
+him, and Polly settled there, and squeezed him tightly with her arms,
+excusing the liberty she took.
+
+They mounted the beacon, and rode along the ridge whence the West
+became visible, and a washed edge of red over Beckley Church spire and
+the woods of Beckley Court.
+
+“And what have you been doing to be punished? What brought you here?”
+said Evan.
+
+“Somebody drove me to Fallowfield to see my poor sister Susan,”
+returned Polly, half crying.
+
+“Well, did he bring you here and leave you?
+
+“No: he wasn’t true to his appointment the moment I wanted to go back;
+and I, to pay him out, I determined I’d walk it where he shouldn’t
+overtake me, and on came the storm... And my gown spoilt, and such a
+bonnet!”
+
+“Who was the somebody?”
+
+“He’s a Mr. Nicholas Frim, sir.”
+
+“Mr. Nicholas Frim will be very unhappy, I should think.”
+
+“Yes, that’s one comfort,” said Polly ruefully, drying her eyes.
+
+Closely surrounding a young man as a young woman must be when both are
+on the same horse, they, as a rule, talk confidentially together in a
+very short time. His “Are you cold?” when Polly shivered, and her “Oh,
+no; not very,” and a slight screwing of her body up to him, as she
+spoke, to assure him and herself of it, soon made them intimate.
+
+“I think Mr. Nicholas Frim mustn’t see us riding into Beckley,” said
+Evan.
+
+“Oh, my gracious! Ought I to get down, sir?” Polly made no move,
+however.
+
+“Is he jealous?”
+
+“Only when I make him, he is.”
+
+“That’s very naughty of you.”
+
+“Yes, I know it is—all the Wheedles are. Mother says, we never go right
+till we’ve once got in a pickle.”
+
+“You ought to go right from this hour,” said Evan.
+
+“It’s ’dizenzy—does it,” said Polly. “And then we’re ashamed to show
+it. My poor Susan went to stay with her aunt at Bodley, and then at our
+cousin’s at Hillford, and then she was off to Lymport to drown her poor
+self, I do believe, when you met her. And all because we can’t bear to
+be seen when we’re in any of our pickles. I wish you wouldn’t look at
+me, Mr. Harrington.”
+
+“You look very pretty.”
+
+“It’s quite impossible I can now,” said Polly, with a wretched effort
+to spread open her collar. “I can see myself a fright, like my Miss
+Rose did, making a face in the looking-glass when I was undressing her
+last night. But, do you know, I would much rather Nicholas saw us than
+somebody!
+
+“Who’s that?”
+
+“Miss Bonner. She’d never forgive me.”
+
+“Is she so strict?”
+
+“She only uses servants for spies,” said Polly. “And since my Miss Rose
+come—though I’m up a step—I’m still a servant, and Miss Bonner’d be in
+a fury to see my—though I’m sure we’re quite respectable, Mr.
+Harrington—my having hold of you as I’m obliged to, and can’t help
+myself. But she’d say I ought to tumble off rather than touch her
+engaged with a little finger.”
+
+“Her engaged?” cried Evan.
+
+“Ain’t you, sir?” quoth Polly. “I understand you were going to be, from
+my lady, the Countess. We all think so at Beckley. Why, look how Miss
+Bonner looks at you, and she’s sure to have plenty of money.”
+
+This was Polly’s innocent way of bringing out a word about her own
+young mistress.
+
+Evan controlled any denial of his pretensions to the hand of Miss
+Bonner. He said: “Is it your mistress’s habit to make faces in the
+looking-glass?”
+
+“I’ll tell you how it happened,” said Polly. “But I’m afraid I’m in
+your way, sir. Shall I get off now?”
+
+“Not by any means,” said Evan. “Make your arm tighter.”
+
+“Will that do?” asked Polly.
+
+Evan looked round and met her appealing face, over which the damp locks
+of hair straggled. The maid was fair: it was fortunate that he was
+thinking of the mistress.
+
+“Speak on,” said Evan, but Polly put the question whether her face did
+not want washing, and so earnestly that he had to regard it again, and
+compromised the case by saying that it wanted kissing by Nicholas Frim,
+which set Polly’s lips in a pout.
+
+“I’m sure it wants kissing by nobody,” she said, adding with a spasm of
+passion: “Oh! I know the colours of my bonnet are all smeared over it,
+and I’m a dreadful fright.”
+
+Evan failed to adopt the proper measures to make Miss Wheedle’s mind
+easy with regard to her appearance, and she commenced her story rather
+languidly.
+
+“My Miss Rose—what was it I was going to tell? Oh!—my Miss Rose. You
+must know, Mr. Harrington, she’s very fond of managing; I can see that,
+though I haven’t known her long before she gave up short frocks; and
+she said to Mr. Laxley, who’s going to marry her some day, ‘She didn’t
+like my lady, the Countess, taking Mr. Harry to herself like that.’ I
+can’t a-bear to speak his name, but I suppose he’s not a bit more
+selfish than the rest of men. So Mr. Laxley said—just like the jealousy
+of men—they needn’t talk of women! I’m sure nobody can tell what we
+have to put up with. We mustn’t look out of this eye, or out of the
+other, but they’re up and—oh, dear me! there’s such a to-do as never
+was known—all for nothing!”
+
+“My good girl!” said Evan, recalling her to the subject-matter with all
+the patience he could command.
+
+“Where was I?” Polly travelled meditatively back. “I do feel a little
+cold.”
+
+“Come closer,” said Evan. “Take this handkerchief—it’s the only dry
+thing I have—cover your chest with it.”
+
+“The shoulders feel wettest,” Polly replied, “and they can’t be helped.
+I’ll tie it round my neck, if you’ll stop, sir. There, now I’m warmer.”
+
+To show how concisely women can narrate when they feel warmer, Polly
+started off:
+
+“So, you know, Mr. Harrington, Mr. Laxley said—he said to Miss Rose,
+‘You have taken her brother, and she has taken yours.’ And Miss Rose
+said, ‘That was her own business, and nobody else’s.’ And Mr. Laxley
+said, ‘He was glad she thought it a fair exchange.’ I heard it all! And
+then Miss Rose said—for she can be in a passion about some things—‘What
+do you mean, Ferdinand,’ was her words, ‘I insist upon your speaking
+out.’ Miss Rose always will call gentlemen by their Christian names
+when she likes them; that’s always a sign with her. And he wouldn’t
+tell her. And Miss Rose got awful angry, and she’s clever, is my Miss
+Rose, for what does she do, Mr. Harrington, but begins praising you up
+so that she knew it must make him mad, only because men can’t abide
+praise of another man when it’s a woman that says it—meaning, young
+lady; for my Miss Rose has my respect, however familiar she lets
+herself be to us that she likes. The others may go and drown
+themselves. Are you took ill, sir?”
+
+“No,” said Evan, “I was only breathing.”
+
+“The doctors say it’s bad to take such long breaths,” remarked artless
+Polly. “Perhaps my arms are pressing you?”
+
+It’s the best thing they can do,” murmured Evan, dejectedly.
+
+“What, sir?”
+
+“Go and drown themselves.”
+
+Polly screwed her lips, as if she had a pin between them, and
+continued: “Miss Rose was quite sensible when she praised you as her
+friend; she meant it—every word; and then sudden what does Mr. Laxley
+do, but say you was something else besides friend—worse or better; and
+she was silent, which made him savage, I could hear by his voice. And
+he said, Mr. Harrington, ‘You meant it if she did not.’ ‘No,’ says she,
+‘I know better; he’s as honest as the day.’ Out he flew and said such
+things: he said, Mr. Harrington, you wasn’t fit to be Miss Rose’s
+friend, even. Then she said, she heard he had told lies about you to
+her Mama, and her aunts; but her Mama, my lady, laughed at him, and she
+at her aunts. Then he said you—oh, abominable of him!”
+
+“What did he say?” asked Evan, waking up.
+
+“Why, if I were to tell my Miss Rose some things of him,” Polly went
+on, “she’d never so much as speak to him another instant.”
+
+“What did he say?” Evan repeated.
+
+“I hate him!” cried Polly. “It’s Mr. Laxley that misleads Mr. Harry,
+who has got his good nature, and means no more harm than he can help.
+Oh, I didn’t hear what he said of you, sir. Only I know it was
+abominable, because Miss Rose was so vexed, and you were her dearest
+friend.”
+
+“Well, and about the looking-glass?”
+
+“That was at night, Mr. Harrington, when I was undressing of her. Miss
+Rose has a beautiful figure, and no need of lacing. But I’d better get
+down now.”
+
+“For heaven’s sake, stay where you are.”
+
+“I tell her she stands as if she’d been drilled for a soldier,” Polly
+quietly continued. “You’re squeezing my arm with your elbow, Mr.
+Harrington. It didn’t hurt me. So when I had her nearly undressed, we
+were talking about this and that, and you amongst ’em—and I, you know,
+rather like you, sir, if you’ll not think me too bold—she started off
+by asking me what was the nickname people gave to tailors. It was one
+of her whims. I told her they were called snips—I’m off!”
+
+Polly gave a shriek. The horse had reared as if violently stung.
+
+“Go on,” said Evan. “Hold hard, and go on.”
+
+“Snips—Oh! and I told her they were called snips. It is a word that
+seems to make you hate the idea. I shouldn’t like to hear my intended
+called snip. Oh, he’s going to gallop!”
+
+And off in a gallop Polly was borne.
+
+“Well,” said Evan, “well?”
+
+“I can’t, Mr. Harrington; I have to press you so,” cried Polly; “and
+I’m bounced so—I shall bite my tongue.”
+
+After a sharp stretch, the horse fell to a canter, and then trotted
+slowly, and allowed Polly to finish.
+
+“So Miss Rose was standing sideways to the glass, and she turned her
+neck, and just as I’d said ‘snip,’ I saw her saying it in the glass;
+and you never saw anything so funny. It was enough to make anybody
+laugh; but Miss Rose, she seemed as if she couldn’t forget how ugly it
+had made her look. She covered her face with her hands, and she
+shuddered! It is a word—snip! that makes you seem to despise yourself.”
+
+Beckley was now in sight from the edge of the downs, lying in its
+foliage dark under the grey sky backed by motionless mounds of vapour.
+Miss Wheedle to her great surprise was suddenly though safely dropped;
+and on her return to the ground the damsel instantly “knew her place,”
+and curtseyed becoming gratitude for his kindness; but he was off in a
+fiery gallop, the gall of Demogorgon in his soul.
+
+What’s that the leaves of the proud old trees of Beckley Court hiss as
+he sweeps beneath them? What has suddenly cut him short? Is he
+diminished in stature? Are the lackeys sneering? The storm that has
+passed has marvellously chilled the air.
+
+His sister, the Countess, once explained to him what Demogorgon was, in
+the sensation it entailed. “You are skinned alive!” said the Countess.
+Evan was skinned alive. Fly, wretched young man! Summon your pride, and
+fly! Fly, noble youth, for whom storms specially travel to tell you
+that your mistress makes faces in the looking-glass! Fly where human
+lips and noses are not scornfully distorted, and get thee a new skin,
+and grow and attain to thy natural height in a more genial sphere! You,
+ladies and gentlemen, who may have had a matter to conceal, and find
+that it is oozing out: you, whose skeleton is seen stalking beside you,
+you know what it is to be breathed upon: you, too, are skinned alive:
+but this miserable youth is not only flayed, he is doomed calmly to
+contemplate the hideous image of himself burning on the face of her he
+loves; making beauty ghastly. In vain—for he is two hours behind the
+dinner-bell—Mr. Burley, the butler, bows and offers him viands and
+wine. How can he eat, with the phantom of Rose there, covering her
+head, shuddering, loathing him? But he must appear in company: he has a
+coat, if he has not a skin. Let him button it, and march boldly. Our
+comedies are frequently youth’s tragedies. We will smile reservedly as
+we mark Mr. Evan Harrington step into the midst of the fair society of
+the drawing-room. Rose is at the piano. Near her reclines the Countess
+de Saldar, fanning the languors from her cheeks, with a word for the
+diplomatist on one side, a whisper for Sir John Loring on the other,
+and a very quiet pair of eyes for everybody. Providence, she is sure,
+is keeping watch to shield her sensitive cuticle; and she is besides
+exquisitely happy, albeit outwardly composed: for, in the room sits his
+Grace the Duke of Belfield, newly arrived. He is talking to her sister,
+Mrs. Strike, masked by Miss Current. The wife of the Major has come
+this afternoon, and Andrew Cogglesby, who brought her, chats with Lady
+Jocelyn like an old acquaintance.
+
+Evan shakes the hands of his relatives. Who shall turn over the leaves
+of the fair singer’s music-book? The young men are in the
+billiard-room: Drummond is engaged in converse with a lovely person
+with Giorgione hair, which the Countess intensely admires, and asks the
+diplomatist whether he can see a soupçon of red in it. The
+diplomatist’s taste is for dark beauties: the Countess is dark.
+
+Evan must do duty by Rose. And now occurred a phenomenon in him.
+Instead of shunning her, as he had rejoiced in doing after the Jocasta
+scene, ere she had wounded him, he had a curious desire to compare her
+with the phantom that had dispossessed her in his fancy. Unconsciously
+when he saw her, he transferred the shame that devoured him, from him
+to her, and gazed coldly at the face that could twist to that
+despicable contortion.
+
+He was in love, and subtle love will not be shamed and smothered. Love
+sits, we must remember, mostly in two hearts at the same time, and the
+one that is first stirred by any of the passions to wakefulness, may
+know more of the other than its owner. Why had Rose covered her head
+and shuddered? Would the girl feel that for a friend? If his pride
+suffered, love was not so downcast; but to avenge him for the cold she
+had cast on him, it could be critical, and Evan made his bearing to her
+a blank.
+
+This somehow favoured him with Rose. Sheep’s eyes are a dainty dish for
+little maids, and we know how largely they indulge in it; but when they
+are just a bit doubtful of the quality of the sheep, let the good
+animal shut his lids forthwith, for a time. Had she not been a little
+unkind to him in the morning? She had since tried to help him, and that
+had appeased her conscience, for in truth he was a good young man.
+Those very words she mentally pronounced, while he was thinking, “Would
+she feel it for a friend?” We dare but guess at the puzzle young women
+present now and then, but I should say that Evan was nearer the mark,
+and that the “good young man” was a sop she threw to that within her
+which wanted quieting, and was thereby passably quieted. Perhaps the
+good young man is offended? Let us assure him of our disinterested
+graciousness.
+
+“Is your friend coming?” she asked, and to his reply said, “I’m glad”;
+and pitched upon a new song—one that, by hazard, did not demand his
+attentions, and he surveyed the company to find a vacant seat with a
+neighbour. Juley Bonner was curled up on the sofa, looking like a
+damsel who has lost the third volume of an exciting novel, and is
+divining the climax. He chose to avoid Miss Bonner. Drummond was
+leaving the side of the Giorgione lady. Evan passed leisurely, and
+Drummond said “You know Mrs. Evremonde? Let me introduce you.”
+
+He was soon in conversation with the glorious-haired dame.
+
+“Excellently done, my brother!” thinks the Countess de Saldar.
+
+Rose sees the matter coolly. What is it to her? But she had finished
+with song. Jenny takes her place at the piano; and, as Rose does not
+care for instrumental music, she naturally talks and laughs with
+Drummond, and Jenny does not altogether like it, even though she is not
+playing to the ear of William Harvey, for whom billiards have such
+attractions; but, at the close of the performance, Rose is quiet
+enough, and the Countess observes her sitting, alone, pulling the
+petals of a flower in her lap, on which her eyes are fixed. Is the doe
+wounded? The damsel of the disinterested graciousness is assuredly
+restless. She starts up and goes out upon the balcony to breathe the
+night-air, mayhap regard the moon, and no one follows her.
+
+Had Rose been guiltless of offence, Evan might have left Beckley Court
+the next day, to cherish his outraged self-love. Love of woman is
+strongly distinguished from pure egoism when it has got a wound: for it
+will not go into a corner complaining, it will fight its duel on the
+field or die. Did the young lady know his origin, and scorn him? He
+resolved to stay and teach her that the presumption she had imputed to
+him was her own mistake. And from this Evan graduated naturally enough
+the finer stages of self-deception downward.
+
+A lover must have his delusions, just as a man must have a skin. But
+here was another singular change in Evan. After his ale-prompted speech
+in Fallowfield, he was nerved to face the truth in the eyes of all save
+Rose. Now that the truth had enmeshed his beloved, he turned to battle
+with it; he was prepared to deny it at any moment; his burnt flesh was
+as sensitive as the Countess’s.
+
+Let Rose accuse him, and he would say, “This is true, Miss Jocelyn—what
+then?” and behold Rose confused and dumb! Let not another dare suspect
+it. For the fire that had scorched him was in some sort healing, though
+horribly painful; but contact with the general air was not to be
+endured—was death! This, I believe, is common in cases of injury by
+fire. So it befell that Evan, meeting Rose the next morning was
+playfully asked by her what choice he had made between the white and
+the red; and he, dropping on her the shallow eyes of a conventional
+smile, replied, that unable to decide and form a choice, he had thrown
+both away; at which Miss Jocelyn gave him a look in the centre of his
+brows, let her head slightly droop, and walked off.
+
+“She can look serious as well as grimace,” was all that Evan allowed
+himself to think, and he strolled out on the lawn with the careless
+serenity of lovers when they fancy themselves heart-free.
+
+Rose, whipping the piano in the drawing-room, could see him go to sit
+by Mrs. Evremonde, till they were joined by Drummond, when he left her
+and walked with Harry, and apparently shadowed the young gentleman’s
+unreflective face; after which Harry was drawn away by the appearance
+of that dark star, the Countess de Saldar, whom Rose was beginning to
+detest. Jenny glided by William Harvey’s side, far off. Rose, the young
+Queen of Friendship, was left deserted on her music-stool for a throne,
+and when she ceased to hammer the notes she was insulted by a voice
+that cried from below:
+
+“Go on, Rose, it’s nice in the sun to hear you,” causing her to close
+her performances and the instrument vigorously.
+
+Rose was much behind her age: she could not tell what was the matter
+with her. In these little torments young people have to pass through
+they gain a rapid maturity. Let a girl talk with her own heart an hour,
+and she is almost a woman. Rose came down-stairs dressed for riding.
+Laxley was doing her the service of smoking one of her rose-trees. Evan
+stood disengaged, prepared for her summons. She did not notice him, but
+beckoned to Laxley drooping over a bud, while the curled smoke floated
+from his lips.
+
+“The very gracefullest of chimney-pots—is he not?” says the Countess to
+Harry, whose immense guffaw fails not to apprise Laxley that something
+has been said of him, for in his dim state of consciousness absence of
+the power of retort is the prominent feature, and when he has the
+suspicion of malicious tongues at their work, all he can do is silently
+to resent it. Probably this explains his conduct to Evan. Some youths
+have an acute memory for things that have shut their mouths.
+
+The Countess observed to Harry that his dear friend Mr. Laxley
+appeared, by the cast of his face, to be biting a sour apple.
+
+“Grapes, you mean?” laughed Harry. “Never mind! she’ll bite at him when
+he comes in for the title.”
+
+“Anything crude will do,” rejoined the Countess. “Why are you not
+courting Mrs. Evremonde, naughty Don?”
+
+“Oh! she’s occupied—castle’s in possession. Besides—!” and Harry tried
+hard to look sly.
+
+“Come and tell me about her,” said the Countess.
+
+Rose, Laxley, and Evan were standing close together.
+
+“You really are going alone, Rose?” said Laxley.
+
+“Didn’t I say so?—unless you wish to join us?” She turned upon Evan.
+
+“I am at your disposal,” said Evan.
+
+Rose nodded briefly.
+
+“I think I’ll smoke the trees,” said Laxley, perceptibly huffing.
+
+“You won’t come, Ferdinand?”
+
+“I only offered to fill up the gap. One does as well as another.”
+
+Rose flicked her whip, and then declared she would not ride at all,
+and, gathering up her skirts, hurried back to the house.
+
+As Laxley turned away, Evan stood before him.
+
+The unhappy fellow was precipitated by the devil of his false position.
+
+“I think one of us two must quit the field; if I go I will wait for
+you,” he said.
+
+“Oh; I understand,” said Laxley. “But if it’s what I suppose you to
+mean, I must decline.”
+
+“I beg to know your grounds.”
+
+“You have tied my hands.”
+
+“You would escape under cover of superior station?”
+
+“Escape! You have only to unsay—tell me you have a right to demand it.”
+
+The battle of the sophist victorious within him was done in a flash, as
+Evan measured his qualities beside this young man’s, and without a
+sense of lying, said: “I have.”
+
+He spoke firmly. He looked the thing he called himself now. The
+Countess, too, was a dazzling shield to her brother. The beautiful Mrs.
+Strike was a completer vindicator of him; though he had queer
+associates, and talked oddly of his family that night in Fallowfield.
+
+“Very well, sir: I admit you manage to annoy me,” said Laxley. “I can
+give you a lesson as well as another, if you want it.”
+
+Presently the two youths were seen bowing in the stiff curt style of
+those cavaliers who defer a passage of temper for an appointed
+settlement. Harry rushed off to them with a shout, and they separated;
+Laxley speaking a word to Drummond, Evan—most judiciously, the Countess
+thought—joining his fair sister Caroline, whom the Duke held in
+converse.
+
+Drummond returned laughing to the side of Mrs. Evremonde, nearing whom,
+the Countess, while one ear was being filled by Harry’s eulogy of her
+brother’s recent handling of Laxley, and while her intense
+gratification at the success of her patient management of her most
+difficult subject made her smiles no mask, heard, “Is it not impossible
+to suppose such a thing?” A hush ensued—the Countess passed.
+
+In the afternoon, the Jocelyns, William Harvey, and Drummond met
+together to consult about arranging the dispute; and deputations went
+to Laxley and to Evan. The former demanded an apology for certain
+expressions that day; and an equivalent to an admission that Mr.
+Harrington had said, in Fallowfield, that he was not a gentleman, in
+order to escape the consequences. All the Jocelyns laughed at his
+tenacity, and “gentleman” began to be bandied about in ridicule of the
+arrogant lean-headed adolescent. Evan was placable enough, but dogged;
+he declined to make any admission, though within himself he admitted
+that his antagonist was not in the position of an impostor; which he
+for one honest word among them would be exposed as being, and which a
+simple exercise of resolution to fly the place would save him from
+being further.
+
+Lady Jocelyn enjoyed the fun, and still more the serious way in which
+her relatives regarded it.
+
+“This comes of Rose having friends, Emily,” said Mrs. Shorne.
+
+There would have been a dispute to arrange between Lady Jocelyn and
+Mrs. Shorne, had not her ladyship been so firmly established in her
+phlegmatic philosophy. She said: “Quelle enfantillage! I dare say Rose
+was at the bottom of it: she can settle it best. Defer the encounter
+between the boys until they see they are in the form of donkeys. They
+will; and then they’ll run on together, as long as their goddess
+permits.”
+
+“Indeed, Emily,” said Mrs. Shorne, “I desire you, by all possible
+means, to keep the occurrence secret from Rose. She ought not to hear
+of it.”
+
+“No; I dare say she ought not,” returned Lady Jocelyn; “but I wager you
+she does. You can teach her to pretend not to, if you like. Ecce
+signum.”
+
+Her ladyship pointed through the library window at Rose, who was
+walking with Laxley, and showing him her pearly teeth in return for one
+of his jokes: an exchange so manifestly unfair, that Lady Jocelyn’s
+womanhood, indifferent as she was, could not but feel that Rose had an
+object in view; which was true, for she was flattering Laxley into a
+consent to meet Evan half way.
+
+The ladies murmured and hummed of these proceedings, and of Rose’s
+familiarity with Mr. Harrington; and the Countess in trepidation took
+Evan to herself, and spoke to him seriously; a thing she had not done
+since her residence in Beckley. She let him see that he must be on a
+friendly footing with everybody in the house, or go which latter
+alternative Evan told her he had decided on. “Yes,” said the Countess,
+“and then you give people full warrant to say it was jealousy drove you
+hence; and you do but extinguish yourself to implicate dear Rose. In
+love, Evan, when you run away, you don’t live to fight another day.”
+
+She was commanded not to speak of love.
+
+“Whatever it may be, my dear,” said the Countess, “Mr. Laxley has used
+you ill. It may be that you put yourself at his feet”; and his sister
+looked at him, sighing a great sigh. She had, with violence, stayed her
+mouth concerning what she knew of the Fallowfield business, dreading to
+alarm his sensitiveness; but she could not avoid giving him a little
+slap. It was only to make him remember by the smart that he must always
+suffer when he would not be guided by her.
+
+Evan professed to the Jocelyns that he was willing to apologize to
+Laxley for certain expressions; determining to leave the house when he
+had done it. The Countess heard and nodded. The young men, sounded on
+both sides, were accordingly lured to the billiard-room, and pushed
+together: and when he had succeeded in thrusting the idea of Rose from
+the dispute, it did seem such folly to Evan’s common sense, that he
+spoke with pleasant bonhommie about it. That done, he entered into his
+acted part, and towered in his conceit considerably above these
+aristocratic boors, who were speechless and graceless, but tigers for
+their privileges and advantages.
+
+It will not be thought that the Countess intended to permit her
+brother’s departure. To have toiled, and yet more, to have lied and
+fretted her conscience, for nothing, was as little her principle, as to
+quit the field of action till she is forcibly driven from it is that of
+any woman.
+
+“Going, my dear,” she said coolly. “To-morrow? Oh! very well. You are
+the judge. And this creature—the insolvent to the apple-woman, who is
+coming, whom you would push here—will expose us, without a soul to
+guide his conduct, for I shall not remain. And Carry will not remain.
+Carry—-!” The Countess gave a semisob. “Carry must return to her
+brute—” meaning the gallant Marine, her possessor.
+
+And the Countess, knowing that Evan loved his sister Caroline,
+incidentally related to him an episode in the domestic life of Major
+and Mrs. Strike.
+
+“Greatly redounding to the credit of the noble martinet for the
+discipline he upholds,” the Countess said, smiling at the stunned
+youth.
+
+“I would advise you to give her time to recover from one bruise,” she
+added. “You will do as it pleases you.”
+
+Evan was sent rushing from the Countess to Caroline, with whom the
+Countess was content to leave him.
+
+The young man was daintily managed. Caroline asked him to stay, as she
+did not see him often, and (she brought it in at the close) her home
+was not very happy. She did not entreat him, but looking resigned, her
+lovely face conjured up the Major to Evan, and he thought, “Can I drive
+her back to her tyrant?” For so he juggled with himself to have but
+another day in the sunshine of Rose.
+
+Andrew, too, threw out genial hints about the Brewery. Old Tom intended
+to retire, he said, and then they would see what they would see! He
+silenced every word about Lymport; called him a brewer already, and
+made absurd jokes, that were serviceable stuff nevertheless to the
+Countess, who deplored to this one and to that the chance existing that
+Evan might, by the urgent solicitations of his brother-in-law, give up
+diplomacy and its honours for a brewery and lucre!
+
+Of course Evan knew that he was managed. The memoirs of a managed man
+have yet to be written; but if he be sincere he will tell you that he
+knew it all the time. He longed for the sugar-plum; he knew it was
+naughty to take it: he dared not for fear of the devil, and he shut his
+eyes while somebody else popped it into his mouth, and assumed his
+responsibility. Being man-driven or chicaned, is different from being
+managed. Being managed implies being led the way this other person
+thinks you should go: altogether for your own benefit, mind: you are to
+see with her eyes, that you may not disappoint your own appetites:
+which does not hurt the flesh, certainly; but does damage the
+conscience; and from the moment you have once succumbed, that function
+ceases to perform its office of moral strainer so well.
+
+After all, was he not happier when he wrote himself tailor, than when
+he declared himself gentleman?
+
+So he now imagined, till Rose, wishing him “Good night” on the balcony,
+and abandoning her hand with a steady sweet voice and gaze, said: “How
+generous of you to forgive my friend, dear Evan!” And the ravishing
+little glimpse of womanly softness in her, set his heart beating. If he
+thought at all, it was that he would have sacrificed body and soul for
+her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+SECOND DESPATCH OF THE COUNTESS
+
+
+We do not advance very far in this second despatch, and it will be
+found chiefly serviceable for the indications it affords of our
+General’s skill in mining, and addiction to that branch of military
+science. For the moment I must beg that a little indulgence be granted
+to her.
+
+“Purely business. Great haste. Something has happened. An event? I know
+not; but events may flow from it.
+
+“A lady is here who has run away from the conjugal abode, and Lady
+Jocelyn shelters her, and is hospitable to another, who is more
+concerned in this lady’s sad fate than he should be. This may be
+morals, my dear: but please do not talk of Portugal now. A fineish
+woman with a great deal of hair worn as if her maid had given it one
+comb straight down and then rolled it up in a hurry round one finger.
+Malice would say carrots. It is called gold. Mr. Forth is in a glass
+house, and is wrong to cast his sneers at perfectly inoffensive people.
+
+“Perfectly impossible we can remain at Beckley Court together—if not
+dangerous. Any means that Providence may designate, I would employ. It
+will be like exorcising a demon. Always excuseable. I only ask a little
+more time for stupid Evan. He might have little Bonner now. I should
+not object; but her family is not so good.
+
+“Now, do attend. At once obtain a copy of Strike’s Company people. You
+understand—prospectuses. Tell me instantly if the Captain Evremonde in
+it is Captain Lawson Evremonde. Pump Strike. Excuse vulgar words.
+Whether he is not Lord Laxley’s half-brother. Strike shall be of use to
+us. Whether he is not mad. Captain E——’s address. Oh! when I think of
+Strike—brute! and poor beautiful uncomplaining Carry and her shoulder!
+But let us indeed most fervently hope that his Grace may be balm to it.
+We must not pray for vengeance. It is sinful. Providence will inflict
+that. Always know that Providence is quite sure to. It comforts
+exceedingly.
+
+“Oh, that Strike were altogether in the past tense! No knowing what the
+Duke might do—a widower and completely subjugated. It makes my bosom
+bound. The man tempts me to the wickedest Frenchy ideas. There!
+
+We progress with dear venerable Mrs. Bonner. Truly pious—interested in
+your Louisa. She dreads that my husband will try to convert me to his
+creed. I can but weep and say—never!
+
+“I need not say I have my circle. To hear this ridiculous boy Harry
+Jocelyn grunt under my nose when he has led me unsuspectingly away from
+company—Harriet! dearest! He thinks it a sigh! But there is no time for
+laughing.
+
+“My maxim in any house is—never to despise the good opinion of the
+nonentities. They are the majority. I think they all look up to me. But
+then of course you must fix that by seducing the stars. My diplomatist
+praises my abilities—Sir John Loring my style—the rest follow and I do
+not withhold my smiles, and they are happy, and I should be but that
+for ungrateful Evan’s sake I sacrificed my peace by binding myself to a
+dreadful sort of half-story. I know I did not quite say it. It seems as
+if Sir A.’s ghost were going to haunt me. And then I have the most
+dreadful fears that what I have done has disturbed him in the other
+world. Can it be so? It is not money or estates we took at all,
+dearest! And these excellent young curates—I almost wish it was
+Protestant to speak a word behind a board to them and imbibe comfort.
+For after all it is nothing: and a word even from this poor thin mopy
+Mr. Parsley might be relief to a poor soul in trouble. Catholics tell
+you that what you do in a good cause is redeemable if not exactly
+right. And you know the Catholic is the oldest Religion of the two. I
+would listen to the Pope, staunch Protestant as I am, in preference to
+King Henry the Eighth. Though, as a woman, I bear him no rancour, for
+his wives were—fools, point blank. No man was ever so manageable. My
+diplomatist is getting liker and liker to him every day. Leaner, of
+course, and does not habitually straddle. Whiskers and morals, I mean.
+We must be silent before our prudish sister. Not a prude? We talk
+diplomacy, dearest. He complains of the exclusiveness of the port of
+Oporto, and would have strict alliance between Portugal and England,
+with mutual privileges. I wish the alliance, and think it better to
+maintain the exclusiveness. Very trifling; but what is life!
+
+“Adieu. One word to leave you laughing. Imagine her situation! This
+stupid Miss Carrington has offended me. She has tried to pump Conning,
+who, I do not doubt, gave her as much truth as I chose she should have
+in her well. But the quandary of the wretched creature! She takes
+Conning into her confidence—a horrible malady just covered by high-neck
+dress! Skin! and impossible that she can tell her engaged—who
+is—guess—Mr. George Up———! Her name is Louisa Carrington. There was a
+Louisa Harrington once. Similarity of names perhaps. Of course I could
+not let her come to the house; and of course Miss C. is in a state of
+wonderment and bad passions, I fear. I went straight to Lady Racial, my
+dear. There was nothing else for it but to go and speak. She is truly a
+noble woman—serves us in every way. As she should!—much affected by
+sight of Evan, and keeps aloof from Beckley Court. The finger of
+Providence is in all. Adieu! but do pray think of Miss Carrington! It
+was foolish of her to offend me. Drives and walks—the Duke attentive.
+Description of him when I embrace you. I give amiable Sir Franks
+Portuguese dishes. Ah, my dear, if we had none but men to contend
+against, and only women for our tools! But this is asking for the
+world, and nothing less.
+
+“Open again,” she pursues. “Dear Carry just come in. There are fairies,
+I think, where there are dukes! Where could it have come from? Could
+any human being have sent messengers post to London, ordered, and had
+it despatched here within this short time? You shall not be mystified!
+I do not think I even hinted; but the afternoon walk I had with his
+Grace, on the first day of his arrival, I did shadow it very delicately
+how much it was to be feared our poor Carry could not, that she dared
+not, betray her liege lord in an evening dress. Nothing more, upon my
+veracity! And Carry has this moment received the most beautiful green
+box, containing two of the most heavenly old lace shawls that you ever
+beheld. We divine it is to hide poor Carry’s matrimonial blue mark! We
+know nothing. Will you imagine Carry is for not accepting it! Priority
+of birth does not imply superior wits, dear—no allusion to you. I have
+undertaken all. Arch looks, but nothing pointed. His Grace will
+understand the exquisite expression of feminine gratitude. It is so
+sweet to deal with true nobility. Carry has only to look as she always
+does. One sees Strike sitting on her. Her very pliability has rescued
+her from being utterly squashed long ere this! The man makes one
+vulgar. It would have been not the slightest use asking me to be a
+Christian had I wedded Strike. But think of the fairy presents! It has
+determined me not to be expelled by Mr. Forth—quite. Tell Silva he is
+not forgotten. But, my dear, between us alone, men are so selfish, that
+it is too evident they do not care for private conversations to turn
+upon a lady’s husband: not to be risked, only now and then.
+
+“I hear that the young ladies and the young gentlemen have been out
+riding a race. The poor little Bonner girl cannot ride, and she says to
+Carry that Rose wishes to break our brother’s neck. The child hardly
+wishes that, but she is feelingless. If Evan could care for Miss
+Bonner, he might have B. C.! Oh, it is not so very long a shot, my
+dear. I am on the spot, remember. Old Mrs. Bonner is a most just-minded
+spirit. Juliana is a cripple, and her grandmother wishes to be sure
+that when she departs to her Lord the poor cripple may not be chased
+from this home of hers. Rose cannot calculate—Harry is in
+disgrace—there is really no knowing. This is how I have reckoned;
+£10,000 extra to Rose; perhaps £1000 or nothing to H.; all the rest of
+ready-money—a large sum—no use guessing—to Lady Jocelyn; and B. C. to
+little Bonner—it is worth £40,000. Then she sells, or stops—permanent
+resident. It might be so soon, for I can see worthy Mrs. Bonner to be
+breaking visibly. But young men will not see with wiser eyes than their
+own. Here is Evan risking his neck for an indifferent—there’s some word
+for ‘not soft.’ In short, Rose is the cold-blooded novice, as I have
+always said, the most selfish of the creatures on two legs.
+
+“Adieu! Would you have dreamed that Major Nightmare’s gallantry to his
+wife would have called forth a gallantry so truly touching and
+delicate? Can you not see Providence there? Out of Evil—the Catholics
+again!
+
+“Address. If Lord Lax—’s half-brother. If wrong in noddle. This I know
+you will attend to scrupulously. Ridiculous words are sometimes the
+most expressive. Once more, may Heaven bless you all! I thought of you
+in church last Sunday.
+
+“I may tell you this: young Mr. Laxley is here. He—but it was Evan’s
+utter madness was the cause, and I have not ventured a word to him. He
+compelled Evan to assert his rank, and Mr. Forth’s face has been one
+concentrated sneer since THEN. He must know the origin of the
+Cogglesbys, or something. Now you will understand the importance. I
+cannot be more explicit. Only—the man must go.
+
+“P.S. I have just ascertained that Lady Jocelyn is quite familiar with
+Andrew’s origin!! She must think my poor Harriet an eccentric woman. Of
+course I have not pretended to rank here, merely gentry. It is gentry
+in reality, for had poor Papa been legitimized, he would have been a
+nobleman. You know that; and between the two we may certainly claim
+gentry. I twiddle your little good Andrew to assert it for us twenty
+times a day. Of all the dear little manageable men! It does you
+infinite credit that you respect him as you do. What would have become
+of me I do not know.
+
+“P.S. I said two shawls—a black and a white. The black not so
+costly—very well. And so delicate of him to think of the mourning! But
+the white, my dear, must be family—must! Old English point. Exquisitely
+chaste. So different from that Brussels poor Andrew surprised you with.
+I know it cost money, but this is a question of taste. The Duke
+reconciles me to England and all my troubles! He is more like poor Papa
+than any one of the men I have yet seen. The perfect gentleman! I do
+praise myself for managing an invitation to our Carry. She has been a
+triumph.”
+
+Admire the concluding stroke. The Countess calls this letter a purely
+business communication. Commercial men might hardly think so; but
+perhaps ladies will perceive it. She rambles concentrically, if I may
+so expound her. Full of luxurious enjoyment of her position, her mind
+is active, and you see her at one moment marking a plot, the next, with
+a light exclamation, appeasing her conscience, proud that she has one;
+again she calls up rival forms of faith, that she may show the
+Protestant its little shortcomings, and that it is slightly in debt to
+her (like Providence) for her constancy, notwithstanding. The
+Protestant you see, does not confess, and she has to absolve herself,
+and must be doing it internally while she is directing outer matters.
+Hence her slap at King Henry VIII. In fact, there is much more business
+in this letter than I dare to indicate; but as it is both impertinent
+and unpopular to dive for any length of time beneath the surface
+(especially when there are few pearls to show for it), we will
+discontinue our examination.
+
+The Countess, when she had dropped the letter in the bag, returned to
+her chamber, and deputed Dorothy Loring, whom she met on the stairs, to
+run and request Rose to lend her her album to beguile the afternoon
+with; and Dorothy dances to Rose, saying, “The Countess de Lispy-Lispy
+would be delighted to look at your album all the afternoon.”
+
+“Oh what a woman that is!” says Rose. “Countess de Lazy-Lazy, I think.”
+
+The Countess, had she been listening, would have cared little for
+accusations on that head. Idlesse was fashionable: exquisite languors
+were a sign of breeding; and she always had an idea that she looked
+more interesting at dinner after reclining on a couch the whole of the
+afternoon. The great Mel and his mate had given her robust health, and
+she was able to play the high-born invalid without damage to her
+constitution. Anything amused her; Rose’s album even, and the
+compositions of W. H., E. H., D. F., and F. L. The initials F. L. were
+diminutive, and not unlike her own hand, she thought. They were
+appended to a piece of facetiousness that would not have disgraced the
+abilities of Mr. John Raikes; but we know that very stiff young
+gentlemen betray monkey-minds when sweet young ladies compel them to
+disport. On the whole, it was not a lazy afternoon that the Countess
+passed, and it was not against her wish that others should think it
+was.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+BREAK-NECK LEAP
+
+
+The August sun was in mid-sky, when a troop of ladies and cavaliers
+issued from the gates of Beckley Court, and winding through the
+hopgardens, emerged on the cultivated slopes bordering the downs.
+Foremost, on her grey cob, was Rose, having on her right her uncle
+Seymour, and on her left Ferdinand Laxley. Behind came Mrs. Evremonde,
+flanked by Drummond and Evan. Then followed Jenny Graine, supported by
+Harry and William Harvey. In the rear came an open carriage, in which
+Miss Carrington and the Countess de Saldar were borne, attended by Lady
+Jocelyn and Andrew Cogglesby on horseback. The expedition had for its
+object the selection of a run of ground for an amateur steeple-chase:
+the idea of which had sprung from Laxley’s boasts of his horsemanship:
+and Rose, quick as fire, had backed herself, and Drummond and Evan, to
+beat him. The mention of the latter was quite enough for Laxley.
+
+“If he follows me, let him take care of his neck,” said that youth.
+
+“Why, Ferdinand, he can beat you in anything!” exclaimed Rose,
+imprudently.
+
+But the truth was, she was now more restless than ever. She was not
+distant with Evan, but she had a feverish manner, and seemed to thirst
+to make him show his qualities, and excel, and shine. Billiards, or
+jumping, or classical acquirements, it mattered not—Evan must come
+first. He had crossed the foils with Laxley, and disarmed him; for Mel
+his father had seen him trained for a military career. Rose made a
+noise about the encounter, and Laxley was eager for his opportunity,
+which he saw in the proposed mad gallop.
+
+Now Mr. George Uplift, who usually rode in buckskins whether he was
+after the fox or fresh air, was out on this particular morning; and it
+happened that, as the cavalcade wound beneath the down, Mr. George
+trotted along the ridge. He was a fat-faced, rotund young squire—a
+bully where he might be, and an obedient creature enough where he must
+be—good-humoured when not interfered with; fond of the table, and
+brimful of all the jokes of the county, the accent of which just
+seasoned his speech. He had somehow plunged into a sort of
+half-engagement with Miss Carrington. At his age, and to ladies of Miss
+Carrington’s age, men unhappily do not plunge head-foremost, or Miss
+Carrington would have had him long before. But he was at least in for
+it half a leg; and a desperate maiden, on the criminal side of thirty,
+may make much of that. Previous to the visit of the Countess de Saldar,
+Mr. George had been in the habit of trotting over to Beckley three or
+four times a week. Miss Carrington had a little money: Mr. George was
+heir to his uncle. Miss Carrington was lean and blue-eyed.
+
+Mr. George was black-eyed and obese. By everybody, except Mr. George,
+the match was made: but that exception goes for little in the country,
+where half the population are talked into marriage, and gossips
+entirely devote themselves to continuing the species. Mr. George was
+certain that he had not been fighting shy of the fair Carrington of
+late, nor had he been unfaithful. He had only been in an extraordinary
+state of occupation. Messages for Lady Racial had to be delivered, and
+he had become her cavalier and escort suddenly. The young squire was
+bewildered; but as he was only one leg in love—if the sentiment may be
+thus spoken of figuratively—his vanity in his present office kept him
+from remorse or uneasiness.
+
+He rode at an easy pace within sight of the home of his treasure, and
+his back turned to it. Presently there rose a cry from below. Mr.
+George looked about. The party of horsemen hallooed: Mr. George
+yoicked. Rose set her horse to gallop up; Seymour Jocelyn cried “fox,”
+and gave the view; hearing which Mr. George shouted, and seemed
+inclined to surrender; but the fun seized him, and, standing up in his
+stirrups, he gathered his coat-tails in a bunch, and waggled them with
+a jolly laugh, which was taken up below, and the clamp of hoofs
+resounded on the turf as Mr. George led off, after once more, with a
+jocose twist in his seat, showing them the brush mockingly. Away went
+fox, and a mad chase began. Seymour acted as master of the hunt. Rose,
+Evan, Drummond, and Mrs. Evremonde and Dorothy, skirted to the right,
+all laughing, and full of excitement. Harry bellowed the direction from
+above. The ladies in the carriage, with Lady Jocelyn and Andrew,
+watched them till they flowed one and all over the shoulder of the
+down.
+
+“And who may the poor hunted animal be?” inquired the Countess.
+
+“George Uplift,” said Lady Jocelyn, pulling out her watch. “I give him
+twenty minutes.”
+
+“Providence speed him!” breathed the Countess, with secret fervour.
+
+“Oh, he hasn’t a chance,” said Lady Jocelyn. “The squire keeps wretched
+beasts.”
+
+“Is there not an attraction that will account for his hasty capture?”
+said the Countess, looking tenderly at Miss Carrington, who sat a
+little straighter, and the Countess, hating manifestations of
+stiff-backedness, could not forbear adding: “I am at war with my
+sympathies, which should be with the poor brute flying from his
+persecutors.”
+
+She was in a bitter state of trepidation, or she would have thought
+twice before she touched a nerve of the enamoured lady, as she knew she
+did in calling her swain a poor brute, and did again by pertinaciously
+pursuing:
+
+“Does he then shun his captivity?”
+
+“Touching a nerve” is one of those unforgivable small offences which,
+in our civilized state, produce the social vendettas and dramas that,
+with savage nations, spring from the spilling of blood. Instead of an
+eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, we demand a nerve for a nerve.
+“Thou hast touched me where I am tender thee, too, will I touch.”
+
+Miss Carrington had been alarmed and hurt at the strange evasion of Mr.
+George; nor could she see the fun of his mimicry of the fox and his
+flight away from instead of into her neighbourhood. She had also, or
+she now thought it, remarked that when Mr. George had been spoken of
+casually, the Countess had not looked a natural look. Perhaps it was
+her present inflamed fancy. At any rate the Countess was offensive now.
+She was positively vulgar, in consequence, to the mind of Miss
+Carrington, and Miss Carrington was drawn to think of a certain thing
+Ferdinand Laxley had said he had heard from the mouth of this lady’s
+brother when ale was in him. Alas! how one seed of a piece of folly
+will lurk and sprout to confound us; though, like the cock in the
+eastern tale, we peck up zealously all but that one!
+
+The carriage rolled over the turf, attended by Andrew, and Lady
+Jocelyn, and the hunt was seen; Mr. George some forty paces a-head;
+Seymour gaining on him, Rose next.
+
+“Who’s that breasting Rose?” said Lady Jocelyn, lifting her glass.
+
+“My brother-in-law, Harrington,” returned Andrew.
+
+“He doesn’t ride badly,” said Lady Jocelyn. “A little too military. He
+must have been set up in England.”
+
+“Oh, Evan can do anything,” said Andrew enthusiastically. “His father
+was a capital horseman, and taught him fencing, riding, and every
+accomplishment. You won’t find such a young fellow, my lady—”
+
+“The brother like him at all?” asked Lady Jocelyn, still eyeing the
+chase.
+
+“Brother? He hasn’t got a brother,” said Andrew.
+
+Lady Jocelyn continued: “I mean the present baronet.”
+
+She was occupied with her glass, and did not observe the flush that
+took hold of Andrew’s ingenuous cheeks, and his hurried glance at and
+off the quiet eye of the Countess. Miss Carrington did observe it.
+
+Mr. Andrew dashed his face under the palm of his hand, and murmured:
+
+“Oh—yes! His brother-in-law isn’t much like him—ha! ha!”
+
+And then the poor little man rubbed his hands, unconscious of the
+indignant pity for his wretched abilities in the gaze of the Countess;
+and he must have been exposed—there was a fear that the ghost of Sir
+Abraham would have darkened this day, for Miss Carrington was about to
+speak, when Lady Jocelyn cried: “There’s a purl! Somebody’s down.”
+
+The Countess was unaware of the nature of a purl, but she could have
+sworn it to be a piece of Providence.
+
+“Just by old Nat Hodges’ farm, on Squire Copping’s ground,” cried
+Andrew, much relieved by the particular individual’s misfortune. “Dear
+me, my lady! how old Tom and I used to jump the brook there, to be
+sure! and when you were no bigger than little Miss Loring—do you
+remember old Tom? We’re all fools one time in our lives!”
+
+“Who can it be?” said Lady Jocelyn, spying at the discomfited horseman.
+“I’m afraid it’s poor Ferdinand.”
+
+They drove on to an eminence from which the plain was entirely laid
+open.
+
+“I hope my brother will enjoy his ride this day,” sighed the Countess.
+“It will be his limit of enjoyment for a lengthened period!”
+
+She perceived that Mr. George’s capture was inevitable, and her heart
+sank; for she was sure he would recognize her, and at the moment she
+misdoubted her powers. She dreamed of flight.
+
+“You’re not going to leave us?” said Lady Jocelyn. “My dear Countess,
+what will the future member do without you? We have your promise to
+stay till the election is over.”
+
+“Thanks for your extreme kind courtesy, Lady Jocelyn,” murmured the
+Countess: “but my husband—the Count.”
+
+“The favour is yours,” returned her ladyship. “And if the Count cannot
+come, you at least are at liberty?”
+
+“You are most kind,” said the Countess.
+
+“Andrew and his wife I should not dare to separate for more than a
+week,” said Lady Jocelyn. “He is the great British husband. The
+proprietor! ‘My wife’ is his unanswerable excuse.”
+
+“Yes,” Andrew replied cheerily. “I don’t like division between man and
+wife, I must say.”
+
+The Countess dared no longer instance the Count, her husband. She was
+heard to murmur that citizen feelings were not hers:
+
+“You suggested Fallowfield to Melville, did you not?” asked Lady
+Jocelyn.
+
+“It was the merest suggestion,” said the Countess, smiling.
+
+“Then you must really stay to see us through it,” said her ladyship.
+“Where are they now? They must be making straight for break-neck fence.
+They’ll have him there. George hasn’t pluck for that.”
+
+“Hasn’t what?”
+
+It was the Countess who requested to know the name of this other piece
+of Providence Mr. George Uplift was deficient in.
+
+“Pluck—go,” said her ladyship hastily, and telling the coachman to
+drive to a certain spot, trotted on with Andrew, saying to him: “I’m
+afraid we are thought vulgar by the Countess.”
+
+Andrew considered it best to reassure her gravely.
+
+“The young man, her brother, is well-bred,” said Lady Jocelyn, and
+Andrew was very ready to praise Evan.
+
+Lady Jocelyn, herself in slimmer days a spirited horsewoman, had
+correctly estimated Mr. George’s pluck. He was captured by Harry and
+Evan close on the leap, in the act of shaking his head at it; and many
+who inspected the leap would have deemed it a sign that wisdom weighted
+the head that would shake long at it; for it consisted of a post and
+rails, with a double ditch.
+
+Seymour Jocelyn, Mrs. Evremonde, Drummond, Jenny Graine, and William
+Harvey, rode with Mr. George in quest of the carriage, and the captive
+was duly delivered over.
+
+“But where’s the brush?” said Lady Jocelyn, laughing, and introducing
+him to the Countess, who dropped her head, and with it her veil.
+
+“Oh! they leave that on for my next run,” said Mr. George, bowing
+civilly.
+
+“You are going to run again?”
+
+Miss Carrington severely asked this question; and Mr. George protested.
+
+“Secure him, Louisa,” said Lady Jocelyn. “See here: what’s the matter
+with poor Dorothy?”
+
+Dorothy came slowly trotting up to them along the green lane, and thus
+expressed her grief, between sobs:
+
+“Isn’t it a shame? Rose is such a tyrant. They’re going to ride a race
+and a jump down in the field, and it’s break-neck leap, and Rose won’t
+allow me to stop and see it, though she knows I’m just as fond of Evan
+as she is; and if he’s killed I declare it will be her fault; and it’s
+all for her stupid, dirty old pocket handkerchief!”
+
+“Break-neck fence!” said Lady Jocelyn; “that’s rather mad.”
+
+“Do let’s go and see it, darling Aunty Joey,” pleaded the little maid.
+Lady Jocelyn rode on, saying to herself: “That girl has a great deal of
+devil in her.” The lady’s thoughts were of Rose.
+
+“Black Lymport’d take the leap,” said Mr. George, following her with
+the rest of the troop. “Who’s that fellow on him?”
+
+“His name’s Harrington,” quoth Drummond.
+
+“Oh, Harrington!” Mr. George responded; but immediately
+laughed—“Harrington? ’Gad, if he takes the leap it’ll be odd—another of
+the name. That’s where old Mel had his spill.”
+
+“Who?” Drummond inquired.
+
+“Old Mel Harrington—the Lymport wonder. Old Marquis Mel,” said Mr.
+George. “Haven’t ye heard of him?”
+
+“What! the gorgeous tailor!” exclaimed Lady Jocelyn. “How I regret
+never meeting that magnificent snob! that efflorescence of sublime
+imposture! I’ve seen the Regent; but one’s life doesn’t seem complete
+without having seen his twin-brother. You must give us warning when you
+have him down at Croftlands again, Mr. George.”
+
+“’Gad, he’ll have to come a long distance—poor old Mel!” said Mr.
+George; and was going on, when Seymour Jocelyn stroked his moustache to
+cry, “Look! Rosey’s starting ’em, by Jove!”
+
+The leap, which did not appear formidable from where they stood, was
+four fields distant from the point where Rose, with a handkerchief in
+her hand, was at that moment giving the signal to Laxley and Evan.
+
+Miss Carrington and the Countess begged Lady Jocelyn to order a shout
+to be raised to arrest them, but her ladyship marked her good sense by
+saying: “Let them go, now they’re about it”; for she saw that to make a
+fuss now matters had proceeded so far, was to be uncivil to the
+inevitable.
+
+The start was given, and off they flew. Harry Jocelyn, behind them, was
+evidently caught by the demon, and clapped spurs to his horse to have
+his fling as well, for the fun of the thing; but Rose, farther down the
+field, rode from her post straight across him, to the imminent peril of
+a mutual overset; and the party on the height could see Harry fuming,
+and Rose coolly looking him down, and letting him understand what her
+will was; and her mother, and Drummond, and Seymour who beheld this,
+had a common sentiment of admiration for the gallant girl. But away
+went the rivals. Black Lymport was the favourite, though none of the
+men thought he would be put at the fence. The excitement became
+contagious. The Countess threw up her veil. Lady Jocelyn, and Seymour,
+and Drummond, galloped down the lane, and Mr. George was for
+accompanying them, till the line of Miss Carrington’s back gave him her
+unmistakeable opinion of such a course of conduct, and he had to dally
+and fret by her side. Andrew’s arm was tightly grasped by the Countess.
+The rivals were crossing the second field, Laxley a little a-head.
+
+“He’s holding in the black mare—that fellow!” said Mr. George. “’Gad,
+it looks like going at the fence. Fancy Harrington!”
+
+They were now in the fourth field, a smooth shorn meadow. Laxley was
+two clear lengths in advance, but seemed riding, as Mr. George
+remarked, more for pace than to take the jump. The ladies kept plying
+random queries and suggestions: the Countess wishing to know whether
+they could not be stopped by a countryman before they encountered any
+danger. In the midst of their chatter, Mr. George rose in his stirrups,
+crying:
+
+“Bravo, the black mare!”
+
+“Has he done it?” said Andrew, wiping his poll.
+
+“He? No, the mare!” shouted Mr. George, and bolted off, no longer to be
+restrained.
+
+The Countess, doubly relieved, threw herself back in the carriage, and
+Andrew drew a breath, saying: “Evan has beat him—I saw that! The
+other’s horse swerved right round.”
+
+“I fear,” said Mrs. Evremonde, “Mr. Harrington has had a fall. Don’t be
+alarmed—it may not be much.”
+
+“A fall!” exclaimed the Countess, equally divided between alarms of
+sisterly affection and a keen sense of the romance of the thing.
+
+Miss Carrington ordered the carriage to be driven round. They had not
+gone far when they were met by Harry Jocelyn riding in hot haste, and
+he bellowed to the coachman to drive as hard as he could, and stop
+opposite Brook’s farm.
+
+The scene on the other side of the fence would have been a sweet one to
+the central figure in it had his eyes then been open. Surrounded by
+Lady Jocelyn, Drummond, Seymour, and the rest, Evan’s dust-stained body
+was stretched along the road, and his head was lying in the lap of
+Rose, who, pale, heedless of anything spoken by those around her, and
+with her lips set and her eyes turning wildly from one to the other,
+held a gory handkerchief to his temple with one hand, and with the
+other felt for the motion of his heart.
+
+But heroes don’t die, you know.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+TRIBULATIONS AND TACTICS OF THE COUNTESS
+
+
+“You have murdered my brother, Rose Jocelyn!”
+
+“Don’t say so now.”
+
+Such was the interchange between the two that loved the senseless
+youth, as he was being lifted into the carriage.
+
+Lady Jocelyn sat upright in her saddle, giving directions about what
+was to be done with Evan and the mare, impartially.
+
+“Stunned, and a good deal shaken, I suppose; Lymport’s knees are
+terribly cut,” she said to Drummond, who merely nodded. And Seymour
+remarked, “Fifty guineas knocked off her value!” One added, “Nothing
+worse, I should think”; and another, “A little damage inside, perhaps.”
+Difficult to say whether they spoke of Evan or the brute.
+
+No violent outcries; no reproaches cast on the cold-blooded coquette;
+no exclamations on the heroism of her brother! They could absolutely
+spare a thought for the animal! And Evan had risked his life for this,
+and might die unpitied. The Countess diversified her grief with a
+deadly bitterness against the heartless Jocelyns.
+
+Oh, if Evan dies! will it punish Rose sufficiently?
+
+Andrew expressed emotion, but not of a kind the Countess liked a
+relative to be seen exhibiting; for in emotion worthy Andrew betrayed
+to her his origin offensively.
+
+“Go away and puke, if you must,” she said, clipping poor Andrew’s word
+about his “dear boy.” She could not help speaking in that way—he was so
+vulgar. A word of sympathy from Lady Jocelyn might have saved her from
+the sourness into which her many conflicting passions were resolving;
+and might also have saved her ladyship from the rancour she had sown in
+the daughter of the great Mel by her selection of epithets to
+characterize him.
+
+Will it punish Rose at all, if Evan dies?
+
+Rose saw that she was looked at. How could the Countess tell that Rose
+envied her the joy of holding Evan in the carriage there? Rose, to
+judge by her face, was as calm as glass. Not so well seen through,
+however. Mrs. Evremonde rode beside her, whose fingers she caught, and
+twined her own with them tightly once for a fleeting instant. Mrs.
+Evremonde wanted no further confession of her state.
+
+Then Rose said to her mother, “Mama, may I ride to have the doctor
+ready?”
+
+Ordinarily, Rose would have clapped heel to horse the moment the
+thought came. She waited for the permission, and flew off at a gallop,
+waving back Laxley, who was for joining her.
+
+“Franks will be a little rusty about the mare,” the Countess heard Lady
+Jocelyn say; and Harry just then stooped his head to the carriage, and
+said, in his blunt fashion, “After all, it won’t show much.”
+
+“We are not cattle!” exclaimed the frenzied Countess, within her bosom.
+Alas! it was almost a democratic outcry they made her guilty of; but
+she was driven past patience. And as a further provocation, Evan would
+open his eyes. She laid her handkerchief over them with loving
+delicacy, remembering in a flash that her own face had been all the
+while exposed to Mr. George Uplift; and then the terrors of his
+presence at Beckley Court came upon her, and the fact that she had not
+for the last ten minutes been the serene Countess de Saldar; and she
+quite hated Andrew, for vulgarity in others evoked vulgarity in her,
+which was the reason why she ranked vulgarity as the chief of the
+deadly sins. Her countenance for Harry and all the others save poor
+Andrew was soon the placid heaven-confiding sister’s again; not before
+Lady Jocelyn had found cause to observe to Drummond:
+
+“Your Countess doesn’t ruffle well.”
+
+But a lady who is at war with two or three of the facts of Providence,
+and yet will have Providence for her ally, can hardly ruffle well. Do
+not imagine that the Countess’s love for her brother was hollow. She
+was assured when she came up to the spot where he fell, that there was
+no danger; he had but dislocated his shoulder, and bruised his head a
+little. Hearing this, she rose out of her clamorous heart, and seized
+the opportunity for a small burst of melodrama. Unhappily, Lady
+Jocelyn, who gave the tone to the rest, was a Spartan in matters of
+this sort; and as she would have seen those dearest to her bear the
+luck of the field, she could see others. When the call for active help
+reached her, you beheld a different woman.
+
+The demonstrativeness the Countess thirsted for was afforded her by
+Juley Bonner, and in a measure by her sister Caroline, who loved Evan
+passionately. The latter was in riding attire, about to mount to ride
+and meet them, accompanied by the Duke. Caroline had hastily tied up
+her hair; a rich golden brown lump of it hung round her cheek; her
+limpid eyes and anxiously-nerved brows impressed the Countess
+wonderfully as she ran down the steps and bent her fine well-filled
+bust forward to ask the first hurried question.
+
+The Countess patted her shoulder. “Safe, dear,” she said aloud, as one
+who would not make much of it. And in a whisper, “You look superb.”
+
+I must charge it to Caroline’s beauty under the ducal radiance, that a
+stream of sweet feelings entering into the Countess made her forget to
+tell her sister that George Uplift was by. Caroline had not been
+abroad, and her skin was not olive-hued; she was a beauty, and a
+majestic figure, little altered since the day when the wooden marine
+marched her out of Lymport.
+
+The Countess stepped from the carriage to go and cherish Juliana’s
+petulant distress; for that unhealthy little body was stamping with
+impatience to have the story told to her, to burst into fits of pathos;
+and while Seymour and Harry assisted Evan to descend, trying to laugh
+off the pain he endured, Caroline stood by, soothing him with words and
+tender looks.
+
+Lady Jocelyn passed him, and took his hand, saying, “Not killed this
+time!”
+
+“At your ladyship’s service to-morrow,” he replied, and his hand was
+kindly squeezed.
+
+“My darling Evan, you will not ride again?” Caroline cried, kissing him
+on the steps; and the Duke watched the operation, and the Countess
+observed the Duke.
+
+That Providence should select her sweetest moments to deal her wounds,
+was cruel; but the Countess just then distinctly heard Mr. George
+Uplift ask Miss Carrington.
+
+“Is that lady a Harrington?”
+
+“You perceive a likeness?” was the answer.
+
+Mr. George went “Whew!—tit-tit-tit!” with the profound expression of a
+very slow mind.
+
+The scene was quickly over. There was barely an hour for the ladies to
+dress for dinner. Leaving Evan in the doctor’s hand, and telling
+Caroline to dress in her room, the Countess met Rose, and gratified her
+vindictiveness, while she furthered her projects, by saying:
+
+“Not till my brother is quite convalescent will it be adviseable that
+you should visit him. I am compelled to think of him entirely now. In
+his present state he is not fit to be, played with.”
+
+Rose, stedfastly eyeing her, seemed to swallow down something in her
+throat, and said:
+
+“I will obey you, Countess. I hoped you would allow me to nurse him.”
+
+“Quiet above all things, Rose Jocelyn!” returned the Countess, with the
+suavity of a governess, who must be civil in her sourness. “If you
+would not complete this morning’s achievement—stay away.”
+
+The Countess declined to see that Rose’s lip quivered. She saw an
+unpleasantness in the bottom of her eyes; and now that her brother’s
+decease was not even remotely to be apprehended, she herself determined
+to punish the cold, unimpressionable coquette of a girl. Before
+returning to Caroline, she had five minutes’ conversation with Juliana,
+which fully determined her to continue the campaign at Beckley Court,
+commence decisive movements, and not to retreat, though fifty George
+Uplofts menaced her. Consequently, having dismissed Conning on a
+message to Harry Jocelyn, to ask him for a list of the names of the new
+people they were to meet that day at dinner, she said to Caroline:
+
+“My dear, I think it will be incumbent on us to depart very quickly.”
+
+Much to the Countess’s chagrin and astonishment, Caroline replied:
+
+“I shall hardly be sorry.”
+
+“Not sorry? Why, what now, dear one? Is it true, then, that a
+flagellated female kisses the rod? Are you so eager for a repetition of
+Strike?”
+
+Caroline, with some hesitation, related to her more than the Countess
+had ventured to petition for in her prayers.
+
+“Oh! how exceedingly generous!” the latter exclaimed. How very
+refreshing to think that there are nobles in your England as romantic,
+as courteous, as delicate as our own foreign ones! But his Grace is
+quite an exceptional nobleman. Are you not touched, dearest Carry?”
+
+Caroline pensively glanced at the reflection of her beautiful arm in
+the glass, and sighed, pushing back the hair from her temples.
+
+“But, for mercy’s sake!” resumed the Countess, in alarm at the sigh,
+“do not be too—too touched. Do, pray, preserve your wits. You weep!
+Caroline, Caroline! O my goodness; it is just five-and-twenty minutes
+to the first dinner-bell, and you are crying! For God’s sake, think of
+your face! Are you going to be a Gorgon? And you show the marks twice
+as long as any other, you fair women. Squinnying like this! Caroline,
+for your Louisa’s sake, do not!”
+
+Hissing which, half angrily and half with entreaty, the Countess
+dropped on her knees. Caroline’s fit of tears subsided. The eldest of
+the sisters, she was the kindest, the fairest, the weakest.
+
+“Not,” said the blandishing Countess, when Caroline’s face was clearer,
+“not that my best of Carrys does not look delicious in her shower. Cry,
+with your hair down, and you would subdue any male creature on two
+legs. And that reminds me of that most audacious Marquis de Remilla. He
+saw a dirty drab of a fruit-girl crying in Lisbon streets one day, as
+he was riding in the carriage of the Duchesse de Col da Rosta, and her
+husband and duena, and he had a letter for her—the Duchesse. They
+loved! How deliver the letter? ‘Save me!’ he cried to the Duchesse,
+catching her hand, and pressing his heart, as if very sick. The
+Duchesse felt the paper—turned her hand over on her knee, and he
+withdrew his. What does my Carry think was the excuse he tendered the
+Duke? This—and this gives you some idea of the wonderful audacity of
+those dear Portuguese—that he—he must precipitate himself and marry any
+woman he saw weep, and be her slave for the term of his natural life,
+unless another woman’s hand at the same moment restrained him! There!”
+and the Countess’s eyes shone brightly.
+
+“How excessively imbecile!” Caroline remarked, hitherto a passive
+listener to these Lusitanian _contes_.
+
+It was the first sign she had yet given of her late intercourse with a
+positive Duke, and the Countess felt it, and drew back. No more
+anecdotes for Caroline, to whom she quietly said:
+
+“You are very English, dear!”
+
+“But now, the Duke—his Grace,” she went on, “how did he inaugurate?”
+
+“I spoke to him of Evan’s position. God forgive me!—I said that was the
+cause of my looks being sad.”
+
+“You could have thought of nothing better,” interposed the Countess.
+“Yes?”
+
+“He said, if he might clear them he should be happy.”
+
+“In exquisite language, Carry, of course.”
+
+“No; just as others talk.”
+
+“Hum!” went the Countess, and issued again brightly from a cloud of
+reflection, with the remark: “It was to seem business-like—the
+commerciality of the English mind. To the point—I know. Well, you
+perceive, my sweetest, that Evan’s interests are in your hands. You
+dare not quit the field. In one week, I fondly trust, he will be
+secure. What more did his Grace say? May we not be the repository of
+such delicious secresies?”
+
+Caroline gave tremulous indications about the lips, and the Countess
+jumped to the bell and rang it, for they were too near dinner for the
+trace of a single tear to be permitted. The bell and the appearance of
+Conning effectually checked the flood.
+
+While speaking to her sister, the Countess had hesitated to mention
+George Uplift’s name, hoping that, as he had no dinner-suit, he would
+not stop to dinner that day, and would fall to the charge of Lady
+Racial once more. Conning, however, brought in a sheet of paper on
+which the names of the guests were written out by Harry, a daily piece
+of service he performed for the captivating dame, and George Uplift’s
+name was in the list.
+
+“We will do the rest, Conning—retire,” she said, and then folding
+Caroline in her arms, murmured, the moment they were alone, “Will my
+Carry dress her hair plain to-day, for the love of her Louisa?”
+
+“Goodness! what a request!” exclaimed Caroline, throwing back her head
+to see if her Louisa could be serious.
+
+“Most inexplicable—is it not? Will she do it?”
+
+“Flat, dear? It makes a fright of me.”
+
+“Possibly. May I beg it?”
+
+“But why, dearest, why? If I only knew why!”
+
+“For the love of your Louy.”
+
+“Plain along the temples?”
+
+“And a knot behind.”
+
+“And a band along the forehead?”
+
+“Gems, if they meet your favour.”
+
+“But my cheek-bones, Louisa?”
+
+“They are not too prominent, Carry.”
+
+“Curls relieve them.”
+
+“The change will relieve the curls, dear one.”
+
+Caroline looked in the glass, at the Countess, as polished a reflector,
+and fell into a chair. Her hair was accustomed to roll across her
+shoulders in heavy curls. The Duke would find a change of the sort
+singular. She should not at all know herself with her hair done
+differently: and for a lovely woman to be transformed to a fright is
+hard to bear in solitude, or in imagination.
+
+“Really!” she petitioned.
+
+“Really—yes, or no?” added the Countess.
+
+“So unaccountable a whim!” Caroline looked in the glass dolefully, and
+pulled up her thick locks from one cheek, letting them fall on the
+instant.
+
+“She will?” breathed the Countess.
+
+“I really cannot,” said Caroline, with vehemence.
+
+The Countess burst into laughter, replying: “My poor child! it is not
+my whim—it is your obligation. George Uplift dines here to-day. Now do
+you divine it? Disguise is imperative for you.”
+
+Mrs. Strike, gazing in her sister’s face, answered slowly, “George? But
+how will you meet him?” she hurriedly asked.
+
+“I have met him,” rejoined the Countess, boldly. “I defy him to know
+me. I brazen him! You with your hair in my style are equally safe. You
+see there is no choice. Pooh! contemptible puppy!”
+
+“But I never,”—Caroline was going to say she never could face him. “I
+will not dine. I will nurse Evan.”
+
+“You have faced him, my dear,” said the Countess, “and you are to
+change your head-dress simply to throw him off his scent.”
+
+As she spoke the Countess tripped about, nodding her head like a girl.
+Triumph in the sense of her power over all she came in contact with,
+rather elated the lady.
+
+Do you see why she worked her sister in this roundabout fashion? She
+would not tell her George Uplift was in the house till she was sure he
+intended to stay, for fear of frightening her. When the necessity
+became apparent, she put it under the pretext of a whim in order to see
+how far Caroline, whose weak compliance she could count on, and whose
+reticence concerning the Duke annoyed her, would submit to it to please
+her sister; and if she rebelled positively, why to be sure it was the
+Duke she dreaded to shock: and, therefore, the Duke had a peculiar hold
+on her: and, therefore, the Countess might reckon that she would do
+more than she pleased to confess to remain with the Duke, and was
+manageable in that quarter. All this she learnt without asking. I need
+not add, that Caroline sighingly did her bidding.
+
+“We must all be victims in our turn, Carry,” said the Countess. “Evan’s
+prospects—it may be, Silva’s restoration—depend upon your hair being
+dressed plain to-day. Reflect on that!”
+
+Poor Caroline obeyed; but she was capable of reflecting only that her
+face was unnaturally lean and strange to her.
+
+The sisters tended and arranged one another, taking care to push their
+mourning a month or two ahead and the Countess animadverted on the
+vulgar mind of Lady Jocelyn, who would allow a “gentleman to sit down
+at a gentlewoman’s table, in full company, in pronounced undress: and
+Caroline, utterly miserable, would pretend that she wore a mask and
+kept grimacing as they do who are not accustomed to paint on the
+cheeks, till the Countess checked her by telling her she should ask her
+for that before the Duke.
+
+After a visit to Evan, the sisters sailed together into the
+drawing-room.
+
+“Uniformity is sometimes a gain,” murmured the Countess, as they were
+parting in the middle of the room. She saw that their fine figures, and
+profiles, and resemblance in contrast, produced an effect. The Duke
+wore one of those calmly intent looks by which men show they are aware
+of change in the heavens they study, and are too devout worshippers to
+presume to disapprove. Mr. George was standing by Miss Carrington, and
+he also watched Mrs. Strike. To bewilder him yet more the Countess
+persisted in fixing her eyes upon his heterodox apparel, and Mr. George
+became conscious and uneasy. Miss Carrington had to address her
+question to him twice before he heard. Melville Jocelyn, Sir John
+Loring, Sir Franks, and Hamilton surrounded the Countess, and told her
+what they had decided on with regard to the election during the day;
+for Melville was warm in his assertion that they would not talk to the
+Countess five minutes without getting a hint worth having.
+
+“Call to us that man who is habited like a groom,” said the Countess,
+indicating Mr. George. “I presume he is in his right place up here?”
+
+“Whew—take care, Countess—our best man. He’s good for a dozen,” said
+Hamilton.
+
+Mr. George was brought over and introduced to the Countess de Saldar.
+
+“So the oldest Tory in the county is a fox?” she said, in allusion to
+the hunt. Never did Caroline Strike admire her sister’s fearful genius
+more than at that moment.
+
+Mr. George ducked and rolled his hand over his chin, with “ah-um!” and
+the like, ended by a dry laugh.
+
+“Are you our supporter, Mr. Uplift?”
+
+“Tory interest, ma—um—my lady.”
+
+“And are you staunch and may be trusted?”
+
+“’Pon my honour, I think I have that reputation.”
+
+“And you would not betray us if we give you any secrets? Say ‘’Pon my
+honour,’ again. You launch it out so courageously.”
+
+The men laughed, though they could not see what the Countess was
+driving at. She had for two minutes spoken as she spoke when a girl,
+and George—entirely off his guard and unsuspicious—looked
+unenlightened. If he knew, there were hints enough for him in her
+words.
+
+If he remained blind, they might pass as air. The appearance of the
+butler cut short his protestation as to his powers of secresy.
+
+The Countess dismissed him.
+
+“You will be taken into our confidence when we require you.” And she
+resumed her foreign air in a most elaborate and overwhelming bow.
+
+She was now perfectly satisfied that she was safe from Mr. George, and,
+as she thoroughly detested the youthful squire, she chose to propagate
+a laugh at him by saying with the utmost languor and clearness of
+voice, as they descended the stairs:
+
+“After all, a very clever fox may be a very dull dog—don’t you think?”
+
+Gentlemen in front of her, and behind, heard it, and at Mr. George’s
+expense her reputation rose.
+
+Thus the genius of this born general prompted her to adopt the
+principle in tactics—boldly to strike when you are in the dark as to
+your enemy’s movements.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+IN WHICH THE DAUGHTERS OF THE GREAT MEL HAVE TO DIGEST HIM AT DINNER
+
+
+You must know, if you would form an estimate of the Countess’s heroic
+impudence, that a rumour was current in Lymport that the fair and
+well-developed Louisa Harrington, in her sixteenth year, did advisedly,
+and with the intention of rendering the term indefinite, entrust her
+guileless person to Mr. George Uplift’s honourable charge. The rumour,
+unflavoured by absolute malignity, was such; and it went on to say,
+that the sublime Mel, alive to the honour of his family, followed the
+fugitives with a pistol, and with a horsewhip, that he might chastise
+the offender according to the degree of his offence. It was certain
+that he had not used the pistol: it was said that he had used the whip.
+The details of the interview between Mel and Mr. George were numerous,
+but at the same time various. Some declared that he put a pistol to Mr.
+George’s ear, and under pressure of that persuader got him into the
+presence of a clergyman, when he turned sulky; and when the pistol was
+again produced, the ceremony would have been performed, had not the
+outraged Church cried out for help. Some vowed that Mr. George had
+referred all questions implying a difference between himself and Mel to
+their mutual fists for decision. At any rate, Mr. George turned up in
+Fallowfield subsequently; the fair Louisa, unhurt and with a quiet
+mind, in Lymport; and this amount of truth the rumours can be reduced
+to—that Louisa and Mr. George had been acquainted. Rumour and gossip
+know how to build: they always have some solid foundation, however
+small. Upwards of twelve years had run since Louisa went to the wife of
+the brewer—a period quite long enough for Mr. George to forget any one
+in; and she was altogether a different creature; and, as it was true
+that Mr. George was a dull one, she was, after the test she had put him
+to, justified in hoping that Mel’s progeny might pass unchallenged
+anywhere out of Lymport. So, with Mr. George facing her at table, the
+Countess sat down, determined to eat and be happy.
+
+A man with the education and tastes of a young country squire is not
+likely to know much of the character of women; and of the marvellous
+power they have of throwing a veil of oblivion between themselves and
+what they don’t want to remember, few men know much. Mr. George had
+thought, when he saw Mrs. Strike leaning to Evan, and heard she was a
+Harrington, that she was rather like the Lymport family; but the
+reappearance of Mrs. Strike, the attention of the Duke of Belfield to
+her, and the splendid tactics of the Countess, which had extinguished
+every thought in the thought of himself, drove Lymport out of his mind.
+
+There were some dinner guests at the table—people of Fallowfield,
+Beckley, and Bodley. The Countess had the diplomatist on one side, the
+Duke on the other. Caroline was under the charge of Sir Franks. The
+Countess, almost revelling in her position opposite Mr. George, was
+ambitious to lead the conversation, and commenced, smiling at Melville:
+
+“We are to be spared politics to-day? I think politics and cookery do
+not assimilate.”
+
+“I’m afraid you won’t teach the true Briton to agree with you,” said
+Melville, shaking his head over the sums involved by this British
+propensity.
+
+“No,” said Seymour. “Election dinners are a part of the Constitution”:
+and Andrew laughed: “They make Radicals pay as well as Tories, so it’s
+pretty square.”
+
+The topic was taken up, flagged, fell, and was taken up again. And then
+Harry Jocelyn said:
+
+“I say, have you worked the flags yet? The great Mel must have his
+flags.”
+
+The flags were in the hands of ladies, and ladies would look to the
+rosettes, he was told.
+
+Then a lady of the name of Barrington laughed lightly, and said:
+
+“Only, pray, my dear Harry, don’t call your uncle the ‘Great Mel’ at
+the election.”
+
+“Oh! very well,” quoth Harry: “why not?”
+
+“You’ll get him laughed at—that’s all.”
+
+“Oh! well, then, I won’t,” said Harry, whose wits were attracted by the
+Countess’s visage.
+
+Mrs. Barrington turned to Seymour, her neighbour, and resumed:
+
+“He really would be laughed at. There was a tailor—he was called the
+Great Mel—and he tried to stand for Fallowfield once. I believe he had
+the support of Squire Uplift—George’s uncle—and others. They must have
+done it for fun! Of course he did not get so far as the hustings; but I
+believe he had flags, and principles, and all sorts of things worked
+ready. He certainly canvassed.”
+
+“A tailor—canvassed—for Parliament?” remarked an old Dowager, the
+mother of Squire Copping. “My what are we coming to next?”
+
+“He deserved to get in,” quoth Aunt Bel: “After having his principles
+worked ready, to eject the man was infamous.”
+
+Amazed at the mine she had sprung, the Countess sat through it,
+lamenting the misery of owning a notorious father. Happily Evan was
+absent, on his peaceful blessed bed!
+
+Bowing over wine with the Duke, she tried another theme, while still,
+like a pertinacious cracker, the Great Mel kept banging up and down the
+table.
+
+“We are to have a feast in the open air, I hear. What you call
+pic-nic.”
+
+The Duke believed there was a project of the sort.
+
+“How exquisitely they do those things in Portugal! I suppose there
+would be no scandal in my telling something now. At least we are out of
+Court-jurisdiction.”
+
+“Scandal of the Court!” exclaimed his Grace, in mock horror.
+
+“The option is yours to listen. The Queen, when young, was sweetly
+pretty; a divine complexion; and a habit of smiling on everybody. I
+presume that the young Habral, son of the first magistrate of Lisbon,
+was also smiled on. Most innocently, I would swear! But it operated on
+the wretched youth! He spent all his fortune in the purchase and
+decoration of a fairy villa, bordering on the Val das Rosas, where the
+Court enjoyed its rustic festivities, and one day a storm! all the
+ladies hurried their young mistress to the house where the young Habral
+had been awaiting her for ages. None so polished as he! Musicians
+started up, the floors were ready, and torches beneath them!—there was
+a feast of exquisite wines and viands sparkling. Quite enchantment. The
+girl-Queen was in ecstasies. She deigned a dance with the young Habral,
+and then all sat down to supper; and in the middle of it came the cry
+of Fire! The Queen shrieked; the flames were seen all around; and if
+the arms of the young Habral were opened to save her, or perish, could
+she cast a thought on Royalty, and refuse? The Queen was saved the
+villa was burnt; the young Habral was ruined, but, if I know a
+Portuguese, he was happy till he died, and well remunerated! For he had
+held a Queen to his heart! So that was a pic-nic!”
+
+The Duke slightly inclined his head.
+
+“Vrai Portughez derrendo,” he said. “They tell a similar story in
+Spain, of one of the Queens—I forget her name. The difference between
+us and your Peninsular cavaliers is, that we would do as much for
+uncrowned ladies.”
+
+“Ah! your Grace!” The Countess swam in the pleasure of a nobleman’s
+compliment.
+
+“What’s the story?” interposed Aunt Bel.
+
+An outline of it was given her. Thank heaven, the table was now rid of
+the Great Mel. For how could he have any, the remotest relation with
+Queens and Peninsular pic-nics? You shall hear.
+
+Lady Jocelyn happened to catch a word or two of the story.
+
+“Why,” said she, “that’s English! Franks, you remember the ballet
+divertissement they improvised at the Bodley race-ball, when the
+magnificent footman fired a curtain and caught up Lady Racial, and
+carried her—”
+
+“Heaven knows where!” cried Sir Franks. “I remember it perfectly. It
+was said that the magnificent footman did it on purpose to have that
+pleasure.”
+
+“Ay, of course,” Hamilton took him up. “They talked of prosecuting the
+magnificent footman.”
+
+“Ay,” followed Seymour, “and nobody could tell where the magnificent
+footman bolted. He vanished into thin air.”
+
+“Ay, of course,” Melville struck in; “and the magic enveloped the lady
+for some time.”
+
+At this point Mr. George Uplift gave a horse-laugh. He jerked in his
+seat excitedly.
+
+“Bodley race-ball!” he cried; and looking at Lady Jocelyn: “Was your
+ladyship there, then? Why—ha! ha! why, you have seen the Great Mel,
+then! That tremendous footman was old Mel himself!”
+
+Lady Jocelyn struck both her hands on the table, and rested her large
+grey eyes, full of humorous surprise, on Mr. George.
+
+There was a pause, and then the ladies and gentlemen laughed.
+
+“Yes,” Mr. George went on, “that was old Mel. I’ll swear to him.”
+
+“And that’s how it began?” murmured Lady Jocelyn.
+
+Mr. George nodded at his plate discreetly.
+
+“Well,” said Lady Jocelyn, leaning back, and lifting her face upward in
+the discursive fulness of her fancy, “I feel I am not robbed. ‘Il y a
+des miracles, et j’en ai vu’. One’s life seems more perfect when one
+has seen what nature can do. The fellow was stupendous! I conceive him
+present. Who’ll fire a house for me? Is it my deficiency of attraction,
+or a total dearth of gallant snobs?”
+
+The Countess was drowned. The muscles of her smiles were horribly stiff
+and painful. Caroline was getting pale. Could it be accident that thus
+resuscitated Mel, their father, and would not let the dead man die? Was
+not malice at the bottom of it? The Countess, though she hated Mr.
+George infinitely, was clear-headed enough to see that Providence alone
+was trying her. No glances were exchanged between him and Laxley, or
+Drummond.
+
+Again Mel returned to his peace, and again he had to come forth.
+
+“Who was this singular man you were speaking about just now?” Mrs.
+Evremonde asked.
+
+Lady Jocelyn answered her: “The light of his age. The embodied protest
+against our social prejudice. Combine—say, Mirabeau and Alcibiades, and
+the result is the Lymport Tailor:—he measures your husband in the
+morning: in the evening he makes love to you, through a series of
+pantomimic transformations. He was a colossal Adonis, and I’m sorry
+he’s dead!”
+
+“But did the man get into society?” said Mrs. Evremonde. “How did he
+manage that?”
+
+“Yes, indeed! and what sort of a society!” the dowager Copping
+interjected. “None but bachelor-tables, I can assure you. Oh! I
+remember him. They talked of fetching him to Dox Hall. I said, No,
+thank you, Tom; this isn’t your Vauxhall.”
+
+“A sharp retort,” said Lady Jocelyn, “a most conclusive rhyme; but
+you’re mistaken. Many families were glad to see him, I hear. And he
+only consented to be treated like a footman when he dressed like one.
+The fellow had some capital points. He fought two or three duels, and
+behaved like a man. Franks wouldn’t have him here, or I would have
+received him. I hear that, as a conteur, he was inimitable. In short,
+he was a robust Brummel, and the Regent of low life.”
+
+This should have been Mel’s final epitaph.
+
+Unhappily, Mrs. Melville would remark, in her mincing manner, that the
+idea of the admission of a tailor into society seemed very unnatural;
+and Aunt Bel confessed that her experience did not comprehend it.
+
+“As to that,” said Lady Jocelyn, “phenomena are unnatural. The rules of
+society are lightened by the exceptions. What I like in this Mel is,
+that though he was a snob, and an impostor, he could still make himself
+respected by his betters. He was honest, so far; he acknowledged his
+tastes, which were those of Franks, Melville, Seymour, and George—the
+tastes of a gentleman. I prefer him infinitely to your cowardly
+democrat, who barks for what he can’t get, and is generally beastly. In
+fact, I’m not sure that I haven’t a secret passion for the great
+tailor.”
+
+“After all, old Mel wasn’t so bad,” Mr. George Uplift chimed in.
+
+“Granted a tailor—you didn’t see a bit of it at table. I’ve known him
+taken for a lord. And when he once got hold of you, you couldn’t give
+him up. The squire met him first in the coach, one winter. He took him
+for a Russian nobleman—didn’t find out what he was for a month or so.
+Says Mel, ‘Yes, I make clothes. You find the notion unpleasant; guess
+how disagreeable it is to me.’ The old squire laughed, and was glad to
+have him at Croftlands as often as he chose to come. Old Mel and I used
+to spar sometimes; but he’s gone, and I should like to shake his fist
+again.”
+
+Then Mr. George told the “Bath” story, and episodes in Mel’s career as
+Marquis; and while he held the ear of the table, Rose, who had not
+spoken a word, and had scarcely eaten a morsel during dinner, studied
+the sisters with serious eyes. Only when she turned them from the
+Countess to Mrs. Strike, they were softened by a shadowy drooping of
+the eyelids, as if for some reason she deeply pitied that lady.
+
+Next to Rose sat Drummond, with a face expressive of cynical enjoyment.
+He devoted uncommon attention to the Countess, whom he usually shunned
+and overlooked. He invited her to exchange bows over wine, in the
+fashion of that day, and the Countess went through the performance with
+finished grace and ease. Poor Andrew had all the time been brushing
+back his hair, and making strange deprecatory sounds in his throat,
+like a man who felt bound to assure everybody at table he was perfectly
+happy and comfortable.
+
+“Material enough for a Sartoriad,” said Drummond to Lady Jocelyn.
+
+“Excellent. Pray write it forthwith, Drummond”, replied her ladyship;
+and as they exchanged talk unintelligible to the Countess, this lady
+observed to the Duke:
+
+“It is a relief to have buried that subject.”
+
+The Duke smiled, raising an eyebrow; but the persecuted Countess
+perceived she had been much too hasty when Drummond added,
+
+“I’ll make a journey to Lymport in a day or two, and master his
+history.”
+
+“Do,” said her ladyship; and flourishing her hand, “‘I sing the Prince
+of Snobs!’”
+
+“Oh, if it’s about old Mel, I’ll sing you material enough,” said Mr.
+George. “There! you talk of it’s being unnatural, his dining out at
+respectable tables. Why, I believe—upon my honour, I believe it’s a
+fact—he’s supped and thrown dice with the Regent.”
+
+Lady Jocelyn clapped her hands. “A noble culmination, Drummond! The
+man’s an Epic!”
+
+“Well, I think old Mel was equal to it,” Mr. George pursued. “He gave
+me pretty broad hints; and this is how it was, if it really happened,
+you know. Old Mel had a friend; some say he was more. Well, that was a
+fellow, a great gambler. I dare say you’ve heard of him—Burley
+Bennet—him that won Ryelands Park of one of the royal dukes—died worth
+upwards of £100,000; and old Mel swore he ought to have had it, and
+would if he hadn’t somehow offended him. He left the money to Admiral
+Harrington, and he was a relation of Mel’s.”
+
+“But are we then utterly mixed up with tailors?” exclaimed Mrs.
+Barrington.
+
+“Well, those are the facts,” said Mr. George.
+
+The wine made the young squire talkative. It is my belief that his
+suspicions were not awake at that moment, and that, like any other
+young country squire, having got a subject he could talk on, he did not
+care to discontinue it. The Countess was past the effort to attempt to
+stop him. She had work enough to keep her smile in the right place.
+
+Every dinner may be said to have its special topic, just as every age
+has its marked reputation. They are put up twice or thrice, and have to
+contend with minor lights, and to swallow them, and then they command
+the tongues of men and flow uninterruptedly. So it was with the great
+Mel upon this occasion. Curiosity was aroused about him. Aunt Bel
+agreed with Lady Jocelyn that she would have liked to know the mighty
+tailor. Mrs. Shorne but very imperceptibly protested against the
+notion, and from one to another it ran. His Grace of Belfield expressed
+positive approval of Mel as one of the old school.
+
+“Si ce n’est pas le gentilhomme, au moins, c’est le gentilhomme
+manqué,” said Lady Jocelyn. “He is to be regretted, Duke. You are
+right. The stuff was in him, but the Fates were unkind. I stretch out
+my hand to the pauvre diable.”
+
+“I think one learns more from the mock magnifico than from anything
+else,” observed his Grace.
+
+“When the lion saw the donkey in his own royal skin,” said Aunt Bel,
+“add the rhyme at your discretion—he was a wiser lion, that’s all.”
+
+“And the ape that strives to copy one—he’s an animal of judgement,”
+said Lady Jocelyn. “We will be tolerant to the tailor, and the Countess
+must not set us down as a nation of shopkeepers: philosophically
+tolerant.”
+
+The Countess started, and ran a little broken “Oh!” affably out of her
+throat, dipped her lips to her tablenapkin, and resumed her smile.
+
+“Yes,” pursued her ladyship; “old Mel stamps the age gone by. The
+gallant adventurer tied to his shop! Alternate footman and marquis, out
+of intermediate tailor! Isn’t there something fine in his buffoon
+imitation of the real thing? I feel already that old Mel belongs to me.
+Where is the great man buried? Where have they set the funeral brass
+that holds his mighty ashes?”
+
+Lady Jocelyn’s humour was fully entered into by the men. The women
+smiled vacantly, and had a common thought that it was ill-bred of her
+to hold forth in that way at table, and unfeminine of any woman to
+speak continuously anywhere.
+
+“Oh, come!” cried Mr. George, who saw his own subject snapped away from
+him by sheer cleverness; “old Mel wasn’t only a buffoon, my lady, you
+know. Old Mel had his qualities. He was as much a ‘no-nonsense’ fellow,
+in his way, as a magistrate, or a minister.”
+
+“Or a king, or a constable,” Aunt Bel helped his illustration.
+
+“Or a prince, a poll-parrot, a Perigord-pie,” added Drummond, whose
+gravity did not prevent Mr. George from seeing that he was laughed at.
+
+“Well, then, now, listen to this,” said Mr. George, leaning his two
+hands on the table resolutely. Dessert was laid, and, with a full glass
+beside him, and a pear to peel, he determined to be heard.
+
+The Countess’s eyes went mentally up to the vindictive heavens. She
+stole a glance at Caroline, and was alarmed at her excessive pallor.
+Providence had rescued Evan from this!
+
+“Now, I know this to be true,” Mr. George began. “When old Mel was
+alive, he and I had plenty of sparring, and that—but he’s dead, and
+I’ll do him justice. I spoke of Burley Bennet just now. Now, my lady,
+old Burley was, I think, Mel’s half-brother, and he came, I know,
+somewhere out of Drury Lane—one of the courts near the theatre—I don’t
+know much of London. However, old Mel wouldn’t have that. Nothing less
+than being born in St. James’s Square would content old Mel, and he
+must have a Marquis for his father. I needn’t be more particular.
+Before ladies—ahem! But Burley was the shrewd hand of the two. Oh-h-h!
+such a card! He knew the way to get into company without false
+pretences. Well, I told you, he had lots more than £100,000—some said
+two—and he gave up Ryelands; never asked for it, though he won it.
+Consequence was, he commanded the services of somebody pretty high. And
+it was he got Admiral Harrington made a captain, posted, commodore,
+admiral, and K.C.B., all in seven years! In the Army it’d have been
+half the time, for the H.R.H. was stronger in that department. Now, I
+know old Burley promised Mel to leave him his money, and called the
+Admiral an ungrateful dog. He didn’t give Mel much at a time—now and
+then a twenty-pounder or so—I saw the cheques. And old Mel expected the
+money, and looked over his daughters like a turkey-cock. Nobody good
+enough for them. Whacking handsome gals—three! used to be called the
+Three Graces of Lymport. And one day Burley comes and visits Mel, and
+sees the girls. And he puts his finger on the eldest, I can tell you.
+She was a spanker! She was the handsomest gal, I think, ever I saw. For
+the mother’s a fine woman, and what with the mother, and what with old
+Mel—”
+
+“We won’t enter into the mysteries of origin,” quoth Lady Jocelyn.
+
+“Exactly, my lady. Oh, your servant, of course. Before ladies. A Burley
+Bennet, I said. Long and short was, he wanted to take her up to London.
+Says old Mel: ‘London’s a sad place.’—‘Place to make money,’ says
+Burley. ‘That’s not work for a young gal,’ says Mel. Long and short
+was, Burley wanted to take her, and Mel wouldn’t let her go.” Mr.
+George lowered his tone, and mumbled, “Don’t know how to explain it
+very well before ladies. What Burley wanted was—it wasn’t quite
+honourable, you know, though there was a good deal of spangles on it,
+and whether a real H.R.H., or a Marquis, or a Viscount, I can’t say,
+but—the offer was tempting to a tradesman. ‘No,’ says Mel; like a chap
+planting his flagstaff and sticking to it. I believe that to get her to
+go with him, Burley offered to make a will on the spot, and to leave
+every farthing of his money and property—upon my soul, I believe it to
+be true—to Mel and his family, if he’d let the gal go. ‘No,’ says Mel.
+I like the old bird! And Burley got in a rage, and said he’d leave
+every farthing to the sailor. Says Mel: ‘I’m a poor tradesman; but I
+have and I always will have the feelings of a gentleman, and they’re
+more to me than hard cash, and the honour of my daughter, sir, is
+dearer to me than my blood. Out of the house!’ cries Mel. And away old
+Burley went, and left every penny to the sailor, Admiral Harrington,
+who never noticed ’em an inch. Now, there!”
+
+All had listened to Mr. George attentively, and he had slurred the
+apologetic passages, and emphasized the propitiatory “before ladies” in
+a way to make himself well understood a generation back.
+
+“Bravo, old Mel!” rang the voice of Lady Jocelyn, and a murmur ensued,
+in the midst of which Rose stood up and hurried round the table to Mrs.
+Strike, who was seen to rise from her chair; and as she did so, the
+ill-arranged locks fell from their unnatural restraint down over her
+shoulders; one great curl half forward to the bosom, and one behind her
+right ear. Her eyes were wide, her whole face, neck, and fingers, white
+as marble. The faintest tremor of a frown on her brows, and her shut
+lips, marked the continuation of some internal struggle, as if with her
+last conscious force she kept down a flood of tears and a wild outcry
+which it was death to hold. Sir Franks felt his arm touched, and looked
+up, and caught her, as Rose approached. The Duke and other gentlemen
+went to his aid, and as the beautiful woman was borne out white and
+still as a corpse, the Countess had this dagger plunged in her heart
+from the mouth of Mr. George, addressing Miss Carrington:
+
+“I swear I didn’t do it on purpose. She’s Carry Harrington, old Mel’s
+daughter, as sure as she’s flesh and blood!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+TREATS OF A HANDKERCHIEF
+
+
+Running through Beckley Park, clear from the chalk, a little stream
+gave light and freshness to its pasturage. Near where it entered, a
+bathing-house of white marble had been built, under which the water
+flowed, and the dive could be taken to a paved depth, and you swam out
+over a pebbly bottom into sun-light, screened by the thick-weeded
+banks, loose-strife and willow-herb, and mint, nodding over you, and in
+the later season long-plumed yellow grasses. Here at sunrise the young
+men washed their limbs, and here since her return home English Rose
+loved to walk by night. She had often spoken of the little happy stream
+to Evan in Portugal, and when he came to Beckley Court, she arranged
+that he should sleep in a bed-room overlooking it. The view was sweet
+and pleasant to him, for all the babbling of the water was of Rose, and
+winding in and out, to East, to North, it wound to embowered hopes in
+the lover’s mind, to tender dreams; and often at dawn, when dressing,
+his restless heart embarked on it, and sailed into havens, the phantom
+joys of which coloured his life for him all the day. But most he loved
+to look across it when the light fell. The palest solitary gleam along
+its course spoke to him rich promise. The faint blue beam of a star
+chained all his longings, charmed his sorrows to sleep. Rose like a
+fairy had breathed her spirit here, and it was a delight to the silly
+luxurious youth to lie down, and fix some image of a flower bending to
+the stream on his brain, and in the cradle of fancies that grew round
+it, slide down the tide of sleep.
+
+From the image of a flower bending to the stream, like his own soul to
+the bosom of Rose, Evan built sweet fables. It was she that exalted
+him, that led him through glittering chapters of adventure. In his
+dream of deeds achieved for her sake, you may be sure the young man
+behaved worthily, though he was modest when she praised him, and his
+limbs trembled when the land whispered of his great reward to come. The
+longer he stayed at Beckley the more he lived in this world within
+world, and if now and then the harsh outer life smote him, a look or a
+word from Rose encompassed him again, and he became sensible only of a
+distant pain.
+
+At first his hope sprang wildly to possess her, to believe, that after
+he had done deeds that would have sent ordinary men in the condition of
+shattered hulks to the hospital, she might be his. Then blow upon blow
+was struck, and he prayed to be near her till he died: no more. Then
+she, herself, struck him to the ground, and sitting in his chamber,
+sick and weary, on the evening of his mishap, Evan’s sole desire was to
+obtain the handkerchief he had risked his neck for. To have that, and
+hold it to his heart, and feel it as a part of her, seemed much.
+
+Over a length of the stream the red round harvest-moon was rising, and
+the weakened youth was this evening at the mercy of the charm that
+encircled him. The water curved, and dimpled, and flowed flat, and the
+whole body of it rushed into the spaces of sad splendour. The clustered
+trees stood like temples of darkness; their shadows lengthened
+supernaturally; and a pale gloom crept between them on the sward. He
+had been thinking for some time that Rose would knock at his door, and
+give him her voice, at least; but she did not come; and when he had
+gazed out on the stream till his eyes ached, he felt that he must go
+and walk by it. Those little flashes of the hurrying tide spoke to him
+of a secret rapture and of a joy-seeking impulse; the pouring onward of
+all the blood of life to one illumined heart, mournful from excess of
+love.
+
+Pardon me, I beg. Enamoured young men have these notions. Ordinarily
+Evan had sufficient common sense and was as prosaic as mankind could
+wish him; but he has had a terrible fall in the morning, and a young
+woman rages in his brain. Better, indeed, and “more manly,” were he to
+strike and raise huge bosses on his forehead, groan, and so have done
+with it. We must let him go his own way.
+
+At the door he was met by the Countess. She came into the room without
+a word or a kiss, and when she did speak, the total absence of any
+euphuism gave token of repressed excitement yet more than her angry
+eyes and eager step. Evan had grown accustomed to her moods, and if one
+moment she was the halcyon, and another the petrel, it no longer
+disturbed him, seeing that he was a stranger to the influences by which
+she was affected. The Countess rated him severely for not seeking
+repose and inviting sympathy. She told him that the Jocelyns had one
+and all combined in an infamous plot to destroy the race of Harrington,
+and that Caroline had already succumbed to their assaults; that the
+Jocelyns would repent it, and sooner than they thought for; and that
+the only friend the Harringtons had in the house was Miss Bonner, whom
+Providence would liberally reward.
+
+Then the Countess changed to a dramatic posture, and whispered aloud,
+“Hush: she is here. She is so anxious. Be generous, my brother, and let
+her see you!”
+
+“She?” said Evan, faintly. “May she come, Louisa?” He hoped for Rose.
+
+“I have consented to mask it,” returned the Countess. “Oh, what do I
+not sacrifice for you!”
+
+She turned from him, and to Evan’s chagrin introduced Juliana Bonner.
+
+“Five minutes, remember!” said the Countess. “I must not hear of more.”
+And then Evan found himself alone with Miss Bonner, and very uneasy.
+This young lady had restless brilliant eyes, and a contraction about
+the forehead which gave one the idea of a creature suffering perpetual
+headache. She said nothing, and when their eyes met she dropped hers in
+a manner that made silence too expressive. Feeling which, Evan began:
+
+“May I tell you that I think it is I who ought to be nursing you, not
+you me?”
+
+Miss Bonner replied by lifting her eyes and dropping them as before,
+murmuring subsequently, “Would you do so?”
+
+“Most certainly, if you did me the honour to select me.”
+
+The fingers of the young lady commenced twisting and intertwining on
+her lap. Suddenly she laughed:
+
+“It would not do at all. You won’t be dismissed from your present
+service till you’re unfit for any other.”
+
+“What do you mean?” said Evan, thinking more of the unmusical laugh
+than of the words.
+
+He received no explanation, and the irksome silence caused him to look
+through the window, as an escape for his mind, at least. The waters
+streamed on endlessly into the golden arms awaiting them. The low moon
+burnt through the foliage. In the distance, over a reach of the flood,
+one tall aspen shook against the lighted sky.
+
+“Are you in pain?” Miss Bonner asked, and broke his reverie.
+
+“No; I am going away, and perhaps I sigh involuntarily.”
+
+“You like these grounds?”
+
+“I have never been so happy in any place.”
+
+“With those cruel young men about you?”
+
+Evan now laughed. “We don’t call young men cruel, Miss Bonner.”
+
+“But were they not? To take advantage of what Rose told them—it was
+base!”
+
+She had said more than she intended, possibly, for she coloured under
+his inquiring look, and added: “I wish I could say the same as you of
+Beckley. Do you know, I am called Rose’s thorn?”
+
+“Not by Miss Jocelyn herself, certainly!”
+
+“How eager you are to defend her. But am I not—tell me—do I not look
+like a thorn in company with her?”
+
+“There is but the difference that ill health would make.”
+
+“Ill health? Oh, yes! And Rose is so much better born.”
+
+“To that, I am sure, she does not give a thought.”
+
+“Not Rose? Oh!”
+
+An exclamation, properly lengthened, convinces the feelings more
+satisfactorily than much logic. Though Evan claimed only the
+hand-kerchief he had won, his heart sank at the sound. Miss Bonner
+watched him, and springing forward, said sharply:
+
+“May I tell you something?”
+
+“You may tell me what you please.”
+
+“Then, whether I offend you or not, you had better leave this.”
+
+“I am going,” said Evan. “I am only waiting to introduce your tutor to
+you.”
+
+She kept her eyes on him, and in her voice as well there was a depth,
+as she returned:
+
+“Mr. Laxley, Mr. Forth, and Harry, are going to Lymport to-morrow.”
+
+Evan was looking at a figure, whose shadow was thrown towards the house
+from the margin of the stream.
+
+He stood up, and taking the hand of Miss Bonner, said:
+
+“I thank you. I may, perhaps, start with them. At any rate, you have
+done me a great service, which I shall not forget.”
+
+The figure by the stream he knew to be that of Rose. He released Miss
+Bonner’s trembling moist hand, and as he continued standing, she moved
+to the door, after once following the line of his eyes into the
+moonlight.
+
+Outside the door a noise was audible. Andrew had come to sit with his
+dear boy, and the Countess had met and engaged and driven him to the
+other end of the passage, where he hung remonstrating with her.
+
+“Why, Van,” he said, as Evan came up to him, “I thought you were in a
+profound sleep. Louisa said—”
+
+“Silly Andrew!” interposed the Countess, “do you not observe he is
+sleep-walking now?” and she left them with a light laugh to go to
+Juliana, whom she found in tears. The Countess was quite aware of the
+efficacy of a little bit of burlesque lying to cover her retreat from
+any petty exposure.
+
+Evan soon got free from Andrew. He was under the dim stars, walking to
+the great fire in the East. The cool air refreshed him. He was simply
+going to ask for his own, before he went, and had no cause to fear what
+would be thought by any one. A handkerchief! A man might fairly win
+that, and carry it out of a very noble family, without having to blush
+for himself.
+
+I cannot say whether he inherited his feeling for rank from Mel, his
+father, or that the Countess had succeeded in instilling it, but Evan
+never took Republican ground in opposition to those who insulted him,
+and never lashed his “manhood” to assert itself, nor compared the
+fineness of his instincts with the behaviour of titled gentlemen.
+Rather he seemed to admit the distinction between his birth and that of
+a gentleman, admitting it to his own soul, as it were, and struggled
+simply as men struggle against a destiny. The news Miss Bonner had
+given him sufficed to break a spell which could not have endured
+another week; and Andrew, besides, had told him of Caroline’s illness.
+He walked to meet Rose, honestly intending to ask for his own, and wish
+her good-bye.
+
+Rose saw him approach, and knew him in the distance. She was sitting on
+a lower branch of the aspen, that shot out almost from the root, and
+stretched over the intervolving rays of light on the tremulous water.
+She could not move to meet him. She was not the Rose whom we have
+hitherto known. Love may spring in the bosom of a young girl, like
+Hesper in the evening sky, a grey speck in a field of grey, and not be
+seen or known, till surely as the circle advances the faint planet
+gathers fire, and, coming nearer earth, dilates, and will and must be
+seen and known. When Evan lay like a dead man on the ground, Rose
+turned upon herself as the author of his death, and then she felt this
+presence within her, and her heart all day had talked to her of it, and
+was throbbing now, and would not be quieted. She could only lift her
+eyes and give him her hand; she could not speak. She thought him cold,
+and he was; cold enough to think that she and her cousin were not
+unlike in their manner, though not deep enough to reflect that it was
+from the same cause.
+
+She was the first to find her wits: but not before she spoke did she
+feel, and start to feel, how long had been the silence, and that her
+hand was still in his.
+
+“Why did you come out, Evan? It was not right.”
+
+“I came to speak to you. I shall leave early to-morrow, and may not see
+you alone.”
+
+“You are going——?”
+
+She checked her voice, and left the thrill of it wavering in him.
+
+“Yes, Rose, I am going; I should have gone before.”
+
+“Evan!” she grasped his hand, and then timidly retained it. “You have
+not forgiven me? I see now. I did not think of any risk to you. I only
+wanted you to beat. I wanted you to be first and best. If you knew how
+I thank God for saving you! What my punishment would have been!”
+
+Till her eyes were full she kept them on him, too deep in emotion to be
+conscious of it.
+
+He could gaze on her tears coldly.
+
+“I should be happy to take the leap any day for the prize you offered.
+I have come for that.”
+
+“For what, Evan?” But while she was speaking the colour mounted in her
+cheeks, and she went on rapidly:
+
+“Did you think it unkind of me not to come to nurse you. I must tell
+you, to defend myself. It was the Countess, Evan. She is offended with
+me—very justly, I dare say. She would not let me come. What could I do?
+I had no claim to come.”
+
+Rose was not aware of the import of her speech. Evan, though he felt
+more in it, and had some secret nerves set tingling and dancing, was
+not to be moved from his demand.
+
+“Do you intend to withhold it, Rose?”
+
+“Withhold what, Evan? Anything that you wish for is yours.”
+
+“The handkerchief. Is not that mine?”
+
+Rose faltered a word. Why did he ask for it? Because he asked for
+nothing else, and wanted no other thing save that.
+
+Why did she hesitate? Because it was so poor a gift, and so unworthy of
+him.
+
+And why did he insist? Because in honour she was bound to surrender it.
+
+And why did she hesitate still? Let her answer.
+
+“Oh, Evan! I would give you anything but that; and if you are going
+away, I should beg so much to keep it.”
+
+He must have been in a singular state not to see her heart in the
+refusal, as was she not to see his in the request. But Love is blindest
+just when the bandage is being removed from his forehead.
+
+“Then you will not give it me, Rose? Do you think I shall go about
+boasting ‘This is Miss Jocelyn’s handkerchief, and I, poor as I am,
+have won it’?”
+
+The taunt struck aslant in Rose’s breast with a peculiar sting. She
+stood up.
+
+“I will give it you, Evan.”
+
+Turning from him she drew it forth, and handed it to him hurriedly. It
+was warm. It was stained with his blood. He guessed where it had been
+nestling, and, now, as if by revelation, he saw that large sole star in
+the bosom of his darling, and was blinded by it and lost his senses.
+
+“Rose! beloved!”
+
+Like the flower of his nightly phantasy bending over the stream, he
+looked and saw in her sweet face the living wonders that encircled his
+image; she murmuring: “No, you must hate me.”
+
+“I love you, Rose, and dare to say it—and it’s unpardonable. Can you
+forgive me?”
+
+She raised her face to him.
+
+“Forgive you for loving me?” she said.
+
+Holy to them grew the stillness: the ripple suffused in golden
+moonlight: the dark edges of the leaves against superlative brightness.
+Not a chirp was heard, nor anything save the cool and endless carol of
+the happy waters, whose voices are the spirits of silence. Nature
+seemed consenting that their hands should be joined, their eyes
+intermingling. And when Evan, with a lover’s craving, wished her lips
+to say what her eyes said so well, Rose drew his fingers up, and, with
+an arch smile and a blush, kissed them. The simple act set his heart
+thumping, and from the look of love, she saw an expression of pain pass
+through him. Her fealty—her guileless, fearless truth—which the kissing
+of his hand brought vividly before him, conjured its contrast as well
+in this that was hidden from her, or but half suspected. Did she
+know—know and love him still? He thought it might be: but that fell
+dead on her asking:
+
+“Shall I speak to Mama to-night?”
+
+A load of lead crushed him.
+
+“Rose!” he said; but could get no farther.
+
+Innocently, or with well-masked design, Rose branched off into little
+sweet words about his bruised shoulder, touching it softly, as if she
+knew the virtue that was in her touch, and accusing her selfish self as
+she caressed it:
+
+“Dearest Evan! you must have been sure I thought no one like you. Why
+did you not tell me before? I can hardly believe it now! Do you know,”
+she hurried on, “they think me cold and heartless,—am I? I must be, to
+have made you run such risk; but yet I’m sure I could not have survived
+you.”
+
+Dropping her voice, Rose quoted Ruth. As Evan listened, the words were
+like food from heaven poured into his spirit.
+
+“To-morrow,” he kept saying to himself, “to-morrow I will tell her all.
+Let her think well of me a few short hours.”
+
+But the passing minutes locked them closer; each had a new link—in a
+word, or a speechless breath, or a touch: and to break the marriage of
+their eyes there must be infinite baseness on one side, or on the other
+disloyalty to love.
+
+The moon was a silver ball, high up through the aspen-leaves. Evan
+kissed the hand of Rose, and led her back to the house. He had appeased
+his conscience by restraining his wild desire to kiss her lips.
+
+In the hall they parted. Rose whispered, “Till death!” giving him her
+hands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+THE COUNTESS MAKES HERSELF FELT
+
+
+There is a peculiar reptile whose stroke is said to deprive men of
+motion. On the day after the great Mel had stalked the dinner-table of
+Beckley Court, several of the guests were sensible of the effect of
+this creature’s mysterious touch, without knowing what it was that
+paralyzed them. Drummond Forth had fully planned to go to Lymport. He
+had special reasons for making investigations with regard to the great
+Mel. Harry, who was fond of Drummond, offered to accompany him, and
+Laxley, for the sake of a diversion, fell into the scheme. Mr. George
+Uplift was also to be of the party, and promised them fun. But when the
+time came to start, not one could be induced to move: Laxley was
+pressingly engaged by Rose: Harry showed the rope the Countess held him
+by; Mr. George made a singular face, and seriously advised Drummond to
+give up the project.
+
+“Don’t rub that woman the wrong way,” he said, in a private colloquy
+they had. “By Jingo, she’s a Tartar. She was as a gal, and she isn’t
+changed, Lou Harrington. Fancy now: she knew me, and she faced me out,
+and made me think her a stranger! ’Gad, I’m glad I didn’t speak to the
+others. Lord’s sake, keep it quiet. Don’t rouse that woman, now, if you
+want to keep a whole skin.”
+
+Drummond laughed at his extreme earnestness in cautioning him, and
+appeared to enjoy his dread of the Countess. Mr. George would not tell
+how he had been induced to change his mind. He repeated his advice with
+a very emphatic shrug of the shoulder.
+
+“You seem afraid of her,” said Drummond.
+
+“I am. I ain’t ashamed to confess it. She’s a regular viper, my boy!”
+said Mr. George. “She and I once were pretty thick—least said soonest
+mended, you know. I offended her. Wasn’t quite up to her mark—a
+tailor’s daughter, you know. ’Gad, if she didn’t set an Irish Dragoon
+Captain on me!—I went about in danger of my life. The fellow began to
+twist his damned black moustaches the moment he clapped eyes on
+me—bullied me till, upon my soul, I was almost ready to fight him! Oh,
+she was a little tripping Tartar of a bantam hen then. She’s grown
+since she’s been countessed, and does it peacocky. Now, I give you fair
+warning, you know. She’s more than any man’s match.”
+
+“I dare say I shall think the same when she has beaten me,” quoth
+cynical Drummond, and immediately went and gave orders for his horse to
+be saddled, thinking that he would tread on the head of the viper.
+
+But shortly before the hour of his departure, Mrs. Evremonde summoned
+him to her, and showed him a slip of paper, on which was written, in an
+uncouth small hand:
+
+“Madam: a friend warns you that your husband is coming here. Deep
+interest in your welfare is the cause of an anonymous communication.
+The writer wishes only to warn you in time.”
+
+Mrs. Evremonde told Drummond that she had received it from one of the
+servants when leaving the breakfast-room. Beyond the fact that a man on
+horseback had handed it to a little boy, who had delivered it over to
+the footman, Drummond could learn nothing. Of course, all thought of
+the journey to Lymport was abandoned. If but to excogitate a motive for
+the origin of the document, Drummond was forced to remain; and now he
+had it, and now he lost it again; and as he was wandering about in his
+maze, the Countess met him with a “Good morning, Mr., Forth. Have I
+impeded your expedition by taking my friend Mr. Harry to cavalier me
+to-day?”
+
+Drummond smilingly assured her that she had not in any way disarranged
+his projects, and passed with so absorbed a brow that the Countess
+could afford to turn her head and inspect him, without fear that he
+would surprise her in the act. Knocking the pearly edge of her fan on
+her teeth, she eyed him under her joined black lashes, and deliberately
+read his thoughts in the mere shape of his back and shoulders. She read
+him through and through, and was unconscious of the effective attitude
+she stood in for the space of two full minutes, and even then it
+required one of our unhappy sex to recall her. This was Harry Jocelyn.
+
+“My friend,” she said to him, with a melancholy smile, “my one friend
+here!”
+
+Harry went through the form of kissing her hand, which he had been
+taught, and practised cunningly as the first step of the ladder.
+
+“I say, you looked so handsome, standing as you did just now,” he
+remarked; and she could see how far beneath her that effective attitude
+had precipitated the youth.
+
+“Ah!” she sighed, walking on, with the step of majesty in exile.
+
+“What the deuce is the matter with everybody to-day?” cried Harry. “I’m
+hanged if I can make it out. There’s the Carrington, as you call her, I
+met her with such a pair of eyes, and old George looking as if he’d
+been licked, at her heels; and there’s Drummond and his lady fair
+moping about the lawn, and my mother positively getting excited—there’s
+a miracle! and Juley’s sharpening her nails for somebody, and if
+Ferdinand don’t look out, your brother’ll be walking off with
+Rosey—that’s my opinion.”
+
+“Indeed,” said the Countess. “You really think so?”
+
+“Well, they come it pretty strong together.”
+
+“And what constitutes the ‘come it strong,’ Mr. Harry?”
+
+“Hold of hands; you know,” the young gentleman indicated.
+
+“Alas, then! must not we be more discreet?”
+
+“Oh! but it’s different. With young people one knows what that means.”
+
+“Deus!” exclaimed the Countess, tossing her head weariedly, and Harry
+perceived his slip, and down he went again.
+
+What wonder that a youth in such training should consent to fetch and
+carry, to listen and relate, to play the spy and know no more of his
+office than that it gave him astonishing thrills of satisfaction, and
+now and then a secret sweet reward?
+
+The Countess had sealed Miss Carrington’s mouth by one of her most
+dexterous strokes. On leaving the dinner-table over-night, and seeing
+that Caroline’s attack would preclude their instant retreat, the
+gallant Countess turned at bay. A word aside to Mr. George Uplift, and
+then the Countess took a chair by Miss Carrington. She did all the
+conversation, and supplied all the smiles to it, and when a lady has to
+do that she is justified in striking, and striking hard, for to abandon
+the pretence of sweetness is a gross insult from one woman to another.
+
+The Countess then led circuitously, but with all the ease in the world,
+to the story of a Portuguese lady, of a marvellous beauty, and who was
+deeply enamoured of the Chevalier Miguel de Rasadio, and engaged to be
+married to him: but, alas for her! in the insolence of her happiness
+she wantonly made an enemy in the person of a most unoffending lady,
+and she repented it. While sketching the admirable Chevalier, the
+Countess drew a telling portrait of Mr. George Uplift, and gratified
+her humour and her wrath at once by strong truth to nature in the
+description and animated encomiums on the individual. The Portuguese
+lady, too, a little resembled Miss Carrington, in spite of her
+marvellous beauty. And it was odd that Miss Carrington should give a
+sudden start and a horrified glance at the Countess just when the
+Countess was pathetically relating the proceeding taken by the
+revengeful lady on the beautiful betrothed of the Chevalier Miguel de
+Rasadio: which proceeding was nothing other than to bring to the
+Chevalier’s knowledge that his beauty had a defect concealed by her
+apparel, and that the specks in his fruit were not one, or two, but,
+Oh! And the dreadful sequel to the story the Countess could not tell:
+preferring ingeniously to throw a tragic veil over it. Miss Carrington
+went early to bed that night.
+
+The courage that mounteth with occasion was eminently the attribute of
+the Countess de Saldar. After that dreadful dinner she (since the
+weaknesses of great generals should not be altogether ignored), did
+pray for flight and total obscurity, but Caroline could not be left in
+her hysteric state, and now that she really perceived that Evan was
+progressing and on the point of sealing his chance, the devoted lady
+resolved to hold her ground. Besides, there was the pic-nic. The
+Countess had one dress she had not yet appeared in, and it was for the
+picnic she kept it. That small motives are at the bottom of many
+illustrious actions is a modern discovery; but I shall not adopt the
+modern principle of magnifying the small motive till it overshadows my
+noble heroine. I remember that the small motive is only to be seen by
+being borne into the range of my vision by a powerful microscope; and
+if I do more than see—if I carry on my reflections by the aid of the
+glass, I arrive at conclusions that must be false. Men who dwarf human
+nature do this. The gods are juster. The Countess, though she wished to
+remain for the pic-nic, and felt warm in anticipation of the homage to
+her new dress, was still a gallant general and a devoted sister, and if
+she said to herself, “Come what may, I will stay for that pic-nic, and
+they shall not brow-beat me out of it,” it is that trifling pleasures
+are noisiest about the heart of human nature: not that they govern us
+absolutely. There is mob-rule in minds as in communities, but the
+Countess had her appetites in excellent drill. This pic-nic
+surrendered, represented to her defeat in all its ignominy. The largest
+longest-headed of schemes ask occasionally for something substantial
+and immediate. So the Countess stipulated with Providence for the
+pic-nic. It was a point to be passed: “Thorough flood, thorough fire.”
+
+In vain poor Andrew Cogglesby, to whom the dinner had been torture, and
+who was beginning to see the position they stood in at Beckley, begged
+to be allowed to take them away, or to go alone. The Countess laughed
+him into submission. As a consequence of her audacious spirits she grew
+more charming and more natural, and the humour that she possessed, but
+which, like her other faculties, was usually subordinate to her plans,
+gave spontaneous bursts throughout the day, and delighted her
+courtiers. Nor did the men at all dislike the difference of her manner
+with them, and with the ladies. I may observe that a woman who shows a
+marked depression in the presence of her own sex will be thought very
+superior by ours; that is, supposing she is clever and agreeable.
+Manhood distinguishes what flatters it. A lady approaches. “We must be
+proper,” says the Countess, and her hearty laugh dies with suddenness
+and is succeeded by the maturest gravity. And the Countess can look a
+profound merriment with perfect sedateness when there appears to be an
+equivoque in company. Finely secret are her glances, as if under every
+eye-lash there lurked the shade of a meaning. What she meant was not so
+clear. All this was going on, and Lady Jocelyn was simply amused, and
+sat as at a play.
+
+“She seems to have stepped out of a book of French memoirs,” said her
+ladyship. “La vie galante et devote—voila la Comtesse.”
+
+In contradistinction to the other ladies, she did not detest the
+Countess because she could not like her.
+
+“Where’s the harm in her?” she asked. “She doesn’t damage the men, that
+I can see. And a person you can laugh at and with, is inexhaustible.”
+
+“And how long is she to stay here?” Mrs. Shorne inquired. Mrs. Melville
+remarking: “Her visit appears to be inexhaustible.”
+
+“I suppose she’ll stay till the Election business is over,” said Lady
+Jocelyn.
+
+The Countess had just driven with Melville to Fallowfield in Caroline’s
+black lace shawl.
+
+“Upwards of four weeks longer!” Mrs. Melville interjected.
+
+Lady Jocelyn chuckled.
+
+Miss Carrington was present. She had been formerly sharp in her
+condemnation of the Countess—her affectedness, her euphuism, and her
+vulgarity. Now she did not say a word, though she might have done it
+with impunity.
+
+“I suppose, Emily, you see what Rose is about?” said Mrs. Melville. “I
+should not have thought it adviseable to have that young man here,
+myself. I think I let you know that.”
+
+“One young man’s as good as another,” responded her ladyship. “I’ve my
+doubts of the one that’s much better. I fancy Rose is as good a judge
+by this time as you or I.”
+
+Mrs. Melville made an effort or two to open Lady Jocelyn’s eyes, and
+then relapsed into the confident serenity inspired by evil
+prognostications.
+
+“But there really does seem some infatuation about these people!”
+exclaimed Mrs. Shorne, turning to Miss Current. “Can you understand it?
+The Duke, my dear! Things seem to be going on in the house, that
+really—and so openly.”
+
+“That’s one virtue,” said Miss Current, with her imperturbable metallic
+voice, and face like a cold clear northern sky. “Things done in secret
+throw on the outsiders the onus of raising a scandal.”
+
+“You don’t believe, then?” suggested Mrs. Shorne.
+
+Miss Current replied: “I always wait for a thing to happen first.”
+
+“But haven’t you seen, my dear?”
+
+“I never see anything, my dear.”
+
+“Then you must be blind, my dear.”
+
+“On the contrary, that’s how I keep my sight, my dear.”
+
+“I don’t understand you,” said Mrs. Shorne.
+
+“It’s a part of the science of optics, and requires study,” said Miss
+Current.
+
+Neither with the worldly nor the unworldly woman could the ladies do
+anything. But they were soon to have their triumph.
+
+A delicious morning had followed the lovely night. The stream flowed
+under Evan’s eyes, like something in a lower sphere, now. His passion
+took him up, as if a genie had lifted him into mid-air, and showed him
+the world on a palm of a hand; and yet, as he dressed by the window,
+little chinks in the garden wall, and nectarines under their shiny
+leaves, and the white walks of the garden, were stamped on his hot
+brain accurately and lastingly. Ruth upon the lips of Rose: that voice
+of living constancy made music to him everywhere. “Thy God shall be my
+God.” He had heard it all through the night. He had not yet broken the
+tender charm sufficiently to think that he must tell her the sacrifice
+she would have to make. When partly he did, the first excuse he
+clutched at was, that he had not even kissed her on the forehead.
+Surely he had been splendidly chivalrous? Just as surely he would have
+brought on himself the scorn of the chivalrous or of the commonly
+balanced if he had been otherwise. The grandeur of this or of any of
+his proceedings, then, was forfeited, as it must needs be when we are
+in the false position: we can have no glory though martyred. The youth
+felt it, even to the seeing of why it was; and he resolved, in justice
+to the dear girl, that he would break loose from his fetters, as we
+call our weakness. Behold, Rose met him descending the stairs, and,
+taking his hand, sang, unabashed, by the tell-tale colour coming over
+her face, a stave of a little Portuguese air that they had both been
+fond of in Portugal; and he, listening to it, and looking in her eyes,
+saw that his feelings in the old time had been hers. Instantly the old
+time gave him its breath, the present drew back.
+
+Rose, now that she had given her heart out, had no idea of concealment.
+She would have denied nothing to her aunts: she was ready to confide it
+to her mother. Was she not proud of the man she loved? When Evan’s hand
+touched hers she retained it, and smiled up at him frankly, as it were
+to make him glad in her gladness. If before others his eyes brought the
+blood to her cheeks, she would perhaps drop her eye-lids an instant,
+and then glance quickly level again to reassure him. And who would have
+thought that this boisterous, boyish creature had such depths of eye!
+Cold, did they call her? Let others think her cold. The tender
+knowledge of her—the throbbing secret they held in common sang at his
+heart. Rose made no confidante, but she attempted no mystery. Evan
+should have risen to the height of the noble girl. But the dearer and
+sweeter her bearing became, the more conscious he was of the dead
+weight he was dragging: in truth her behaviour stamped his false
+position to hard print the more he admired her for it, and he had
+shrinkings from the feminine part it imposed on him to play.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+IN WHICH THE STREAM FLOWS MUDDY AND CLEAR
+
+
+An Irish retriever-pup of the Shannon breed, Pat by name, was
+undergoing tuition on the sward close by the kennels, Rose’s
+hunting-whip being passed through his collar to restrain erratic
+propensities. The particular point of instruction which now made poor
+Pat hang out his tongue, and agitate his crisp brown curls, was the
+performance of the “down-charge”; a ceremony demanding implicit
+obedience from the animal in the midst of volatile gambadoes, and a
+simulation of profound repose when his desire to be up and bounding was
+mighty. Pat’s Irish eyes were watching Rose, as he lay with his head
+couched between his forepaws in the required attitude. He had but half
+learnt his lesson; and something in his half-humorous, half-melancholy
+look talked to Rose more eloquently than her friend Ferdinand at her
+elbow. Laxley was her assistant dog-breaker. Rose would not abandon her
+friends because she had accepted a lover. On the contrary, Rose was
+very kind to Ferdinand, and perhaps felt bound to be so to-day. To-day,
+also, her face was lighted; a readiness to colour, and an expression of
+deeper knowledge, which she now had, made the girl dangerous to
+friends. This was not Rose’s fault but there is no doubt among the
+faculty that love is a contagious disease, and we ought not to come
+within miles of the creatures in whom it lodges.
+
+Pat’s tail kept hinting to his mistress that a change would afford him
+satisfaction. After a time she withdrew her wistful gaze from him, and
+listened entirely to Ferdinand: and it struck her that he spoke
+particularly well to-day, though she did not see so much in his eyes as
+in Pat’s. The subject concerned his departure, and he asked Rose if she
+should be sorry. Rose, to make him sure of it, threw a music into her
+voice dangerous to friends. For she had given heart and soul to Evan,
+and had a sense, therefore, of being irredeemably in debt to her old
+associates, and wished to be doubly kind to them.
+
+Pat took advantage of the diversion to stand up quietly and have a
+shake. He then began to kiss his mistress’s hand, to show that all was
+right on both sides; and followed this with a playful pretence at a
+bite, that there might be no subsequent misunderstanding, and then a
+bark and a whine. As no attention was paid to this amount of
+plain-speaking, Pat made a bolt. He got no farther than the length of
+the whip, and all he gained was to bring on himself the terrible word
+of drill once more. But Pat had tasted liberty. Irish rebellion against
+constituted authority was exhibited. Pat would not: his ears tossed
+over his head, and he jumped to right and left, and looked the
+raggedest rapparee that ever his ancestry trotted after. Rose laughed
+at his fruitless efforts to get free; but Ferdinand meditatively
+appeared to catch a sentiment in them.
+
+“Down-charge, Sir, will you? Ah, Pat! Pat! You’ll have to obey me, my
+boy. Now, down-charge!”
+
+While Rose addressed the language of reason to Pat, Ferdinand slipped
+in a soft word or two. Presently she saw him on one knee.
+
+“Pat won’t, and I will,” said he.
+
+“But Pat shall, and you had better not,” said she. “Besides, my dear
+Ferdinand,” she added, laughing, “you don’t know how to do it.”
+
+“Do you want me to prostrate on all fours, Rose?”
+
+“No. I hope not. Do get up, Ferdinand. You’ll be seen from the
+windows.”
+
+Instead of quitting his posture, he caught her hand, and scared her
+with a declaration.
+
+“Of all men, you to be on your knees! and to me, Ferdinand!” she cried,
+in discomfort.
+
+“Why shouldn’t I, Rose?” was this youth’s answer.
+
+He had got the idea that foreign cavalier manners would take with her;
+but it was not so easy to make his speech correspond with his posture,
+and he lost his opportunity, which was pretty. However, he spoke plain
+English. The interview ended by Rose releasing Pat from drill, and
+running off in a hurry. Where was Evan? She must have his consent to
+speak to her mother, and prevent a recurrence of these silly scenes.
+
+Evan was with Caroline, his sister.
+
+It was contrary to the double injunction of the Countess that Caroline
+should receive Evan during her absence, or that he should disturb the
+dear invalid with a visit. These two were not unlike both in
+organization and character, and they had not sat together long before
+they found each other out. Now, to further Evan’s love-suit, the
+Countess had induced Caroline to continue yet awhile in the Purgatory
+Beckley Court had become to her; but Evan, in speaking of Rose,
+expressed a determination to leave her, and Caroline caught at it.
+
+“Can you?—will you? Oh, dear Van! have you the courage? I—look at
+me—you know the home I go to, and—and I think of it here as a place to
+be happy in. What have our marriages done for us? Better that we had
+married simple stupid men who earn their bread, and would not have been
+ashamed of us! And, my dearest, it is not only that. None can tell what
+our temptations are. Louisa has strength, but I feel I have none; and
+though, dear, for your true interest, I would indeed sacrifice myself—I
+would, Van! I would!—it is not good for you to stay,—I know it is not.
+For you have Papa’s sense of honour—and oh! if you should learn to
+despise me, my dear brother!”
+
+She kissed him; her nerves were agitated by strong mental excitement.
+He attributed it to her recent attack of illness, but could not help
+asking, while he caressed her:
+
+“What’s that? Despise you?”
+
+It may have been that Caroline felt then, that to speak of something
+was to forfeit something. A light glimmered across the dewy blue of her
+beautiful eyes. Desire to breathe it to him, and have his loving aid:
+the fear of forfeiting it, evil as it was to her, and at the bottom of
+all, that doubt we choose to encourage of the harm in a pleasant sin
+unaccomplished; these might be read in the rich dim gleam that swept
+like sunlight over sea-water between breaks of clouds.
+
+“Dear Van! do you love her so much?”
+
+Caroline knew too well that she was shutting her own theme with iron
+clasps when she once touched on Evan’s.
+
+Love her? Love Rose? It became an endless carol with Evan. Caroline
+sighed for him from her heart.
+
+“You know—you understand me; don’t you?” he said, after a breathless
+excursion of his fancy.
+
+“I believe you love her, dear. I think I have never loved any one but
+my one brother.”
+
+His love for Rose he could pour out to Caroline; when it came to Rose’s
+love for him his blood thickened, and his tongue felt guilty. He must
+speak to her, he said,—tell her all.
+
+“Yes, tell her all,” echoed Caroline. “Do, do tell her. Trust a woman
+utterly if she loves you, dear. Go to her instantly.”
+
+“Could you bear it?” said Evan. He began to think it was for the sake
+of his sisters that he had hesitated.
+
+“Bear it? bear anything rather than perpetual imposture. What have I
+not borne? Tell her, and then, if she is cold to you, let us go. Let us
+go. I shall be glad to. Ah, Van! I love you so.” Caroline’s voice
+deepened. “I love you so, my dear. You won’t let your new love drive me
+out? Shall you always love me?”
+
+Of that she might be sure, whatever happened.
+
+“Should you love me, Van, if evil befel me?”
+
+Thrice as well, he swore to her.
+
+“But if I—if I, Van Oh! my life is intolerable! Supposing I should ever
+disgrace you in any way, and not turn out all you fancied me. I am very
+weak and unhappy.”
+
+Evan kissed her confidently, with a warm smile. He said a few words of
+the great faith he had in her: words that were bitter comfort to
+Caroline. This brother, who might save her, to him she dared not speak.
+Did she wish to be saved? She only knew that to wound Evan’s sense of
+honour and the high and chivalrous veneration for her sex and pride in
+himself and those of his blood, would be wicked and unpardonable, and
+that no earthly pleasure could drown it. Thinking this, with her hands
+joined in pale dejection, Caroline sat silent, and Evan left her to lay
+bare his heart to Rose. On his way to find Rose he was stopped by the
+announcement of the arrival of Mr. Raikes, who thrust a bundle of notes
+into his hand, and after speaking loudly of “his curricle,” retired on
+important business, as he said, with a mysterious air. “I’m beaten in
+many things, but not in the article Luck,” he remarked; “you will hear
+of me, though hardly as a tutor in this academy.”
+
+Scanning the bundle of notes, without a reflection beyond the thought
+that money was in his hand; and wondering at the apparition of the
+curricle, Evan was joined by Harry Jocelyn, and Harry linked his arm in
+Evan’s and plunged with extraordinary spontaneity and candour into the
+state of his money affairs. What the deuce he was to do for money he
+did not know. From the impressive manner in which he put it, it
+appeared to be one of Nature’s great problems that the whole human race
+were bound to set their heads together to solve. A hundred pounds—Harry
+wanted no more, and he could not get it. His uncles? they were as poor
+as rats; and all the spare money they could club was going for Mel’s
+Election expenses. A hundred and fifty was what Harry really wanted;
+but he could do with a hundred. Ferdinand, who had plenty, would not
+even lend him fifty. Ferdinand had dared to hint at a debt already
+unsettled, and he called himself a gentleman!
+
+“You wouldn’t speak of money-matters now, would you, Harrington?”
+
+“I dislike the subject, I confess,” said Evan.
+
+“And so do I” Harry jumped at the perfect similarity between them. “You
+can’t think how it bothers one to have to talk about it. You and I are
+tremendously alike.”
+
+Evan might naturally suppose that a subject Harry detested, he would
+not continue, but for a whole hour Harry turned it over and over with
+grim glances at Jewry.
+
+“You see,” he wound up, “I’m in a fix. I want to help that poor girl,
+and one or two things—”
+
+“It’s for that you want it?” cried Evan, brightening to him. “Accept it
+from me.”
+
+It is a thing familiar to the experience of money-borrowers, that your
+“last chance” is the man who is to accommodate you; but we are always
+astonished, nevertheless; and Harry was, when notes to the amount of
+the largest sum named by him were placed in his hand by one whom he
+looked upon as the last to lend.
+
+“What a trump you are, Harrington!” was all he could say; and then he
+was for hurrying Evan into the house, to find pen and paper, and write
+down a memorandum of the loan: but Evan insisted upon sparing him the
+trouble, though Harry, with the admirable scruples of an inveterate
+borrower, begged hard to be allowed to bind himself legally to repay
+the money.
+
+“’Pon my soul, Harrington, you make me remember I once doubted whether
+you were one of us—rather your own fault, you know!” said Harry. “Bury
+that, won’t you?”
+
+“’Till your doubts recur,” Evan observed; and Harry burst out, “’Gad,
+if you weren’t such a melancholy beggar, you’d be the jolliest fellow I
+know! There, go after Rosey. Dashed if I don’t think you’re ahead of
+Ferdinand, long chalks. Your style does for girls. I like women.”
+
+With a chuckle and a wink, Harry swung-off. Evan had now to reflect
+that he had just thrown away part of the price of his bondage to
+Tailordom; the mention of Rose filled his mind. Where was she? Both
+were seeking one another. Rose was in the cypress walk. He saw the
+star-like figure up the length of it, between the swelling tall dark
+pillars, and was hurrying to her, resolute not to let one minute of
+deception blacken further the soul that loved so true a soul. She saw
+him, and stood smiling, when the Countess issued, shadow-like, from a
+side path, and declared that she must claim her brother for a few
+instants. Would her sweet Rose pardon her? Rose bowed coolly. The
+hearts of the lovers were chilled, not that they perceived any malice
+in the Countess, but their keen instincts felt an evil fate.
+
+The Countess had but to tell Evan that she had met the insolvent in
+apples, and recognized him under his change of fortune, and had no
+doubt that at least he would amuse the company. Then she asked her
+brother the superfluous question, whether he loved her, which Evan
+answered satisfactorily enough, as he thought; but practical ladies
+require proofs.
+
+“Quick,” said Evan, seeing Rose vanish, “what do you want? I’ll do
+anything.”
+
+“Anything? Ah, but this will be disagreeable to you.”
+
+“Name it at once. I promise beforehand.”
+
+The Countess wanted Evan to ask Andrew to be the very best
+brother-in-law in the world, and win, unknown to himself, her cheerful
+thanks, by lending Evan to lend to her the sum of one hundred pounds,
+as she was in absolute distress for money.
+
+“Really, Louisa, this is a thing you might ask him yourself,” Evan
+remonstrated.
+
+“It would not become me to do so, dear,” said the Countess, demurely;
+and inasmuch as she had already drawn on Andrew in her own person
+pretty largely, her views of propriety were correct in this instance.
+
+Evan had to consent before he could be released. He ran to the end of
+the walk through the portal, into the park. Rose was not to be seen.
+She had gone in to dress for dinner. The opportunity might recur, but
+would his courage come with it? His courage had sunk on a sudden; or it
+may have been that it was worst for this young man to ask for a loan of
+money, than to tell his beloved that he was basely born, vile, and
+unworthy, and had snared her into loving him; for when he and Andrew
+were together, money was not alluded to. Andrew, however, betrayed
+remarkable discomposure. He said plainly that he wanted to leave
+Beckley Court, and wondered why he didn’t leave, and whether he was on
+his head or his feet, and how he had been such a fool as to come.
+
+“Do you mean that for me?” said sensitive Evan.
+
+“Oh, you! You’re a young buck,” returned Andrew, evasively. “We
+common-place business men—we’re out of our element; and there’s poor
+Carry can’t sit down to their dinners without an upset. I thank God I’m
+a Radical, Van; one man’s the same as another to me, how he’s born, as
+long as he’s honest and agreeable. But a chap like that George Uplift
+to look down on anybody! ’Gad, I’ve a good mind to bring in a Bill for
+the Abolition of the Squirearchy.”
+
+Ultimately, Andrew somehow contrived to stick a hint or two about the
+terrible dinner in Evan’s quivering flesh. He did it as delicately as
+possible, half begging pardon, and perspiring profusely. Evan grasped
+his hand, and thanked him. Caroline’s illness was now explained to him.
+
+“I’ll take Caroline with me to-morrow,” he said. “Louisa wishes to
+stay—there’s a pic-nic. Will you look to her, and bring her with you?”
+
+“My dear Van,” replied Andrew, “stop with Louisa? Now, in confidence,
+it’s as bad as a couple of wives; no disrespect to my excellent good
+Harry at home; but Louisa—I don’t know how it is—but Louisa, you lose
+your head, you’re in a whirl, you’re an automaton, a teetotum! I
+haven’t a notion of what I’ve been doing or saying since I came here.
+My belief is, I’ve been lying right and left. I shall be found out to a
+certainty: Oh! if she’s made her mind up for the pic-nic, somebody must
+stop. I can only tell you, Van, it’s one perpetual vapour-bath to me.
+There’ll be room for two in my trousers when I get back. I shall have
+to get the tailor to take them in a full half.”
+
+Here occurred an opening for one of those acrid pleasantries which
+console us when there is horrid warfare within.
+
+“You must give me the work,” said Evan, partly pleased with his hated
+self for being able to jest on the subject, as a piece of preliminary
+self-conquest.
+
+“Aha!” went Andrew, as if the joke were too good to be dwelt on; “Hem”;
+and by way of diverting from it cleverly and naturally, he remarked
+that the weather was fine. This made Evan allude to his letter written
+from Lymport, upon which Andrew said: “tush! pish! humbug! nonsense!
+won’t hear a word. Don’t know anything about it. Van, you’re going to
+be a brewer. I say you are. You’re afraid you can’t? I tell you, sir,
+I’ve got a bet on it. You’re not going to make me lose, are you—eh? I
+have, and a stiff bet, too. You must and shall, so there’s an end. Only
+we can’t make arrangements just yet, my boy. Old Tom—very good old
+fellow—but, you know—must get old Tom out of the way, first. Now go and
+dress for dinner. And Lord preserve us from the Great Mel to-day!”
+Andrew mumbled as he turned away.
+
+Evan could not reach his chamber without being waylaid by the Countess.
+Had he remembered the sister who sacrificed so much for him? “There,
+there!” cried Evan, and her hand closed on the delicious golden
+whispers of bank-notes. And, “Oh, generous Andrew! dear good Evan!”
+were the exclamations of the gratified lady.
+
+There remained nearly another hundred. Evan laid out the notes, and
+eyed them while dressing. They seemed to say to him, “We have you now.”
+He was clutched by a beneficent or a most malignant magician. The
+former seemed due to him, considering the cloud on his fortunes. This
+enigma might mean, that by submitting to a temporary humiliation, for a
+trial of him—in fact, by his acknowledgement of the fact, loathed
+though it was,—he won a secret overlooker’s esteem, gained a powerful
+ally. Here was the proof, he held the proof. He had read Arabian Tales
+and could believe in marvels; especially could he believe in the
+friendliness of a magical thing that astounded without hurting him.
+
+He, sat down in his room at night and wrote a fairly manful letter to
+Rose; and it is to be said of the wretch he then saw himself, that he
+pardoned her for turning from so vile a pretender. He heard a step in
+the passage. It was Polly Wheedle. Polly had put her young mistress to
+bed, and was retiring to her own slumbers. He made her take the letter
+and promise to deliver it immediately. Would not to-morrow morning do,
+she asked, as Miss Rose was very sleepy. He seemed to hesitate—he was
+picturing how Rose looked when very sleepy. Why should he surrender
+this darling? And subtler question—why should he make her unhappy? Why
+disturb her at all in her sweet sleep?
+
+“Well,” said Evan. “To-morrow will do.—No, take it to-night, for God’s
+sake!” he cried, as one who bursts the spell of an opiate. “Go at
+once.” The temptation had almost overcome him.
+
+Polly thought his proceedings queer. And what could the letter contain?
+A declaration, of course. She walked slowly along the passage,
+meditating on love, and remotely on its slave, Mr. Nicholas Frim.
+Nicholas had never written her a letter; but she was determined that he
+should, some day. She wondered what love-letters were like? Like
+valentines without the Cupids. Practical valentines, one might say. Not
+vapoury and wild, but hot and to the point. Delightful things! No harm
+in peeping at a love-letter, if you do it with the eye of a friend.
+
+Polly spelt just a word when a door opened at her elbow. She dropped
+her candle and curtsied to the Countess’s voice. The Countess desired
+her to enter, and all in a tremble Polly crept in. Her air of guilt
+made the Countess thrill. She had merely called her in to extract daily
+gossip. The corner of the letter sticking up under Polly’s neck
+attracted her strangely, and beginning with the familiar, “Well,
+child,” she talked of things interesting to Polly, and then exhibited
+the pic-nic dress. It was a lovely half-mourning; airy sorrows, gauzy
+griefs, you might imagine to constitute the wearer. White delicately
+striped, exquisitely trimmed, and of a stuff to make the feminine mouth
+water!
+
+Could Polly refuse to try it on, when the flattering proposal met her
+ears? Blushing, shame-faced, adoring the lady who made her look
+adorable, Polly tried it on, and the Countess complimented her, and
+made a doll of her, and turned her this way and that way, and
+intoxicated her.
+
+“A rich husband, Polly, child! and you are a lady ready made.”
+
+Infamous poison to poor Polly; but as the thunder destroys small
+insects, exalted schemers are to be excused for riding down their few
+thousands. Moreover, the Countess really looked upon domestics as being
+only half-souls.
+
+Dressed in her own attire again, Polly felt in her pockets, and at her
+bosom, and sang out: “Oh, my—Oh, where! Oh!”
+
+The letter was lost. The letter could not be found. The Countess grew
+extremely fatigued, and had to dismiss Polly, in spite of her eager
+petitions to be allowed to search under the carpets and inside the bed.
+
+In the morning came Evan’s great trial. There stood Rose. She turned to
+him, and her eyes were happy and unclouded.
+
+“You are not changed?” he said.
+
+“Changed? what could change me?”
+
+The God of true hearts bless her! He could hardly believe it.
+
+“You are the Rose I knew yesterday?”
+
+“Yes, Evan. But you—you look as if you had not slept.”
+
+“You will not leave me this morning, before I go, Rose? Oh, my darling!
+this that you do for me is the work of an angel—nothing less! I have
+been a coward. And my beloved! to feel vile is agony to me—it makes me
+feel unworthy of the hand I press. Now all is clear between us. I go: I
+am forgiven.”
+
+Rose repeated his last words, and then added hurriedly:
+
+“All is clear between us? Shall I speak to Mama this morning? Dear
+Evan! it will be right that I should.”
+
+For the moment he could not understand why, but supposing a scrupulous
+honesty in her, said: “Yes, tell Lady Jocelyn all.”
+
+“And then, Evan, you will never need to go.”
+
+They separated. The deep-toned sentence sang in Evan’s heart. Rose and
+her mother were of one stamp. And Rose might speak for her mother. To
+take the hands of such a pair and be lifted out of the slough, he
+thought no shame: and all through the hours of the morning the image of
+two angels stooping to touch a leper, pressed on his brain like a
+reality, and went divinely through his blood.
+
+Toward mid-day Rose beckoned to him, and led him out across the lawn
+into the park, and along the borders of the stream.
+
+“Evan,” she said, “shall I really speak to Mama?”
+
+“You have not yet?” he answered.
+
+“No. I have been with Juliana and with Drummond. Look at this, Evan.”
+She showed a small black speck in the palm of her hand, which turned
+out, on your viewing it closely, to be a brand of the letter L. “Mama
+did that when I was a little girl, because I told lies. I never could
+distinguish between truth and falsehood; and Mama set that mark on me,
+and I have never told a lie since. She forgives anything but that. She
+will be our friend; she will never forsake us, Evan, if we do not
+deceive her. Oh, Evan! it never is of any use. But deceive her, and she
+cannot forgive you. It is not in her nature.”
+
+Evan paused before he replied: “You have only to tell her what I have
+told you. You know everything.”
+
+Rose gave him a flying look of pain: “Everything, Evan? What do I
+know?”
+
+“Ah, Rose! do you compel me to repeat it?”
+
+Bewildered, Rose thought: “Have I slept and forgotten it?”
+
+He saw the persistent grieved interrogation of her eyebrows.
+
+“Well!” she sighed resignedly: “I am yours; you know that, Evan.”
+
+But he was a lover, and quarrelled with her sigh.
+
+“It may well make you sad now, Rose.”
+
+“Sad? no, that does not make me sad. No; but my hands are tied. I
+cannot defend you or justify myself; and induce Mama to stand by us.
+Oh, Evan! you love me! why can you not open your heart to me entirely,
+and trust me?”
+
+“More?” cried Evan: “Can I trust you more?” He spoke of the letter:
+Rose caught his hand.
+
+“I never had it, Evan. You wrote it last night? and all was written in
+it? I never saw it—but I know all.”
+
+Their eyes fronted. The gates of Rose’s were wide open, and he saw no
+hurtful beasts or lurking snakes in the happy garden within, but Love,
+like a fixed star.
+
+“Then you know why I must leave, Rose.”
+
+“Leave? Leave me? On the contrary, you must stay by me, and support me.
+Why, Evan, we have to fight a battle.”
+
+Much as he worshipped her, this intrepid directness of soul startled
+him—almost humbled him. And her eyes shone with a firm cheerful light,
+as she exclaimed: “It makes me so happy to think you were the first to
+mention this. You meant to be, and that’s the same thing. I heard it
+this morning: you wrote it last night. It’s you I love, Evan. Your
+birth, and what you were obliged to do—that’s nothing. Of course I’m
+sorry for it, dear. But I’m more sorry for the pain I must have
+sometimes put you to. It happened through my mother’s father being a
+merchant; and that side of the family the men and women are quite
+sordid and unendurable; and that’s how it came that I spoke of
+disliking tradesmen. I little thought I should ever love one sprung
+from that class.”
+
+She turned to him tenderly.
+
+“And in spite of what my birth is, you love me, Rose?”
+
+“There’s no spite in it, Evan. I do.”
+
+Hard for him, while his heart was melting to caress her, the thought
+that he had snared this bird of heaven in a net! Rose gave him no time
+for reflection, or the moony imagining of their raptures lovers love to
+dwell upon.
+
+“You gave the letter to Polly, of course?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Oh, naughty Polly! I must punish you,” Rose apostrophized her. “You
+might have divided us for ever. Well, we shall have to fight a battle,
+you understand that. Will you stand by me?”
+
+Would he not risk his soul for her?
+
+“Very well, Evan. Then—but don’t be sensitive. Oh, how sensitive you
+are! I see it all now. This is what we shall have to do. We shall have
+to speak to Mama to-day—this morning. Drummond has told me he is going
+to speak to her, and we must be first. That’s decided. I begged a
+couple of hours. You must not be offended with Drummond. He does it out
+of pure affection for us, and I can see he’s right—or, at least, not
+quite wrong. He ought, I think, to know that he cannot change me. Very
+well, we shall win Mama by what we do. My mother has ten times my wits,
+and yet I manage her like a feather. I have only to be honest and
+straightforward. Then Mama will gain over Papa. Papa, of course, won’t
+like it. He’s quiet and easy, but he likes blood, but he also likes
+peace better; and I think he loves Rosey—as well as somebody—almost?
+Look, dear, there is our seat where we—where you would rob me of my
+handkerchief. I can’t talk any more.”
+
+Rose had suddenly fallen from her prattle, soft and short-breathed.
+
+“Then, dear,” she went on, “we shall have to fight the family. Aunt
+Shorne will be terrible. My poor uncles! I pity them. But they will
+come round. They always have thought what I did was right, and why
+should they change their minds now? I shall tell them that at their
+time of life a change of any kind is very unwise and bad for them. Then
+there is Grandmama Bonner. She can hurt us really, if she pleases. Oh,
+my dear Evan! if you had only been a curate! Why isn’t your name
+Parsley? Then my Grandmama the Countess of Elburne. Well, we have a
+Countess on our side, haven’t we? And that reminds me, Evan, if we’re
+to be happy and succeed, you must promise one thing: you will not tell
+the Countess, your sister. Don’t confide this to her. Will you
+promise?”
+
+Evan assured her he was not in the habit of pouring secrets into any
+bosom, the Countess’s as little as another’s.
+
+“Very well, then, Evan, it’s unpleasant while it lasts, but we shall
+gain the day. Uncle Melville will give you an appointment, and then?”
+
+“Yes, Rose,” he said, “I will do this, though I don’t think you can
+know what I shall have to endure—not in confessing what I am, but in
+feeling that I have brought you to my level.”
+
+“Does it not raise me?” she cried.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+“But in reality, Evan—apart from mere appearances—in reality it does!
+it does!”
+
+“Men will not think so, Rose, nor can I. Oh, my Rose! how different you
+make me. Up to this hour I have been so weak! torn two ways! You give
+me double strength.”
+
+Then these lovers talked of distant days—compared their feelings on
+this and that occasion with mutual wonder and delight. Then the old
+hours lived anew. And—did you really think that, Evan? And—Oh, Rose!
+was that your dream? And the meaning of that by-gone look: was it what
+they fancied? And such and such a tone of voice; would it bear the
+wished interpretation? Thus does Love avenge himself on the
+unsatisfactory Past and call out its essence.
+
+Could Evan do less than adore her? She knew all, and she loved him!
+Since he was too shy to allude more than once to his letter, it was
+natural that he should not ask her how she came to know, and how much
+the “all” that she knew comprised. In his letter he had told all; the
+condition of his parents, and his own. Honestly, now, what with his
+dazzled state of mind, his deep inward happiness, and love’s endless
+delusions, he abstained from touching the subject further. Honestly,
+therefore, as far as a lover can be honest.
+
+So they toyed, and then Rose, setting her fingers loose, whispered:
+“Are you ready?” And Evan nodded; and Rose, to make him think light of
+the matter in hand, laughed: “Pluck not quite up yet?”
+
+“Quite, my Rose!” said Evan, and they walked to the house, not quite
+knowing what they were going to do.
+
+On the steps they met Drummond with Mrs. Evremonde. Little imagining
+how heart and heart the two had grown, and that Evan would understand
+him, Drummond called to Rose playfully: “Time’s up.”
+
+“Is it?” Rose answered, and to Mrs. Evremonde
+
+“Give Drummond a walk. Poor Drummond is going silly.”
+
+Evan looked into his eyes calmly as he passed.
+
+“Where are you going, Rose?” said Mrs. Evremonde.
+
+“Going to give my maid Polly a whipping for losing a letter she ought
+to have delivered to me last night,” said Rose, in a loud voice,
+looking at Drummond. “And then going to Mama. Pleasure first—duty
+after. Isn’t that the proverb, Drummond?”
+
+She kissed her fingers rather scornfully to her old friend.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+MRS. MEL MAKES A BED FOR HERSELF AND FAMILY
+
+
+The last person thought of by her children at this period was Mrs. Mel:
+nor had she been thinking much of them till a letter from Mr. Goren
+arrived one day, which caused her to pass them seriously in review.
+Always an early bird, and with maxims of her own on the subject of
+rising and getting the worm, she was standing in a small perch in the
+corner of the shop, dictating accounts to Mrs. Fiske, who was copying
+hurriedly, that she might earn sweet intervals for gossip, when Dandy
+limped up and delivered the letter. Mrs. Fiske worked hard while her
+aunt was occupied in reading it, for a great deal of fresh talk follows
+the advent of the post, and may be reckoned on. Without looking up,
+however, she could tell presently that the letter had been read
+through. Such being the case, and no conversation coming of it, her
+curiosity was violent. Her aunt’s face, too, was an index of something
+extraordinary. That inflexible woman, instead of alluding to the letter
+in any way, folded it up, and renewed her dictation. It became a
+contest between them which should show her human nature first. Mrs. Mel
+had to repress what she knew; Mrs. Fiske to control the passion for
+intelligence. The close neighbourhood of one anxious to receive, and
+one capable of giving, waxed too much for both.
+
+“I think, Anne, you are stupid this morning,” said Mrs. Mel.
+
+“Well, I am, aunt,” said Mrs. Fiske, pretending not to see which was
+the first to unbend, “I don’t know what it is. The figures seem all
+dazzled like. I shall really be glad when Evan comes to take his proper
+place.”
+
+“Ah!” went Mrs. Mel, and Mrs. Fiske heard her muttering. Then she cried
+out: “Are Harriet and Caroline as great liars as Louisa?”
+
+Mrs. Fiske grimaced. “That would be difficult, would it not, aunt?”
+
+“And I have been telling everybody that my son is in town learning his
+business, when he’s idling at a country house, and trying to play his
+father over again! Upon my word, what with liars and fools, if you go
+to sleep a minute you have a month’s work on your back.”
+
+“What is it, aunt?” Mrs. Fiske feebly inquired.
+
+“A gentleman, I suppose! He wouldn’t take an order if it was offered.
+Upon my word, when tailors think of winning heiresses it’s time we went
+back to Adam and Eve.”
+
+“Do you mean Evan, aunt?” interposed Mrs. Fiske, who probably did not
+see the turns in her aunt’s mind.
+
+“There—read for yourself,” said Mrs. Mel, and left her with the letter.
+
+Mrs. Fiske read that Mr. Goren had been astonished at Evan’s
+non-appearance, and at his total silence; which he did not consider
+altogether gentlemanly behaviour, and certainly not such as his father
+would have practised. Mr. Goren regretted his absence the more as he
+would have found him useful in a remarkable invention he was about to
+patent, being a peculiar red cross upon shirts—a fortune to the
+patentee; but as Mr. Goren had no natural heirs of his body, he did not
+care for that. What affected him painfully was the news of Evan’s
+doings at a noble house, Beckley Court, to wit, where, according to the
+report of a rich young gentleman friend, Mr. Raikes (for whose custom
+Mr. Goren was bound to thank Evan), the youth who should have been
+learning the science of Tailoring, had actually passed himself off as a
+lord, or the son of one, or something of the kind, and had got engaged
+to a wealthy heiress, and would, no doubt, marry her if not found out.
+Where the chances of detection were so numerous, Mr. Goren saw much to
+condemn in the idea of such a marriage. But “like father like son,”
+said Mr. Goren. He thanked the Lord that an honest tradesman was not
+looked down upon in this country; and, in fact, gave Mrs. Mel a few
+quiet digs to waken her remorse in having missed the man that he was.
+
+When Mrs. Fiske met her aunt again she returned her the letter, and
+simply remarked: “Louisa.”
+
+Mrs. Mel nodded. She understood the implication.
+
+The General who had schemed so successfully to gain Evan time at
+Beckley Court in his own despite and against a hundred obstructions,
+had now another enemy in the field, and one who, if she could not undo
+her work, could punish her. By the afternoon coach, Mrs. Mel,
+accompanied by Dandy her squire, was journeying to Fallowfield, bent
+upon things. The faithful squire was kept by her side rather as a
+security for others than for his particular services. Dandy’s arms were
+crossed, and his countenance was gloomy. He had been promised a holiday
+that afternoon to give his mistress, Sally, Kilne’s cook, an airing,
+and Dandy knew in his soul that Sally, when she once made up her mind
+to an excursion, would go, and would not go alone, and that her very
+force of will endangered her constancy. He had begged humbly to be
+allowed to stay, but Mrs. Mel could not trust him. She ought to have
+told him so, perhaps. Explanations were not approved of by this
+well-intended despot, and however beneficial her resolves might turn
+out for all parties, it was natural that in the interim the children of
+her rule should revolt, and Dandy, picturing his Sally flaunting on the
+arm of some accursed low marine, haply, kicked against Mrs. Mel’s
+sovereignty, though all that he did was to shoot out his fist from time
+to time, and grunt through his set teeth: “Iron!” to express the
+character of her awful rule.
+
+Mrs. Mel alighted at the Dolphin, the landlady of which was a Mrs.
+Hawkshaw, a rival of Mrs. Sockley of the Green Dragon. She was welcomed
+by Mrs. Hawkshaw with considerable respect. The great Mel had sometimes
+slept at the Dolphin.
+
+“Ah, that black!” she sighed, indicating Mrs. Mel’s dress and the story
+it told.
+
+“I can’t give you his room, my dear Mrs. Harrington, wishing I could!
+I’m sorry to say it’s occupied, for all I ought to be glad, I dare say,
+for he’s an old gentleman who does you a good turn, if you study him.
+But there! I’d rather have had poor dear Mr. Harrington in my best bed
+than old or young—Princes or nobodies, I would—he was that grand and
+pleasant.”
+
+Mrs. Mel had her tea in Mrs. Hawkshaw’s parlour, and was entertained
+about her husband up to the hour of supper, when a short step and a
+querulous voice were heard in the passage, and an old gentleman
+appeared before them.
+
+“Who’s to carry up my trunk, ma’am? No man here?”
+
+Mrs. Hawkshaw bustled out and tried to lay her hand on a man. Failing
+to find the growth spontaneous, she returned and begged the old
+gentleman to wait a few moments and the trunk would be sent up.
+
+“Parcel o’ women!” was his reply. “Regularly bedevilled. Gets worse and
+worse. I’ll carry it up myself.”
+
+With a wheezy effort he persuaded the trunk to stand on one end, and
+then looked at it. The exertion made him hot, which may account for the
+rage he burst into when Mrs. Hawkshaw began flutteringly to apologize.
+
+“You’re sure, ma’am, sure—what are you sure of? I’ll tell you what I am
+sure of—eh? This keeping clear of men’s a damned pretence. You don’t
+impose upon me. Don’t believe in your pothouse nunneries—not a bit.
+Just like you! when you are virtuous it’s deuced inconvenient. Let one
+of the maids try? No. Don’t believe in ’em.”
+
+Having thus relieved his spleen the old gentleman addressed himself to
+further efforts and waxed hotter. He managed to tilt the trunk over,
+and thus gained a length, and by this method of progression arrived at
+the foot of the stairs, where he halted, and wiped his face, blowing
+lustily.
+
+Mrs. Mel had been watching him with calm scorn all the while. She saw
+him attempt most ridiculously to impel the trunk upwards by a similar
+process, and thought it time to interfere.
+
+“Don’t you see you must either take it on your shoulders, or have a
+help?”
+
+The old gentleman sprang up from his peculiarly tight posture to blaze
+round at her. He had the words well-peppered on his mouth, but somehow
+he stopped, and was subsequently content to growl: “Where’s the help in
+a parcel of petticoats?”
+
+Mrs. Mel did not consider it necessary to give him an answer. She went
+up two or three steps, and took hold of one handle of the trunk,
+saying: “There; I think it can be managed this way,” and she pointed
+for him to seize the other end with his hand.
+
+He was now in that unpleasant state of prickly heat when testy old
+gentlemen could commit slaughter with ecstasy. Had it been the maid
+holding a candle who had dared to advise, he would have overturned her
+undoubtedly, and established a fresh instance of the impertinence, the
+uselessness and weakness of women. Mrs. Mel topped him by half a head,
+and in addition stood three steps above him; towering like a giantess.
+The extreme gravity of her large face dispersed all idea of an assault.
+The old gentleman showed signs of being horribly injured: nevertheless,
+he put his hand to the trunk; it was lifted, and the procession
+ascended the stairs in silence.
+
+The landlady waited for Mrs. Mel to return, and then said:
+
+“Really, Mrs. Harrington, you are clever. That lifting that trunk’s as
+good as a lock and bolt on him. You’ve as good as made him a
+Dolphin—him that was one o’ the oldest Green Dragons in Fallifield. My
+thanks to you most sincere.”
+
+Mrs. Mel sent out to hear where Dandy had got to after which, she said:
+“Who is the man?”
+
+“I told you, Mrs. Harrington—the oldest Green Dragon. His name, you
+mean? Do you know, if I was to breathe it out, I believe he’d jump out
+of the window. He’d be off, that you might swear to. Oh, such a
+whimsical! not ill-meaning—quite the contrary. Study his whims, and
+you’ll never want. There’s Mrs. Sockley—she’s took ill. He won’t go
+there—that’s how I’ve caught him, my dear—but he pays her medicine, and
+she looks to him the same. He hate a sick house: but he pity a sick
+woman. Now, if I can only please him, I can always look on him as half
+a Dolphin, to say the least; and perhaps to-morrow I’ll tell you who he
+is, and what, but not to-night; for there’s his supper to get over, and
+that, they say, can be as bad as the busting of one of his own vats.
+Awful!”
+
+“What does he eat?” said Mrs. Mel.
+
+“A pair o’ chops. That seem simple, now, don’t it? And yet they chops
+make my heart go pitty-pat.”
+
+“The commonest things are the worst done,” said Mrs. Mel.
+
+“It ain’t that; but they must be done his particular way, do you see,
+Mrs. Harrington. Laid close on the fire, he say, so as to keep in the
+juice. But he ups and bounces in a minute at a speck o’ black. So, one
+thing or the other, there you are: no blacks, no juices, I say.”
+
+“Toast the chops,” said Mrs. Mel.
+
+The landlady of the Dolphin accepted this new idea with much
+enlightenment, but ruefully declared that she was afraid to go against
+his precise instructions. Mrs. Mel then folded her hands, and sat in
+quiet reserve. She was one of those numerous women who always know
+themselves to be right. She was also one of those very few whom
+Providence favours by confounding dissentients. She was positive the
+chops would be ill-cooked: but what could she do? She was not in
+command here; so she waited serenely for the certain disasters to
+enthrone her. Not that the matter of the chops occupied her mind
+particularly: nor could she dream that the pair in question were
+destined to form a part of her history, and divert the channel of her
+fortunes. Her thoughts were about her own immediate work; and when the
+landlady rushed in with the chops under a cover, and said: “Look at
+’em, dear Mrs. Harrington!” she had forgotten that she was again to be
+proved right by the turn of events.
+
+“Oh, the chops!” she responded. “Send them while they are hot.”
+
+“Send ’em! Why you don’t think I’d have risked their cooling? I have
+sent ’em; and what do he do but send ’em travelling back, and here they
+be; and what objections his is I might study till I was blind, and I
+shouldn’t see ’em.”
+
+“No; I suppose not,” said Mrs. Mel. “He won’t eat ’em?”
+
+“Won’t eat anything: but his bed-room candle immediately. And whether
+his sheets are aired. And Mary says he sniffed at the chops; and that
+gal really did expect he’d fling them at her. I told you what he was.
+Oh, dear!”
+
+The bell was heard ringing in the midst of the landlady’s lamentations.
+
+“Go to him yourself,” said Mrs. Mel. “No Christian man should go to
+sleep without his supper.”
+
+“Ah! but he ain’t a common Christian,” returned Mrs. Hawkshaw.
+
+The old gentleman was in a hurry to know when his bed-room candle was
+coming up, or whether they intended to give him one at all that night;
+if not, let them say so, as he liked plain-speaking. The moment Mrs.
+Hawkshaw touched upon the chops, he stopped her mouth.
+
+“Go about your business, ma’am. You can’t cook ’em. I never expected
+you could: I was a fool to try you. It requires at least ten years’
+instruction before a man can get a woman to cook his chop as he likes
+it.”
+
+“But what was your complaint, sir?” said Mrs. Hawkshaw, imploringly.
+
+“That’s right!” and he rubbed his hands, and brightened his eyes
+savagely. “That’s the way. Opportunity for gossip! Thing’s well
+done—down it goes: you know that. You can’t have a word over it—eh?
+Thing’s done fit to toss on a dungheap, aha! Then there’s a cackle! My
+belief is, you do it on purpose. Can’t be such rank idiots. You do it
+on purpose. All done for gossip!”
+
+“Oh, sir, no!” The landlady half curtsied.
+
+“Oh, ma’am, yes!” The old gentleman bobbed his head.
+
+“No, indeed, sir!” The landlady shook hers.
+
+“Damn it, ma’am, I swear you do.”
+
+Symptoms of wrath here accompanied the declaration; and, with a sigh
+and a very bitter feeling, Mrs. Hawkshaw allowed him to have the last
+word. Apparently this—which I must beg to call the lady’s
+morsel—comforted his irascible system somewhat; for he remained in a
+state of composure eight minutes by the clock. And mark how little
+things hang together. Another word from the landlady, precipitating a
+retort from him, and a gesture or muttering from her; and from him a
+snapping outburst, and from her a sign that she held out still; in
+fact, had she chosen to battle for that last word, as in other cases
+she might have done, then would he have exploded, gone to bed in the
+dark, and insisted upon sleeping: the consequence of which would have
+been to change this history. Now while Mrs. Hawkshaw was upstairs, Mrs.
+Mel called the servant, who took her to the kitchen, where she saw a
+prime loin of mutton; off which she cut two chops with a cunning hand:
+and these she toasted at a gradual distance, putting a plate beneath
+them, and a tin behind, and hanging the chops so that they would turn
+without having to be pierced. The bell rang twice before she could say
+the chops were ready. The first time, the maid had to tell the old
+gentleman she was taking up his water. Her next excuse was, that she
+had dropped her candle. The chops ready—who was to take them?
+
+“Really, Mrs. Harrington, you are so clever, you ought, if I might be
+so bold as say so; you ought to end it yourself,” said the landlady. “I
+can’t ask him to eat them: he was all but on the busting point when I
+left him.”
+
+“And that there candle did for him quite,” said Mary, the maid.
+
+“I’m afraid it’s chops cooked for nothing,” added the landlady.
+
+Mrs. Mel saw them endangered. The maid held back: the landlady feared.
+
+“We can but try,” she said.
+
+“Oh! I wish, mum, you’d face him, ’stead o’ me,” said Mary; “I do dread
+that old bear’s den.”
+
+“Here, I will go,” said Mrs. Mel. “Has he got his ale? Better draw it
+fresh, if he drinks any.”
+
+And upstairs she marched, the landlady remaining below to listen for
+the commencement of the disturbance. An utterance of something
+certainly followed Mrs. Mel’s entrance into the old bear’s den. Then
+silence. Then what might have been question and answer. Then—was Mrs.
+Mel assaulted? and which was knocked down? It really was a chair being
+moved to the table. The door opened.
+
+“Yes, ma’am; do what you like,” the landlady heard. Mrs. Mel descended,
+saying: “Send him up some fresh ale.”
+
+“And you have made him sit down obedient to those chops?” cried the
+landlady. “Well might poor dear Mr. Harrington—pleasant man as he
+was!—say, as he used to say, ‘There’s lovely women in the world, Mrs.
+Hawkshaw,’ he’d say, ‘and there’s Duchesses,’ he’d say, ‘and there’s
+they that can sing, and can dance, and some,’ he says, ‘that can cook.’
+But he’d look sly as he’d stoop his head and shake it. ‘Roll ’em into
+one,’ he says, ‘and not any of your grand ladies can match my wife at
+home.’
+
+And, indeed, Mrs. Harrington, he told me he thought so many a time in
+the great company he frequented.”
+
+Perfect peace reigning above, Mrs. Hawkshaw and Mrs. Mel sat down to
+supper below; and Mrs. Hawkshaw talked much of the great one gone. His
+relict did not care to converse about the dead, save in their practical
+aspect as ghosts; but she listened, and that passed the time.
+By-and-by, the old gentleman rang, and sent a civil message to know if
+the landlady had ship’s rum in the house.
+
+“Dear! here’s another trouble,” cried the poor woman. “No—none!”
+
+“Say, yes,” said Mrs. Mel, and called Dandy, and charged him to run
+down the street to the square, and ask for the house of Mr. Coxwell,
+the maltster, and beg of him, in her name, a bottle of his ship’s rum.
+
+“And don’t you tumble down and break the bottle, Dandy. Accidents with
+spirit-bottles are not excused.”
+
+Dandy went on the errand, after an energetic grunt.
+
+In due time he returned with the bottle, whole and sound, and Mr.
+Coxwell’s compliments. Mrs. Mel examined the cork to see that no
+process of suction had been attempted, and then said:
+
+“Carry it up to him, Dandy. Let him see there’s a man in the house
+besides himself.”
+
+“Why, my dear,” the landlady turned to her, “it seems natural to you to
+be mistress where you go. I don’t at all mind, for ain’t it my profit?
+But you do take us off our legs.”
+
+Then the landlady, warmed by gratitude, told her that the old gentleman
+was the great London brewer, who brewed there with his brother, and
+brewed for himself five miles out of Fallowfield, half of which and a
+good part of the neighbourhood he owned, and his name was Mr. Tom
+Cogglesby.
+
+“Oh!” said Mrs. Mel. “And his brother is Mr. Andrew.”
+
+“That’s it,” said the landlady. “And because he took it into his head
+to go and to choose for himself, and be married, no getting his
+brother, Mr. Tom, to speak to him. Why not, indeed? If there’s to be no
+marrying, the sooner we lay down and give up, the better, I think. But
+that’s his way. He do hate us women, Mrs. Harrington. I have heard he
+was crossed. Some say it was the lady of Beckley Court, who was a
+Beauty, when he was only a poor cobbler’s son.”
+
+Mrs. Mel breathed nothing of her relationship to Mr. Tom, but continued
+from time to time to express solicitude about Dandy. They heard the
+door open, and old Tom laughing in a capital good temper, and then
+Dandy came down, evidently full of ship’s rum.
+
+“He’s pumped me!” said Dandy, nodding heavily at his mistress.
+
+Mrs. Mel took him up to his bed-room, and locked the door. On her way
+back she passed old Tom’s chamber, and his chuckles were audible to
+her.
+
+“They finished the rum,” said Mrs. Hawkshaw.
+
+“I shall rate him for that to-morrow,” said Mrs. Mel. “Giving that poor
+beast liquor!”
+
+“Rate Mr. Tom! Oh! Mrs. Harrington! Why, he’ll snap your head off for a
+word.”
+
+Mrs. Mel replied that her head would require a great deal of snapping
+to come off.
+
+During this conversation they had both heard a singular intermittent
+noise above. Mrs. Hawkshaw was the first to ask:
+
+“What can it be? More trouble with him? He’s in his bed-room now.”
+
+“Mad with drink, like Dandy, perhaps,” said Mrs. Mel.
+
+“Hark!” cried the landlady. “Oh!”
+
+It seemed that Old Tom was bouncing about in an extraordinary manner.
+Now came a pause, as if he had sworn to take his rest: now the room
+shook and the windows rattled.
+
+“One’d think, really, his bed was a frying-pan, and him a live fish in
+it,” said the landlady. “Oh—there, again! My goodness! have he got a
+flea?”
+
+The thought was alarming. Mrs. Mel joined in:
+
+“Or a ———”
+
+“Don’t! don’t, my dear!” she was cut short. “Oh! one o’ them little
+things’d be ruin to me. To think o’ that! Hark at him! It must be. And
+what’s to do? I’ve sent the maids to bed. We haven’t a man. If I was to
+go and knock at his door, and ask?”
+
+“Better try and get him to be quiet somehow.”
+
+“Ah! I dare say I shall make him fire out fifty times worse.”
+
+Mrs. Hawkshaw stipulated that Mrs. Mel should stand by her, and the two
+women went up-stairs and stood at Old Tom’s door. There they could hear
+him fuming and muttering imprecations, and anon there was an interval
+of silence, and then the room was shaken, and the cursings recommenced.
+
+“It must be a fight he’s having with a flea,” said the landlady. “Oh!
+pray heaven, it is a flea. For a flea, my dear—gentlemen may bring that
+theirselves; but a b——, that’s a stationary, and born of a bed. Don’t
+you hear? The other thing’d give him a minute’s rest; but a flea’s
+hop-hop-off and on. And he sound like an old gentleman worried by a
+flea. What are you doing?”
+
+Mrs. Mel had knocked at the door. The landlady waited breathlessly for
+the result. It appeared to have quieted Old Tom.
+
+“What’s the matter?” said Mrs. Mel, severely.
+
+The landlady implored her to speak him fair, and reflect on the
+desperate things he might attempt.
+
+“What’s the matter? Can anything be done for you?”
+
+Mr. Tom Cogglesby’s reply comprised an insinuation so infamous
+regarding women when they have a solitary man in their power, that it
+cannot be placed on record.
+
+“Is anything the matter with your bed?”
+
+“Anything? Yes; anything is the matter, ma’am. Hope twenty live geese
+inside it’s enough—eh? Bed, do you call it? It’s the rack! It’s
+damnation! Bed? Ha!”
+
+After delivering this, he was heard stamping up and down the room.
+
+“My very best bed!” whispered the landlady. “Would it please you, sir,
+to change—I can give you another?”
+
+“I’m not a man of experiments, ma’am—’specially in strange houses.”
+
+“So very, very sorry!”
+
+“What the deuce!” Old Tom came close to the door. “You whimpering! You
+put a man in a beast of a bed—you drive him half mad—and then begin to
+blubber! Go away.”
+
+“I am so sorry, sir!”
+
+“If you don’t go away, ma’am, I shall think your intentions are
+improper.”
+
+“Oh, my goodness!” cried poor Mrs. Hawkshaw. “What can one do with
+him?” Mrs. Mel put Mrs. Hawkshaw behind her.
+
+“Are you dressed?” she called out.
+
+In this way Mrs. Mel tackled Old Tom. He was told that should he
+consent to cover himself decently, she would come into his room and
+make his bed comfortable. And in a voice that dispersed armies of
+innuendoes, she bade him take his choice, either to rest quiet or do
+her bidding. Had Old Tom found his master at last, and in one of the
+hated sex? Breathlessly Mrs. Hawkshaw waited his answer, and she was an
+astonished woman when it came.
+
+“Very well, ma’am. Wait a couple of minutes. Do as you like.”
+
+On their admission to the interior of the chamber, Old Tom was
+exhibited in his daily garb, sufficiently subdued to be civil and
+explain the cause of his discomfort. Lumps in his bed: he was bruised
+by them. He supposed he couldn’t ask women to judge for
+themselves—they’d be shrieking—but he could assure them he was blue all
+down his back. Mrs. Mel and Mrs. Hawkshaw turned the bed about, and
+punched it, and rolled it.
+
+“Ha!” went Old Tom, “what’s the good of that? That’s just how I found
+it. Moment I got into bed geese began to put up their backs.”
+
+Mrs. Mel seldom indulged in a joke, and then only when it had a
+proverbial cast. On the present occasion, the truth struck her
+forcibly, and she said:
+
+“One fool makes many, and so, no doubt, does one goose.”
+
+Accompanied by a smile the words would have seemed impudent; but spoken
+as a plain fact, and with a grave face, it set Old Tom blinking like a
+small boy ten minutes after the whip.
+
+“Now,” she pursued, speaking to him as to an old child, “look here.
+This is how you manage. Knead down in the middle of the bed. Then jump
+into the hollow. Lie there, and you needn’t wake till morning.”
+
+Old Tom came to the side of the bed. He had prepared himself for a
+wretched night, an uproar, and eternal complaints against the house,
+its inhabitants, and its foundations; but a woman stood there who as
+much as told him that digging his fist into the flock and jumping into
+the hole—into that hole under his, eyes—was all that was wanted! that
+he had been making a noise for nothing, and because he had not the wit
+to hit on a simple contrivance! Then, too, his jest about the
+geese—this woman had put a stop to that! He inspected the hollow
+cynically. A man might instruct him on a point or two: Old Tom was not
+going to admit that a woman could.
+
+“Oh, very well; thank you, ma’am; that’s your idea. I’ll try it. Good
+night.”
+
+“Good night,” returned Mrs. Mel. “Don’t forget to jump into the
+middle.”
+
+“Head foremost, ma’am?”
+
+“As you weigh,” said Mrs. Mel, and Old Tom trumped his lips, silenced
+if not beaten. Beaten, one might almost say, for nothing more was heard
+of him that night.
+
+He presented himself to Mrs. Mel after breakfast next morning.
+
+“Slept well, ma’am.”
+
+“Oh! then you did as I directed you,” said Mrs. Mel.
+
+“Those chops, too, very good. I got through ’em.”
+
+“Eating, like scratching, only wants a beginning,” said Mrs. Mel.
+
+“Ha! you’ve got your word, then, as well as everybody else. Where’s
+your Dandy this morning, ma’am?”
+
+“Locked up. You ought to be ashamed to give that poor beast liquor. He
+won’t get fresh air to-day.”
+
+“Ha! May I ask you where you’re going to-day, ma’am?”
+
+“I am going to Beckley.”
+
+“So am I, ma’am. What d’ ye say, if we join company. Care for
+insinuations?”
+
+“I want a conveyance of some sort,” returned Mrs. Mel.
+
+“Object to a donkey, ma’am?”
+
+“Not if he’s strong and will go.”
+
+“Good,” said Old Tom; and while he spoke a donkey-cart stopped in front
+of the Dolphin, and a well-dressed man touched his hat.
+
+“Get out of that damned bad habit, will you?” growled Old Tom. What do
+you mean by wearing out the brim o’ your hat in that way? Help this
+woman in.”
+
+Mrs. Mel helped herself to a part of the seat.
+
+“We are too much for the donkey,” she said.
+
+“Ha, that’s right. What I have, ma’am, is good. I can’t pretend to
+horses, but my donkey’s the best. Are you going to cry about him?”
+
+“No. When he’s tired I shall either walk or harness you,” said Mrs.
+Mel.
+
+This was spoken half-way down the High Street of Fallowfield. Old Tom
+looked full in her face, and bawled out:
+
+“Deuce take it. Are you a woman?”
+
+“I have borne three girls and one boy,” said Mrs. Mel.
+
+“What sort of a husband?”
+
+“He is dead.”
+
+“Ha! that’s an opening, but ’tain’t an answer. I’m off to Beckley on a
+marriage business. I’m the son of a cobbler, so I go in a donkey-cart.
+No damned pretences for me. I’m going to marry off a young tailor to a
+gal he’s been playing the lord to. If she cares for him she’ll take
+him: if not, they’re all the luckier, both of ’em.”
+
+“What’s the tailor’s name?” said Mrs. Mel.
+
+“You are a woman,” returned Old Tom. “Now, come, ma’am, don’t you feel
+ashamed of being in a donkeycart?”
+
+“I’m ashamed of men, sometimes,” said Mrs. Mel; “never of animals.”
+
+“’Shamed o’ me, perhaps.”
+
+“I don’t know you.”
+
+“Ha! well! I’m a man with no pretences. Do you like ’em? How have you
+brought up your three girls and one boy? No pretences—eh?”
+
+Mrs. Mel did not answer, and Old Tom jogged the reins and chuckled, and
+asked his donkey if he wanted to be a racer.
+
+“Should you take me for a gentleman, ma’am?”
+
+“I dare say you are, sir, at heart. Not from your manner of speech.”
+
+“I mean appearances, ma’am.”
+
+“I judge by the disposition.”
+
+“You do, ma’am? Then, deuce take it, if you are a woman, you’re ——” Old
+Tom had no time to conclude.
+
+A great noise of wheels, and a horn blown, caused them both to turn
+their heads, and they beheld a curricle descending upon them
+vehemently, and a fashionably attired young gentleman straining with
+all his might at the reins. The next instant they were rolling on the
+bank. About twenty yards ahead the curricle was halted and turned about
+to see the extent of the mischief done.
+
+“Pardon, a thousand times, my worthy couple,” cried the sonorous Mr.
+Raikes. “What we have seen we swear not to divulge. Franco and
+Fred—your pledge!”
+
+“We swear!” exclaimed this couple.
+
+But suddenly the cheeks of Mr. John Raikes flushed. He alighted from
+the box, and rushing up to Old Tom, was shouting, “My bene—”
+
+“Do you want my toe on your plate?” Old Tom stopped him with.
+
+The mysterious words completely changed the aspect of Mr. John Raikes.
+He bowed obsequiously and made his friend Franco step down and assist
+in the task of reestablishing the donkey, who fortunately had received
+no damage.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+EXHIBITS ROSE’S GENERALSHIP; EVAN’S PERFORMANCE ON THE SECOND FIDDLE;
+AND THE WRETCHEDNESS OF THE COUNTESS
+
+
+We left Rose and Evan on their way to Lady Jocelyn. At the library-door
+Rose turned to him, and with her chin archly lifted sideways, said:
+
+“I know what you feel; you feel foolish.”
+
+Now the sense of honour, and of the necessity of acting the part it
+imposes on him, may be very strong in a young man; but certainly, as a
+rule, the sense of ridicule is more poignant, and Evan was suffering
+horrid pangs. We none of us like to play second fiddle. To play second
+fiddle to a young woman is an abomination to us all. But to have to
+perform upon that instrument to the darling of our hearts—would we not
+rather die? nay, almost rather end the duet precipitately and with
+violence. Evan, when he passed Drummond into the house, and quietly
+returned his gaze, endured the first shock of this strange feeling.
+There could be no doubt that he was playing second fiddle to Rose. And
+what was he about to do? Oh, horror! to stand like a criminal, and say,
+or worse, have said for him, things to tip the ears with fire! To tell
+the young lady’s mother that he had won her daughter’s love, and
+meant—what did he mean? He knew not. Alas! he was second fiddle; he
+could only mean what she meant. Evan loved Rose deeply and completely,
+but noble manhood was strong in him. You may sneer at us, if you
+please, ladies. We have been educated in a theory, that when you lead
+off with the bow, the order of Nature is reversed, and it is no wonder
+therefore, that, having stript us of one attribute, our fine feathers
+moult, and the majestic cock-like march which distinguishes us
+degenerates. You unsex us, if I may dare to say so. Ceasing to be men,
+what are we? If we are to please you rightly, always allow us to play
+First.
+
+Poor Evan did feel foolish. Whether Rose saw it in his walk, or had a
+loving feminine intuition of it, and was aware of the golden rule I
+have just laid down, we need not inquire. She hit the fact, and he
+could only stammer, and bid her open the door.
+
+“No,” she said, after a slight hesitation, “it will be better that I
+should speak to Mama alone, I see. Walk out on the lawn, dear, and wait
+for me. And if you meet Drummond, don’t be angry with him. Drummond is
+very fond of me, and of course I shall teach him to be fond of you. He
+only thinks... what is not true, because he does not know you. I do
+thoroughly, and there, you see, I give you my hand.”
+
+Evan drew the dear hand humbly to his lips. Rose then nodded meaningly,
+and let her eyes dwell on him, and went in to her mother to open the
+battle.
+
+Could it be that a flame had sprung up in those grey eyes latterly?
+Once they were like morning before sunrise. How soft and warm and
+tenderly transparent they could now be! Assuredly she loved him. And
+he, beloved by the noblest girl ever fashioned, why should he hang his
+head, and shrink at the thought of human faces, like a wretch doomed to
+the pillory? He visioned her last glance, and lightning emotions of
+pride and happiness flashed through his veins. The generous, brave
+heart! Yes, with her hand in his, he could stand at bay—meet any fate.
+Evan accepted Rose because he believed in her love, and judged it by
+the strength of his own; her sacrifice of her position he accepted,
+because in his soul he knew he should have done no less. He mounted to
+the level of her nobleness, and losing nothing of the beauty of what
+she did, it was not so strange to him.
+
+Still there was the baleful reflection that he was second fiddle to his
+beloved. No harmony came of it in his mind. How could he take an
+initiative? He walked forth on the lawn, where a group had gathered
+under the shade of a maple, consisting of Drummond Forth, Mrs.
+Evremonde, Mrs. Shorne, Mr. George Uplift, Seymour Jocelyn, and
+Ferdinand Laxley. A little apart Juliana Bonner was walking with Miss
+Carrington. Juliana, when she saw him, left her companion, and passing
+him swiftly, said, “Follow me presently into the conservatory.”
+
+Evan strolled near the group, and bowed to Mrs. Shorne, whom he had not
+seen that morning.
+
+The lady’s acknowledgement of his salute was constrained, and but a
+shade on the side of recognition. They were silent till he was out of
+earshot. He noticed that his second approach produced the same effect.
+In the conservatory Juliana was awaiting him.
+
+“It is not to give you roses I called you here, Mr. Harrington,” she
+said.
+
+“Not if I beg one?” he responded.
+
+“Ah! but you do not want them from... It depends on the person.”
+
+“Pluck this,” said Evan, pointing to a white rose.
+
+She put her fingers to the stem.
+
+“What folly!” she cried, and turned from it.
+
+“Are you afraid that I shall compromise you?” asked Evan.
+
+“You care for me too little for that.”
+
+“My dear Miss Bonner!”
+
+“How long did you know Rose before you called her by her Christian
+name?”
+
+Evan really could not remember, and was beginning to wonder what he had
+been called there for. The little lady had feverish eyes and fingers,
+and seemed to be burning to speak, but afraid.
+
+“I thought you had gone,” she dropped her voice, “without wishing me
+good-bye.”
+
+“I certainly should not do that, Miss Bonner.”
+
+“Formal!” she exclaimed, half to herself. “Miss Bonner thanks you. Do
+you think I wish you to stay? No friend of yours would wish it. You do
+not know the selfishness—brutal!—of these people of birth, as they call
+it.”
+
+“I have met with nothing but kindness here,” said Evan.
+
+“Then go while you can feel that,” she answered; “for it cannot last
+another hour. Here is the rose.” She broke it from the stem and handed
+it to him. “You may wear that, and they are not so likely to call you
+an adventurer, and names of that sort. I am hardly considered a lady by
+them.”
+
+An adventurer! The full meaning of the phrase struck Evan’s senses when
+he was alone. Miss Bonner knew something of his condition, evidently.
+Perhaps it was generally known, and perhaps it was thought that he had
+come to win Rose for his worldly advantage! The idea was overwhelmingly
+new to him. Up started self-love in arms. He would renounce her.
+
+It is no insignificant contest when love has to crush self-love
+utterly. At moments it can be done. Love has divine moments. There are
+times also when Love draws part of his being from self-love, and can
+find no support without it.
+
+But how could he renounce her, when she came forth to him,—smiling,
+speaking freshly and lightly, and with the colour on her cheeks which
+showed that she had done her part? How could he retract a step?
+
+“I have told Mama, Evan. That’s over. She heard it first from me.”
+
+“And she?”
+
+“Dear Evan, if you are going to be sensitive, I’ll run away. You that
+fear no danger, and are the bravest man I ever knew! I think you are
+really trembling. She will speak to Papa, and then—and then, I suppose,
+they will both ask you whether you intend to give me up, or no. I’m
+afraid you’ll do the former.”
+
+“Your mother—Lady Jocelyn listened to you, Rose? You told her all?”
+
+“Every bit.”
+
+“And what does she think of me?”
+
+“Thinks you very handsome and astonishing, and me very idiotic and
+natural, and that there is a great deal of bother in the world, and
+that my noble relatives will lay the blame of it on her. No, dear, not
+all that; but she talked very sensibly to me, and kindly. You know she
+is called a philosopher: nobody knows how deep-hearted she is, though.
+My mother is true as steel. I can’t separate the kindness from the
+sense, or I would tell you all she said. When I say kindness, I don’t
+mean any ‘Oh, my child,’ and tears, and kisses, and maundering, you
+know. You mustn’t mind her thinking me a little fool. You want to know
+what she thinks of you. She said nothing to hurt you, Evan, and we have
+gained ground so far, and now we’ll go and face our enemies. Uncle Mel
+expects to hear about your appointment, in a day or two, and——”
+
+“Oh, Rose!” Evan burst out.
+
+“What is it?”
+
+“Why must I owe everything to you?”
+
+“Why, dear? Why, because, if you do, it’s very much better than your
+owing it to anybody else. Proud again?”
+
+Not proud: only second fiddle.
+
+“You know, dear Evan, when two people love, there is no such thing as
+owing between them.”
+
+“Rose, I have been thinking. It is not too late. I love you, God knows!
+I did in Portugal: I do now—more and more. But Oh, my bright angel!” he
+ended the sentence in his breast.
+
+“Well? but—what?”
+
+Evan sounded down the meaning of his “but.” Stripped of the usual
+heroics, it was, “what will be thought of me?” not a small matter to
+any of us. He caught a distant glimpse of the little bit of bare
+selfishness, and shrank from it.
+
+“Too late,” cried Rose. “The battle has commenced now, and, Mr.
+Harrington, I will lean on your arm, and be led to my dear friends
+yonder. Do they think that I am going to put on a mask to please them?
+Not for anybody! What they are to know they may as well know at once.”
+
+She looked in Evan’s face.
+
+“Do you hesitate?”
+
+He felt the contrast between his own and hers; between the niggard
+spirit of the beggarly receiver, and the high bloom of the exalted
+giver. Nevertheless, he loved her too well not to share much of her
+nature, and wedding it suddenly, he said:
+
+“Rose; tell me, now. If you were to see the place where I was born,
+could you love me still?”
+
+“Yes, Evan.”
+
+“If you were to hear me spoken of with contempt—”
+
+“Who dares?” cried Rose. “Never to me!”
+
+“Contempt of what I spring from, Rose. Names used... Names are used
+...”
+
+“Tush!—names!” said Rose, reddening. “How cowardly that is! Have you
+finished? Oh, faint heart! I suppose I’m not a fair lady, or you
+wouldn’t have won me. Now, come. Remember, Evan, I conceal nothing; and
+if anything makes you wretched here, do think how I love you.”
+
+In his own firm belief he had said everything to arrest her in her
+course, and been silenced by transcendent logic. She thought the same.
+
+Rose made up to the conclave under the maple.
+
+The voices hushed as they approached.
+
+“Capital weather,” said Rose. “Does Harry come back from London
+to-morrow—does anybody know?”
+
+“Not aware,” Laxley was heard to reply.
+
+“I want to speak a word to you, Rose,” said Mrs. Shorne.
+
+“With the greatest pleasure, my dear aunt”: and Rose walked after her.
+
+“My dear Rose,” Mrs. Shorne commenced, “your conduct requires that I
+should really talk to you most seriously. You are probably not aware of
+what you are doing: Nobody likes ease and natural familiarity more than
+I do. I am persuaded it is nothing but your innocence. You are young to
+the world’s ways, and perhaps a little too headstrong, and vain.”
+
+“Conceited and wilful,” added Rose.
+
+“If you like the words better. But I must say—I do not wish to trouble
+your father—you know he cannot bear worry—but I must say, that if you
+do not listen to me, he must be spoken to.”
+
+“Why not Mama?”
+
+“I should naturally select my brother first. No doubt you understand
+me.”
+
+“Any distant allusion to Mr. Harrington?”
+
+“Pertness will not avail you, Rose.”
+
+“So you want me to do secretly what I am doing openly?”
+
+“You must and shall remember you are a Jocelyn, Rose.”
+
+“Only half, my dear aunt!”
+
+“And by birth a lady, Rose.”
+
+“And I ought to look under my eyes, and blush, and shrink, whenever I
+come near a gentleman, aunt!”
+
+“Ah! my dear. No doubt you will do what is most telling. Since you have
+spoken of this Mr. Harrington, I must inform you that I have it on
+certain authority from two or three sources, that he is the son of a
+small shopkeeper at Lymport.”
+
+Mrs. Shorne watched the effect she had produced.
+
+“Indeed, aunt?” cried Rose. “And do you know this to be true?”
+
+“So when you talk of gentlemen, Rose, please be careful whom you
+include.”
+
+“I mustn’t include poor Mr. Harrington? Then my Grandpapa Bonner is out
+of the list, and such numbers of good worthy men?”
+
+Mrs. Shorne understood the hit at the defunct manufacturer. She said:
+“You must most distinctly give me your promise, while this young
+adventurer remains here—I think it will not be long—not to be
+compromising yourself further, as you now do. Or—indeed I must—I shall
+let your parents perceive that such conduct is ruin to a young girl in
+your position, and certainly you will be sent to Elburne House for the
+winter.”
+
+Rose lifted her hands, crying: “Ye Gods!—as Harry says. But I’m very
+much obliged to you, my dear aunt. Concerning Mr. Harrington,
+wonderfully obliged. Son of a small——! Is it a t-t-tailor, aunt?”
+
+“It is—I have heard.”
+
+“And that is much worse. Cloth is viler than cotton! And don’t they
+call these creatures sn-snips? Some word of that sort?”
+
+“It makes little difference what they are called.”
+
+“Well, aunt, I sincerely thank you. As this subject seems to interest
+you, go and see Mama, now. She can tell you a great deal more: and, if
+you want her authority, come back to me.”
+
+Rose then left her aunt in a state of extreme indignation. It was a
+clever move to send Mrs. Shorne to Lady Jocelyn. They were
+antagonistic, and, rational as Lady Jocelyn was, and with her passions
+under control, she was unlikely to side with Mrs. Shorne.
+
+Now Rose had fought against herself, and had, as she thought,
+conquered. In Portugal Evan’s half insinuations had given her small
+suspicions, which the scene on board the Jocasta had half confirmed:
+and since she came to communicate with her own mind, she bore the
+attack of all that rose against him, bit by bit. She had not been too
+blind to see the unpleasantness of the fresh facts revealed to her.
+They did not change her; on the contrary, drew her to him faster—and
+she thought she had completely conquered whatever could rise against
+him. But when Juliana Bonner told her that day that Evan was not only
+the son of the thing, but the thing himself, and that his name could be
+seen any day in Lymport, and that he had come from the shop to Beckley,
+poor Rosey had a sick feeling that almost sank her. For a moment she
+looked back wildly to the doors of retreat. Her eyes had to feed on
+Evan, she had to taste some of the luxury of love, before she could
+gain composure, and then her arrogance towards those she called her
+enemies did not quite return.
+
+“In that letter you told me all—all—all, Evan?”
+
+“Yes, all—religiously.”
+
+“Oh, why did I miss it!”
+
+“Would it give you pleasure?”
+
+She feared to speak, being tender as a mother to his sensitiveness. The
+expressive action of her eyebrows sufficed. She could not bear
+concealment, or doubt, or a shadow of dishonesty; and he, gaining force
+of soul to join with hers, took her hands and related the contents of
+the letter fully. She was pale when he had finished. It was some time
+before she was able to get free from the trammels of prejudice, but
+when she did, she did without reserve, saying: “Evan, there is no man
+who would have done so much.” These little exaltations and generosities
+bind lovers tightly. He accepted the credit she gave him, and at that
+we need not wonder. It helped him further to accept herself, otherwise
+could he—his name known to be on a shop-front—have aspired to her
+still? But, as an unexampled man, princely in soul, as he felt, why, he
+might kneel to Rose Jocelyn. So they listened to one another, and
+blinded the world by putting bandages on their eyes, after the fashion
+of little boys and girls.
+
+Meantime the fair being who had brought these two from the ends of the
+social scale into this happy tangle, the beneficent Countess, was
+wretched. When you are in the enemy’s country you are dependent on the
+activity and zeal of your spies and scouts, and the best of these—Polly
+Wheedle, to wit—had proved defective, recalcitrant even. And because a
+letter had been lost in her room! as the Countess exclaimed to herself,
+though Polly gave her no reasons. The Countess had, therefore, to rely
+chiefly upon personal observation, upon her intuitions, upon her
+sensations in the proximity of the people to whom she was opposed; and
+from these she gathered that she was, to use the word which seemed
+fitting to her, betrayed. Still to be sweet, still to smile and to
+amuse,—still to give her zealous attention to the business of the
+diplomatist’s Election, still to go through her church-services
+devoutly, required heroism; she was equal to it, for she had remarkable
+courage; but it was hard to feel no longer at one with Providence. Had
+not Providence suggested Sir Abraham to her? killed him off at the
+right moment in aid of her? And now Providence had turned, and the
+assistance she had formerly received from that Power, and given thanks
+for so profusely, was the cause of her terror. It was absolutely as if
+she had been borrowing from a Jew, and were called upon to pay
+fifty-fold interest.
+
+“Evan!” she writes in a gasp to Harriet. “We must pack up and depart.
+Abandon everything. He has disgraced us all, and ruined himself.
+Impossible that we can stay for the pic-nic. We are known, dear. Think
+of my position one day in this house! Particulars when I embrace you. I
+dare not trust a letter here. If Evan had confided in me! He is
+impenetrable. He will be low all his life, and I refuse any more to
+sully myself in attempting to lift him. For Silva’s sake I must
+positively break the connection. Heaven knows what I have done for this
+boy, and will support me in the feeling that I have done enough. My
+conscience at least is safe.”
+
+Like many illustrious Generals, the Countess had, for the hour, lost
+heart. We find her, however, the next day, writing:
+
+“Oh! Harriet! what trials for sisterly affection! Can I
+possibly—weather the gale, as the old L—— sailors used to say? It is
+dreadful. I fear I am by duty bound to stop on. Little Bonner thinks
+Evan quite a duke’s son, has been speaking to her Grandmama, and
+to-day, this morning, the venerable old lady quite as much as gave me
+to understand that an union between our brother and her son’s child
+would sweetly gratify her, and help her to go to her rest in peace. Can
+I chase that spark of comfort from one so truly pious? Dearest Juliana!
+I have anticipated Evan’s feeling for her, and so she thinks his
+conduct cold. Indeed, I told her, point blank, he loved her. That, you
+know, is different from saying, dying of love, which would have been an
+untruth. But, Evan, of course! No getting him! Should Juliana ever
+reproach me, I can assure the child that any man is in love with any
+woman—which is really the case. It is, you dear humdrum! what the
+dictionary calls ‘nascent.’ I never liked the word, but it stands for a
+fact.”
+
+The Countess here exhibits the weakness of a self-educated
+intelligence. She does not comprehend the joys of scholarship in her
+employment of Latinisms. It will be pardoned to her by those who
+perceive the profound piece of feminine discernment which precedes it.
+
+“I do think I shall now have courage to stay out the pic-nic,” she
+continues. “I really do not think all is known. Very little can be
+known, or I am sure I could not feel as I do. It would burn me up.
+George Up— does not dare; and his most beautiful lady-love had far
+better not. Mr. Forth may repent his whispers. But, Oh! what Evan may
+do! Rose is almost detestable. Manners, my dear? Totally deficient!
+
+“An ally has just come. Evan’s good fortune is most miraculous. His low
+friend turns out to be a young Fortunatus; very original, sparkling,
+and in my hands to be made much of. I do think he will—for he is most
+zealous—he will counteract that hateful Mr. Forth, who may soon have
+work enough. Mr. Raikes (Evan’s friend) met a mad captain in
+Fallowfield! Dear Mr. Raikes is ready to say anything; not from love of
+falsehood, but because he is ready to think it. He has confessed to me
+that Evan told him! Louisa de Saldar has changed his opinion, and much
+impressed this eccentric young gentleman. Do you know any young girl
+who wants a fortune, and would be grateful?
+
+“Dearest! I have decided on the pic-nic. Let your conscience be clear,
+and Providence cannot be against you. So I feel. Mr. Parsley spoke very
+beautifully to that purpose last Sunday in the morning service. A
+little too much through his nose, perhaps; but the poor young man’s
+nose is a great organ, and we will not cast it in his teeth more than
+nature has done. I said so to my diplomatist, who was amused. If you
+are sparklingly vulgar with the English, you are aristocratic. Oh! what
+principle we women require in the thorny walk of life. I can show you a
+letter when we meet that will astonish humdrum. Not so diplomatic as
+the writer thought! Mrs. Melville (sweet woman!) must continue to
+practise civility; for a woman who is a wife, my dear, in verity she
+lives in a glass house, and let her fling no stones. ‘Let him who is
+without sin.’ How beautiful that Christian sentiment! I hope I shall be
+pardoned, but it always seems to me that what we have to endure is
+infinitely worse than any other suffering, for you find no comfort for
+the children of T——s in Scripture, nor any defence of their dreadful
+position. Robbers, thieves, Magdalens! but, no! the unfortunate
+offspring of that class are not even mentioned: at least, in my most
+diligent perusal of the Scriptures, I never lighted upon any remote
+allusion; and we know the Jews did wear clothing. Outcasts, verily! And
+Evan could go, and write—but I have no patience with him. He is the
+blind tool of his mother, and anybody’s puppet.”
+
+The letter concludes, with horrid emphasis:
+
+“The Madre in Beckley! Has sent for Evan from a low public-house! I
+have intercepted the messenger. Evan closeted with Sir Franks. Andrew’s
+horrible old brother with Lady Jocelyn. The whole house, from garret to
+kitchen, full of whispers!”
+
+A prayer to Providence closes the communication.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+TOM COGGLESEY’S PROPOSITION
+
+
+The appearance of a curricle and a donkey-cart within the gates of
+Beckley Court, produced a sensation among the men of the lower halls,
+and a couple of them rushed out, with the left calf considerably in
+advance, to defend the house from violation. Toward the curricle they
+directed what should have been a bow, but was a nod. Their joint
+attention was then given to the donkey-cart, in which old Tom Cogglesby
+sat alone, bunchy in figure, bunched in face, his shrewd grey eyes
+twinkling under the bush of his eyebrows.
+
+“Oy, sir—you! my man!” exclaimed the tallest of the pair, resolutely.
+“This won’t do. Don’t you know driving this sort of conveyance slap
+along the gravel ’ere, up to the pillars, ’s unparliamentary? Can’t be
+allowed. Now, right about!”
+
+This address, accompanied by a commanding elevation of the dexter hand,
+seemed to excite Mr. Raikes far more than Old Tom. He alighted from his
+perch in haste, and was running up to the stalwart figure, crying,
+“Fellow!” when, as you tell a dog to lie down, Old Tom called out, “Be
+quiet, Sir!” and Raikes halted with prompt military obedience.
+
+The sight of the curricle acting satellite to the donkey-cart staggered
+the two footmen.
+
+“Are you lords?” sang out Old Tom.
+
+A burst of laughter from the friends of Mr. Raikes, in the curricle,
+helped to make the powdered gentlemen aware of a sarcasm, and one with
+no little dignity replied that they were not lords.
+
+“Oh! Then come and hold my donkey.”
+
+Great irresolution was displayed at the injunction, but having
+consulted the face of Mr. Raikes, one fellow, evidently half overcome
+by what was put upon him, with the steps of Adam into exile, descended
+to the gravel, and laid his hand on the donkey’s head.
+
+“Hold hard!” cried Old Tom. “Whisper in his ear. He’ll know your
+language.”
+
+“May I have the felicity of assisting you to terra firma?” interposed
+Mr. Raikes, with the bow of deferential familiarity.
+
+“Done that once too often,” returned Old Tom, jumping out. “There.
+What’s the fee? There’s a crown for you that ain’t afraid of a live
+donkey; and there’s a sixpenny bit for you that are—to keep up your
+courage; and when he’s dead you shall have his skin—to shave by.”
+
+“Excellent!” shouted Raikes.
+
+“Thomas!” he addressed a footman, “hand in my card. Mr. John Feversham
+Raikes.”
+
+“And tell my lady, Tom Cogglesby’s come,” added the owner of that name.
+
+We will follow Tom Cogglesby, as he chooses to be called.
+
+Lady Jocelyn rose on his entering the library, and walking up to him,
+encountered him with a kindly full face.
+
+“So I see you at last, Tom?” she said, without releasing his hand; and
+Old Tom mounted patches of red in his wrinkled cheeks, and blinked, and
+betrayed a singular antiquated bashfulness, which ended, after a mumble
+of “Yes, there he was, and he hoped her ladyship was well,” by his
+seeking refuge in a chair, where he sat hard, and fixed his attention
+on the leg of a table.
+
+“Well, Tom, do you find much change in me?” she was woman enough to
+continue.
+
+He was obliged to look up.
+
+“Can’t say I do, my lady.”
+
+“Don’t you see the grey hairs, Tom?”
+
+“Better than a wig,” rejoined he.
+
+Was it true that her ladyship had behaved rather ill to Old Tom in her
+youth? Excellent women have been naughty girls, and young Beauties will
+have their train. It is also very possible that Old Tom had presumed
+upon trifles, and found it difficult to forgive her his own folly.
+
+“Preferable to a wig? Well, I would rather see you with your natural
+thatch. You’re bent, too. You look as if you had kept away from Beckley
+a little too long.”
+
+“Told you, my lady, I should come when your daughter was marriageable.”
+
+“Oho! that’s it? I thought it was the Election!
+
+“Election be ——— hem!—beg pardon, my lady.”
+
+“Swear, Tom, if it relieves you. I think it bad to check an oath or a
+sneeze.”
+
+“I’m come to see you on business, my lady, or I shouldn’t have troubled
+you.”
+
+“Malice?”
+
+“You’ll see I don’t bear any, my lady.”
+
+“Ah! if you had only sworn roundly twenty-five years ago, what a much
+younger man you would have been! and a brave capital old friend whom I
+should not have missed all that time.”
+
+“Come!” cried Old Tom, varying his eyes rapidly between her ladyship’s
+face and the floor, “you acknowledge I had reason to.”
+
+“Mais, cela va sans dire.”
+
+“Cobblers’ sons ain’t scholars, my lady.”
+
+“And are not all in the habit of throwing their fathers in our teeth, I
+hope!”
+
+Old Tom wriggled in his chair. “Well, my lady, I’m not going to make a
+fool of myself at my time o’ life. Needn’t be alarmed now. You’ve got
+the bell-rope handy and a husband on the premises.”
+
+Lady Jocelyn smiled, stood up, and went to him. “I like an honest
+fist,” she said, taking his. “We’re not going to be doubtful friends,
+and we won’t snap and snarl. That’s for people who’re independent of
+wigs, Tom. I find, for my part, that a little grey on the top of any
+head cools the temper amazingly. I used to be rather hot once.”
+
+“You could be peppery, my lady.”
+
+“Now I’m cool, Tom, and so must you be; or, if you fight, it must be in
+my cause, as you did when you thrashed that saucy young carter. Do you
+remember?”
+
+“If you’ll sit ye down, my lady, I’ll just tell you what I’m come for,”
+said Old Tom, who plainly showed that he did remember, and was
+alarmingly softened by her ladyship’s retention of the incident.
+
+Lady Jocelyn returned to her place.
+
+“You’ve got a marriageable daughter, my lady?”
+
+“I suppose we may call her so,” said Lady Jocelyn, with a composed
+glance at the ceiling.
+
+“’Gaged to be married to any young chap?”
+
+“You must put the question to her, Tom.”
+
+“Ha! I don’t want to see her.”
+
+At this Lady Jocelyn looked slightly relieved. Old Tom continued.
+
+“Happen to have got a little money—not so much as many a lord’s got, I
+dare say; such as ’tis, there ’tis. Young fellow I know wants a wife,
+and he shall have best part of it. Will that suit ye, my lady?”
+
+Lady Jocelyn folded her hands. “Certainly; I’ve no objection. What it
+has to do with me I can’t perceive.”
+
+“Ahem!” went Old Tom. “It won’t hurt your daughter to be married now,
+will it?”
+
+“Oh! my daughter is the destined bride of your ‘young fellow,’” said
+Lady Jocelyn. “Is that how it’s to be?”
+
+“She”—Old Tom cleared his throat “she won’t marry a lord, my lady; but
+she—’hem—if she don’t mind that—’ll have a deuced sight more hard cash
+than many lord’s son’d give her, and a young fellow for a husband,
+sound in wind and limb, good bone and muscle, speaks grammar and two or
+three languages, and—”
+
+“Stop!” cried Lady Jocelyn. “I hope this is not a prize young man? If
+he belongs, at his age, to the unco quid, I refuse to take him for a
+son-in-law, and I think Rose will, too.”
+
+Old Tom burst out vehemently: “He’s a damned good young fellow, though
+he isn’t a lord.”
+
+“Well,” said Lady Jocelyn, “I’ve no doubt you’re in earnest, Tom. It’s
+curious, for this morning Rose has come to me and given me the first
+chapter of a botheration, which she declares is to end in the common
+rash experiment. What is your ‘young fellow’s’ name? Who is he? What is
+he?”
+
+“Won’t take my guarantee, my lady?”
+
+“Rose—if she marries—must have a name, you know?”
+
+Old Tom hit his knee. “Then there’s a pill for ye to swallow, for he
+ain’t the son of a lord.”
+
+“That’s swallowed, Tom. What is he?”
+
+“He’s the son of a tradesman, then, my lady.” And Old Tom watched her
+to note the effect he had produced.
+
+“More’s the pity,” was all she remarked.
+
+“And he’ll have his thousand a year to start with; and he’s a tailor,
+my lady.”
+
+Her ladyship opened her eyes.
+
+“Harrington’s his name, my lady. Don’t know whether you ever heard of
+it.”
+
+Lady Jocelyn flung herself back in her chair. “The queerest thing I
+ever met!” said she.
+
+“Thousand a year to start with,” Old Tom went on, “and if she marries—I
+mean if he marries her, I’ll settle a thousand per ann. on the first
+baby-boy or gal.”
+
+“Hum! Is this gross collusion, Mr. Tom?” Lady Jocelyn inquired.
+
+“What does that mean?”
+
+“Have you spoken of this before to any one?”
+
+“I haven’t, my lady. Decided on it this morning. Hem! you got a son,
+too. He’s fond of a young gal, or he ought to be. I’ll settle him when
+I’ve settled the daughter.”
+
+“Harry is strongly attached to a dozen, I believe,” said his mother.
+“Well, Tom, we’ll think of it. I may as well tell you: Rose has just
+been here to inform me that this Mr. Harrington has turned her head,
+and that she has given her troth, and all that sort of thing. I believe
+such was not to be laid to my charge in my day.”
+
+“You were open enough, my lady,” said Old Tom. “She’s fond of the young
+fellow? She’ll have a pill to swallow! poor young woman!”
+
+Old Tom visibly chuckled. Lady Jocelyn had a momentary temptation to
+lead him out, but she did not like the subject well enough to play with
+it.
+
+“Apparently Rose has swallowed it,” she said.
+
+“Goose, shears, cabbage, and all!” muttered Old Tom. “Got a
+stomach!—she knows he’s a tailor, then? The young fellow told her? He
+hasn’t been playing the lord to her?”
+
+“As far as he’s concerned, I think he has been tolerably honest, Tom,
+for a man and a lover.”
+
+“And told her he was born and bound a tailor?”
+
+“Rose certainly heard it from him.”
+
+Slapping his knee, Old Tom cried: “Bravo!” For though one part of his
+nature was disappointed, and the best part of his plot disarranged, he
+liked Evan’s proceeding and felt warm at what seemed to him Rose’s
+scorn of rank.
+
+“She must be a good gal, my lady. She couldn’t have got it from t’
+other side. Got it from you. Not that you—”
+
+“No,” said Lady Jocelyn, apprehending him. “I’m afraid I have no
+Republican virtues. I’m afraid I should have rejected the pill. Don’t
+be angry with me,” for Old Tom looked sour again; “I like birth and
+position, and worldly advantages, and, notwithstanding Rose’s pledge of
+the instrument she calls her heart, and in spite of your offer, I
+shall, I tell you honestly, counsel her to have nothing to do with—”
+
+“Anything less than lords,” Old Tom struck in. “Very well. Are you
+going to lock her up, my lady?”
+
+“No. Nor shall I whip her with rods.”
+
+“Leave her free to her choice?”
+
+“She will have my advice. That I shall give her. And I shall take care
+that before she makes a step she shall know exactly what it leads to.
+Her father, of course, will exercise his judgement.” (Lady Jocelyn said
+this to uphold the honour of Sir Franks, knowing at the same time
+perfectly well that he would be wheedled by Rose.) “I confess I like
+this Mr. Harrington. But it’s a great misfortune for him to have had a
+notorious father. A tailor should certainly avoid fame, and this young
+man will have to carry his father on his back. He’ll never throw the
+great Mel off.”
+
+Tom Cogglesby listened, and was really astonished at her ladyship’s
+calm reception of his proposal.
+
+“Shameful of him! shameful!” he muttered perversely: for it would have
+made him desolate to have had to change his opinion of her ladyship
+after cherishing it, and consoling himself with it, five-and-twenty
+years. Fearing the approach of softness, he prepared to take his leave.
+
+“Now—your servant, my lady. I stick to my word, mind: and if your
+people here are willing, I—I’ve got a candidate up for Fall’field—I’ll
+knock him down, and you shall sneak in your Tory. Servant, my lady.”
+
+Old Tom rose to go. Lady Jocelyn took his hand cordially, though she
+could not help smiling at the humility of the cobbler’s son in his
+manner of speaking of the Tory candidate.
+
+“Won’t you stop with us a few days?”
+
+“I’d rather not, I thank ye.”
+
+“Won’t you see Rose?”
+
+“I won’t. Not till she’s married.”
+
+“Well, Tom, we’re friends now?”
+
+“Not aware I’ve ever done you any harm, my lady.”
+
+“Look me in the face.”
+
+The trial was hard for him. Though she had been five-and-twenty years a
+wife, she was still very handsome: but he was not going to be melted,
+and when the perverse old fellow obeyed her, it was with an aspect of
+resolute disgust that would have made any other woman indignant. Lady
+Jocelyn laughed.
+
+“Why, Tom, your brother Andrew’s here, and makes himself comfortable
+with us. We rode by Brook’s farm the other day. Do you remember
+Copping’s pond—how we dragged it that night? What days we had!”
+
+Old Tom tugged once or twice at his imprisoned fist, while these
+youthful frolics of his too stupid self and the wild and beautiful Miss
+Bonner were being recalled.
+
+“I remember!” he said savagely, and reaching the door hurled out: “And
+I remember the Bull-dogs, too! servant, my lady.” With which he
+effected a retreat, to avoid a ringing laugh he heard in his ears.
+
+Lady Jocelyn had not laughed. She had done no more than look and smile
+kindly on the old boy. It was at the Bull-dogs, a fall of water on the
+borders of the park, that Tom Cogglesby, then a hearty young man, had
+been guilty of his folly: had mistaken her frank friendliness for a
+return of his passion, and his stubborn vanity still attributed her
+rejection of his suit to the fact of his descent from a cobbler, or, as
+he put it, to her infernal worship of rank.
+
+“Poor old Tom!” said her ladyship, when alone. “He’s rough at the rind,
+but sound at the core.” She had no idea of the long revenge Old Tom
+cherished, and had just shaped into a plot to be equal with her for the
+Bull-dogs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+PRELUDE TO AN ENGAGEMENT
+
+
+Money was a strong point with the Elburne brood. The Jocelyns very
+properly respected blood; but being, as Harry, their youngest
+representative, termed them, poor as rats, they were justified in
+considering it a marketable stuff; and when they married they married
+for money. The Hon. Miss Jocelyn had espoused a manufacturer, who
+failed in his contract, and deserved his death. The diplomatist,
+Melville, had not stepped aside from the family traditions in his
+alliance with Miss Black, the daughter of a bold bankrupt, educated in
+affluence; and if he touched nothing but £5000 and some very pretty
+ringlets, that was not his fault. Sir Franks, too, mixed his pure
+stream with gold. As yet, however, the gold had done little more than
+shine on him; and, belonging to expectancy, it might be thought
+unsubstantial. Beckley Court was in the hands of Mrs. Bonner, who, with
+the highest sense of duty toward her only living child, was the last to
+appreciate Lady Jocelyn’s entire absence of demonstrative affection,
+and severely reprobated her daughter’s philosophic handling of certain
+serious subjects. Sir Franks, no doubt, came better off than the
+others; her ladyship brought him twenty thousand pounds, and Harry had
+ten in the past tense, and Rose ten in the future; but living, as he
+had done, a score of years anticipating the demise of an incurable
+invalid, he, though an excellent husband and father, could scarcely be
+taught to imagine that the Jocelyn object of his bargain was attained.
+He had the semblance of wealth, without the personal glow which
+absolute possession brings. It was his habit to call himself a poor
+man, and it was his dream that Rose should marry a rich one. Harry was
+hopeless. He had been his Grandmother’s pet up to the years of
+adolescence: he was getting too old for any prospect of a military
+career: he had no turn for diplomacy, no taste for any of the walks
+open to blood and birth, and was in headlong disgrace with the fountain
+of goodness at Beckley Court, where he was still kept in the tacit
+understanding that, should Juliana inherit the place, he must be at
+hand to marry her instantly, after the fashion of the Jocelyns. They
+were an injured family; for what they gave was good, and the commercial
+world had not behaved honourably to them. Now, Ferdinand Laxley was
+just the match for Rose. Born to a title and fine estate, he was
+evidently fond of her, and there had been a gentle hope in the bosom of
+Sir Franks that the family fatality would cease, and that Rose would
+marry both money and blood.
+
+From this happy delusion poor Sir Franks was awakened to hear that his
+daughter had plighted herself to the son of a tradesman: that, as the
+climax to their evil fate, she who had some blood and some money of her
+own—the only Jocelyn who had ever united the two—was desirous of
+wasting herself on one who had neither. The idea was so utterly opposed
+to the principles Sir Franks had been trained in, that his intellect
+could not grasp it. He listened to his sister, Mrs. Shorne: he listened
+to his wife; he agreed with all they said, though what they said was
+widely diverse: he consented to see and speak to Evan, and he did so,
+and was much the most distressed. For Sir Franks liked many things in
+life, and hated one thing alone—which was “bother.” A smooth world was
+his delight. Rose knew this, and her instruction to Evan was: “You
+cannot give me up—you will go, but you cannot give me up while I am
+faithful to you: tell him that.” She knew that to impress this fact at
+once on the mind of Sir Franks would be a great gain; for in his
+detestation of bother he would soon grow reconciled to things
+monstrous: and hearing the same on both sides, the matter would assume
+an inevitable shape to him. Mr. Second Fiddle had no difficulty in
+declaring the eternity of his sentiments; but he toned them with a
+despair Rose did not contemplate, and added also his readiness to
+repair, in any way possible, the evil done. He spoke of his birth and
+position. Sir Franks, with a gentlemanly delicacy natural to all lovers
+of a smooth world, begged him to see the main and the insurmountable
+objection. Birth was to be desired, of course, and position, and so
+forth: but without money how can two young people marry? Evan’s heart
+melted at this generous way of putting it. He said he saw it, he had no
+hope: he would go and be forgotten: and begged that for any annoyance
+his visit might have caused Sir Franks and Lady Jocelyn, they would
+pardon him. Sir Franks shook him by the hand, and the interview ended
+in a dialogue on the condition of the knees of Black Lymport, and on
+horseflesh in Portugal and Spain.
+
+Following Evan, Rose went to her father and gave him a good hour’s
+excitement, after which the worthy gentleman hurried for consolation to
+Lady Jocelyn, whom he found reading a book of French memoirs, in her
+usual attitude, with her feet stretched out and her head thrown back,
+as in a distant survey of the lively people screening her from a
+troubled world. Her ladyship read him a piquant story, and Sir Franks
+capped it with another from memory; whereupon her ladyship held him
+wrong in one turn of the story, and Sir Franks rose to get the volume
+to verify, and while he was turning over the leaves, Lady Jocelyn told
+him incidentally of old Tom Cogglesby’s visit and proposal. Sir Franks
+found the passage, and that her ladyship was right, which it did not
+move her countenance to hear.
+
+“Ah!” said he, finding it no use to pretend there was no bother in the
+world, “here’s a pretty pickle! Rose says she will have that fellow.”
+
+“Hum!” replied her ladyship. “And if she keeps her mind a couple of
+years, it will be a wonder.”
+
+“Very bad for her this sort of thing—talked about,” muttered Sir
+Franks. “Ferdinand was just the man.”
+
+“Well, yes; I suppose it’s her mistake to think brains an absolute
+requisite,” said Lady Jocelyn, opening her book again, and scanning
+down a column.
+
+Sir Franks, being imitative, adopted a similar refuge, and the talk
+between them was varied by quotations and choice bits from the authors
+they had recourse to. Both leaned back in their chairs, and spoke with
+their eyes on their books.
+
+“Julia’s going to write to her mother,” said he.
+
+“Very filial and proper,” said she.
+
+“There’ll be a horrible hubbub, you know, Emily.”
+
+“Most probably. I shall get the blame; ‘cela se conçoit’.”
+
+“Young Harrington goes the day after to-morrow. Thought it better not
+to pack him off in a hurry.”
+
+“And just before the pic-nic; no, certainly. I suppose it would look
+odd.”
+
+“How are we to get rid of the Countess?”
+
+“Eh? This Bautru is amusing, Franks; but he’s nothing to Vandy. “Homme
+incomparable!” On the whole I find Menage rather dull. The Countess?
+what an accomplished liar that woman is! She seems to have stepped out
+of Tallemant’s Gallery. Concerning the Countess, I suppose you had
+better apply to Melville.”
+
+“Where the deuce did this young Harrington get his breeding from?”
+
+“He comes of a notable sire.”
+
+“Yes, but there’s no sign of the snob in him.”
+
+“And I exonerate him from the charge of ‘adventuring’ after Rose.
+George Uplift tells me—I had him in just now—that the mother is a woman
+of mark and strong principle. She has probably corrected the too
+luxuriant nature of Mel in her offspring. That is to say in this one.
+‘Pour les autres, je ne dis pas’. Well, the young man will go; and if
+Rose chooses to become a monument of constancy, we can do nothing. I
+shall give my advice; but as she has not deceived me, and she is a
+reasonable being, I shan’t interfere. Putting the case at the worst,
+they will not want money. I have no doubt Tom Cogglesby means what he
+says, and will do it. So there we will leave the matter till we hear
+from Elburne House.”
+
+Sir Franks groaned at the thought.
+
+“How much does he offer to settle on them?” he asked.
+
+“A thousand a year on the marriage, and the same amount to the first
+child. I daresay the end would be that they would get all.”
+
+Sir Franks nodded, and remained with one eye-brow pitiably elevated
+above the level of the other.
+
+“Anything but a tailor!” he exclaimed presently, half to himself.
+
+“There is a prejudice against that craft,” her ladyship acquiesced.
+“Béranger—let me see—your favourite Frenchman, Franks, wasn’t it his
+father?—no, his grandfather. ‘Mon pauvre et humble grandpère,’ I think,
+was a tailor. Hum! the degrees of the thing, I confess, don’t affect
+me. One trade I imagine to be no worse than another.”
+
+“Ferdinand’s allowance is about a thousand,” said Sir Franks,
+meditatively.
+
+“And won’t be a farthing more till he comes to the title,” added her
+ladyship.
+
+“Well,” resumed Sir Franks, “it’s a horrible bother!”
+
+His wife philosophically agreed with him, and the subject was dropped.
+
+Lady Jocelyn felt with her husband, more than she chose to let him
+know, and Sir Franks could have burst into anathemas against fate and
+circumstances, more than his love of a smooth world permitted. He,
+however, was subdued by her calmness; and she, with ten times the
+weight of brain, was manoeuvred by the wonderful dash of General Rose
+Jocelyn. For her ladyship, thinking, “I shall get the blame of all
+this,” rather sided insensibly with the offenders against those who
+condemned them jointly; and seeing that Rose had been scrupulously
+honest and straightforward in a very delicate matter, this lady was so
+constituted that she could not but applaud her daughter in her heart. A
+worldly woman would have acted, if she had not thought, differently;
+but her ladyship was not a worldly woman.
+
+Evan’s bearing and character had, during his residence at Beckley
+Court, become so thoroughly accepted as those of a gentleman, and one
+of their own rank, that, after an allusion to the origin of his
+breeding, not a word more was said by either of them on that topic.
+Besides, Rose had dignified him by her decided conduct.
+
+By the time poor Sir Franks had read himself into tranquillity, Mrs.
+Shorne, who knew him well, and was determined that he should not enter
+upon his usual negociations with an unpleasantness: that is to say, to
+forget it, joined them in the library, bringing with her Sir John
+Loring and Hamilton Jocelyn. Her first measure was to compel Sir Franks
+to put down his book. Lady Jocelyn subsequently had to do the same.
+
+“Well, what have you done, Franks?” said Mrs. Shorne.
+
+“Done?” answered the poor gentleman. “What is there to be done? I’ve
+spoken to young Harrington.”
+
+“Spoken to him! He deserves horsewhipping! Have you not told him to
+quit the house instantly?”
+
+Lady Jocelyn came to her husband’s aid: “It wouldn’t do, I think, to
+kick him out. In the first place, he hasn’t deserved it.”
+
+“Not deserved it, Emily!—the commonest, low, vile, adventuring
+tradesman!”
+
+“In the second place,” pursued her ladyship, “it’s not adviseable to do
+anything that will make Rose enter into the young woman’s sublimities.
+It’s better not to let a lunatic see that you think him stark mad, and
+the same holds with young women afflicted with the love-mania. The
+sound of sense, even if they can’t understand it, flatters them so as
+to keep them within bounds. Otherwise you drive them into excesses best
+avoided.”
+
+“Really, Emily,” said Mrs. Shorne, “you speak almost, one would say, as
+an advocate of such unions.”
+
+“You must know perfectly well that I entirely condemn them,” replied
+her ladyship, who had once, and once only, delivered her opinion of the
+nuptials of Mr. and Mrs. Shorne.
+
+In self-defence, and to show the total difference between the cases,
+Mrs. Shorne interjected: “An utterly penniless young adventurer!”
+
+“Oh, no; there’s money,” remarked Sir Franks.
+
+“Money is there?” quoth Hamilton, respectfully.
+
+“And there’s wit,” added Sir John, “if he has half his sister’s
+talent.”
+
+“Astonishing woman!” Hamilton chimed in; adding, with a shrug, “But,
+egad!”
+
+“Well, we don’t want him to resemble his sister,” said Lady Jocelyn. “I
+acknowledge she’s amusing.”
+
+“Amusing, Emily!” Mrs. Shorne never encountered her sister-in-law’s
+calmness without indignation. “I could not rest in the house with such
+a person, knowing her what she is. A vile adventuress, as I firmly
+believe. What does she do all day with your mother? Depend upon it, you
+will repent her visit in more ways than one.”
+
+“A prophecy?” asked Lady Jocelyn, smiling.
+
+On the grounds of common sense, on the grounds of propriety, and
+consideration of what was due to themselves, all agreed to condemn the
+notion of Rose casting herself away on Evan. Lady Jocelyn agreed with
+Mrs. Shorne; Sir Franks with his brother, and Sir John. But as to what
+they were to do, they were divided. Lady Jocelyn said she should not
+prevent Rose from writing to Evan, if she had the wish to do so.
+
+“Folly must come out,” said her ladyship. “It’s a combustible material.
+I won’t have her health injured. She shall go into the world more. She
+will be presented at Court, and if it’s necessary to give her a dose or
+two to counteract her vanity, I don’t object. This will wear off, or,
+‘si c’est veritablement une grande passion, eh bien’ we must take what
+Providence sends us.”
+
+“And which we might have prevented if we had condescended to listen to
+the plainest worldly wisdom,” added Mrs. Shorne.
+
+“Yes,” said Lady Jocelyn, equably, “you know, you and I, Julia, argue
+from two distinct points. Girls may be shut up, as you propose. I don’t
+think nature intended to have them the obverse of men. I’m sure their
+mothers never designed that they should run away with footmen,
+riding-masters, chance curates, as they occasionally do, and wouldn’t
+if they had points of comparison. My opinion is that Prospero was just
+saved by the Prince of Naples being wrecked on his island, from a
+shocking mis-alliance between his daughter and the son of Sycorax. I
+see it clearly. Poetry conceals the extreme probability, but from what
+I know of my sex, I should have no hesitation in turning prophet also,
+as to that.”
+
+What could Mrs. Shorne do with a mother who talked in this manner? Mrs.
+Melville, when she arrived to take part in the conference, which
+gradually swelled to a family one, was equally unable to make Lady
+Jocelyn perceive that her plan of bringing up Rose was, in the present
+result of it, other than unlucky.
+
+Now the two Generals—Rose Jocelyn and the Countess de Saldar—had
+brought matters to this pass; and from the two tactical extremes: the
+former by openness and dash; the latter by subtlety, and her own
+interpretations of the means extended to her by Providence. I will not
+be so bold as to state which of the two I think right. Good and evil
+work together in this world. If the Countess had not woven the tangle,
+and gained Evan time, Rose would never have seen his blood,—never have
+had her spirit hurried out of all shows and forms and habits of
+thought, up to the gates of existence, as it were, where she took him
+simply as God created him and her, and clave to him. Again, had Rose
+been secret, when this turn in her nature came, she would have
+forfeited the strange power she received from it, and which endowed her
+with decision to say what was in her heart, and stamp it lastingly
+there. The two Generals were quite antagonistic, but no two, in perfect
+ignorance of one another’s proceedings, ever worked so harmoniously
+toward the main result. The Countess was the skilful engineer: Rose the
+General of cavalry. And it did really seem that, with Tom Cogglesby and
+his thousands in reserve, the victory was about to be gained. The male
+Jocelyns, an easy race, decided that, if the worst came to the worst,
+and Rose proved a wonder, there was money, which was something.
+
+But social prejudice was about to claim its champion. Hitherto there
+had been no General on the opposite side. Love, aided by the Countess,
+had engaged an inert mass. The champion was discovered in the person of
+the provincial Don Juan, Mr. Harry Jocelyn. Harry had gone on a
+mysterious business of his own to London. He returned with a green box
+under his arm, which, five minutes after his arrival, was entrusted to
+Conning, in company with a genial present for herself, of a kind not
+perhaps so fit for exhibition; at least they both thought so, for it
+was given in the shades. Harry then went to pay his respects to his
+mother, who received him with her customary ironical tolerance. His
+father, to whom he was an incarnation of bother, likewise nodded to him
+and gave him a finger. Duty done, Harry looked round him for pleasure,
+and observed nothing but glum faces. Even the face of John Raikes was
+heavy. He had been hovering about the Duke and Miss Current for an
+hour, hoping the Countess would come and give him a promised
+introduction. The Countess stirred not from above, and Jack drifted
+from group to group on the lawn, and grew conscious that wherever he
+went he brought silence with him. His isolation made him humble, and
+when Harry shook his hand, and said he remembered Fallowfield and the
+fun there, Mr. Raikes thanked him.
+
+Harry made his way to join his friend Ferdinand, and furnished him with
+the latest London news not likely to appear in the papers. Laxley was
+distant and unamused. From the fact, too, that Harry was known to be
+the Countess’s slave, his presence produced the same effect in the
+different circles about the grounds, as did that of John Raikes. Harry
+began to yawn and wish very ardently for his sweet lady. She, however,
+had too fine an instinct to descend.
+
+An hour before dinner, Juliana sent him a message that she desired to
+see him.
+
+“Jove! I hope that girl’s not going to be blowing hot again,” sighed
+the conqueror.
+
+He had nothing to fear from Juliana. The moment they were alone she
+asked him, “Have you heard of it?”
+
+Harry shook his head and shrugged.
+
+“They haven’t told you? Rose has engaged herself to Mr. Harrington, a
+tradesman, a tailor!”
+
+“Pooh! have you got hold of that story?” said Harry. “But I’m sorry for
+old Ferdy. He was fond of Rosey. Here’s another bother!”
+
+“You don’t believe me, Harry?”
+
+Harry was mentally debating whether, in this new posture of affairs,
+his friend Ferdinand would press his claim for certain moneys lent.
+
+“Oh, I believe you,” he said. “Harrington has the knack with you women.
+Why, you made eyes at him. It was a toss-up between you and Rosey
+once.”
+
+Juliana let this accusation pass.
+
+“He is a tradesman. He has a shop in Lymport, I tell you, Harry, and
+his name on it. And he came here on purpose to catch Rose. And now he
+has caught her, he tells her. And his mother is now at one of the
+village inns, waiting to see him. Go to Mr. George Uplift; he knows the
+family. Yes, the Countess has turned your head, of course; but she has
+schemed, and schemed, and told such stories—God forgive her!”
+
+The girl had to veil her eyes in a spasm of angry weeping.
+
+“Oh, come! Juley!” murmured her killing cousin. Harry boasted an
+extraordinary weakness at the sight of feminine tears. “I say! Juley!
+you know if you begin crying I’m done for, and it isn’t fair.”
+
+He dropped his arm on her waist to console her, and generously declared
+to her that he always had been very fond of her. These scenes were not
+foreign to the youth. Her fits of crying, from which she would burst in
+a frenzy of contempt at him, had made Harry say stronger things; and
+the assurances of profound affection uttered in a most languid voice
+will sting the hearts of women.
+
+Harry still went on with his declarations, heating them rapidly, so as
+to bring on himself the usual outburst and check. She was longer in
+coming to it this time, and he had a horrid fear, that instead of
+dismissing him fiercely, and so annulling his words, the strange little
+person was going to be soft and hold him to them. There were her tears,
+however, which she could not stop.
+
+“Well, then, Juley, look. I do, upon my honour, yes—there, don’t cry
+any more—I do love you.”
+
+Harry held his breath in awful suspense. Juliana quietly disengaged her
+waist, and looking at him, said, “Poor Harry! You need not lie any more
+to please me.”
+
+Such was Harry’s astonishment, that he exclaimed,
+
+“It isn’t a lie! I say, I do love you.” And for an instant he thought
+and hoped that he did love her.
+
+“Well, then, Harry, I don’t love you,” said Juliana; which revealed to
+our friend that he had been mistaken in his own emotions. Nevertheless,
+his vanity was hurt when he saw she was sincere, and he listened to
+her, a moody being. This may account for his excessive wrath at Evan
+Harrington after Juliana had given him proofs of the truth of what she
+said.
+
+But the Countess was Harrington’s sister! The image of the Countess
+swam before him. Was it possible? Harry went about asking everybody he
+met. The initiated were discreet; those who had the whispers were open.
+A bare truth is not so convincing as one that discretion confirms.
+Harry found the detestable news perfectly true.
+
+“Stop it by all means if you can,” said his father.
+
+“Yes, try a fall with Rose,” said his mother.
+
+“And I must sit down to dinner to-day with a confounded fellow, the son
+of a tailor, who’s had the impudence to make love to my sister!” cried
+Harry. “I’m determined to kick him out of the house!—half.”
+
+“To what is the modification of your determination due?” Lady Jocelyn
+inquired, probably suspecting the sweet and gracious person who divided
+Harry’s mind.
+
+Her ladyship treated her children as she did mankind generally, from
+her intellectual eminence. Harry was compelled to fly from her cruel
+shafts. He found comfort with his Aunt Shorne, and she as much as told
+Harry that he was the head of the house, and must take up the matter
+summarily. It was expected of him. Now was the time for him to show his
+manhood.
+
+Harry could think of but one way to do that.
+
+“Yes, and if I do—all up with the old lady,” he said, and had to
+explain that his Grandmama Bonner would never leave a penny to a fellow
+who had fought a duel.
+
+“A duel!” said Mrs. Shorne. “No, there are other ways. Insist upon his
+renouncing her. And Rose—treat her with a high hand, as becomes you.
+Your mother is incorrigible, and as for your father, one knows him of
+old. This devolves upon you. Our family honour is in your hands,
+Harry.”
+
+Considering Harry’s reputation, the family honour must have got low:
+Harry, of course, was not disposed to think so. He discovered a great
+deal of unused pride within him, for which he had hitherto not found an
+agreeable vent. He vowed to his aunt that he would not suffer the
+disgrace, and while still that blandishing olive-hued visage swam
+before his eyes, he pledged his word to Mrs. Shorne that he would come
+to an understanding with Harrington that night.
+
+“Quietly,” said she. “No scandal, pray.”
+
+“Oh, never mind how I do it,” returned Harry, manfully. “How am I to do
+it, then?” he added, suddenly remembering his debt to Evan.
+
+Mrs. Shorne instructed him how to do it quietly, and without fear of
+scandal. The miserable champion replied that it was very well for her
+to tell him to say this and that, but—and she thought him demented—he
+must, previous to addressing Harrington in those terms, have money.
+
+“Money!” echoed the lady. “Money!”
+
+“Yes, money!” he iterated doggedly, and she learnt that he had borrowed
+a sum of Harrington, and the amount of the sum.
+
+It was a disastrous plight, for Mrs. Shorne was penniless.
+
+She cited Ferdinand Laxley as a likely lender.
+
+“Oh, I’m deep with him already,” said Harry, in apparent dejection.
+
+“How dreadful are these everlasting borrowings of yours!” exclaimed his
+aunt, unaware of a trifling incongruity in her sentiments. “You must
+speak to him without—pay him by-and-by. We must scrape the money
+together. I will write to your grandfather.”
+
+“Yes; speak to him! How can I when I owe him? I can’t tell a fellow
+he’s a blackguard when I owe him, and I can’t speak any other way. I
+ain’t a diplomatist. Dashed if I know what to do!”
+
+“Juliana,” murmured his aunt.
+
+“Can’t ask her, you know.”
+
+Mrs. Shorne combated the one prominent reason for the objection: but
+there were two. Harry believed that he had exhausted Juliana’s
+treasury. Reproaching him further for his wastefulness, Mrs. Shorne
+promised him the money should be got, by hook or by crook, next day.
+
+“And you will speak to this Mr. Harrington to-night, Harry? No allusion
+to the loan till you return it. Appeal to his sense of honour.”
+
+The dinner-bell assembled the inmates of the house. Evan was not among
+them. He had gone, as the Countess said aloud, on a diplomatic mission
+to Fallowfield, with Andrew Cogglesby. The truth being that he had
+finally taken Andrew into his confidence concerning the letter, the
+annuity, and the bond. Upon which occasion Andrew had burst into a
+laugh, and said he could lay his hand on the writer of the letter.
+
+“Trust Old Tom for plots, Van! He’ll blow you up in a twinkling, the
+cunning old dog! He pretends to be hard—he’s as soft as I am, if it
+wasn’t for his crotchets. We’ll hand him back the cash, and that’s
+ended. And—eh? what a dear girl she is! Not that I’m astonished. My
+Harry might have married a lord—sit at top of any table in the land!
+And you’re as good as any man.
+
+That’s my opinion. But I say she’s a wonderful girl to see it.”
+
+Chattering thus, Andrew drove with the dear boy into Fallowfield. Evan
+was still in his dream. To him the generous love and valiant openness
+of Rose, though they were matched in his own bosom, seemed scarcely
+human. Almost as noble to him were the gentlemanly plainspeaking of Sir
+Franks and Lady Jocelyn’s kind commonsense. But the more he esteemed
+them, the more unbounded and miraculous appeared the prospect of his
+calling their daughter by the sacred name, and kneeling with her at
+their feet. Did the dear heavens have that in store for him? The
+horizon edges were dimly lighted.
+
+Harry looked about under his eye-lids for Evan, trying at the same time
+to compose himself for the martyrdom he had to endure in sitting at
+table with the presumptuous fellow. The Countess signalled him to come
+within the presence. As he was crossing the room, Rose entered, and
+moved to meet him, with: “Ah, Harry! back again! Glad to see you.”
+
+Harry gave her a blunt nod, to which she was inattentive.
+
+“What!” whispered the Countess, after he pressed the tips of her
+fingers. “Have you brought back the grocer?”
+
+Now this was hard to stand. Harry could forgive her her birth, and pass
+it utterly by if she chose to fall in love with him; but to hear the
+grocer mentioned, when he knew of the tailor, was a little too much,
+and what Harry felt his ingenuous countenance was accustomed to
+exhibit. The Countess saw it. She turned her head from him to the
+diplomatist, and he had to remain like a sentinel at her feet. He did
+not want to be thanked for the green box: still he thought she might
+have favoured him with one of her much-embracing smiles:
+
+In the evening, after wine, when he was warm, and had almost forgotten
+the insult to his family and himself, the Countess snubbed him. It was
+unwise on her part, but she had the ghastly thought that facts were
+oozing out, and were already half known. She was therefore sensitive
+tenfold to appearances; savage if one failed to keep up her lie to her,
+and was guilty of a shadow of difference of behaviour. The pic-nic
+over, our General would evacuate Beckley Court, and shake the dust off
+her shoes, and leave the harvest of what she had sown to Providence.
+Till then, respect, and the honours of war! So the Countess snubbed
+him, and he being full of wine, fell into the hands of Juliana, who had
+witnessed the little scene.
+
+“She has made a fool of others as well as of you,” said Juliana.
+
+“How has she?” he inquired.
+
+“Never mind. Do you want to make her humble and crouch to you?”
+
+“I want to see Harrington,” said Harry.
+
+“He will not return to-night from Fallowfield. He has gone there to get
+Mr. Andrew Cogglesby’s brother to do something for him. You won’t have
+such another chance of humbling them both—both! I told you his mother
+is at an inn here. The Countess has sent Mr. Harrington to Fallowfield
+to be out of the way, and she has told her mother all sorts of
+falsehoods.”
+
+“How do you know all that?” quoth Harry. “By Jove, Juley! talk about
+plotters! No keeping anything from you, ever!”
+
+“Never mind. The mother is here. She must be a vulgar woman. Oh! if you
+could manage, Harry, to get this woman to come—you could do it so
+easily! while they are at the pie-nic tomorrow. It would have the best
+effect on Rose. She would then understand! And the Countess!”
+
+“I could send the old woman a message!” cried Harry, rushing into the
+scheme, inspired by Juliana’s fiery eyes. “Send her a sort of message
+to say where we all were.”
+
+“Let her know that her son is here, in some way,” Juley resumed.
+
+“And, egad! what an explosion!” pursued Harry. “But, suppose—”
+
+“No one shall know, if you leave it to me—if you do just as I tell you,
+Harry. You won’t be treated as you were this evening after that, if you
+bring down her pride. And, Harry, I hear you want money—I can give you
+some.”
+
+“You’re a perfect trump, Juley!” exclaimed her enthusiastic cousin.
+“But, no; I can’t take it. I must kiss you, though.”
+
+He put a kiss upon her cheek. Once his kisses had left a red waxen
+stamp; she was callous to these compliments now.
+
+“Will you do what I advise you to-morrow?” she asked.
+
+After a slight hesitation, during which the olive-hued visage flitted
+faintly in the distances of his brain, Harry said:
+
+“It’ll do Rose good, and make Harrington cut. Yes! I declare I will.”
+
+Then they parted. Juliana went to her bed-room, and flung herself upon
+the bed hysterically. As the tears came thick and fast, she jumped up
+to lock the door, for this outrageous habit of crying had made her
+contemptible in the eyes of Lady Jocelyn, and an object of pity to
+Rose. Some excellent and noble natures cannot tolerate disease, and are
+mystified by its ebullitions. It was very sad to see the slight thin
+frame grasped by those wan hands to contain the violence of the frenzy
+that possessed her! the pale, hapless face rigid above the torment in
+her bosom! She had prayed to be loved like other girls, and her
+readiness to give her heart in return had made her a by-word in the
+house. She went to the window and leaned out on the casement, looking
+towards Fallowfield over the downs, weeping bitterly, with a hard shut
+mouth. One brilliant star hung above the ridge, and danced on her
+tears.
+
+“Will he forgive me?” she murmured. “Oh, my God! I wish we were dead
+together!”
+
+Her weeping ceased, and she closed the window, and undressed as far
+away from the mirror as she could get; but its force was too much for
+her, and drew her to it. Some undefined hope had sprung in her
+suddenly. With nervous slow steps she approached the glass, and first
+brushing back the masses of black hair from her brow, looked as for
+some new revelation. Long and anxiously she perused her features: the
+wide bony forehead; the eyes deep-set and rounded with the scarlet of
+recent tears, the thin nose—sharp as the dead; the weak irritable mouth
+and sunken cheeks. She gazed like a spirit disconnected from what she
+saw. Presently a sort of forlorn negative was indicated by the motion
+of her head.
+
+“I can pardon him,” she said, and sighed. “How could he love such a
+face!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+THE BATTLE OF THE BULL-DOGS. PART I.
+
+
+At the South-western extremity of the park, with a view extending over
+wide meadows and troubled mill waters, yellow barn-roofs and
+weather-gray old farm-walls, two grassy mounds threw their slopes to
+the margin of the stream. Here the bull-dogs held revel. The hollow
+between the slopes was crowned by a bending birch, which rose
+three-stemmed from the root, and hung a noiseless green shower over the
+basin of green it shadowed. Beneath it the interminable growl sounded
+pleasantly; softly shot the sparkle of the twisting water, and you
+might dream things half-fulfilled. Knots of fern were about, but the
+tops of the mounds were firm grass, evidently well rolled, and with an
+eye to airy feet. Olympus one eminence was called, Parnassus the other.
+Olympus a little overlooked Parnassus, but Parnassus was broader and
+altogether better adapted for the games of the Muses. Round the edges
+of both there was a well-trimmed bush of laurel, obscuring only the
+feet of the dancers from the observing gods. For on Olympus the elders
+reclined. Great efforts had occasionally been made to dispossess and
+unseat them, and their security depended mainly on a hump in the middle
+of the mound which defied the dance.
+
+Watteau-like groups were already couched in the shade. There were
+ladies of all sorts: town-bred and country-bred: farmers’ daughters and
+daughters of peers: for this pic-nic, as Lady Jocelyn, disgusting the
+Countess, would call it, was in reality a “fête champêtre”, given
+annually, to which the fair offspring of the superior tenants were
+invited the brothers and fathers coming to fetch them in the evening.
+It struck the eye of the Countess de Saldar that Olympus would be a
+fitting throne for her, and a point whence her shafts might fly without
+fear of a return. Like another illustrious General at Salamanca, she
+directed a detachment to take possession of the height. Courtly Sir
+John Loring ran up at once, and gave the diplomatist an opportunity to
+thank her flatteringly for gaining them two minutes to themselves. Sir
+John waved his handkerchief in triumph, welcoming them under an awning
+where carpets and cushions were spread, and whence the Countess could
+eye the field. She was dressed ravishingly; slightly in a foreign
+style, the bodice being peaked at the waist, as was then the Portuguese
+persuasion. The neck, too, was deliciously veiled with fine lace—and
+thoroughly veiled, for it was a feature the Countess did not care to
+expose to the vulgar daylight. Off her gentle shoulders, as it were
+some fringe of cloud blown by the breeze this sweet lady opened her
+bosom to, curled a lovely black lace scarf: not Caroline’s. If she
+laughed, the tinge of mourning lent her laughter new charms. If she
+sighed, the exuberant array of her apparel bade the spectator be of
+good cheer. Was she witty, men surrendered reason and adored her. Only
+when she entered the majestic mood, and assumed the languors of
+greatness, and recited musky anecdotes of her intimacy with it, only
+then did mankind, as represented at Beckley Court, open an internal eye
+and reflect that it was wonderful in a tailor’s daughter. And she felt
+that mankind did so reflect. Her instincts did not deceive her. She
+knew not how much was known; in the depths of her heart she kept low
+the fear that possibly all might be known; and succeeding in this, she
+said to herself that probably nothing was known after all. George
+Uplift, Miss Carrington, and Rose, were the three she abhorred. Partly
+to be out of their way, and to be out of the way of chance shots (for
+she had heard names of people coming that reminded her of Dubbins’s,
+where, in past days, there had been on one awful occasion a terrific
+discovery made), the Countess selected Olympus for her station. It was
+her last day, and she determined to be happy. Doubtless, she was making
+a retreat, but have not illustrious Generals snatched victory from
+their pursuers? Fair, then, sweet, and full of grace, the Countess
+moved. As the restless shifting of colours to her motions was the
+constant interchange of her semisorrowful manner and ready archness.
+Sir John almost capered to please her, and the diplomatist in talking
+to her forgot his diplomacy and the craft of his tongue.
+
+It was the last day also of Caroline and the Duke. The Countess clung
+to Caroline and the Duke more than to Evan and Rose. She could see the
+first couple walking under an avenue of limes, and near them that young
+man or monkey, Raikes, as if in ambush. Twice they passed him, and
+twice he doffed his hat and did homage.
+
+“A most singular creature!” exclaimed the Countess. “It is my constant
+marvel where my brother discovered such a curiosity. Do notice him.”
+
+“That man? Raikes?” said the diplomatist. “Do you know he is our rival?
+Harry wanted an excuse for another bottle last night, and proposed the
+‘Member’ for Fallowfield. Up got this Mr. Raikes and returned thanks.”
+
+“Yes?” the Countess negligently interjected in a way she had caught
+from Lady Jocelyn.
+
+“Cogglesby’s nominee, apparently.”
+
+“I know it all,” said the Countess. “We need have no apprehension. He
+is docile. My brother-in-law’s brother, you see, is most eccentric. We
+can manage him best through this Mr. Raikes, for a personal application
+would be ruin. He quite detests our family, and indeed all the
+aristocracy.”
+
+Melville’s mouth pursed, and he looked very grave.
+
+Sir John remarked: “He seems like a monkey just turned into a man.”
+
+“And doubtful about the tail,” added the Countess.
+
+The image was tolerably correct, but other causes were at the bottom of
+the air worn by John Raikes. The Countess had obtained an invitation
+for him, with instructions that he should come early, and he had
+followed them so implicitly that the curricle was flinging dust on the
+hedges between Fallowfield and Beckley but an hour or two after the
+chariot of Apollo had mounted the heavens, and Mr. Raikes presented
+himself at the breakfast table. Fortunately for him the Countess was
+there. After the repast she introduced him to the Duke: and he bowed to
+the Duke, and the Duke bowed to him: and now, to instance the peculiar
+justness in the mind of Mr. Raikes, he, though he worshipped a coronet
+and would gladly have recalled the feudal times to a corrupt land,
+could not help thinking that his bow had beaten the Duke’s and was
+better. He would rather not have thought so, for it upset his
+preconceptions and threatened a revolution in his ideas. For this
+reason he followed the Duke, and tried, if possible, to correct, or at
+least chasten the impressions he had of possessing a glaring advantage
+over the nobleman. The Duke’s second notice of him was hardly a nod.
+“Well!” Mr. Raikes reflected, “if this is your Duke, why, egad! for
+figure and style my friend Harrington beats him hollow.” And Raikes
+thought he knew who could conduct a conversation with superior dignity
+and neatness. The torchlight of a delusion was extinguished in him, but
+he did not wander long in that gloomy cavernous darkness of the
+disenchanted, as many of us do, and as Evan had done, when after a week
+at Beckley Court he began to examine of what stuff his brilliant
+father, the great Mel, was composed. On the contrary, as the light of
+the Duke dwindled, Raikes gained in lustre. “In fact,” he said,
+“there’s nothing but the title wanting.” He was by this time on a level
+with the Duke in his elastic mind.
+
+Olympus had been held in possession by the Countess about half an hour,
+when Lady Jocelyn mounted it, quite unconscious that she was scaling a
+fortified point. The Countess herself fired off the first gun at her.
+
+“It has been so extremely delightful up alone here, Lady Jocelyn: to
+look at everybody below! I hope many will not intrude on us!”
+
+“None but the dowagers who have breath to get up,” replied her
+ladyship, panting. “By the way, Countess, you hardly belong to us yet.
+You dance?”
+
+“Indeed, I do not.”
+
+“Oh, then you are in your right place. A dowager is a woman who doesn’t
+dance: and her male attendant is—what is he? We will call him a fogy.”
+
+Lady Jocelyn directed a smile at Melville and Sir John, who both
+protested that it was an honour to be the Countess’s fogy.
+
+Rose now joined them, with Laxley morally dragged in her wake.
+
+“Another dowager and fogy!” cried the Countess, musically. “Do you not
+dance, my child?”
+
+“Not till the music strikes up,” rejoined Rose. “I suppose we shall
+have to eat first.”
+
+“That is the Hamlet of the pic-nic play, I believe,” said her mother.
+
+“Of course you dance, don’t you, Countess?” Rose inquired, for the sake
+of amiable conversation.
+
+The Countess’s head signified: “Oh, no! quite out of the question”: she
+held up a little bit of her mournful draperies, adding: “Besides, you,
+dear child, know your company, and can select; I do not, and cannot do
+so. I understand we have a most varied assembly!”
+
+Rose shut her eyes, and then looked at her mother. Lady Jocelyn’s face
+was undisturbed; but while her eyes were still upon the Countess, she
+drew her head gently back, imperceptibly. If anything, she was admiring
+the lady; but Rose could be no placid philosophic spectator of what was
+to her a horrible assumption and hypocrisy. For the sake of him she
+loved, she had swallowed a nauseous cup bravely. The Countess was too
+much for her. She felt sick to think of being allied to this person.
+She had a shuddering desire to run into the ranks of the world, and
+hide her head from multitudinous hootings. With a pang of envy she saw
+her friend Jenny walking by the side of William Harvey, happy, untried,
+unoffending: full of hope, and without any bitter draughts to swallow!
+
+Aunt Bel now came tripping up gaily.
+
+“Take the alternative, ‘douairiere or demoiselle’?” cried Lady Jocelyn.
+“We must have a sharp distinction, or Olympus will be mobbed.”
+
+“Entre les deux, s’il vous plait,” responded Aunt Bel. “Rose, hurry
+down, and leaven the mass. I see ten girls in a bunch. It’s shocking.
+Ferdinand, pray disperse yourself. Why is it, Emily, that we are always
+in excess at pic-nics? Is man dying out?”
+
+“From what I can see,” remarked Lady Jocelyn, “Harry will be lost to
+his species unless some one quickly relieves him. He’s already half
+eaten up by the Conley girls. Countess, isn’t it your duty to rescue
+him?”
+
+The Countess bowed, and murmured to Sir John:
+
+“A dismissal!”
+
+“I fear my fascinations, Lady Jocelyn, may not compete with those fresh
+young persons.”
+
+“Ha! ha! ‘fresh young persons,’” laughed Sir John for the ladies in
+question were romping boisterously with Mr. Harry.
+
+The Countess inquired for the names and condition of the ladies, and
+was told that they sprang from Farmer Conley, a well-to-do son of the
+soil, who farmed about a couple of thousand acres between Fallowfield
+and Beckley, and bore a good reputation at the county bank.
+
+“But I do think,” observed the Countess, “it must indeed be pernicious
+for any youth to associate with that class of woman. A deterioration of
+manners!”
+
+Rose looked at her mother again. She thought “Those girls would scorn
+to marry a tradesman’s son!”
+
+The feeling grew in Rose that the Countess lowered and degraded her.
+Her mother’s calm contemplation of the lady was more distressing than
+if she had expressed the contempt Rose was certain, according to her
+young ideas, Lady Jocelyn must hold.
+
+Now the Countess had been considering that she would like to have a
+word or two with Mr. Harry, and kissing her fingers to the occupants of
+Olympus, and fixing her fancy on the diverse thoughts of the ladies and
+gentlemen, deduced from a rapturous or critical contemplation of her
+figure from behind, she descended the slope.
+
+Was it going to be a happy day? The well-imagined opinions of the
+gentleman on her attire and style, made her lean to the affirmative;
+but Rose’s demure behaviour, and something—something would come across
+her hopes. She had, as she now said to herself, stopped for the
+pic-nic, mainly to give Caroline a last opportunity of binding the Duke
+to visit the Cogglesby saloons in London. Let Caroline cleverly
+contrive this, as she might, without any compromise, and the stay at
+Beckley Court would be a great gain. Yes, Caroline was still with the
+Duke; they were talking earnestly. The Countess breathed a short appeal
+to Providence that Caroline might not prove a fool. Overnight she had
+said to Caroline: “Do not be so English. Can one not enjoy friendship
+with a nobleman without wounding one’s conscience or breaking with the
+world? My dear, the Duke visiting you, you cow that infamous Strike of
+yours. He will be utterly obsequious! I am not telling you to pass the
+line. The contrary. But we continentals have our grievous reputation
+because we dare to meet as intellectual beings, and defy the imputation
+that ladies and gentlemen are no better than animals.”
+
+It sounded very lofty to Caroline, who, accepting its sincerity,
+replied:
+
+“I cannot do things by halves. I cannot live a life of deceit. A life
+of misery—not deceit.”
+
+Whereupon, pitying her poor English nature, the Countess gave her
+advice, and this advice she now implored her familiars to instruct or
+compel Caroline to follow.
+
+The Countess’s garment was plucked at. She beheld little Dorothy Loring
+glancing up at her with the roguish timidity of her years.
+
+“May I come with you?” asked the little maid, and went off into a
+prattle: “I spent that five shillings—I bought a shilling’s worth of
+sweet stuff, and nine penn’orth of twine, and a shilling for small wax
+candles to light in my room when I’m going to bed, because I like
+plenty of light by the looking-glass always, and they do make the room
+so hot! My Jane declared she almost fainted, but I burnt them out! Then
+I only had very little left for a horse to mount my doll on; and I
+wasn’t going to get a screw, so I went to Papa, and he gave me five
+shillings. And, oh, do you know, Rose can’t bear me to be with you.
+Jealousy, I suppose, for you’re very agreeable. And, do you know, your
+Mama is coming to-day? I’ve got a Papa and no Mama, and you’ve got a
+Mama and no Papa. Isn’t it funny? But I don’t think so much of it, as
+you’re grown up. Oh, I’m quite sure she is coming, because I heard
+Harry telling Juley she was, and Juley said it would be so gratifying
+to you.”
+
+A bribe and a message relieved the Countess of Dorothy’s attendance on
+her.
+
+What did this mean? Were people so base as to be guilty of hideous
+plots in this house? Her mother coming! The Countess’s blood turned
+deadly chill. Had it been her father she would not have feared, but her
+mother was so vilely plain of speech; she never opened her mouth save
+to deliver facts: which was to the Countess the sign of atrocious
+vulgarity.
+
+But her mother had written to say she would wait for Evan in
+Fallowfield! The Countess grasped at straws. Did Dorothy hear that? And
+if Harry and Juliana spoke of her mother, what did that mean? That she
+was hunted, and must stand at bay!
+
+“Oh, Papa! Papa! why did you marry a Dawley?” she exclaimed, plunging
+to what was, in her idea, the root of the evil.
+
+She had no time for outcries and lamentations. It dawned on her that
+this was to be a day of battle. Where was Harry? Still in the midst of
+the Conley throng, apparently pooh-poohing something, to judge by the
+twist of his mouth.
+
+The Countess delicately signed for him to approach her. The extreme
+delicacy of the signal was at least an excuse for Harry to perceive
+nothing. It was renewed, and Harry burst into a fit of laughter at some
+fun of one of the Conley girls. The Countess passed on, and met Juliana
+pacing by herself near the lower gates of the park. She wished only to
+see how Juliana behaved. The girl looked perfectly trustful, as much so
+as when the Countess was pouring in her ears the tales of Evan’s
+growing but bashful affection for her.
+
+“He will soon be here,” whispered the Countess. “Has he told you he
+will come by this entrance?”
+
+“No,” replied Juliana.
+
+“You do not look well, sweet child.”
+
+“I was thinking that you did not, Countess?”
+
+“Oh, indeed, yes! With reason, alas! All our visitors have by this time
+arrived, I presume?”
+
+“They come all day.”
+
+The Countess hastened away from one who, when roused, could be almost
+as clever as herself, and again stood in meditation near the joyful
+Harry. This time she did not signal so discreetly. Harry could not but
+see it, and the Conley girls accused him of cruelty to the beautiful
+dame, which novel idea stung Harry with delight, and he held out to
+indulge in it a little longer. His back was half turned, and as he
+talked noisily, he could not observe the serene and resolute march of
+the Countess toward him. The youth gaped when he found his arm taken
+prisoner by the insertion of a small deliciously-gloved and perfumed
+hand through it. “I must claim you for a few moments,” said the
+Countess, and took the startled Conley girls one and all in her
+beautiful smile of excuse.
+
+“Why do you compromise me thus, sir?”
+
+These astounding words were spoken out of the hearing of the Conley
+girls.
+
+“Compromise you!” muttered Harry.
+
+Masterly was the skill with which the Countess contrived to speak
+angrily and as an injured woman, while she wore an indifferent social
+countenance.
+
+“I repeat, compromise me. No, Mr. Harry Jocelyn, you are not the
+jackanapes you try to make people think you: you understand me.”
+
+The Countess might accuse him, but Harry never had the ambition to make
+people think him that: his natural tendency was the reverse: and he
+objected to the application of the word jackanapes to himself, and was
+ready to contest the fact of people having that opinion at all.
+However, all he did was to repeat: “Compromise!”
+
+“Is not open unkindness to me compromising me?”
+
+“How?” asked Harry.
+
+“Would you dare to do it to a strange lady? Would you have the
+impudence to attempt it with any woman here but me? No, I am innocent;
+it is my consolation; I have resisted you, but you by this cowardly
+behaviour place me—and my reputation, which is more—at your mercy.
+Noble behaviour, Mr. Harry Jocelyn! I shall remember my young English
+gentleman.”
+
+The view was totally new to Harry.
+
+“I really had no idea of compromising you,” he said. “Upon my honour, I
+can’t see how I did it now!”
+
+“Oblige me by walking less in the neighbourhood of those fat-faced
+glaring farm-girls,” the Countess spoke under her breath; “and don’t
+look as if you were being whipped. The art of it is evident—you are but
+carrying on the game.—Listen. If you permit yourself to exhibit an
+unkindness to me, you show to any man who is a judge, and to every
+woman, that there has been something between us. You know my
+innocence—yes! but you must punish me for having resisted you thus
+long.”
+
+Harry swore he never had such an idea, and was much too much of a man
+and a gentleman to behave in that way.—And yet it seemed wonderfully
+clever! And here was the Countess saying:
+
+“Take your reward, Mr. Harry Jocelyn. You have succeeded; I am your
+humble slave. I come to you and sue for peace. To save my reputation I
+endanger myself. This is generous of you.”
+
+“Am I such a clever fellow?” thought the young gentleman. “Deuced lucky
+with women”: he knew that: still a fellow must be wonderfully,
+miraculously, clever to be able to twist and spin about such a woman as
+this in that way. He did not object to conceive that he was the fellow
+to do it. Besides, here was the Countess de Saldar—worth five hundred
+of the Conley girls—almost at his feet!
+
+Mollified, he said: “Now, didn’t you begin it?”
+
+“Evasion!” was the answer. “It would be such pleasure to you so see a
+proud woman weep! And if yesterday, persecuted as I am, with dreadful
+falsehoods abroad respecting me and mine, if yesterday I did seem cold
+to your great merits, is it generous of you to take this revenge?”
+
+Harry began to scent the double meaning in her words. She gave him no
+time to grow cool over it. She leaned, half abandoned, on his arm. Arts
+feminine and irresistible encompassed him. It was a fatal mistake of
+Juliana’s to enlist Harry Jocelyn against the Countess de Saldar. He
+engaged, still without any direct allusion to the real business, to
+move heaven and earth to undo all that he had done, and the Countess
+implied an engagement to do—what? more than she intended to fulfil.
+
+Ten minutes later she was alone with Caroline.
+
+“Tie yourself to the Duke at the dinner,” she said, in the forcible
+phrase she could use when necessary. “Don’t let them scheme to separate
+you. Never mind looks—do it!”
+
+Caroline, however, had her reasons for desiring to maintain
+appearances. The Countess dashed at her hesitation.
+
+“There is a plot to humiliate us in the most abominable way. The whole
+family have sworn to make us blush publicly. Publicly blush! They have
+written to Mama to come and speak out. Now will you attend to me,
+Caroline? You do not credit such atrocity? I know it to be true.”
+
+“I never can believe that Rose would do such a thing,” said Caroline.
+“We can hardly have to endure more than has befallen us already.”
+
+Her speech was pensive, as of one who had matter of her own to ponder
+over. A swift illumination burst in the Countess’s mind.
+
+“No? Have you, dear, darling Carry? not that I intend that you should!
+but to-day the Duke would be such ineffable support to us. May I deem
+you have not been too cruel to-day? You dear silly English creature,
+‘Duck,’ I used to call you when I was your little Louy. All is not yet
+lost, but I will save you from the ignominy if I can. I will!”
+
+Caroline denied nothing—confirmed nothing, just as the Countess had
+stated nothing. Yet they understood one another perfectly. Women have a
+subtler language than ours: the veil pertains to them morally as
+bodily, and they see clearer through it.
+
+The Countess had no time to lose. Wrath was in her heart. She did not
+lend all her thoughts to self-defence.
+
+Without phrasing a word, or absolutely shaping a thought in her head,
+she slanted across the sun to Mr. Raikes, who had taken refreshment,
+and in obedience to his instinct, notwithstanding his enormous
+pretensions, had commenced a few preliminary antics.
+
+“Dear Mr. Raikes!” she said, drawing him aside, “not before dinner!”
+
+“I really can’t contain the exuberant flow!” returned that gentleman.
+“My animal spirits always get the better of me,” he added
+confidentially.
+
+“Suppose you devote your animal spirits to my service for half an
+hour.”
+
+“Yours, Countess, from the ‘os frontis’ to the chine!” was the
+exuberant rejoinder.
+
+The Countess made a wry mouth.
+
+“Your curricle is in Beckley?”
+
+“Behold!” said Jack. “Two juveniles, not half so blest as I, do from
+the seat regard the festive scene o’er yon park palings. They are
+there, even Franko and Fred. I’m afraid I promised to get them in at a
+later period of the day. Which sadly sore my conscience doth disturb!
+But what is to be done about the curricle, my Countess?”
+
+“Mr. Raikes,” said the Countess, smiling on him fixedly, “you are
+amusing; but in addressing me, you must be precise, and above all
+things accurate. I am not your Countess!”
+
+He bowed profoundly. “Oh, that I might say my Queen!”
+
+The Countess replied: “A conviction of your lunacy would prevent my
+taking offence, though I might wish you enclosed and guarded.”
+
+Without any further exclamations, Raikes acknowledged a superior.
+
+“And, now, attend to me,” said the Countess. “Listen:
+
+You go yourself, or send your friends instantly to Fallowfield. Bring
+with you that girl and her child. Stop: there is such a person. Tell
+her she is to be spoken to about the prospects of the poor infant. I
+leave that to your inventive genius. Evan wishes her here. Bring her,
+and should you see the mad captain who behaves so oddly, favour him
+with a ride. He says he dreams his wife is here, and he will not reveal
+his name! Suppose it should be my own beloved husband! I am quite
+anxious.”
+
+The Countess saw him go up to the palings and hold a communication with
+his friends Franko and Fred. One took the whip, and after mutual
+flourishes, drove away.
+
+“Now!” mused the Countess, “if Captain Evremonde should come!” It would
+break up the pic-nic. Alas! the Countess had surrendered her humble
+hopes of a day’s pleasure. But if her mother came as well, what a
+diversion that would be! If her mother came before the Captain, his
+arrival would cover the retreat; if the Captain preceded her, she would
+not be noticed. Suppose her mother refrained from coming? In that case
+it was a pity, but the Jocelyns had brought it on themselves.
+
+This mapping out of consequences followed the Countess’s deeds, and did
+not inspire them. Her passions sharpened her instincts, which produced
+her actions. The reflections ensued: as in nature, the consequences
+were all seen subsequently! Observe the difference between your male
+and female Generals.
+
+On reflection, too, the Countess praised herself for having done all
+that could be done. She might have written to her mother: but her
+absence would have been remarked: her messenger might have been
+overhauled and, lastly, Mrs. Mel—“Gorgon of a mother!” the Countess
+cried out: for Mrs. Mel was like a Fate to her. She could remember only
+two occasions in her whole life when she had been able to manage her
+mother, and then by lying in such a way as to distress her conscience
+severely.
+
+“If Mama has conceived this idea of coming, nothing will impede her. My
+prayers will infuriate her!” said the Countess, and she was sure that
+she had acted both rightly and with wisdom.
+
+She put on her armour of smiles: she plunged into the thick of the
+enemy. Since they would not allow her to taste human happiness—she had
+asked but for the pic-nic! a small truce! since they denied her that,
+rather than let them triumph by seeing her wretched, she took into her
+bosom the joy of demons. She lured Mr. George Uplift away from Miss
+Carrington, and spoke to him strange hints of matrimonial
+disappointments, looking from time to time at that apprehensive lady,
+doating on her terrors. And Mr. George seconded her by his clouded
+face, for he was ashamed not to show that he did not know Louisa
+Harrington in the Countess de Saldar, and had not the courage to
+declare that he did. The Countess spoke familiarly, but without any
+hint of an ancient acquaintance between them. “What a post her
+husband’s got!” thought Mr. George, not envying the Count. He was
+wrong: she was an admirable ally. All over the field the Countess went,
+watching for her mother, praying that if she did come, Providence might
+prevent her from coming while they were at dinner. How clearly Mrs.
+Shorne and Mrs. Melville saw her vulgarity now! By the new light of
+knowledge, how certain they were that they had seen her ungentle
+training in a dozen little instances.
+
+“She is not well-bred, ‘cela se voit’,” said Lady Jocelyn.
+
+“Bred! it’s the stage! How could such a person be bred?” said Mrs.
+Shorne.
+
+Accept in the Countess the heroine who is combating class-prejudices,
+and surely she is pre-eminently noteworthy. True, she fights only for
+her family, and is virtually the champion of the opposing institution
+misplaced. That does not matter: the Fates may have done it purposely:
+by conquering she establishes a principle. A Duke adores her sister,
+the daughter of the house her brother, and for herself she has many
+protestations in honour of her charms: nor are they empty ones. She can
+confound Mrs. Melville, if she pleases to, by exposing an adorer to
+lose a friend. Issuing out of Tailordom, she, a Countess, has done all
+this; and it were enough to make her glow, did not little evils, and
+angers, and spites, and alarms so frightfully beset her.
+
+The sun of the pic-nic system is dinner. Hence philosophers may deduce
+that the pic-nic is a British invention. There is no doubt that we do
+not shine at the pic-nic until we reflect the face of dinner. To this,
+then, all who were not lovers began seriously to look forward, and the
+advance of an excellent county band, specially hired to play during the
+entertainment, gave many of the guests quite a new taste for sweet
+music; and indeed we all enjoy a thing infinitely more when we see its
+meaning.
+
+About this time Evan entered the lower park-gates with Andrew. The
+first object he encountered was John Raikes in a state of great
+depression. He explained his case:
+
+“Just look at my frill! Now, upon my honour, you know, I’m
+good-tempered; I pass their bucolic habits, but this is beyond bearing.
+I was near the palings there, and a fellow calls out, ‘Hi! will you
+help the lady over?’ Holloa! thinks I, an adventure! However, I advised
+him to take her round to the gates. The beast burst out laughing. ‘Now,
+then,’ says he, and I heard a scrambling at the pales, and up came the
+head of a dog. ‘Oh! the dog first,’ says I. ‘Catch by the ears,’ says
+he. I did so. ‘Pull,’ says he. ‘’Gad, pull indeed!’, The beast gave a
+spring and came slap on my chest, with his dirty wet muzzle on my neck!
+I felt instantly it was the death of my frill, but gallant as you know
+me, I still asked for the lady. ‘If you will please, or as it meet your
+favour, to extend your hand to me!’ I confess I did think it rather
+odd, the idea of a lady coming in that way over the palings! but my
+curst love of adventure always blinds me. It always misleads my better
+sense, Harrington. Well, instead of a lady, I see a fellow—he may have
+been a lineal descendant of Cedric the Saxon. ‘Where’s the lady?’ says
+I. ‘Lady?’ says he, and stares, and then laughs: ‘Lady! why,’ he jumps
+over, and points at his beast of a dog, ‘don’t you know a bitch when
+you see one?’ I was in the most ferocious rage! If he hadn’t been a big
+burly bully, down he’d have gone. ‘Why didn’t you say what it was?’ I
+roared. ‘Why,’ says he, ‘the word isn’t considered polite!’ I gave him
+a cut there. I said, ‘I rejoice to be positively assured that you
+uphold the laws and forms of civilization, sir.’ My belief is he didn’t
+feel it.”
+
+“The thrust sinned in its shrewdness,” remarked Evan, ending a laugh.
+
+“Hem!” went Mr. Raikes, more contentedly: “after all, what are
+appearances to the man of wit and intellect? Dress, and women will
+approve you: but I assure you they much prefer the man of wit in his
+slouched hat and stockings down. I was introduced to the Duke this
+morning. It is a curious thing that the seduction of a Duchess has
+always been one of my dreams.”
+
+At this Andrew Cogglesby fell into a fit of laughter.
+
+“Your servant,” said Mr. Raikes, turning to him. And then he muttered
+“Extraordinary likeness! Good Heavens! Powers!”
+
+From a state of depression, Mr. Raikes—changed into one of
+bewilderment. Evan paid no attention to him, and answered none of his
+hasty undertoned questions. Just then, as they were on the skirts of
+the company, the band struck up a lively tune, and quite unconsciously,
+the legs of Raikes, affected, it may be, by supernatural reminiscences,
+loosely hornpiped. It was but a moment: he remembered himself the next:
+but in that fatal moment eyes were on him. He never recovered his
+dignity in Beckley Court: he was fatally mercurial.
+
+“What is the joke against this poor fellow?” asked Evan of Andrew.
+
+“Never mind, Van. You’ll roar. Old Tom again. We’ll see by-and-by,
+after the champagne. He—this young Raikes-ha! ha!—but I can’t tell
+you.” And Andrew went away to Drummond, to whom he was more
+communicative. Then he went to Melville, and one or two others, and the
+eyes of many became concentrated on Raikes, and it was observed as a
+singular sign that he was constantly facing about, and flushing the
+fiercest red. Once he made an effort to get hold of Evan’s arm and drag
+him away, as one who had an urgent confession to be delivered of, but
+Evan was talking to Lady Jocelyn, and other ladies, and quietly
+disengaged his arm without even turning to notice the face of his
+friend. Then the dinner was announced, and men saw the dinner. The
+Countess went to shake her brother’s hand, and with a very gratulatory
+visage, said through her half-shut teeth.
+
+“If Mama appears, rise up and go away with her, before she has time to
+speak a word.” An instant after Evan found himself seated between Mrs.
+Evremonde and one of the Conley girls. The dinner had commenced. The
+first half of the Battle of the Bull-dogs was as peaceful as any
+ordinary pic-nic, and promised to the general company as calm a
+conclusion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+THE BATTLE OF THE BULL-DOGS. PART II.
+
+
+If it be a distinct point of wisdom to hug the hour that is, then does
+dinner amount to a highly intellectual invitation to man, for it
+furnishes the occasion; and Britons are the wisest of their race, for
+more than all others they take advantage of it. In this Nature is
+undoubtedly our guide, seeing that he who, while feasting his body
+allows to his soul a thought for the morrow, is in his digestion curst,
+and becomes a house of evil humours. Now, though the epicure may
+complain of the cold meats, a dazzling table, a buzzing company, blue
+sky, and a band of music, are incentives to the forgetfulness of
+troubles past and imminent, and produce a concentration of the
+faculties. They may not exactly prove that peace is established between
+yourself and those who object to your carving of the world, but they
+testify to an armistice.
+
+Aided by these observations, you will understand how it was that the
+Countess de Saldar, afflicted and menaced, was inspired, on taking her
+seat, to give so graceful and stately a sweep to her dress that she was
+enabled to conceive woman and man alike to be secretly overcome by it.
+You will not refuse to credit the fact that Mr. Raikes threw care to
+the dogs, heavy as was that mysterious lump suddenly precipitated on
+his bosom; and you will think it not impossible that even the springers
+of the mine about to explode should lose their subterranean
+countenances. A generous abandonment to one idea prevailed. As for
+Evan, the first glass of champagne rushed into reckless nuptials with
+the music in his head, bringing Rose, warm almost as life, on his
+heart. Sublime are the visions of lovers! He knew he must leave her on
+the morrow; he feared he might never behold her again; and yet he
+tasted bliss, for it seemed within the contemplation of the Gods that
+he should dance with his darling before dark—haply waltz with her! Oh,
+heaven! he shuts his eyes, blinded. The band wheels off meltingly in a
+tune all cadences, and twirls, and risings and sinkings, and passionate
+outbursts trippingly consoled. Ah! how sweet to waltz through life with
+the right partner. And what a singular thing it is to look back on the
+day when we thought something like it! Never mind: there may be spheres
+where it is so managed—doubtless the planets have their Hanwell and
+Bedlam.
+
+I confess that the hand here writing is not insensible to the effects
+of that first glass of champagne. The poetry of our Countess’s
+achievements waxes rich in manifold colours: I see her by the light of
+her own pleas to Providence. I doubt almost if the hand be mine which
+dared to make a hero play second fiddle, and to his beloved. I have
+placed a bushel over his light, certainly. Poor boy! it was enough that
+he should have tailordom on his shoulders: I ought to have allowed him
+to conquer Nature, and so come out of his eclipse. This shall be said
+of him: that he can play second fiddle without looking foolish, which,
+for my part, I call a greater triumph than if he were performing the
+heroics we are more accustomed to. He has steady eyes, can gaze at the
+right level into the eyes of others, and commands a tongue which is
+neither struck dumb nor set in a flutter by any startling question. The
+best instances to be given that he does not lack merit are that the
+Jocelyns, whom he has offended by his birth, cannot change their
+treatment of him, and that the hostile women, whatever they may say, do
+not think Rose utterly insane. At any rate, Rose is satisfied, and her
+self-love makes her a keen critic. The moment Evan appeared, the
+sickness produced in her by the Countess passed, and she was ready to
+brave her situation. With no mock humility she permitted Mrs. Shorne to
+place her in a seat where glances could not be interchanged. She was
+quite composed, calmly prepared for conversation with any one. Indeed,
+her behaviour since the hour of general explanation had been so
+perfectly well-contained, that Mrs. Melville said to Lady Jocelyn:
+
+“I am only thinking of the damage to her. It will pass over—this fancy.
+You can see she is not serious. It is mere spirit of opposition. She
+eats and drinks just like other girls. You can see that the fancy has
+not taken such very strong hold of her.”
+
+“I can’t agree with you,” replied her ladyship. “I would rather have
+her sit and sigh by the hour, and loathe roast beef. That would look
+nearer a cure.”
+
+“She has the notions of a silly country girl,” said Mrs. Shorne.
+
+“Exactly,” Lady Jocelyn replied. “A season in London will give her
+balance.”
+
+So the guests were tolerably happy, or at least, with scarce an
+exception, open to the influences of champagne and music. Perhaps
+Juliana was the wretchedest creature present. She was about to smite on
+both cheeks him she loved, as well as the woman she despised and had
+been foiled by. Still she had the consolation that Rose, seeing the
+vulgar mother, might turn from Evan: a poor distant hope, meagre and
+shapeless like herself. Her most anxious thoughts concerned the means
+of getting money to lockup Harry’s tongue. She could bear to meet the
+Countess’s wrath, but not Evan’s offended look. Hark to that Countess!
+
+“Why do you denominate this a pic-nic, Lady Jocelyn? It is in verity a
+fête!”
+
+“I suppose we ought to lie down à la Grecque to come within the term,”
+was the reply. “On the whole, I prefer plain English for such matters.”
+
+“But this is assuredly too sumptuous for a pic-nic, Lady Jocelyn. From
+what I can remember, pic-nic implies contribution from all the guests.
+It is true I left England a child!”
+
+Mr. George Uplift could not withhold a sharp grimace: The Countess had
+throttled the inward monitor that tells us when we are lying, so
+grievously had she practised the habit in the service of her family.
+
+“Yes,” said Mrs. Melville, “I have heard of that fashion, and very
+stupid it is.”
+
+“Extremely vulgar,” murmured Miss Carrington.
+
+“Possibly,” Lady Jocelyn observed; “but good fun. I have been to
+pic-nics, in my day. I invariably took cold pie and claret. I clashed
+with half-a-dozen, but all the harm we did was to upset the dictum that
+there can be too much of a good thing. I know for certain that the
+bottles were left empty.”
+
+“And this woman,” thought the Countess, “this woman, with a soul so
+essentially vulgar, claims rank above me!” The reflection generated
+contempt of English society, in the first place, and then a passionate
+desire for self-assertion.
+
+She was startled by a direct attack which aroused her momentarily
+lulled energies.
+
+A lady, quite a stranger, a dry simpering lady, caught the Countess’s
+benevolent passing gaze, and leaning forward, said: “I hope her
+ladyship bears her affliction as well as can be expected?”
+
+In military parlance, the Countess was taken in flank. Another would
+have asked—What ladyship? To whom do you allude, may I beg to inquire?
+The Countess knew better. Rapid as light it shot through her that the
+relict of Sir Abraham was meant, and this she divined because she was
+aware that devilish malignity was watching to trip her.
+
+A little conversation happening to buzz at the instant, the Countess
+merely turned her chin to an angle, agitated her brows very gently, and
+crowned the performance with a mournful smile. All that a woman must
+feel at the demise of so precious a thing as a husband, was therein
+eloquently expressed: and at the same time, if explanations ensued,
+there were numerous ladyships in the world, whom the Countess did not
+mind afflicting, should she be hard pressed.
+
+“I knew him so well!” resumed the horrid woman, addressing anybody. “It
+was so sad! so unexpected! but he was so subject to affection of the
+throat. And I was so sorry I could not get down to him in time. I had
+not seen him since his marriage, when I was a girl!—and to meet one of
+his children!—But, my dear, in quinsey, I have heard that there is
+nothing on earth like a good hearty laugh.”
+
+Mr. Raikes hearing this, sucked down the flavour of a glass of
+champagne, and with a look of fierce jollity, interposed, as if
+specially charged by Providence to make plain to the persecuted
+Countess his mission and business there: “Then our vocation is at last
+revealed to us! Quinsey-doctor! I remember when a boy, wandering over
+the paternal mansion, and envying the life of a tinker, which my mother
+did not think a good omen in me. But the traps of a Quinsey-doctor are
+even lighter. Say twenty good jokes, and two or three of a practical
+kind. A man most enviable!”
+
+“It appears,” he remarked aloud to one of the Conley girls, “that
+quinsey is needed before a joke is properly appreciated.”
+
+“I like fun,” said she, but had not apparently discovered it.
+
+What did that odious woman mean by perpetually talking about Sir
+Abraham? The Countess intercepted a glance between her and the hated
+Juliana. She felt it was a malignant conspiracy: still the vacuous
+vulgar air of the woman told her that most probably she was but an
+instrument, not a confederate, and was only trying to push herself into
+acquaintance with the great: a proceeding scorned and abominated by the
+Countess, who longed to punish her for her insolent presumption. The
+bitterness of her situation stung her tenfold when she considered that
+she dared not.
+
+Meantime the champagne became as regular in its flow as the Bull-dogs,
+and the monotonous bass of these latter sounded through the music, like
+life behind the murmur of pleasure, if you will. The Countess had a not
+unfeminine weakness for champagne, and old Mr. Bonner’s cellar was well
+and choicely stocked. But was this enjoyment to the Countess?—this
+dreary station in the background! “May I emerge?” she as much as
+implored Providence.
+
+The petition was infinitely tender. She thought she might, or it may be
+that nature was strong, and she could not restrain herself.
+
+Taking wine with Sir John, she said:
+
+“This bowing! Do you know how amusing it is deemed by us Portuguese?
+Why not embrace? as the dear Queen used to say to me.”
+
+“I am decidedly of Her Majesty’s opinion,” observed Sir John, with
+emphasis, and the Countess drew back into a mingled laugh and blush.
+
+Her fiendish persecutor gave two or three nods. “And you know the
+Queen!” she said.
+
+She had to repeat the remark: whereupon the Countess murmured,
+“Intimately.”
+
+“Ah, we have lost a staunch old Tory in Sir Abraham,” said the lady,
+performing lamentation.
+
+What did it mean? Could design lodge in that empty-looking head with
+its crisp curls, button nose, and diminishing simper? Was this pic-nic
+to be made as terrible to the Countess by her putative father as the
+dinner had been by the great Mel? The deep, hard, level look of Juliana
+met the Countess’s smile from time to time, and like flimsy light horse
+before a solid array of infantry, the Countess fell back, only to be
+worried afresh by her perfectly unwitting tormentor.
+
+“His last days?—without pain? Oh, I hope so!” came after a lapse of
+general talk.
+
+“Aren’t we getting a little funereal, Mrs. Perkins?” Lady Jocelyn
+asked, and then rallied her neighbours.
+
+Miss Carrington looked at her vexedly, for the fiendish Perkins was
+checked, and the Countess in alarm, about to commit herself, was a
+pleasant sight to Miss Carrington.
+
+“The worst of these indiscriminate meetings is that there is no
+conversation,” whispered the Countess, thanking Providence for the
+relief.
+
+Just then she saw Juliana bend her brows at another person. This was
+George Uplift, who shook his head, and indicated a shrewd-eyed, thin,
+middle-aged man, of a lawyer-like cast; and then Juliana nodded, and
+George Uplift touched his arm, and glanced hurriedly behind for
+champagne. The Countess’s eyes dwelt on the timid young squire most
+affectionately. You never saw a fortress more unprepared for dread
+assault.
+
+“Hem!” was heard, terrific. But the proper pause had evidently not yet
+come, and now to prevent it the Countess strained her energies and
+tasked her genius intensely. Have you an idea of the difficulty of
+keeping up the ball among a host of ill-assorted, stupid country
+people, who have no open topics, and can talk of nothing continuously
+but scandal of their neighbours, and who, moreover, feel they are not
+up to the people they are mixing with? Darting upon Seymour Jocelyn,
+the Countess asked touchingly for news of the partridges. It was like
+the unlocking of a machine. Seymour was not blythe in his reply, but he
+was loud and forcible; and when he came to the statistics—oh, then you
+would have admired the Countess!—for comparisons ensued, braces were
+enumerated, numbers given were contested, and the shooting of this one
+jeered at, and another’s sure mark respectfully admitted. And how lay
+the coveys? And what about the damage done by last winter’s floods? And
+was there good hope of the pheasants? Outside this latter the Countess
+hovered. Twice the awful “Hem!” was heard. She fought on. She kept them
+at it. If it flagged she wished to know this or that, and finally
+thought that, really, she should like herself to try one shot. The
+women had previously been left behind. This brought in the women. Lady
+Jocelyn proposed a female expedition for the morrow.
+
+“I believe I used to be something of a shot, formerly,” she said.
+
+“You peppered old Tom once, my lady,” remarked Andrew, and her ladyship
+laughed, and that foolish Andrew told the story, and the Countess, to
+revive her subject, had to say: “May I be enrolled to shoot?” though
+she detested and shrank from fire-arms.
+
+“Here are two!” said the hearty presiding dame. “Ladies, apply
+immediately to have your names put down.”
+
+The possibility of an expedition of ladies now struck Seymour vividly,
+and said he: “I’ll be secretary”; and began applying to the ladies for
+permission to put down their names. Many declined, with brevity,
+muttering, either aloud or to themselves, “unwomanly”; varied by
+“unladylike”: some confessed cowardice; some a horror of the noise
+close to their ears; and there was the plea of nerves. But the names of
+half-a-dozen ladies were collected, and then followed much laughter,
+and musical hubbub, and delicate banter. So the ladies and gentlemen
+fell one and all into the partridge pit dug for them by the Countess:
+and that horrible “Hem!” equal in force and terror to the roar of
+artillery preceding the charge of ten thousand dragoons, was
+silenced—the pit appeared impassable. Did the Countess crow over her
+advantage? Mark her: the lady’s face is entirely given up to
+partridges. “English sports are so much envied abroad,” she says: but
+what she dreads is a reflection, for that leads off from the point. A
+portion of her mind she keeps to combat them in Lady Jocelyn and others
+who have the tendency: the rest she divides between internal-prayers
+for succour, and casting about for another popular subject to follow
+partridges. Now, mere talent, as critics say when they are lighting
+candles round a genius, mere talent would have hit upon pheasants as
+the natural sequitur, and then diverged to sports—a great theme, for it
+ensures a chorus of sneers at foreigners, and so on probably to a
+discussion of birds and beasts best adapted to enrapture the palate of
+man. Stories may succeed, but they are doubtful, and not to be trusted,
+coming after cookery. After an exciting subject which has made the
+general tongue to wag, and just enough heated the brain to cause it to
+cry out for spiced food—then start your story: taking care that it be
+mild; for one too marvellous stops the tide, the sense of climax being
+strongly implanted in all bosoms. So the Countess told an anecdote—one
+of Mel’s. Mr. George Uplift was quite familiar with it, and knew of one
+passage that would have abashed him to relate “before ladies.” The
+sylph-like ease with which the Countess floated over this foul abysm
+was miraculous. Mr. George screwed his eye-lids queerly, and closed his
+jaws with a report, completely beaten. The anecdote was of the
+character of an apologue, and pertained to game. This was, as it
+happened, a misfortune; for Mr. Raikes had felt himself left behind by
+the subject; and the stuff that was in this young man being naturally
+ebullient, he lay by to trip it, and take a lead. His remarks brought
+on him a shrewd cut from the Countess, which made matters worse; for a
+pun may also breed puns, as doth an anecdote. The Countess’s stroke was
+so neat and perfect that it was something for the gentlemen to think
+over; and to punish her for giving way to her cleverness and to petty
+vexation, “Hem!” sounded once more, and then: “May I ask you if the
+present Baronet is in England?”
+
+Now Lady Jocelyn perceived that some attack was directed against her
+guest. She allowed the Countess to answer:
+
+“The eldest was drowned in the Lisbon waters.”
+
+And then said: “But who is it that persists in serving up the funeral
+baked meats to us?”
+
+Mrs. Shorne spoke for her neighbour: “Mr. Farnley’s cousin was the
+steward of Sir Abraham Harrington’s estates.”
+
+The Countess held up her head boldly. There is a courageous exaltation
+of the nerves known to heroes and great generals in action when they
+feel sure that resources within themselves will spring up to the
+emergency, and that over simple mortals success is positive.
+
+“I had a great respect for Sir Abraham,” Mr. Farnley explained, “very
+great. I heard that this lady” (bowing to the Countess) “was his
+daughter.”
+
+Lady Jocelyn’s face wore an angry look, and Mrs. Shorne gave her the
+shade of a shrug and an expression implying, “I didn’t!”
+
+Evan was talking to Miss Jenny Graine at the moment rather earnestly.
+With a rapid glance at him, to see that his ears were closed, the
+Countess breathed:
+
+“Not the elder branch!—Cadet!”
+
+The sort of noisy silence produced by half-a-dozen people respirating
+deeply and moving in their seats was heard. The Countess watched Mr.
+Farnley’s mystified look, and whispered to Sir John: “Est-ce qu’il
+comprenne le Français, lui?”
+
+It was the final feather-like touch to her triumph. She saw safety and
+a clear escape, and much joyful gain, and the pleasure of relating her
+sufferings in days to come. This vista was before her when, harsh as an
+execution bell, telling her that she had vanquished man, but that
+Providence opposed her, “Mrs. Melchisedec Harrington!” was announced to
+Lady Jocelyn.
+
+Perfect stillness reigned immediately, as if the pic-nic had heard its
+doom.
+
+“Oh! I will go to her,” said her ladyship, whose first thought was to
+spare the family. “Andrew, come and give me your arm.”
+
+But when she rose Mrs. Mel was no more than the length of an arm from
+her elbow.
+
+In the midst of the horrible anguish she was enduring, the Countess
+could not help criticizing her mother’s curtsey to Lady Jocelyn. Fine,
+but a shade too humble. Still it was fine; all might not yet be lost.
+
+“Mama!” she softly exclaimed, and thanked heaven that she had not
+denied her parent.
+
+Mrs. Mel did not notice her or any of her children. There was in her
+bosom a terrible determination to cast a devil out of the one she best
+loved. For this purpose, heedless of all pain to be given, or of
+impropriety, she had come to speak publicly, and disgrace and
+humiliate, that she might save him from the devils that had ruined his
+father.
+
+“My lady,” said the terrible woman, thanking her in reply to an
+invitation that she should be seated, “I have come for my son. I hear
+he has been playing the lord in your house, my lady. I humbly thank
+your ladyship for your kindness to him, but he is nothing more than a
+tailor’s son, and is bound a tailor himself that his father may be
+called an honest man. I am come to take him away.”
+
+Mrs. Mel seemed to speak without much effort, though the pale flush of
+her cheeks showed that she felt what she was doing. Juliana was pale as
+death, watching Rose. Intensely bright with the gem-like light of her
+gallant spirit, Rose’s eyes fixed on Evan. He met them. The words of
+Ruth passed through his heart. But the Countess, who had given Rose to
+Evan, and the Duke to Caroline, where was her supporter? The Duke was
+entertaining Caroline with no less dexterity, and Rose’s eyes said to
+Evan: “Feel no shame that I do not feel!” but the Countess stood alone.
+It is ever thus with genius! to quote the numerous illustrious authors
+who have written of it.
+
+What mattered it now that in the dead hush Lady Jocelyn should assure
+her mother that she had been misinformed, and that Mrs. Mel was
+presently quieted, and made to sit with others before the fruits and
+wines? All eyes were hateful—the very thought of Providence confused
+her brain. Almost reduced to imbecility, the Countess imagined, as a
+reality, that Sir Abraham had borne with her till her public
+announcement of relationship, and that then the outraged ghost would no
+longer be restrained, and had struck this blow.
+
+The crushed pic-nic tried to get a little air, and made attempts at
+conversation. Mrs. Mel sat upon the company with the weight of all
+tailordom.
+
+And now a messenger came for Harry. Everybody was so zealously employed
+in the struggle to appear comfortable under Mrs. Mel, that his
+departure was hardly observed. The general feeling for Evan and his
+sisters, by their superiors in rank, was one of kindly pity. Laxley,
+however, did not behave well. He put up his glass and scrutinized Mrs.
+Mel, and then examined Evan, and Rose thought that in his interchange
+of glances with any one there was a lurking revival of the scene gone
+by. She signalled with her eyebrows for Drummond to correct him, but
+Drummond had another occupation. Andrew made the diversion. He
+whispered to his neighbour, and the whisper went round, and the laugh;
+and Mr. Raikes grew extremely uneasy in his seat, and betrayed an
+extraordinary alarm. But he also was soon relieved. A messenger had
+come from Harry to Mrs. Evremonde, bearing a slip of paper. This the
+lady glanced at, and handed it to Drummond. A straggling pencil had
+traced these words:
+
+“Just running by S.W. gates—saw the Captain coming in—couldn’t stop to
+stop him—tremendous hurry—important. Harry J.”
+
+Drummond sent the paper to Lady Jocelyn. After her perusal of it a
+scout was despatched to the summit of Olympus, and his report
+proclaimed the advance in the direction of the Bull-dogs of a smart
+little figure of a man in white hat and white trousers, who kept
+flicking his legs with a cane.
+
+Mrs. Evremonde rose and conferred with her ladyship an instant, and
+then Drummond took her arm quietly, and passed round Olympus to the
+East, and Lady Jocelyn broke up the sitting.
+
+Juliana saw Rose go up to Evan, and make him introduce her to his
+mother. She turned lividly white, and went to a corner of the park by
+herself, and cried bitterly.
+
+Lady Jocelyn, Sir Franks, and Sir John, remained by the tables, but
+before the guests were out of ear-shot, the individual signalled from
+Olympus presented himself.
+
+“There are times when one can’t see what else to do but to lie,” said
+her ladyship to Sir Franks, “and when we do lie the only way is to lie
+intrepidly.”
+
+Turning from her perplexed husband, she exclaimed:
+
+“Ah! Lawson?”
+
+Captain Evremonde lifted his hat, declining an intimacy.
+
+“Where is my wife, madam?”
+
+“Have you just come from the Arctic Regions?”
+
+“I have come for my wife, madam!”
+
+His unsettled grey eyes wandered restlessly on Lady Jocelyn’s face. The
+Countess standing near the Duke, felt some pity for the wife of that
+cropped-headed, tight-skinned lunatic at large, but deeper was the
+Countess’s pity for Lady Jocelyn, in thinking of the account she would
+have to render on the Day of Judgement, when she heard her ladyship
+reply—
+
+“Evelyn is not here.”
+
+Captain Evremonde bowed profoundly, trailing his broad white hat along
+the sward.
+
+“Do me the favour to read this, madam,” he said, and handed a letter to
+her.
+
+Lady Jocelyn raised her brows as she gathered the contents of the
+letter.
+
+“Ferdinand’s handwriting!” she exclaimed.
+
+“I accuse no one, madam,—I make no accusation. I have every respect for
+you, madam,—you have my esteem. I am sorry to intrude, madam, an
+intrusion is regretted. My wife runs away from her bed, madam, and I
+have the law, madam, the law is with the husband. No force!” He lashed
+his cane sharply against his white legs. “The law, madam. No brute
+force!” His cane made a furious whirl, cracking again on his legs, as
+he reiterated, “The law!”
+
+“Does the law advise you to strike at a tangent all over the country in
+search for her?” inquired Lady Jocelyn.
+
+Captain Evremonde became ten times more voluble and excited.
+
+Mrs. Mel was heard by the Countess to say: “Her ladyship does not know
+how to treat madmen.”
+
+Nor did Sir Franks and Sir John. They began expostulating with him.
+
+“A madman gets madder when you talk reason to him,” said Mrs. Mel.
+
+And now the Countess stepped forward to Lady Jocelyn, and hoped she
+would not be thought impertinent in offering her opinion as to how this
+frantic person should be treated. The case indeed looked urgent. Many
+gentlemen considered themselves bound to approach and be ready in case
+of need. Presently the Countess passed between Sir Franks and Sir John,
+and with her hand put up, as if she feared the furious cane, said:
+
+“You will not strike me?”
+
+“Strike a lady, madam?” The cane and hat were simultaneously lowered.
+
+“Lady Jocelyn permits me to fetch for you a gentleman of the law. Or
+will you accompany me to him?”
+
+In a moment, Captain Evremonde’s manners were subdued and civilized,
+and in perfectly sane speech he thanked the Countess and offered her
+his arm. The Countess smilingly waved back Sir John, who motioned to
+attend on her, and away she went with the Captain, with all the glow of
+a woman who feels that she is heaping coals of fire on the heads of her
+enemies.
+
+Was she not admired now?
+
+“Upon my honour,” said Lady Jocelyn, “they are a remarkable family,”
+meaning the Harringtons.
+
+What farther she thought she did not say, but she was a woman who
+looked to natural gifts more than the gifts of accidents; and Evan’s
+chance stood high with her then. So the battle of the Bull-dogs was
+fought, and cruelly as the Countess had been assailed and wounded, she
+gained a victory; yea, though Demogorgon, aided by the vindictive ghost
+of Sir Abraham, took tangible shape in the ranks opposed to her. True,
+Lady Jocelyn, forgetting her own recent intrepidity, condemned her as a
+liar; but the fruits of the Countess’s victory were plentiful. Drummond
+Forth, fearful perhaps of exciting unjust suspicions in the mind of
+Captain Evremonde, disappeared altogether. Harry was in a mess which
+threw him almost upon Evan’s mercy, as will be related. And, lastly,
+Ferdinand Laxley, that insufferable young aristocrat, was thus spoken
+to by Lady Jocelyn.
+
+“This letter addressed to Lawson, telling him that his wife is here, is
+in your handwriting, Ferdinand. I don’t say you wrote it—I don’t think
+you could have written it. But, to tell you the truth, I have an
+unpleasant impression about it, and I think we had better shake hands
+and not see each other for some time.”
+
+Laxley, after one denial of his guilt, disdained to repeat it. He met
+her ladyship’s hand haughtily, and, bowing to Sir Franks, turned on his
+heel.
+
+So, then, in glorious complete victory, the battle of the Bull-dogs
+ended!
+
+Of the close of the pic-nic more remains to be told.
+
+For the present I pause, in observance of those rules which demand that
+after an exhibition of consummate deeds, time be given to the spectator
+to digest what has passed before him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+IN WHICH EVAN’S LIGHT BEGINS TO TWINKLE AGAIN
+
+
+The dowagers were now firmly planted on Olympus. Along the grass lay
+the warm strong colours of the evening sun, reddening the pine-stems
+and yellowing the idle aspen-leaves. For a moment it had hung in doubt
+whether the pic-nic could survive the two rude shocks it had received.
+Happily the youthful element was large, and when the band, refreshed by
+chicken and sherry, threw off half-a-dozen bars of one of those
+irresistible waltzes that first catch the ear, and then curl round the
+heart, till on a sudden they invade and will have the legs, a rush up
+Parnassus was seen, and there were shouts and laughter and commotion,
+as over other great fields of battle the corn will wave gaily and mark
+the reestablishment of nature’s reign.
+
+How fair the sight! Approach the twirling couples. They talk as they
+whirl. “Fancy the run-away tailor!” is the male’s remark, and he
+expects to be admired for it, and is.
+
+“That make-up Countess—his sister, you know—didn’t you see her? she
+turned green,” says Creation’s second effort, almost occupying the
+place of a rib.
+
+“Isn’t there a run-away wife, too?”
+
+“Now, you mustn’t be naughty!”
+
+They laugh and flatter one another. The power to give and take flattery
+to any amount is the rare treasure of youth.
+
+Undoubtedly they are a poetical picture; but some poetical pictures
+talk dreary prose; so we will retire.
+
+Now, while the dancers carried on their business, and distance lent
+them enchantment, Rose stood by Juliana, near an alder which hid them
+from the rest.
+
+“I don’t accuse you,” she was saying; “but who could have done this but
+you? Ah, Juley! you will never get what you want if you plot for it. I
+thought once you cared for Evan. If he had loved you, would I not have
+done all that I could for you both? I pardon you with all my heart.”
+
+“Keep your pardon!” was the angry answer. “I have done more for you,
+Rose. He is an adventurer, and I have tried to open your eyes and make
+you respect your family. You may accuse me of what you like, I have my
+conscience.”
+
+“And the friendship of the Countess,” added Rose.
+
+Juliana’s figure shook as if she had been stung.
+
+“Go and be happy—don’t stay here and taunt me,” she said, with a
+ghastly look. “I suppose he can lie like his sister, and has told you
+all sorts of tales.”
+
+“Not a word—not a word!” cried Rose. “Do you think my lover could tell
+a lie?”
+
+The superb assumption of the girl, and the true portrait of Evan’s
+character which it flashed upon Juliana, were to the latter such
+intense pain, that she turned like one on the rack, exclaiming:
+
+“You think so much of him? You are so proud of him? Then, yes! I love
+him too, ugly, beastly as I am to look at! Oh, I know what you think! I
+loved him from the first, and I knew all about him, and spared him
+pain. I did not wait for him to fall from a horse. I watched every
+chance of his being exposed. I let them imagine he cared for me.
+Drummond would have told what he knew long before—only he knew there
+would not be much harm in a tradesman’s son marrying me. And I have
+played into your hands, and now you taunt me!”
+
+Rose remembered her fretful unkindness to Evan on the subject of his
+birth, when her feelings toward him were less warm. Dwelling on that
+alone, she put her arms round Juliana’s stiffening figure, and said: “I
+dare say I am much more selfish than you. Forgive me, dear.”
+
+Staring at her, Juliana replied, “Now you are acting.”
+
+“No,” said Rose, with a little effort to fondle her; “I only feel that
+I love you better for loving him.”
+
+Generous as her words sounded, and were, Juliana intuitively struck to
+the root of them, which was comfortless. For how calm in its fortune,
+how strong in its love, must Rose’s heart be, when she could speak in
+this unwonted way!
+
+“Go, and leave me, pray,” she said.
+
+Rose kissed her burning cheek. “I will do as you wish, dear. Try and
+know me better, and be sister Juley as you used to be. I know I am
+thoughtless, and horribly vain and disagreeable sometimes. Do forgive
+me. I will love you truly.”
+
+Half melting, Juliana pressed her hand.
+
+“We are friends?” said Rose. “Good-bye”; and her countenance lighted,
+and she moved away, so changed by her happiness! Juliana was jealous of
+a love strong as she deemed her own to overcome obstacles. She called
+to her: “Rose! Rose, you will not take advantage of what I have told
+you, and repeat it to any one?”
+
+Instantly Rose turned with a glance of full contempt over her shoulder.
+
+“To whom?” she asked.
+
+“To any one.”
+
+“To him? He would not love me long if I did!”
+
+Juliana burst into fresh tears, but Rose walked into the sunbeams and
+the circle of the music.
+
+Mounting Olympus, she inquired whether Ferdinand was within hail, as
+they were pledged to dance the first dance together. A few hints were
+given, and then Rose learnt that Ferdinand had been dismissed.
+
+“And where is he?” she cried with her accustomed impetuosity. “Mama!—of
+course you did not accuse him—but, Mama! could you possibly let him go
+with the suspicion that you thought him guilty of writing an anonymous
+letter?”
+
+“Not at all,” Lady Jocelyn replied. “Only the handwriting was so
+extremely like, and he was the only person who knew the address and the
+circumstances, and who could have a motive—though I don’t quite see
+what it is—I thought it as well to part for a time.”
+
+“But that’s sophistry!” said Rose. “You accuse or you exonerate. Nobody
+can be half guilty. If you do not hold him innocent you are unjust!”
+Lady Jocelyn rejoined: “Yes? It’s singular what a stock of axioms young
+people have handy for their occasions.”
+
+Rose loudly announced that she would right this matter.
+
+“I can’t think where Rose gets her passion for hot water,” said her
+mother, as Rose ran down the ledge.
+
+Two or three young gentlemen tried to engage her for a dance. She gave
+them plenty of promises, and hurried on till she met Evan, and, almost
+out of breath, told him the shameful injustice that had been done to
+her friend.
+
+“Mama is such an Epicurean! I really think she is worse than Papa. This
+disgraceful letter looks like Ferdinand’s writing, and she tells him
+so; and, Evan! will you believe that instead of being certain it’s
+impossible any gentleman could do such a thing, she tells Ferdinand she
+shall feel more comfortable if she doesn’t see him for some time? Poor
+Ferdinand! He has had so much to bear!”
+
+Too sure of his darling to be envious now of any man she pitied, Evan
+said, “I would forfeit my hand on his innocence!”
+
+“And so would I,” echoed Rose. “Come to him with me, dear. Or no,” she
+added, with a little womanly discretion, “perhaps it would not be so
+well—you’re not very much cast down by what happened at dinner?”
+
+“My darling! I think of you.”
+
+“Of me, dear? Concealment is never of any service. What there is to be
+known people may as well know at once. They’ll gossip for a month, and
+then forget it. Your mother is dreadfully outspoken, certainly; but she
+has better manners than many ladies—I mean people in a position: you
+understand me? But suppose, dear, this had happened, and I had said
+nothing to Mama, and then we had to confess? Ah, you’ll find I’m wiser
+than you imagine, Mr. Evan.”
+
+“Haven’t I submitted to somebody’s lead?”
+
+“Yes, but with a sort of ‘under protest.’ I saw it by the mouth. Not
+quite natural. You have been moody ever since—just a little. I suppose
+it’s our manly pride. But I’m losing time. Will you promise me not to
+brood over that occurrence? Think of me. Think everything of me. I am
+yours; and, dearest, if I love you, need you care what anybody else
+thinks? We will soon change their opinion.”
+
+“I care so little,” said Evan, somewhat untruthfully, “that till you
+return I shall go and sit with my mother.”
+
+“Oh, she has gone. She made her dear old antiquated curtsey to Mama and
+the company. ‘If my son has not been guilty of deception, I will leave
+him to your good pleasure, my lady.’ That’s what she said. Mama likes
+her, I know. But I wish she didn’t mouth her words so precisely: it
+reminds me of—” the Countess, Rose checked herself from saying.
+“Good-bye. Thank heaven! the worst has happened. Do you know what I
+should do if I were you, and felt at all distressed? I should keep
+repeating,” Rose looked archly and deeply up under his eyelids, “‘I am
+the son of a tradesman, and Rose loves me,’ over and over, and then, if
+you feel ashamed, what is it of?”
+
+She nodded adieu, laughing at her own idea of her great worth; an idea
+very firmly fixed in her fair bosom, notwithstanding. Mrs. Melville
+said of her, “I used to think she had pride.” Lady Jocelyn answered,
+“So she has. The misfortune is that it has taken the wrong turning.”
+
+Evan watched the figure that was to him as that of an angel—no less!
+She spoke so frankly to them as she passed: or here and there went on
+with a light laugh. It seemed an act of graciousness that she should
+open her mouth to one! And, indeed, by virtue of a pride which raised
+her to the level of what she thought it well to do, Rose was veritably
+on higher ground than any present. She no longer envied her friend
+Jenny, who, emerging from the shades, allured by the waltz, dislinked
+herself from William’s arm, and whispered exclamations of sorrow at the
+scene created by Mr. Harrington’s mother. Rose patted her hand, and
+said: “Thank you, Jenny dear but don’t be sorry. I’m glad. It prevents
+a number of private explanations.”
+
+“Still, dear!” Jenny suggested.
+
+“Oh! of course, I should like to lay my whip across the shoulders of
+the person who arranged the conspiracy,” said Rose. “And afterwards I
+don’t mind returning thanks to him, or her, or them.”
+
+William cried out, “I’m always on your side, Rose.”
+
+“And I’ll be Jenny’s bridesmaid,” rejoined Rose, stepping blithely away
+from them.
+
+Evan debated whither to turn when Rose was lost to his eyes. He had no
+heart for dancing. Presently a servant approached, and said that Mr.
+Harry particularly desired to see him. From Harry’s looks at table,
+Evan judged that the interview was not likely to be amicable. He asked
+the direction he was to take, and setting out with long strides, came
+in sight of Raikes, who walked in gloom, and was evidently labouring
+under one of his mountains of melancholy. He affected to be quite out
+of the world; but finding that Evan took the hint in his usual prosy
+manner, was reduced to call after him, and finally to run and catch
+him.
+
+“Haven’t you one single spark of curiosity?” he began.
+
+“What about?” said Evan.
+
+“Why, about my amazing luck! You haven’t asked a question. A matter of
+course.”
+
+Evan complimented him by asking a question: saying that Jack’s luck
+certainly was wonderful.
+
+“Wonderful, you call it,” said Jack, witheringly. “And what’s more
+wonderful is, that I’d give up all for quiet quarters in the Green
+Dragon. I knew I was prophetic. I knew I should regret that peaceful
+hostelry. Diocletian, if you like. I beg you to listen. I can’t walk so
+fast without danger.”
+
+“Well, speak out, man. What’s the matter with you?” cried Evan,
+impatiently.
+
+Jack shook his head: “I see a total absence of sympathy,” he remarked.
+“I can’t.”
+
+“Then stand out of the way.”
+
+Jack let him pass, exclaiming, with cold irony, “I will pay homage to a
+loftier Nine!”
+
+Mr. Raikes could not in his soul imagine that Evan was really so little
+inquisitive concerning a business of such importance as the trouble
+that possessed him. He watched his friend striding off, incredulously,
+and then commenced running in pursuit.
+
+“Harrington, I give in; I surrender; you reduce me to prose. Thy nine
+have conquered my nine!—pardon me, old fellow. I’m immensely upset.
+This is the first day in my life that I ever felt what indigestion is.
+Egad, I’ve got something to derange the best digestion going!
+
+“Look here, Harrington. What happened to you today, I declare I think
+nothing of. You owe me your assistance, you do, indeed; for if it
+hadn’t been for the fearful fascinations of your sister—that divine
+Countess—I should have been engaged to somebody by this time, and
+profited by the opportunity held out to me, and which is now gone. I’m
+disgraced. I’m known. And the worst of it is, I must face people. I
+daren’t turn tail. Did you ever hear of such a dilemma?”
+
+“Ay,” quoth Evan, “what is it?”
+
+Raikes turned pale. “Then you haven’t heard of it?” “Not a word.”
+
+“Then it’s all for me to tell. I called on Messrs. Grist. I dined at
+the Aurora afterwards. Depend upon it, Harrington, we’re led by a star.
+I mean, fellows with anything in them are. I recognized our Fallowfield
+host, and thinking to draw him out, I told our mutual histories. Next
+day I went to these Messrs. Grist. They proposed the membership for
+Fallowfield, five hundred a year, and the loan of a curricle, on
+condition. It’s singular, Harrington; before anybody knew of the
+condition I didn’t care about it a bit. It seemed to me childish. Who
+would think of minding wearing a tin plate? But now!—the sufferings of
+Orestes—what are they to mine? He wasn’t tied to his Furies. They did
+hover a little above him; but as for me, I’m scorched; and I mustn’t
+say where: my mouth is locked; the social laws which forbid the
+employment of obsolete words arrest my exclamations of despair. What do
+you advise?”
+
+Evan stared a moment at the wretched object, whose dream of meeting a
+beneficent old gentleman had brought him to be the sport of a cynical
+farceur. He had shivers on his own account, seeing something of himself
+magnified, and he loathed the fellow, only to feel more acutely what a
+stigma may be.
+
+“It’s a case I can’t advise in,” he said, as gently as he could. “I
+should be off the grounds in a hurry.”
+
+“And then I’m where I was before I met the horrid old brute!” Raikes
+moaned.
+
+“I told him over a pint of port—and noble stuff is that Aurora port!—I
+told him—I amused him till he was on the point of bursting—I told him I
+was such a gentleman as the world hadn’t seen—minus money. So he
+determined to launch me. He said I should lead the life of such a
+gentleman as the world had not yet seen—on that simple condition, which
+appeared to me childish, a senile whim; rather an indulgence of his.”
+
+Evan listened to the tribulations of his friend as he would to those of
+a doll—the sport of some experimental child. By this time he knew
+something of old Tom Cogglesby, and was not astonished that he should
+have chosen John Raikes to play one of his farces on. Jack turned off
+abruptly the moment he saw they were nearing human figures, but soon
+returned to Evan’s side, as if for protection.
+
+“Hoy! Harrington!” shouted Harry, beckoning to him. “Come, make haste!
+I’m in a deuce of a mess.”
+
+The two Wheedles—Susan and Polly—were standing in front of him, and
+after his call to Evan, he turned to continue some exhortation or
+appeal to the common sense of women, largely indulged in by young men
+when the mischief is done.
+
+“Harrington, do speak to her. She looks upon you as a sort of parson. I
+can’t make her believe I didn’t send for her. Of course, she knows I’m
+fond of her. My dear fellow,” he whispered, “I shall be ruined if my
+grandmother hears of it. Get her away, please. Promise anything.”
+
+Evan took her hand and asked for the child.
+
+“Quite well, sir,” faltered Susan.
+
+“You should not have come here.”
+
+Susan stared, and commenced whimpering: “Didn’t you wish it, sir?”
+
+“Oh, she’s always thinking of being made a lady of,” cried Polly. “As
+if Mr. Harry was going to do that. It wants a gentleman to do that.”
+
+“The carriage came for me, sir, in the afternoon,” said Susan,
+plaintively, “with your compliments, and would I come. I thought—”
+
+“What carriage?” asked Evan.
+
+Raikes, who was ogling Polly, interposed grandly, “Mine!”
+
+“And you sent in my name for this girl to come here?” Evan turned
+wrathfully on him.
+
+“My dear Harrington, when you hit you knock down. The wise require but
+one dose of experience. The Countess wished it, and I did dispatch.”
+
+“The Countess!” Harry exclaimed; “Jove! do you mean to say that the
+Countess—”
+
+“De Saldar,” added Jack. “In Britain none were worthy found.”
+
+Harry gave a long whistle.
+
+“Leave at once,” said Evan to Susan. “Whatever you may want send to me
+for. And when you think you can meet your parents, I will take you to
+them. Remember that is what you must do.”
+
+“Make her give up that stupidness of hers, about being made a lady of,
+Mr. Harrington,” said the inveterate Polly.
+
+Susan here fell a-weeping.
+
+“I would go, sir,” she said. “I’m sure I would obey you: but I can’t. I
+can’t go back to the inn. They’re beginning to talk about me,
+because—because I can’t—can’t pay them, and I’m ashamed.”
+
+Evan looked at Harry.
+
+“I forgot,” the latter mumbled, but his face was crimson. He put his
+hands in his pockets. “Do you happen to have a note or so?” he asked.
+
+Evan took him aside and gave him what he had; and this amount, without
+inspection or reserve, Harry offered to Susan. She dashed his hand
+impetuously from her sight.
+
+“There, give it to me,” said Polly. “Oh, Mr. Harry! what a young man
+you are!”
+
+Whether from the rebuff, or the reproach, or old feelings reviving,
+Harry was moved to go forward, and lay his hand on Susan’s shoulder and
+mutter something in her ear that softened her.
+
+Polly thrust the notes into her bosom, and with a toss of her nose, as
+who should say, “Here’s nonsense they’re at again,” tapped Susan on the
+other shoulder, and said imperiously: “Come, Miss!”
+
+Hurrying out a dozen sentences in one, Harry ended by suddenly kissing
+Susan’s cheek, and then Polly bore her away; and Harry, with great
+solemnity, said to Evan:
+
+“’Pon my honour, I think I ought to! I declare I think I love that
+girl. What’s one’s family? Why shouldn’t you button to the one that
+just suits you? That girl, when she’s dressed, and in good trim, by
+Jove! nobody’d know her from a born lady. And as for grammar, I’d soon
+teach her that.”
+
+Harry began to whistle: a sign in him that he was thinking his hardest.
+
+“I confess to being considerably impressed by the maid Wheedle,” said
+Raikes.
+
+“Would you throw yourself away on her?” Evan inquired.
+
+Apparently forgetting how he stood, Mr. Raikes replied:
+
+“You ask, perhaps, a little too much of me. One owes consideration to
+one’s position. In the world’s eyes a matrimonial slip outweighs a
+peccadillo. No. To much the maid might wheedle me, but to Hymen! She’s
+decidedly fresh and pert—the most delicious little fat lips and cocky
+nose; but cease we to dwell on her, or of us two, to! one will be
+undone.”
+
+Harry burst into a laugh: “Is this the T.P. for Fallowfield?”
+
+“M.P. I think you mean,” quoth Raikes, serenely; but a curious glance
+being directed on him, and pursuing him pertinaciously, it was as if
+the pediment of the lofty monument he topped were smitten with
+violence. He stammered an excuse, and retreated somewhat as it is the
+fashion to do from the presence of royalty, followed by Harry’s roar of
+laughter, in which Evan cruelly joined.
+
+“Gracious powers!” exclaimed the victim of ambition, “I’m laughed at by
+the son of a tailor!” and he edged once more into the shade of trees.
+
+It was a strange sight for Harry’s relatives to see him arm-in-arm with
+the man he should have been kicking, challenging, denouncing, or
+whatever the code prescribes: to see him talking to this young man
+earnestly, clinging to him affectionately, and when he separated from
+him, heartily wringing his hand. Well might they think that there was
+something extraordinary in these Harringtons. Convicted of Tailordom,
+these Harringtons appeared to shine with double lustre. How was it?
+They were at a loss to say. They certainly could say that the Countess
+was egregiously affected and vulgar; but who could be altogether
+complacent and sincere that had to fight so hard a fight? In this
+struggle with society I see one of the instances where success is
+entirely to be honoured and remains a proof of merit. For however
+boldly antagonism may storm the ranks of society, it will certainly be
+repelled, whereas affinity cannot be resisted; and they who, against
+obstacles of birth, claim and keep their position among the educated
+and refined, have that affinity. It is, on the whole, rare, so that
+society is not often invaded. I think it will have to front Jack Cade
+again before another Old Mel and his progeny shall appear. You refuse
+to believe in Old Mel? You know not nature’s cunning.
+
+Mrs. Shorne, Mrs. Melville, Miss Carrington, and many of the guests who
+observed Evan moving from place to place, after the exposure, as they
+called it, were amazed at his audacity. There seemed such a quietly
+superb air about him. He would not look out of his element; and this,
+knowing what they knew, was his offence. He deserved some commendation
+for still holding up his head, but it was love and Rose who kept the
+fires of his heart alive.
+
+The sun had sunk. The figures on the summit of Parnassus were seen
+bobbing in happy placidity against the twilight sky. The sun had sunk,
+and many of Mr. Raikes’ best things were unspoken. Wandering about in
+his gloom, he heard a feminine voice:
+
+“Yes, I will trust you.”
+
+“You will not repent it,” was answered.
+
+Recognizing the Duke, Mr. Raikes cleared his throat.
+
+“A-hem, your Grace! This is how the days should pass. I think we should
+diurnally station a good London band on high, and play his Majesty to
+bed—the sun. My opinion is, it would improve the crops. I’m not, as
+yet, a landed proprietor—”
+
+The Duke stepped aside with him, and Raikes addressed no one for the
+next twenty minutes. When he next came forth Parnassus was half
+deserted. It was known that old Mrs. Bonner had been taken with a
+dangerous attack, and under this third blow the pic-nic succumbed.
+Simultaneously with the messenger that brought the news to Lady
+Jocelyn, one approached Evan, and informed him that the Countess de
+Saldar urgently entreated him to come to the house without delay. He
+also wished to speak a few words to her, and stepped forward briskly.
+He had no prophetic intimations of the change this interview would
+bring upon him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+THE HERO TAKES HIS RANK IN THE ORCHESTRA
+
+
+The Countess was not in her dressing-room when Evan presented himself.
+She was in attendance on Mrs. Bonner, Conning said; and the primness of
+Conning was a thing to have been noticed by any one save a dreamy youth
+in love. Conning remained in the room, keeping distinctly aloof. Her
+duties absorbed her, but a presiding thought mechanically jerked back
+her head from time to time: being the mute form of, “Well, I never!” in
+Conning’s rank of life and intellectual capacity. Evan remained quite
+still in a chair, and Conning was certainly a number of paces beyond
+suspicion, when the Countess appeared, and hurling at the maid one of
+those feminine looks which contain huge quartos of meaning, vented the
+cold query:
+
+“Pray, why did you not come to me, as you were commanded?”
+
+“I was not aware, my lady,” Conning drew up to reply, and performed
+with her eyes a lofty rejection of the volume cast at her, and a threat
+of several for offensive operations, if need were.
+
+The Countess spoke nearer to what she was implying “You know I object
+to this: it is not the first time.”
+
+“Would your ladyship please to say what your ladyship means?”
+
+In return for this insolent challenge to throw off the mask, the
+Countess felt justified in punishing her by being explicit. “Your
+irregularities are not of yesterday,” she said, kindly making use of a
+word of double signification still.
+
+“Thank you, my lady.” Conning accepted the word in its blackest
+meaning. “I am obliged to you. If your ladyship is to be believed, my
+character is not worth much. But I can make distinctions, my lady.”
+
+Something very like an altercation was continued in a sharp, brief
+undertone; and then Evan, waking up to the affairs of the hour, heard
+Conning say:
+
+“I shall not ask your ladyship to give me a character.”
+
+The Countess answering with pathos: “It would, indeed, be to give you
+one.”
+
+He was astonished that the Countess should burst into tears when
+Conning had departed, and yet more so that his effort to console her
+should bring a bolt of wrath upon himself.
+
+“Now, Evan, now see what you have done for us—do, and rejoice at it.
+The very menials insult us. You heard what that creature said? She can
+make distinctions. Oh! I could beat her. They know it: all the servants
+know it: I can see it in their faces. I feel it when I pass them. The
+insolent wretches treat us as impostors; and this Conning—to defy me!
+Oh! it comes of my devotion to you. I am properly chastized. I passed
+Rose’s maid on the stairs, and her reverence was barely perceptible.”
+
+Evan murmured that he was very sorry, adding, foolishly: “Do you really
+care, Louisa, for what servants think and say?”
+
+The Countess sighed deeply: “Oh! you are too thickskinned! Your mother
+from top to toe! It is too dreadful! What have I done to deserve it?
+Oh, Evan, Evan!”
+
+Her head dropped in her lap. There was something ludicrous to Evan in
+this excess of grief on account of such a business; but he was
+tender-hearted and wrought upon to declare that, whether or not he was
+to blame for his mother’s intrusion that afternoon, he was ready to do
+what he could to make up to the Countess for her sufferings: whereat
+the Countess sighed again: asked him what he possibly could do, and
+doubted his willingness to accede to the most trifling request.
+
+“No; I do in verity believe that were I to desire you to do aught for
+your own good alone, you would demur, Van.”
+
+He assured her that she was mistaken.
+
+“We shall see,” she said.
+
+“And if once or twice, I have run counter to you, Louisa—”
+
+“Abominable language!” cried the Countess, stopping her ears like a
+child. “Do not excruciate me so. You laugh! My goodness! what will you
+come to!”
+
+Evan checked his smile, and, taking her hand, said:
+
+“I must tell you; that, on the whole, I see nothing to regret in what
+has happened to-day. You may notice a change in the manners of the
+servants and some of the country squiresses, but I find none in the
+bearing of the real ladies, the true gentlemen, to me.”
+
+“Because the change is too fine for you to perceive it,” interposed the
+Countess.
+
+“Rose, then, and her mother, and her father!” Evan cried impetuously.
+
+“As for Lady Jocelyn!” the Countess shrugged:
+
+“And Sir Franks!” her head shook: “and Rose, Rose is, simply
+self-willed; a ‘she will’ or ‘she won’t’ sort of little person. No
+criterion! Henceforth the world is against us. We have to struggle with
+it: it does not rank us of it!”
+
+“Your feeling on the point is so exaggerated, my dear Louisa”, said
+Evan, “one can’t bring reason to your ears. The tattle we shall hear we
+shall outlive. I care extremely for the good opinion of men, but I
+prefer my own; and I do not lose it because my father was in trade.”
+
+“And your own name, Evan Harrington, is on a shop,” the Countess struck
+in, and watched him severely from under her brow, glad to mark that he
+could still blush.
+
+“Oh, heaven!” she wailed to increase the effect, “on a shop! a brother
+of mine!”
+
+“Yes, Louisa. It may not last... I did it—is it not better that a son
+should blush, than cast dishonour on his father’s memory?”
+
+“Ridiculous boy-notion!”
+
+“Rose has pardoned it, Louisa—cannot you? I find that the naturally
+vulgar and narrow-headed people, and cowards who never forego mean
+advantages, are those only who would condemn me and my conduct in
+that.”
+
+“And you have joy in your fraction of the world left to you!” exclaimed
+his female-elder.
+
+Changeing her manner to a winning softness, she said:
+
+“Let me also belong to the very small party! You have been really
+romantic, and most generous and noble; only the shop smells! But, never
+mind, promise me you will not enter it.”
+
+“I hope not,” said Evan.
+
+“You do hope that you will not officiate? Oh, Evan the eternal
+contemplation of gentlemen’s legs! think of that! Think of yourself
+sculptured in that attitude!” Innumerable little prickles and stings
+shot over Evan’s skin.
+
+“There—there, Louisa!” he said, impatiently; “spare your ridicule. We
+go to London to-morrow, and when there I expect to hear that I have an
+appointment, and that this engagement is over.” He rose and walked up
+and down the room.
+
+“I shall not be prepared to go to-morrow,” remarked the Countess,
+drawing her figure up stiffly.
+
+“Oh! well, if you can stay, Andrew will take charge of you, I dare
+say.”
+
+“No, my dear, Andrew will not—a nonentity cannot—you must.”
+
+“Impossible, Louisa,” said Evan, as one who imagines he is uttering a
+thing of little consequence. “I promised Rose.”
+
+“You promised Rose that you would abdicate and retire? Sweet, loving
+girl!”
+
+Evan made no answer.
+
+“You will stay with me, Evan.”
+
+“I really can’t,” he said in his previous careless tone.
+
+“Come and sit down,” cried the Countess, imperiously. “The first trifle
+is refused. It does not astonish me. I will honour you now by talking
+seriously to you. I have treated you hitherto as a child. Or, no—” she
+stopped her mouth; “it is enough if I tell you, dear, that poor Mrs.
+Bonner is dying, and that she desires my attendance on her to refresh
+her spirit with readings on the Prophecies, and Scriptural converse. No
+other soul in the house can so soothe her.”
+
+“Then, stay,” said Evan.
+
+“Unprotected in the midst of enemies! Truly!”
+
+“I think, Louisa, if you can call Lady Jocelyn an enemy, you must read
+the Scriptures by a false light.”
+
+“The woman is an utter heathen!” interjected the Countess. “An infidel
+can be no friend. She is therefore the reverse. Her opinions embitter
+her mother’s last days. But now you will consent to remain with me,
+dear Van!”
+
+An implacable negative responded to the urgent appeal of her eyes.
+
+“By the way,” he said, for a diversion, “did you know of a girl
+stopping at an inn in Fallowfield?”
+
+“Know a barmaid?” the Countess’s eyes and mouth were wide at the
+question.
+
+“Did you send Raikes for her to-day?”
+
+“Did Mr. Raikes—ah, Evan! that creature reminds me, you have no sense
+of contrast. For a Brazilian ape—he resembles, if he is not truly
+one—what contrast is he to an English gentleman! His proximity and
+acquaintance—rich as he may be—disfigure you. Study contrast!”
+
+Evan had to remind her that she had not answered him: whereat she
+exclaimed: “One would really think you had never been abroad. Have you
+not evaded me, rather?”
+
+The Countess commenced fanning her languid brows, and then pursued:
+“Now, my dear brother, I may conclude that you will acquiesce in my
+moderate wishes. You remain. My venerable friend cannot last three
+days. She is on the brink of a better world! I will confide to you that
+it is of the utmost importance we should be here, on the spot, until
+the sad termination! That is what I summoned you for. You are now at
+liberty. Ta-ta, as soon as you please.”
+
+She had baffled his little cross-examination with regard to Raikes, but
+on the other point he was firm. She would listen to nothing: she
+affected that her mandate had gone forth, and must be obeyed; tapped
+with her foot, fanned deliberately, and was a consummate queen, till he
+turned the handle of the door, when her complexion deadened, she
+started up, trembling, and tripping towards him, caught him by the arm,
+and said: “Stop! After all that I have sacrificed for you! As well try
+to raise the dead as a Dawley from the dust he grovels in! Why did I
+consent to visit this place? It was for you. I came, I heard that you
+had disgraced yourself in drunkenness at Fallowfield, and I toiled to
+eclipse that, and I did. Young Jocelyn thought you were what you are: I
+could spit the word at you! and I dazzled him to give you time to win
+this minx, who will spin you like a top if you get her. That Mr. Forth
+knew it as well, and that vile young Laxley. They are gone! Why are
+they gone? Because they thwarted me—they crossed your interests—I said
+they should go. George Uplift is going to-day. The house is left to us;
+and I believe firmly that Mrs. Bonner’s will contains a memento of the
+effect of our frequent religious conversations. So you would leave now?
+I suspect nobody, but we are all human, and Wills would not have been
+tampered with for the first time. Besides,” and the Countess’s
+imagination warmed till she addressed her brother as a confederate, “we
+shall then see to whom Beckley Court is bequeathed. Either way it may
+be yours. Yours! and you suffer their plots to drive you forth. Do you
+not perceive that Mama was brought here to-day on purpose to shame us
+and cast us out? We are surrounded by conspiracies, but if our faith is
+pure who can hurt us? If I had not that consolation—would that you had
+it, too!—would it be endurable to me to see those menials whispering
+and showing their forced respect? As it is, I am fortified to forgive
+them. I breathe another atmosphere. Oh, Evan! you did not attend to Mr.
+Parsley’s beautiful last sermon. The Church should have been your
+vocation.”
+
+From vehemence the Countess had subsided to a mournful gentleness. She
+had been too excited to notice any changes in her brother’s face during
+her speech, and when he turned from the door, and still eyeing her
+fixedly, led her to a chair, she fancied from his silence that she had
+subdued and convinced him. A delicious sense of her power, succeeded by
+a weary reflection that she had constantly to employ it, occupied her
+mind, and when presently she looked up from the shade of her hand, it
+was to agitate her head pitifully at her brother.
+
+“All this you have done for me, Louisa,” he said.
+
+“Yes, Evan,—all!” she fell into his tone.
+
+“And you are the cause of Laxley’s going? Did you know anything of that
+anonymous letter?”
+
+He was squeezing her hand—with grateful affection, as she was deluded
+to imagine.
+
+“Perhaps, dear,—a little,” her conceit prompted her to admit.
+
+“Did you write it?”
+
+He gazed intently into her eyes, and as the question shot like a
+javelin, she tried ineffectually to disengage her fingers; her delusion
+waned; she took fright, but it was too late; he had struck the truth
+out of her before she could speak. Her spirit writhed like a snake in
+his hold. Innumerable things she was ready to say, and strove to; the
+words would not form on her lips.
+
+“I will be answered, Louisa.”
+
+The stern manner he had assumed gave her no hope of eluding him. With
+an inward gasp, and a sensation of nakedness altogether new to her,
+dismal, and alarming, she felt that she could not lie. Like a creature
+forsaken of her staunchest friend, she could have flung herself to the
+floor. The next instant her natural courage restored her. She jumped up
+and stood at bay.
+
+“Yes. I did.”
+
+And now he was weak, and she was strong, and used her strength.
+
+“I wrote it to save you. Yes. Call on your Creator, and be my judge, if
+you dare. Never, never will you meet a soul more utterly devoted to
+you, Evan. This Mr. Forth, this Laxley, I said, should go, because they
+were resolved to ruin you, and make you base. They are gone. The
+responsibility I take on myself. Nightly—during the remainder of my
+days—I will pray for pardon.”
+
+He raised his head to ask sombrely: “Is your handwriting like
+Laxley’s?”
+
+“It seems so,” she answered, with a pitiful sneer for one who could
+arrest her exaltation to inquire about minutiae. “Right or wrong, it is
+done, and if you choose to be my judge, think whether your own
+conscience is clear. Why did you come here? Why did you stay? You have
+your free will,—do you deny that? Oh, I will take the entire blame, but
+you must not be a hypocrite, Van. You know you were aware. We had no
+confidences. I was obliged to treat you like a child; but for you to
+pretend to suppose that roses grow in your path—oh, that is paltry! You
+are a hypocrite or an imbecile, if that is your course.”
+
+Was he not something of the former? The luxurious mist in which he had
+been living, dispersed before his sister’s bitter words, and, as she
+designed he should, he felt himself her accomplice. But, again, reason
+struggled to enlighten him; for surely he would never have done a thing
+so disproportionate to the end to be gained! It was the unconnected
+action of his brain that thus advised him. No thoroughly-fashioned,
+clear-spirited man conceives wickedness impossible to him: but
+wickedness so largely mixed with folly, the best of us may reject as
+not among our temptations. Evan, since his love had dawned, had begun
+to talk with his own nature, and though he knew not yet how much it
+would stretch or contract, he knew that he was weak and could not
+perform moral wonders without severe struggles. The cynic may add, if
+he likes—or without potent liquors.
+
+Could he be his sister’s judge? It is dangerous for young men to be too
+good. They are so sweeping in their condemnations, so sublime in their
+conceptions of excellence, and the most finished Puritan cannot out-do
+their demands upon frail humanity. Evan’s momentary self-examination
+saved him from this, and he told the Countess, with a sort of cold
+compassion, that he himself dared not blame her.
+
+His tone was distinctly wanting in admiration of her, but she was
+somewhat over-wrought, and leaned her shoulder against him, and became
+immediately his affectionate, only too-zealous, sister; dearly to be
+loved, to be forgiven, to be prized: and on condition of inserting a
+special petition for pardon in her orisons, to live with a calm
+conscience, and to be allowed to have her own way with him during the
+rest of her days.
+
+It was a happy union—a picture that the Countess was lured to admire in
+the glass.
+
+Sad that so small a murmur should destroy it for ever!
+
+“What?” cried the Countess, bursting from his arm.
+
+“Go?” she emphasized with the hardness of determined unbelief, as if
+plucking the words, one by one, out of her reluctant ears. “Go to Lady
+Jocelyn, and tell her I wrote the letter?”
+
+“You can do no less, I fear,” said Evan, eyeing the floor and breathing
+a deep breath.
+
+“Then I did hear you correctly? Oh, you must be mad—idiotic! There,
+pray go away, Evan. Come in the morning. You are too much for my
+nerves.”
+
+Evan rose, putting out his hand as if to take hers and plead with her.
+She rejected the first motion, and repeated her desire for him to leave
+her; saying, cheerfully—
+
+“Good night, dear; I dare say we shan’t meet till the morning.”
+
+“You can’t let this injustice continue a single night, Louisa?” said
+he.
+
+She was deep in the business of arrangeing a portion of her attire.
+
+“Go-go; please,” she responded.
+
+Lingering, he said: “If I go, it will be straight to Lady Jocelyn.”
+
+She stamped angrily.
+
+“Only go!” and then she found him gone, and she stooped lower to the
+glass, to mark if the recent agitation were observable under her eyes.
+There, looking at herself, her heart dropped heavily in her bosom. She
+ran to the door and hurried swiftly after Evan, pulling him back
+speechlessly.
+
+“Where are you going, Evan?”
+
+“To Lady Jocelyn.”
+
+The unhappy victim of her devotion stood panting.
+
+“If you go, I—I take poison!” It was for him now to be struck; but he
+was suffering too strong an anguish to be susceptible to mock tragedy.
+The Countess paused to study him. She began to fear her brother. “I
+will!” she reiterated wildly, without moving him at all. And the quiet
+inflexibility of his face forbade the ultimate hope which lies in
+giving men a dose of hysterics when they are obstinate. She tried by
+taunts and angry vituperations to make him look fierce, if but an
+instant, to precipitate her into an exhibition she was so well prepared
+for.
+
+“Evan! what! after all my love, my confidence in you—I need not have
+told you—to expose us! Brother? would you? Oh!”
+
+“I will not let this last another hour,” said Evan, firmly, at the same
+time seeking to caress her. She spurned his fruitless affection,
+feeling, nevertheless, how cruel was her fate; for, with any other save
+a brother, she had arts at her disposal to melt the manliest
+resolutions. The glass showed her that her face was pathetically pale;
+the tones of her voice were rich and harrowing. What did they avail
+with a brother? “Promise me,” she cried eagerly, “promise me to stop
+here—on this spot—till I return.”
+
+The promise was extracted. The Countess went to fetch Caroline. Evan
+did not count the minutes. One thought was mounting in his brain—the
+scorn of Rose. He felt that he had lost her. Lost her when he had just
+won her! He felt it, without realizing it. The first blows of an
+immense grief are dull, and strike the heart through wool, as it were.
+The belief of the young in their sorrow has to be flogged into them, on
+the good old educational principle. Could he do less than this he was
+about to do? Rose had wedded her noble nature to him, and it was as
+much her spirit as his own that urged him thus to forfeit her, to be
+worthy of her by assuming unworthiness.
+
+There he sat neither conning over his determination nor the cause for
+it, revolving Rose’s words about Laxley, and nothing else. The words
+were so sweet and so bitter; every now and then the heavy smiting on
+his heart set it quivering and leaping, as the whip starts a jaded
+horse.
+
+Meantime the Countess was participating in a witty conversation in the
+drawing-room with Sir John and the Duke, Miss Current, and others; and
+it was not till after she had displayed many graces, and, as one or two
+ladies presumed to consider, marked effrontery, that she rose and drew
+Caroline away with her. Returning to her dressing-room, she found that
+Evan had faithfully kept his engagement; he was on the exact spot where
+she had left him.
+
+Caroline came to him swiftly, and put her hand to his forehead that she
+might the better peruse his features, saying, in her mellow caressing
+voice: “What is this, dear Van, that you will do? Why do you look so
+wretched?”
+
+“Has not Louisa told you?”
+
+“She has told me something, dear, but I don’t know what it is. That you
+are going to expose us? What further exposure do we need? I’m sure,
+Van, my pride—what I had—is gone. I have none left!”
+
+Evan kissed her brows warmly. An explanation, full of the Countess’s
+passionate outcries of justification, necessity, and innocence in
+higher than fleshly eyes, was given, and then the three were silent.
+
+“But, Van,” Caroline commenced, deprecatingly, “my darling! of what
+use—now! Whether right or wrong, why should you, why should you, when
+the thing is done, dear?—think!”
+
+“And you, too, would let another suffer under an unjust accusation?”
+said Evan.
+
+“But, dearest, it is surely your duty to think of your family first.
+Have we not been afflicted enough? Why should you lay us under this
+fresh burden?”
+
+“Because it’s better to bear all now than a life of remorse,” answered
+Evan.
+
+“But this Mr. Laxley—I cannot pity him; he has behaved so insolently to
+you throughout! Let him suffer.”
+
+“Lady Jocelyn,” said Evan, “has been unintentionally unjust to him, and
+after her kindness—apart from the right or wrong—I will not—I can’t
+allow her to continue so.”
+
+“After her kindness!” echoed the Countess, who had been fuming at
+Caroline’s weak expostulations. “Kindness! Have I not done ten times
+for these Jocelyns what they have done for us? O mio Deus! why, I have
+bestowed on them the membership for Fallowfield: I have saved her from
+being a convicted liar this very day. Worse! for what would have been
+talked of the morals of the house, supposing the scandal. Oh! indeed I
+was tempted to bring that horrid mad Captain into the house face to
+face with his flighty doll of a wife, as I, perhaps, should have done,
+acting by the dictates of my conscience. I lied for Lady Jocelyn, and
+handed the man to a lawyer, who withdrew him. And this they owe to me!
+Kindness? They have given us bed and board, as the people say. I have
+repaid them for that.”
+
+“Pray be silent, Louisa,” said Evan, getting up hastily, for the sick
+sensation Rose had experienced came over him. His sister’s plots, her
+untruth, her coarseness, clung to him and seemed part of his blood. He
+now had a personal desire to cut himself loose from the wretched
+entanglement revealed to him, whatever it cost.
+
+“Are you really, truly going?” Caroline exclaimed, for he was near the
+door.
+
+“At a quarter to twelve at night!” sneered the Countess, still
+imagining that he, like herself, must be partly acting.
+
+“But, Van, is it—dearest, think! is it manly for a brother to go and
+tell of his sister? And how would it look?”
+
+Evan smiled. “Is it that that makes you unhappy? Louisa’s name will not
+be mentioned—be sure of that.”
+
+Caroline was stooping forward to him. Her figure straightened: “Good
+Heaven, Evan! you are not going to take it on yourself? Rose!—she will
+hate you.”
+
+“God help me!” he cried internally.
+
+“Oh, Evan, darling! consider, reflect!” She fell on her knees, catching
+his hand. “It is worse for us that you should suffer, dearest! Think of
+the dreadful meanness and baseness of what you will have to
+acknowledge.”
+
+“Yes!” sighed the youth, and his eyes, in his extreme pain, turned to
+the Countess reproachfully.
+
+“Think, dear,” Caroline hurried on, “he gains nothing for whom you do
+this—you lose all. It is not your deed. You will have to speak an
+untruth. Your ideas are wrong—wrong, I know they are. You will have to
+lie. But if you are silent, the little, little blame that may attach to
+us will pass away, and we shall be happy in seeing our brother happy.”
+
+“You are talking to Evan as if he had religion,” said the Countess,
+with steady sedateness. And at that moment, from the sublimity of his
+pagan virtue, the young man groaned for some pure certain light to
+guide him: the question whether he was about to do right made him weak.
+He took Caroline’s head between his two hands, and kissed her mouth.
+The act brought Rose to his senses insufferably, and she—his Goddess of
+truth and his sole guiding light—spurred him afresh.
+
+“My family’s dishonour is mine, Caroline. Say nothing more—don’t think
+of me. I go to Lady Jocelyn tonight. To-morrow we leave, and there’s
+the end. Louisa, if you have any new schemes for my welfare, I beg you
+to renounce them.”
+
+“Gratitude I never expected from a Dawley!” the Countess retorted.
+
+“Oh, Louisa! he is going!” cried Caroline; “kneel to him with me: stop
+him: Rose loves him, and he is going to make her hate him.”
+
+“You can’t talk reason to one who’s mad,” said the Countess, more like
+the Dawley she sprang from than it would have pleased her to know.
+
+“My darling! My own Evan! it will kill me,” Caroline exclaimed, and
+passionately imploring him, she looked so hopelessly beautiful, that
+Evan was agitated, and caressed her, while he said, softly: “Where our
+honour is not involved I would submit to your smallest wish.”
+
+“It involves my life—my destiny!” murmured Caroline.
+
+Could he have known the double meaning in her words, and what a saving
+this sacrifice of his was to accomplish, he would not have turned to do
+it feeling abandoned of heaven and earth.
+
+The Countess stood rigidly as he went forth. Caroline was on her knees,
+sobbing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+A PAGAN SACRIFICE
+
+
+Three steps from the Countess’s chamber door, the knot of Evan’s
+resolution began to slacken. The clear light of his simple duty grew
+cloudy and complex. His pride would not let him think that he was
+shrinking, but cried out in him, “Will you be believed?” and whispered
+that few would believe him guilty of such an act. Yet, while something
+said that full surely Lady Jocelyn would not, a vague dread that Rose
+might, threw him back on the luxury of her love and faith in him. He
+found himself hoping that his statement would be laughed at. Then why
+make it?
+
+No: that was too blind a hope. Many would take him at his word; all—all
+save Lady Jocelyn! Rose the first! Because he stood so high with her
+now he feared the fall. Ah, dazzling pinnacle! our darlings shoot us up
+on a wondrous juggler’s pole, and we talk familiarly to the stars, and
+are so much above everybody, and try to walk like creatures with two
+legs, forgetting that we have but a pin’s point to stand on up there.
+Probably the absence of natural motion inspires the prophecy that we
+must ultimately come down: our unused legs wax morbidly restless. Evan
+thought it good that Rose should lift her head to look at him;
+nevertheless, he knew that Rose would turn from him the moment he
+descended from his superior station. Nature is wise in her young
+children, though they wot not of it, and are always trying to rush away
+from her. They escape their wits sooner than their instincts.
+
+But was not Rose involved in him, and part of him? Had he not sworn
+never to renounce her? What was this but a betrayal?
+
+Go on, young man: fight your fight. The little imps pluck at you: the
+big giant assails you: the seductions of the soft-mouthed siren are not
+wanting. Slacken the knot an instant, and they will all have play. And
+the worst is, that you may be wrong, and they may be right! For is it,
+can it be proper for you to stain the silvery whiteness of your skin by
+plunging headlong into yonder pitch-bath? Consider the defilement!
+Contemplate your hideous aspect on issuing from that black baptism!
+
+As to the honour of your family, Mr. Evan Harrington, pray, of what
+sort of metal consists the honour of a tailor’s family?
+
+One little impertinent imp ventured upon that question on his own
+account. The clever beast was torn back and strangled instantaneously
+by his experienced elders, but not before Evan’s pride had answered
+him. Exalted by Love, he could dread to abase himself and strip off his
+glittering garments; lowered by the world, he fell back upon his innate
+worth.
+
+Yes, he was called on to prove it; he was on his way to prove it.
+Surrendering his dearest and his best, casting aside his dreams, his
+desires, his aspirations, for this stern duty, he at least would know
+that he made himself doubly worthy of her who abandoned him, and the
+world would scorn him by reason of his absolute merit. Coming to this
+point, the knot of his resolve tightened again; he hugged it with the
+furious zeal of a martyr.
+
+Religion, the lack of which in him the Countess deplored, would have
+guided him and silenced the internal strife. But do not despise a
+virtue purely Pagan. The young who can act readily up to the Christian
+light are happier, doubtless: but they are led, they are passive: I
+think they do not make such capital Christians subsequently. They are
+never in such danger, we know; but some in the flock are more than
+sheep. The heathen ideal it is not so very easy to attain, and those
+who mount from it to the Christian have, in my humble thought, a firmer
+footing.
+
+So Evan fought his hard fight from the top of the stairs to the bottom.
+A Pagan, which means our poor unsupported flesh, is never certain of
+his victory. Now you will see him kneeling to his Gods, and anon
+drubbing them; or he makes them fight for him, and is complacent at the
+issue. Evan had ceased to pick his knot with one hand and pull it with
+the other: but not finding Lady Jocelyn below, and hearing that she had
+retired for the night, he mounted the stairs, and the strife
+recommenced from the bottom to the top. Strange to say, he was almost
+unaware of any struggle going on within him. The suggestion of the
+foolish little imp alone was loud in the heart of his consciousness;
+the rest hung more in his nerves than in his brain. He thought: “Well,
+I will speak it out to her in the morning”; and thought so sincerely,
+while an ominous sigh of relief at the reprieve rose from his
+over-burdened bosom.
+
+Hardly had the weary deep breath taken flight, when the figure of Lady
+Jocelyn was seen advancing along the corridor, with a lamp in her hand.
+She trod heavily, in a kind of march, as her habit was; her large
+fully-open grey eyes looking straight ahead. She would have passed him,
+and he would have let her pass, but seeing the unusual pallor on her
+face, his love for this lady moved him to step forward and express a
+hope that she had no present cause for sorrow.
+
+Hearing her mother’s name, Lady Jocelyn was about to return a
+conventional answer. Recognizing Evan, she said:
+
+“Ah! Mr. Harrington! Yes, I fear it’s as bad as it can be. She can
+scarcely outlive the night.”
+
+Again he stood alone: his chance was gone. How could he speak to her in
+her affliction? Her calm sedate visage had the beauty of its youth,
+when lighted by the animation that attends meetings or farewells. In
+her bow to Evan, he beheld a lovely kindness more unique, if less
+precious, than anything he had ever seen on the face of Rose. Half
+exultingly, he reflected that no opportunity would be allowed him now
+to teach that noble head and truest of human hearts to turn from him:
+the clear-eyed morrow would come: the days of the future would be
+bright as other days!
+
+Wrapped in the comfort of his cowardice, he started to see Lady Jocelyn
+advancing to him again.
+
+“Mr. Harrington,” she said, “Rose tells me you leave us early in the
+morning. I may as well shake your hand now. We part very good friends.
+I shall always be glad to hear of you.”
+
+Evan pressed her hand, and bowed. “I thank you, madam,” was all he
+could answer.
+
+“It will be better if you don’t write to Rose.”
+
+Her tone was rather that of a request than an injunction.
+
+“I have no right to do so, my lady.”
+
+“She considers that you have: I wish her to have, a fair trial.”
+
+His voice quavered. The philosophic lady thought it time to leave him.
+
+“So good-bye. I can trust you without extracting a promise. If you ever
+have need of a friend, you know you are at liberty to write to me.”
+
+“You are tired, my lady?” He put this question more to dally with what
+he ought to be saying.
+
+“Tolerably. Your sister, the Countess, relieves me in the night. I
+fancy my mother finds her the better nurse of the two.”
+
+Lady Jocelyn’s face lighted in its gracious pleasant way, as she just
+inclined her head: but the mention of the Countess and her attendance
+on Mrs. Bonner had nerved Evan: the contrast of her hypocrisy and vile
+scheming with this most open, noble nature, acted like a new force
+within him. He begged Lady Jocelyn’s permission to speak with her in
+private. Marking his fervid appearance, she looked at him seriously.
+
+“Is it really important?”
+
+“I cannot rest, madam, till it is spoken.”
+
+“I mean, it doesn’t pertain to the delirium? We may sleep upon that.”
+
+He divined her sufficiently to answer: “It concerns a piece of
+injustice done by you, madam, and which I can help you to set right.”
+
+Lady Jocelyn stared somewhat. “Follow me into my dressing-room,” she
+said, and led the way.
+
+Escape was no longer possible. He was on the march to execution, and
+into the darkness of his brain danced John Raikes, with his grotesque
+tribulations. It was the harsh savour of reality that conjured up this
+flighty being, who probably never felt a sorrow or a duty. The farce
+Jack lived was all that Evan’s tragic bitterness could revolve, and
+seemed to be the only light in his mind. You might have seen a smile on
+his mouth when he was ready to ask for a bolt from heaven to crush him.
+
+“Now,” said her ladyship, and he found that the four walls enclosed
+them, “what have I been doing?”
+
+She did not bid him be seated. Her brevity influenced him to speak to
+the point.
+
+“You have dismissed Mr. Laxley, my lady: he is innocent.”
+
+“How do you know that?”
+
+“Because,”—a whirl of sensations beset the wretched youth, “because I
+am guilty.”
+
+His words had run ahead of his wits; and in answer to Lady Jocelyn’s
+singular exclamation he could but simply repeat them.
+
+Her head drew back; her face was slightly raised; she looked, as he had
+seen her sometimes look at the Countess, with a sort of speculative
+amazement.
+
+“And why do you come to tell me?”
+
+“For the reason that I cannot allow you to be unjust, madam.”
+
+“What on earth was your motive?”
+
+Evan stood silent, flinching from her frank eyes.
+
+“Well, well, well!” Her ladyship dropped into a chair, and thumped her
+knees.
+
+There was lawyer’s blood in Lady Jocelyn’s veins: she had the judicial
+mind. A confession was to her a confession. She tracked actions up to a
+motive; but one who came voluntarily to confess needed no sifting. She
+had the habit of treating things spoken as facts.
+
+“You absolutely wrote that letter to Mrs. Evremonde’s husband!”
+
+Evan bowed, to avoid hearing his own lie.
+
+“You discovered his address and wrote to him, and imitated Mr. Laxley’s
+handwriting, to effect the purpose you may have had?”
+
+Her credulity did require his confirmation of it, and he repeated: “It
+is my deed.”
+
+“Hum! And you sent that premonitory slip of paper to her?”
+
+“To Mrs. Evremonde?”
+
+“Somebody else was the author of that, perhaps?”
+
+“It is all on me.”
+
+“In that case, Mr. Harrington, I can only say that it’s quite right you
+should quit this house to-morrow morning.”
+
+Her ladyship commenced rocking in her chair, and then added: “May I
+ask, have you madness in your family? No? Because when one can’t
+discern a motive, it’s natural to ascribe certain acts to madness. Had
+Mrs. Evremonde offended you? or Ferdinand—but one only hears of such
+practices towards fortunate rivals, and now you have come to undo what
+you did! I must admit, that taking the monstrousness of the act and the
+inconsequence of your proceedings together, the whole affair becomes
+more incomprehensible to me than it was before. Would it be unpleasant
+to you to favour me with explanations?”
+
+She saw the pain her question gave him, and, passing it, said:
+
+“Of course you need not be told that Rose must hear of this?”
+
+“Yes,” said Evan, “she must hear it.”
+
+“You know what that’s equivalent to? But, if you like, I will not speak
+to her till you have left us.”
+
+“Instantly,” cried Evan. “Now—to-night! I would not have her live a
+minute in a false estimate of me.”
+
+Had Lady Jocelyn’s intellect been as penetrating as it was masculine,
+she would have taken him and turned him inside out in a very short
+time; for one who would bear to see his love look coldly on him rather
+than endure a minute’s false estimate of his character, and who could
+yet stoop to concoct a vile plot, must either be mad or simulating the
+baseness for some reason or other. She perceived no motive for the
+latter, and she held him to be sound in the head, and what was spoken
+from the mouth she accepted. Perhaps, also, she saw in the complication
+thus offered an escape for Rose, and was the less inclined to elucidate
+it herself. But if her intellect was baffled, her heart was unerring. A
+man proved guilty of writing an anonymous letter would not have been
+allowed to stand long in her room. She would have shown him to the door
+of the house speedily; and Evan was aware in his soul that he had not
+fallen materially in her esteem. He had puzzled and confused her, and
+partly because she had the feeling that this young man was entirely
+trustworthy, and because she never relied on her feelings, she let his
+own words condemn him, and did not personally discard him. In fact, she
+was a veritable philosopher. She permitted her fellows to move the
+world on as they would, and had no other passions in the contemplation
+of the show than a cultured audience will usually exhibit.
+
+“Strange,—most strange! I thought I was getting old!” she said, and
+eyed the culprit as judges generally are not wont to do. “It will be a
+shock to Rose. I must tell you that I can’t regret it. I would not have
+employed force with her, but I should have given her as strong a taste
+of the world as it was in my power to give. Girls get their reason from
+society. But, come! if you think you can make your case out better to
+her, you shall speak to her first yourself.”
+
+“No, my lady,” said Evan, softly.
+
+“You would rather not?”
+
+“I could not.”
+
+“But, I suppose, she’ll want to speak to you when she knows it.”
+
+“I can take death from her hands, but I cannot slay myself.”
+
+The language was natural to his condition, though the note was pitched
+high. Lady Jocelyn hummed till the sound of it was over, and an idea
+striking her, she said:
+
+“Ah, by the way, have you any tremendous moral notions?”
+
+“I don’t think I have, madam.”
+
+“People act on that mania sometimes, I believe. Do you think it an
+outrage on decency for a wife to run away from a mad husband whom they
+won’t shut up, and take shelter with a friend? Is that the cause? Mr.
+Forth is an old friend of mine. I would trust my daughter with him in a
+desert, and stake my hand on his honour.”
+
+“Oh, Lady Jocelyn!” cried Evan. “Would to God you might ever have said
+that of me! Madam, I love you. I shall never see you again. I shall
+never meet one to treat me so generously. I leave you, blackened in
+character—you cannot think of me without contempt. I can never hope
+that this will change. But, for your kindness let me thank you.”
+
+And as speech is poor where emotion is extreme—and he knew his own to
+be especially so—he took her hand with petitioning eyes, and dropping
+on one knee, reverentially kissed it.
+
+Lady Jocelyn was human enough to like to be appreciated. She was a
+veteran Pagan, and may have had the instinct that a peculiar virtue in
+this young one was the spring of his conduct. She stood up and said:
+“Don’t forget that you have a friend here.”
+
+The poor youth had to turn his head from her.
+
+“You wish that I should tell Rose what you have told me at once, Mr.
+Harrington?”
+
+“Yes, my lady; I beg that you will do so.”
+
+“Well!”
+
+And the queer look Lady Jocelyn had been wearing dimpled into absolute
+wonder. A stranger to Love’s cunning, she marvelled why he should
+desire to witness the scorn Rose would feel for him.
+
+“If she’s not asleep, then, she shall hear it now,” said her ladyship.
+“You understand that it will be mentioned to no other person.”
+
+“Except to Mr. Laxley, madam, to whom I shall offer the satisfaction he
+may require. But I will undertake that.”
+
+“Just as you think proper on that matter,” remarked her philosophical
+ladyship, who held that man was a fighting animal, and must not have
+his nature repressed.
+
+She lighted him part of the way, and then turned off to Rose’s chamber.
+
+Would Rose believe it of him? Love combated his dismal foreboding.
+Strangely, too, now that he had plunged into his pitch-bath, the guilt
+seemed to cling to him, and instead of hoping serenely, or fearing
+steadily, his spirit fell in a kind of abject supplication to Rose, and
+blindly trusted that she would still love even if she believed him
+base. In his weakness he fell so low as to pray that she might love
+that crawling reptile who could creep into a house and shrink from no
+vileness to win her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+ROSE WOUNDED
+
+
+The light of morning was yet cold along the passages of the house when
+Polly Wheedle, hurrying to her young mistress, met her loosely dressed
+and with a troubled face.
+
+“What’s the matter, Polly? I was coming to you.”
+
+“O, Miss Rose! and I was coming to you. Miss Bonner’s gone back to her
+convulsions again. She’s had them all night. Her hair won’t last till
+thirty, if she keeps on giving way to temper, as I tell her: and I know
+that from a barber.”
+
+“Tush, you stupid Polly! Does she want to see me?”
+
+“You needn’t suspect that, Miss. But you quiet her best, and I thought
+I’d come to you. But, gracious!”
+
+Rose pushed past her without vouchsafing any answer to the look in her
+face, and turned off to Juliana’s chamber, where she was neither
+welcomed nor repelled. Juliana said she was perfectly well, and that
+Polly was foolishly officious: whereupon Rose ordered Polly out of the
+room, and said to Juliana, kindly: “You have not slept, dear, and I
+have not either. I am so unhappy.”
+
+Whether Rose intended by this communication to make Juliana eagerly
+attentive, and to distract her from her own affair, cannot be said, but
+something of the effect was produced.
+
+“You care for him, too,” cried Rose, impetuously. “Tell me, Juley: do
+you think him capable of any base action? Do you think he would do what
+any gentleman would be ashamed to own? Tell me.”
+
+Juliana looked at Rose intently, but did not reply.
+
+Rose jumped up from the bed. “You hesitate, Juley? What? Could you
+think so?”
+
+Young women after a common game are shrewd. Juliana may have seen that
+Rose was not steady on the plank she walked, and required support.
+
+“I don’t know,” she said, turning her cheek to her pillow.
+
+“What an answer!” Rose exclaimed. “Have you no opinion? What did you
+say yesterday? It’s silent as the grave with me: but if you do care for
+him, you must think one thing or the other.”
+
+“I suppose not, then—no,” said Juliana.
+
+Repeating the languid words bitterly, Rose continued:
+
+“What is it to love without having faith in him you love? You make my
+mind easier.”
+
+Juliana caught the implied taunt, and said, fretfully:
+
+“I’m ill. You’re so passionate. You don’t tell me what it is. How can I
+answer you?”
+
+“Never mind,” said Rose, moving to the door, wondering why she had
+spoken at all: but when Juliana sprang forward, and caught her by the
+dress to stop her, and with a most unwonted outburst of affection,
+begged of her to tell her all, the wound in Rose’s breast began to
+bleed, and she was glad to speak.
+
+“Juley, do you—can you believe that he wrote that letter which poor
+Ferdinand was—accused of writing?”
+
+Juliana appeared to muse, and then responded: “Why should he do such a
+thing?”
+
+“O my goodness, what a girl!” Rose interjected.
+
+“Well, then, to please you, Rose, of course I think he is too
+honourable.”
+
+“You do think so, Juley? But if he himself confessed it—what then? You
+would not believe him, would you?”
+
+“Oh, then I can’t say. Why should he condemn himself?”
+
+“But you would know—you would know that he was a man to suffer death
+rather than be guilty of the smallest baseness. His birth—what is
+that!” Rose filliped her fingers: “But his acts—what he is himself you
+would be sure of, would you not? Dear Juley! Oh, for heaven’s sake,
+speak out plainly to me.”
+
+A wily look had crept over Juliana’s features.
+
+“Certainly,” she said, in a tone that belied it, and drawing Rose to
+her bosom, the groan she heard there was passing sweet to her.
+
+“He has confessed it to Mama,” sobbed Rose. “Why did he not come to me
+first? He has confessed it—the abominable thing has come out of his own
+mouth. He went to her last night...”
+
+Juliana patted her shoulders regularly as they heaved. When words were
+intelligible between them, Juliana said:
+
+“At least, dear, you must admit that he has redeemed it.”
+
+“Redeemed it? Could he do less?” Rose dried her eyes vehemently, as if
+the tears shamed her. “A man who could have let another suffer for his
+crime—I could never have lifted my head again. I think I would have cut
+off this hand that plighted itself to him! As it is, I hardly dare look
+at myself. But you don’t think it, dear? You know it to be false!
+false! false!”
+
+“Why should Mr. Harrington confess it?” said Juliana.
+
+“Oh, don’t speak his name!” cried Rose.
+
+Her cousin smiled. “So many strange things happen,” she said, and
+sighed.
+
+“Don’t sigh: I shall think you believe it!” cried Rose. An appearance
+of constrained repose was assumed. Rose glanced up, studied for an
+instant, and breathlessly uttered: “You do, you do believe it, Juley?”
+
+For answer, Juliana hugged her with much warmth, and recommenced the
+patting.
+
+“I dare say it’s a mistake,” she remarked. “He may have been jealous of
+Ferdinand. You know I have not seen the letter. I have only heard of
+it. In love, they say, you ought to excuse... And the want of religious
+education! His sister...”
+
+Rose interrupted her with a sharp shudder. Might it not be possible
+that one who had the same blood as the Countess would stoop to a
+momentary vileness.
+
+How changed was Rose from the haughty damsel of yesterday!
+
+“Do you think my lover could tell a lie?” “He—would not love me long if
+_I_ did!”
+
+These phrases arose and rang in Juliana’s ears while she pursued the
+task of comforting the broken spirit that now lay prone on the bed, and
+now impetuously paced the room. Rose had come thinking the moment
+Juliana’s name was mentioned, that here was the one to fortify her
+faith in Evan: one who, because she loved, could not doubt him. She
+moaned in a terror of distrust, loathing her cousin: not asking herself
+why she needed support. And indeed she was too young for much clear
+self-questioning, and her blood was flowing too quickly for her brain
+to perceive more than one thing at a time.
+
+“Does your mother believe it?” said Juliana, evading a direct assault.
+
+“Mama? She never doubts what you speak,” answered Rose, disconsolately.
+
+“She does?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+Whereat Juliana looked most grave, and Rose felt that it was hard to
+breathe.
+
+She had grown very cold and calm, and Juliana had to be expansive
+unprovoked.
+
+“Believe nothing, dear, till you hear it from his own lips. If he can
+look in your face and say that he did it... well, then! But of course
+he cannot. It must be some wonderful piece of generosity to his rival.”
+
+“So I thought, Juley! so I thought,” cried Rose, at the new light, and
+Juliana smiled contemptuously, and the light flickered and died, and
+all was darker than before in the bosom of Rose. She had borne so much
+that this new drop was poison.
+
+“Of course it must be that, if it is anything,” Juliana pursued. “You
+were made to be happy, Rose. And consider, if it is true, people of
+very low birth, till they have lived long with other people, and if
+they have no religion, are so very likely to do things. You do not
+judge them as you do real gentlemen, and one must not be too harsh—I
+only wish to prepare you for the worst.”
+
+A dim form of that very idea had passed through Rose, giving her small
+comfort.
+
+“Let him tell you with his own lips that what he has told your mother
+is true, and then, and not till then, believe him,” Juliana concluded,
+and they kissed kindly, and separated. Rose had suddenly lost her firm
+step, but no sooner was Juliana alone than she left the bed, and
+addressed her visage to the glass with brightening eyes, as one who saw
+the glimmer of young hope therein.
+
+“She love him! Not if he told me so ten thousand times would I believe
+it! and before he has said a syllable she doubts him. Asking me in that
+frantic way! as if I couldn’t see that she wanted me to help her to her
+faith in him, as she calls it. Not name his name? Mr. Harrington! I may
+call him Evan: some day!”
+
+Half-uttered, half-mused, the unconscious exclamations issued from her,
+and for many a weary day since she had dreamed of love, and studied
+that which is said to attract the creature, she had not been so
+glowingly elated or looked so much farther in the glass than its pale
+reflection.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+BEFORE BREAKFAST
+
+
+Cold through the night the dark-fringed stream had whispered under
+Evan’s eyes, and the night breeze voiced “Fool, fool!” to him, not
+without a distant echo in his heart. By symbols and sensations he knew
+that Rose was lost to him. There was no moon: the water seemed aimless,
+passing on carelessly to oblivion. Now and then, the trees stirred and
+talked, or a noise was heard from the pastures. He had slain the life
+that lived in them, and the great glory they were to bring forth, and
+the end to which all things moved. Had less than the loss of Rose been
+involved, the young man might have found himself looking out on a world
+beneath notice, and have been sighing for one more worthy of his
+clouded excellence but the immense misery present to him in the
+contemplation of Rose’s sad restrained contempt, saved him from the
+silly elation which is the last, and generally successful, struggle of
+human nature in those who can so far master it to commit a sacrifice.
+The loss of that brave high young soul—Rose, who had lifted him out of
+the mire with her own white hands: Rose, the image of all that he
+worshipped: Rose, so closely wedded to him that to be cut away from her
+was to fall like pallid clay from the soaring spirit: surely he was
+stunned and senseless when he went to utter the words to her mother!
+Now that he was awake, and could feel his self-inflicted pain, he
+marvelled at his rashness and foolishness, as perhaps numerous mangled
+warriors have done for a time, when the battle-field was cool, and they
+were weak, and the uproar of their jarred nerves has beset them, lying
+uncherished.
+
+By degrees he grew aware of a little consolatory touch, like the point
+of a needle, in his consciousness. Laxley would certainly insult him!
+In that case he would not refuse to fight him. The darkness broke and
+revealed this happy prospect, and Evan held to it an hour, and could
+hardly reject it when better thoughts conquered. For would it not be
+sweet to make the strength of his arm respected? He took a stick, and
+ran his eye musingly along the length, trifling with it grimly. The
+great Mel had been his son’s instructor in the chivalrous science of
+fence, and a _maître d’armes_ in Portugal had given him polish. In
+Mel’s time duels with swords had been occasionally fought, and Evan
+looked on the sword as the weapon of combat. Face to face with his
+adversary—what then were birth or position? Action!—action! he sighed
+for it, as I have done since I came to know that his history must be
+morally developed. A glow of bitter pleasure exalted him when, after
+hot passages, and parryings and thrusts, he had disarmed Ferdinand
+Laxley, and bestowing on him his life, said: “Accept this worthy gift
+of the son of a tailor!” and he wiped his sword, haply bound up his
+wrist, and stalked off the ground, the vindicator of man’s natural
+dignity. And then he turned upon himself with laughter, discovering a
+most wholesome power, barely to be suspected in him yet; but of all the
+children of glittering Mel and his solid mate, Evan was the best mixed
+compound of his parents.
+
+He put the stick back in its corner and eyed his wrist, as if he had
+really just gone through the pretty scene he had just laughed at. It
+was nigh upon reality, for it suggested the employment of a
+handkerchief, and he went to a place and drew forth one that had the
+stain of his blood on it, and the name of Rose at one end. The beloved
+name was half-blotted by the dull-red mark, and at that sight a strange
+tenderness took hold of Evan. His passions became dead and of old date.
+This, then, would be his for ever! Love, for whom earth had been too
+small, crept exultingly into a nut-shell. He clasped the treasure on
+his breast, and saw a life beyond his parting with her.
+
+Strengthened thus, he wrote by the morning light to Laxley. The letter
+was brief, and said simply that the act of which Laxley had been
+accused, Evan Harrington was responsible for. The latter expressed
+regret that Laxley should have fallen under a false charge, and, at the
+same time, indicated that if Laxley considered himself personally
+aggrieved, the writer was at his disposal.
+
+A messenger had now to be found to convey it to the village-inn.
+Footmen were stirring about the house, and one meeting Evan close by
+his door, observed with demure grin, that he could not find the
+gentleman’s nether-garments. The gentleman, it appeared, was Mr. John
+Raikes, who according to report, had been furnished with a bed at the
+house, because of a discovery, made at a late period over-night, that
+farther the gentleman could not go. Evan found him sleeping soundly.
+How much the poor youth wanted a friend! Fortune had given him instead
+a born buffoon; and it is perhaps the greatest evil of a position like
+Evan’s, that, with cultured feelings, you are likely to meet with none
+to know you. Society does not mix well in money-pecking spheres. Here,
+however, was John Raikes, and Evan had to make the best of him.
+
+“Eh?” yawned Jack, awakened; “I was dreaming I was Napoleon Bonaparte’s
+right-hand man.”
+
+“I want you to be mine for half-an-hour,” said Evan.
+
+Without replying, the distinguished officer jumped out of bed at a
+bound, mounted a chair, and peered on tip-toe over the top, from which,
+with a glance of self-congratulation, he pulled the missing piece of
+apparel, sighed dejectedly as he descended, while he exclaimed:
+
+“Safe! but no distinction can compensate a man for this state of
+intolerable suspicion of everybody. I assure you, Harrington, I
+wouldn’t be Napoleon himself—and I have always been his peculiar
+admirer—to live and be afraid of my valet! I believe it will develop
+cancer sooner or later in me. I feel singular pains already. Last
+night, after crowning champagne with ale, which produced a sort of
+French Revolution in my interior—by the way, that must have made me
+dream of Napoleon last night, with my lower members in revolt against
+my head, I had to sit and cogitate for hours on a hiding-place for
+these—call them what you will. Depend upon it, Harrington, this world
+is no such funny affair as we fancy.”
+
+“Then it is true, that you could let a man play pranks on you,” said
+Evan. “I took it for one of your jokes.”
+
+“Just as I can’t believe that you’re a tailor,” returned Jack. “It’s
+not a bit more extraordinary.”
+
+“But, Jack, if you cause yourself to be contemptible——”
+
+“Contemptible!” cried Jack. “This is not the tone I like. Contemptible!
+why it’s my eccentricity among my equals. If I dread the profane
+vulgar, that only proves that I’m above them. _Odi_, etc. Besides,
+Achilles had his weak point, and egad, it was when he faced about! By
+Jingo! I wish I’d had that idea yesterday. I should have behaved
+better.”
+
+Evan could see that the creature was beginning to rely desperately on
+his humour.
+
+“Come,” he said, “be a man to-day. Throw off your motley. When I met
+you that night so oddly, you had been acting like a worthy fellow,
+trying to earn your bread in the best way you could—”
+
+“And precisely because I met you, of all men, I’ve been going round and
+round ever since,” said Jack. “A clown or pantaloon would have given me
+balance. Say no more. You couldn’t help it. We met because we were the
+two extremes.”
+
+Sighing, “What a jolly old inn!” Raikes rolled himself over in the
+sheets, and gave two or three snug jolts indicative of his
+determination to be comfortable while he could.
+
+“Do you intend to carry on this folly, Jack?”
+
+“Say, sacrifice,” was the answer. “I feel it as much as you possibly
+could, Mr. Harrington. Hear the facts,” Jack turned round again. “Why
+did I consent to this absurdity? Because of my ambition. That old
+fellow, whom I took to be a clerk of Messrs. Grist, said: ‘You want to
+cut a figure in the world—you’re armed now.’ A sort of Fortunatus’s
+joke. It was his way of launching me. But did he think I intended this
+for more than a lift? I his puppet? He, sir, was my tool! Well, I came.
+All my efforts were strained to shorten the period of penance. I had
+the best linen, and put on captivating manners. I should undoubtedly
+have won some girl of station, and cast off my engagement like an old
+suit, but just mark!—now mark how Fortune tricks us! After the pic-nic
+yesterday, the domestics of the house came to clear away, and the band
+being there, I stopped them and bade them tune up, and at the same time
+seizing the maid Wheedle, away we flew. We danced, we whirled, we
+twirled. Ale upon this! My head was lost. ‘Why don’t it last for ever?’
+says I. ‘I wish it did,’ says she. The naivete enraptured me. ‘Oooo!’ I
+cried, hugging her, and then, you know, there was no course open to a
+man of honour but to offer marriage and make a lady of her. I proposed:
+she accepted me, and here I am, eternally tied to this accurst
+insignia, if I’m to keep my promise! Isn’t that a sacrifice, friend H.?
+There’s no course open to me. The poor girl is madly in love. She
+called me a ‘rattle!’ As a gentleman, I cannot recede.”
+
+Evan got up and burst into damnable laughter at this burlesque of
+himself. Telling the fellow the service he required, and receiving a
+groaning assurance that the letter should, without loss of time, be
+delivered in proper style, the egoist, as Jack heartily thought him,
+fell behind his; knitted brows, and, after musing abstractedly, went
+forth to light upon his fate.
+
+But a dread of meeting had seized both Rose and Evan. She had exhausted
+her first sincerity of unbelief in her interview with Juliana: and he
+had begun to consider what he could say to her. More than the three
+words “I did it,” would not be possible; and if she made him repeat
+them, facing her truthful eyes, would he be man enough to strike her
+bared heart twice? And, ah! the sullen brute he must seem, standing
+before her dumb, hearing her sigh, seeing her wretched effort not to
+show how unwillingly her kind spirit despised him. The reason for the
+act—she would ask for that! Rose would not be so philosophic as her
+mother. She would grasp at every chance to excuse the deed. He cried
+out against his scheming sister in an agony, and while he did so,
+encountered Miss Carrington and Miss Bonner in deep converse. Juliana
+pinched her arm, whereupon Miss Carrington said: “You look merry this
+morning, Mr. Harrington”: for he was unawares smiling at the image of
+himself in the mirror of John Raikes. That smile, transformed to a
+chuckling grimace, travelled to Rose before they met.
+
+Why did she not come to him?
+
+A soft voice at his elbow made his blood stop. It was Caroline. She
+kissed him, answering his greeting: “Is it good morning?”
+
+“Certainly,” said he. “By the way, don’t forget that the coach leaves
+early.”
+
+“My darling Evan! you make me so happy. For it was really a mistaken
+sense of honour. For what can at all excuse a falsehood, you know,
+Evan!”
+
+Caroline took his arm, and led him into the sun, watching his face at
+times. Presently she said: “I want just to be assured that you thought
+more wisely than when you left us last night.”
+
+“More wisely?” Evan turned to her with a playful smile.
+
+“My dear brother! you did not do what you said you would do?”
+
+“Have you ever known me not to do what I said I would do?”
+
+“Evan! Good heaven! you did it? Then how can you remain here an
+instant? Oh, no, no!—say no, darling!”
+
+“Where is Louisa?” he inquired.
+
+“She is in her room. She will never appear at breakfast, if she knows
+this.”
+
+“Perhaps more solitude would do her good,” said Evan.
+
+“Remember, if this should prove true, think how you punish her!”
+
+On that point Evan had his own opinion.
+
+“Well, I shall never have to punish you in this way, my love,” he said
+fondly, and Caroline dropped her eyelids.
+
+“Don’t think that I am blaming her,” he added, trying to feel as
+honestly as he spoke. “I was mad to come here. I see it all now. Let us
+keep to our place. We are all the same before God till we disgrace
+ourselves.” Possibly with that sense of shame which some young people
+have who are not professors of sounding sentences, or affected by
+missionary zeal, when they venture to breathe the holy name, Evan
+blushed, and walked on humbly silent. Caroline murmured: “Yes, yes! oh,
+brother!” and her figure drew to him as if for protection. Pale, she
+looked up.
+
+“Shall you always love me, Evan?”
+
+“Whom else have I to love?”
+
+“But always—always? Under any circumstances?”
+
+“More and more, dear. I always have, and shall. I look to you now. I
+have no home but in your heart now.”
+
+She was agitated, and he spoke warmly to calm her.
+
+The throb of deep emotion rang in her rich voice. “I will live any life
+to be worthy of your love, Evan,” and she wept.
+
+To him they were words and tears without a history.
+
+Nothing further passed between them. Caroline went to the Countess:
+Evan waited for Rose. The sun was getting high. The face of the stream
+glowed like metal. Why did she not come? She believed him guilty from
+the mouth of another? If so, there was something less for him to lose.
+And now the sacrifice he had made did whisper a tale of mortal
+magnificence in his ears: feelings that were not his noblest stood up
+exalted. He waited till the warm meadow-breath floating past told that
+the day had settled into heat, and then he waited no more, but quietly
+walked into the house with the strength of one who has conquered more
+than human scorn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+THE RETREAT FROM BECKLEY
+
+
+Never would the Countess believe that brother of hers, idiot as by
+nature he might be, and heir to unnumbered epithets, would so far
+forget what she had done for him, as to drag her through the mud for
+nothing: and so she told Caroline again and again, vehemently.
+
+It was about ten minutes before the time for descending to the
+breakfast-table. She was dressed, and sat before the glass, smoothing
+her hair, and applying the contents of a pot of cold cream to her
+forehead between-whiles. With perfect sincerity she repeated that she
+could not believe it. She had only trusted Evan once since their visit
+to Beckley; and that this once he should, when treated as a man, turn
+traitor to their common interests, and prove himself an utter baby, was
+a piece of nonsense her great intelligence indignantly rejected.
+
+“Then, if true,” she answered Caroline’s assurances finally, “if true,
+he is not his father’s son!”
+
+By which it may be seen that she had indeed taken refuge in the Castle
+of Negation against the whole army of facts.
+
+“He is acting, Carry. He is acting the ideas of his ridiculous empty
+noddle!”
+
+“No,” said Caroline, mournfully, “he is not. I have never known Evan to
+lie.”
+
+“Then you must forget the whipping he once had from his mother—little
+dolt! little selfish pig! He obtains his reputation entirely from his
+abominable selfishness, and then stands tall, and asks us to admire
+him. He bursts with vanity. But if you lend your credence to it, Carry,
+how, in the name of goodness, are you to appear at the breakfast?
+
+“I was going to ask you whether you would come,” said Caroline, coldly.
+
+“If I can get my hair to lie flat by any means at all, of course!”
+returned the Countess. “This dreadful horrid country pomade! Why did we
+not bring a larger stock of the Andalugian Regenerator? Upon my honour,
+my dear, you use a most enormous quantity; I must really tell you
+that.”
+
+Conning here entered to say that Mr. Evan had given orders for the
+boxes to be packed and everything got ready to depart by half-past
+eleven o’clock, when the fly would call for them and convey them to
+Fallowfield in time to meet the coach for London.
+
+The Countess turned her head round to Caroline like an astonished
+automaton.
+
+“Given orders!” she interjected.
+
+“I have very little to get ready,” remarked Caroline.
+
+“Be so good as to wait outside the door one instant,” said the Countess
+to Conning, with particular urbanity.
+
+Conning heard a great deal of vigorous whispering within, and when
+summoned to re-appear, a note was handed to her to convey to Mr.
+Harrington immediately. He was on the lawn; read it, and wrote back
+three hasty lines in pencil.
+
+“Louisa. You have my commands to quit this house, at the hour named,
+this day. You will go with me. E. H.”
+
+Conning was again requested to wait outside the Countess’s door. She
+was the bearer of another note. Evan read it likewise; tore it up, and
+said that there was no answer.
+
+The Castle of Negation held out no longer. Ruthless battalions poured
+over the walls, blew up the Countess’s propriety, made frightful
+ravages in her complexion. Down fell her hair.
+
+“You cannot possibly go to breakfast,” said Caroline.
+
+“I must! I must!” cried the Countess. “Why, my dear, if he has done
+it—wretched creature! don’t you perceive that, by withholding our
+presences, we become implicated with him?” And the Countess, from a
+burst of frenzy, put this practical question so shrewdly, that
+Caroline’s wits succumbed to her.
+
+“But he has not done it; he is acting!” she pursued, restraining her
+precious tears for higher purposes, as only true heroines can. “Thinks
+to frighten me into submission!”
+
+“Do you not think Evan is right in wishing us to leave, after—after—”
+Caroline humbly suggested.
+
+“Say, before my venerable friend has departed this life,” the Countess
+took her up. “No, I do not. If he is a fool, I am not. No, Carry: I do
+not jump into ditches for nothing. I will have something tangible for
+all that I have endured. We are now tailors in this place, remember. If
+that stigma is affixed to us, let us at least be remunerated for it.
+Come.”
+
+Caroline’s own hard struggle demanded all her strength yet she appeared
+to hesitate. “You will surely not disobey Evan, Louisa?”
+
+“Disobey?” The Countess amazedly dislocated the syllables. “Why, the
+boy will be telling you next that he will not permit the Duke to visit
+you! Just your English order of mind, that cannot—brutes!—conceive of
+friendship between high-born men and beautiful women. Beautiful as you
+truly are, Carry, five years more will tell on you. But perhaps my
+dearest is in a hurry to return to her Maxwell? At least he thwacks
+well!”
+
+Caroline’s arm was taken. The Countess loved an occasional rhyme when a
+point was to be made, and went off nodding and tripping till the time
+for stateliness arrived, near the breakfast-room door. She indeed was
+acting. At the bottom of her heart there was a dismal rage of passions:
+hatred of those who would or might look tailor in her face: terrors
+concerning the possible re-visitation of the vengeful Sir Abraham:
+dread of Evan and the efforts to despise him: the shocks of many
+conflicting elements. Above it all her countenance was calmly, sadly
+sweet: even as you may behold some majestic lighthouse glimmering over
+the tumult of a midnight sea.
+
+An unusual assemblage honoured the breakfast that morning. The news of
+Mrs. Bonner’s health was more favourable. How delighted was the
+Countess to hear that! Mrs. Bonner was the only firm ground she stood
+on there, and after receiving and giving gentle salutes, she talked of
+Mrs. Bonner, and her night-watch by the sick bed, in a spirit of
+doleful hope. This passed off the moments till she could settle herself
+to study faces. Decidedly, every lady present looked glum, with the
+single exception of Miss Current. Evan was by Lady Jocelyn’s side. Her
+ladyship spoke to him; but the Countess observed that no one else did.
+To herself, however, the gentlemen were as attentive as ever. Evan sat
+three chairs distant from her.
+
+If the traitor expected his sister to share in his disgrace, by
+noticing him, he was in error. On the contrary, the Countess joined the
+conspiracy to exclude him, and would stop a mild laugh if perchance he
+looked up. Presently Rose entered. She said “Good morning” to one or
+two, and glided into a seat.
+
+That Evan was under Lady Jocelyn’s protection soon became generally
+apparent, and also that her ladyship was angry: an exhibition so rare
+with her that it was the more remarked. Rose could see that she was a
+culprit in her mother’s eyes. She glanced from Evan to her. Lady
+Jocelyn’s mouth shut hard. The girl’s senses then perceived the
+something that was afloat at the table; she thought with a pang of
+horror: “Has Juliana told?” Juliana smiled on her; but the aspect of
+Mrs. Shorne, and of Miss Carrington, spoke for their knowledge of that
+which must henceforth be the perpetual reproof to her headstrong youth.
+
+“At what hour do you leave us?” said Lady Jocelyn to Evan.
+
+“When I leave the table, my lady. The fly will call for my sisters at
+half-past eleven.”
+
+“There is no necessity for you to start in advance?”
+
+“I am going over to see my mother.”
+
+Rose burned to speak to him now. Oh! why had she delayed! Why had she
+swerved from her good rule of open, instant explanations? But Evan’s
+heart was stern to his love. Not only had she, by not coming, shown her
+doubt of him,—she had betrayed him!
+
+Between the Countess, Melville, Sir John, and the Duke, an animated
+dialogue was going on, over which Miss Current played like a lively
+iris. They could not part with the Countess. Melville said he should be
+left stranded, and numerous pretty things were uttered by other
+gentlemen: by the women not a word. Glancing from certain of them
+lingeringly to her admirers, the Countess smiled her thanks, and then
+Andrew, pressed to remain, said he was willing and happy, and so forth;
+and it seemed that her admirers had prevailed over her reluctance, for
+the Countess ended her little protests with a vanquished bow. Then
+there was a gradual rising from table. Evan pressed Lady Jocelyn’s
+hand, and turning from her bent his head to Sir Franks, who, without
+offering an exchange of cordialities, said, at arm’s length: “Good-bye,
+sir.” Melville also gave him that greeting stiffly. Harry was perceived
+to rush to the other end of the room, in quest of a fly apparently.
+Poor Caroline’s heart ached for her brother, to see him standing there
+in the shadow of many faces. But he was not left to stand alone. Andrew
+quitted the circle of Sir John, Seymour Jocelyn, Mr. George Uplift, and
+others, and linked his arm to Evan’s. Rose had gone. While Evan looked
+for her despairingly to say his last word and hear her voice once more,
+Sir Franks said to his wife:
+
+“See that Rose keeps up-stairs.”
+
+“I want to speak to her,” was her ladyship’s answer, and she moved to
+the door.
+
+Evan made way for her, bowing.
+
+“You will be ready at half-past eleven, Louisa,” he said, with calm
+distinctness, and passed from that purgatory.
+
+Now honest Andrew attributed the treatment Evan met with to the
+exposure of yesterday. He was frantic with democratic disgust.
+
+“Why the devil don’t they serve me like that; eh? ’Cause I got a few
+coppers! There, Van! I’m a man of peace; but if you’ll call any man of
+’em out I’ll stand your second—’pon my soul, I will. They must be
+cowards, so there isn’t much to fear. Confound the fellows, I tell ’em
+every day I’m the son of a cobbler, and egad, they grow civiller. What
+do they mean? Are cobblers ranked over tailors?”
+
+“Perhaps that’s it,” said Evan.
+
+“Hang your gentlemen!” Andrew cried.
+
+“Let us have breakfast first,” uttered a melancholy voice near them in
+the passage.
+
+“Jack!” said Evan. “Where have you been?”
+
+“I didn’t know the breakfast-room,” Jack returned, “and the fact is, my
+spirits are so down, I couldn’t muster up courage to ask one of the
+footmen. I delivered your letter. Nothing hostile took place. I bowed
+fiercely to let him know what he might expect. That generally stops it.
+You see, I talk prose. I shall never talk anything else!”
+
+Andrew recommenced his jests of yesterday with Jack. The latter bore
+them patiently, as one who had endured worse.
+
+“She has rejected me!” he whispered to Evan. “Talk of the ingratitude
+of women! Ten minutes ago I met her. She perked her eyebrows at
+me!—tried to run away. ‘Miss Wheedle’: I said. ‘If you please, I’d
+rather not,’ says she. To cut it short, the sacrifice I made to her was
+the cause. It’s all over the house. She gave the most excruciating
+hint. Those low-born females are so horribly indelicate. I stood
+confounded.”
+
+Commending his new humour, Evan persuaded him to breakfast immediately,
+and hunger being one of Jack’s solitary incitements to a sensible
+course of conduct, the disconsolate gentleman followed its dictates.
+“Go with him, Andrew,” said Evan. “He is here as my friend, and may be
+made uncomfortable.”
+
+“Yes, yes,—ha! ha! I’ll follow the poor chap,” said Andrew. “But what
+is it all about? Louisa won’t go, you know. Has the girl given you up
+because she saw your mother, Van? I thought it was all right. Why the
+deuce are you running away?”
+
+“Because I’ve just seen that I ought never to have come, I suppose,”
+Evan replied, controlling the wretched heaving of his chest.
+
+“But Louisa won’t go, Van.”
+
+“Understand, my dear Andrew, that I know it to be quite imperative. Be
+ready yourself with Caroline. Louisa will then make her choice. Pray
+help me in this. We must not stay a minute more than is necessary in
+this house.”
+
+“It’s an awful duty,” breathed Andrew, after a pause. “I see nothing
+but hot water at home. Why—but it’s no use asking questions. My love to
+your mother. I say, Van,—now isn’t Lady Jocelyn a trump?”
+
+“God bless her!” said Evan. And the moisture in Andrew’s eyes affected
+his own.
+
+“She’s the staunchest piece of woman-goods I ever—I know a hundred
+cases of her!”
+
+“I know one, and that’s enough,” said Evan.
+
+Not a sign of Rose! Can Love die without its dear farewell on which it
+feeds, away from the light, dying by bits? In Evan’s heart Love seemed
+to die, and all the pangs of a death were there as he trod along the
+gravel and stepped beneath the gates of Beckley Court.
+
+Meantime the gallant Countess was not in any way disposed to retreat on
+account of Evan’s defection. The behaviour toward him at the
+breakfast-table proved to her that he had absolutely committed his
+egregious folly, and as no General can have concert with a fool, she
+cut him off from her affections resolutely. Her manifest disdain at his
+last speech, said as much to everybody present. Besides, the lady was
+in her element here, and compulsion is required to make us relinquish
+our element. Lady Jocelyn certainly had not expressly begged of her to
+remain: the Countess told Melville so, who said that if she required
+such an invitation she should have it, but that a guest to whom they
+were so much indebted, was bound to spare them these formalities.
+
+“What am I to do?”
+
+The Countess turned piteously to the diplomatist’s wife.
+
+She answered, retiringly: “Indeed I cannot say.”
+
+Upon this, the Countess accepted Melville’s arm, and had some thoughts
+of punishing the woman.
+
+They were seen parading the lawn. Mr. George Uplift chuckled
+singularly.
+
+“Just the old style,” he remarked, but corrected the inadvertence with
+a “hem!” committing himself more shamefully the instant after. “I’ll
+wager she has the old Dip. down on his knee before she cuts.”
+
+“Bet can’t be taken,” observed Sir John Loring. “It requires a spy.”
+
+Harry, however, had heard the remark, and because he wished to speak to
+her, let us hope, and reproach her for certain things when she chose to
+be disengaged, he likewise sallied out, being forlorn as a youth whose
+sweet vanity is much hurt.
+
+The Duke had paired off with Mrs. Strike. The lawn was fair in sunlight
+where they walked. The air was rich with harvest smells, and the scent
+of autumnal roses. Caroline was by nature luxurious and soft. The
+thought of that drilled figure to which she was returning in bondage,
+may have thrown into bright relief the polished and gracious nobleman
+who walked by her side, shadowing forth the chances of a splendid
+freedom. Two lovely tears fell from her eyes. The Duke watched them
+quietly.
+
+“Do you know, they make me jealous?” he said.
+
+Caroline answered him with a faint smile.
+
+“Reassure me, my dear lady; you are not going with your brother this
+morning?”
+
+“Your Grace, I have no choice!”
+
+“May I speak to you as your warmest friend? From what I hear, it
+appears to be right that your brother should not stay. To the best of
+my ability I will provide for him: but I sincerely desire to disconnect
+you from those who are unworthy of you. Have you not promised to trust
+in me? Pray, let me be your guide.”
+
+Caroline replied to the heart of his words: “I dare not.”
+
+“What has changed you?”
+
+“I am not changed, but awakened,” said Caroline.
+
+The Duke paced on in silence.
+
+“Pardon me if I comprehend nothing of such a change,” he resumed. “I
+asked you to sacrifice much; all that I could give in return I offered.
+Is it the world you fear?”
+
+“What is the world to such as I am?”
+
+“Can you consider it a duty to deliver yourself bound to that man
+again?”
+
+“Heaven pardon me, my lord, I think of that too little!”
+
+The Duke’s next question: “Then what can it be?” stood in his eyes.
+
+“Oh!” Caroline’s touch quivered on his arm, “Do not suppose me
+frivolous, ungrateful, or—or cowardly. For myself you have offered more
+happiness than I could have hoped for. To be allied to one so generous,
+I could bear anything. Yesterday you had my word: give it me back
+to-day!”
+
+Very curiously the Duke gazed on her, for there was evidence of
+internal torture across her forehead.
+
+“I may at least beg to know the cause for this request?”
+
+She quelled some throbbing in her bosom. “Yes.”
+
+He waited, and she said: “There is one—if I offended him, I could not
+live. If now I followed my wishes, he would lose his faith in the last
+creature that loves him. He is unhappy. I could bear what is called
+disgrace, my lord—I shudder to say it—I could sin against heaven; but I
+dare not do what would make him despise me.”
+
+She was trembling violently; yet the nobleman, in his surprise, could
+not forbear from asking who this person might be, whose influence on
+her righteous actions was so strong.
+
+“It is my brother, my lord,” she said.
+
+Still more astonished, “Your brother!” the Duke exclaimed. “My dearest
+lady, I would not wound you; but is not this a delusion? We are so
+placed that we must speak plainly. Your brother I have reason to feel
+sure is quite unworthy of you.”
+
+“Unworthy? My brother Evan? Oh! he is noble, he is the best of men!”
+
+“And how, between yesterday and to-day, has he changed you?”
+
+“It is that yesterday I did not know him, and to-day I do.”
+
+Her brother, a common tradesman, a man guilty of forgery and the utmost
+baseness—all but kicked out of the house! The Duke was too delicate to
+press her further. Moreover, Caroline had emphasized the “yesterday”
+and “to-day,” showing that the interval which had darkened Evan to
+everybody else, had illumined him to her. He employed some courtly
+eloquence, better unrecorded; but if her firm resolution perplexed him,
+it threw a strange halo round the youth from whom it sprang.
+
+The hour was now eleven, and the Countess thought it full time to
+retire to her entrenchment in Mrs. Bonner’s chamber. She had great
+things still to do: vast designs were in her hand awaiting the sanction
+of Providence. Alas! that little idle promenade was soon to be
+repented. She had joined her sister, thinking it safer to have her
+upstairs till they were quit of Evan. The Duke and the diplomatist
+loitering in the rear, these two fair women sailed across the lawn,
+conscious, doubtless, over all their sorrows and schemes, of the
+freight of beauty they carried.
+
+What meant that gathering on the steps? It was fortuitous, like
+everything destined to confound us. There stood Lady Jocelyn with
+Andrew, fretting his pate. Harry leant against a pillar, Miss
+Carrington, Mrs. Shorne, and Mrs. Melville, supported by Mr. George
+Uplift, held watchfully by. Juliana, with Master Alec and Miss Dorothy,
+were in the background.
+
+Why did our General see herself cut off from her stronghold, as by a
+hostile band? She saw it by that sombre light in Juliana’s eyes, which
+had shown its ominous gleam whenever disasters were on the point of
+unfolding.
+
+Turning to Caroline, she said: “Is there a back way?”
+
+Too late! Andrew called.
+
+“Come along, Louisa, Just time, and no more. Carry, are you packed?”
+
+This in reality was the first note of the retreat from Beckley; and
+having blown it, the hideous little trumpeter burst into scarlet
+perspirations, mumbling to Lady Jocelyn: “Now, my lady, mind you stand
+by me.”
+
+The Countess walked straight up to him.
+
+“Dear Andrew! this sun is too powerful for you. I beg you, withdraw
+into the shade of the house.”
+
+She was about to help him with all her gentleness.
+
+“Yes, yes. All right, Louisa,” rejoined Andrew. “Come, go and pack. The
+fly’ll be here, you know—too late for the coach, if you don’t mind, my
+lass. Ain’t you packed yet?”
+
+The horrible fascination of vulgarity impelled the wretched lady to
+answer: “Are we herrings?” And then she laughed, but without any
+accompaniment.
+
+“I am now going to dear Mrs. Bonner,” she said, with a tender glance at
+Lady Jocelyn.
+
+“My mother is sleeping,” her ladyship remarked.
+
+“Come, Carry, my darling!” cried Andrew.
+
+Caroline looked at her sister. The Countess divined Andrew’s shameful
+trap.
+
+“I was under an engagement to go and canvass this afternoon,” she said.
+
+“Why, my dear Louisa, we’ve settled that in here this morning,” said
+Andrew. “Old Tom only stuck up a puppet to play with. We’ve knocked him
+over, and march in victorious—eh, my lady?”
+
+“Oh!” exclaimed the Countess, “if Mr. Raikes shall indeed have listened
+to my inducements!”
+
+“Deuce a bit of inducements!” returned Andrew. “The fellow’s ashamed of
+himself—ha! ha! Now then, Louisa.”
+
+While they talked, Juliana had loosed Dorothy and Alec, and these imps
+were seen rehearsing a remarkable play, in which the damsel held forth
+a hand and the cavalier advanced and kissed it with a loud smack, being
+at the same time reproached for his lack of grace.
+
+“You are so English!” cried Dorothy, with perfect languor, and a
+malicious twitter passed between two or three. Mr. George spluttered
+indiscreetly.
+
+The Countess observed the performance. Not to convert the retreat into
+a total rout, she, with that dark flush which was her manner of
+blushing, took formal leave of Lady Jocelyn, who, in return, simply
+said: “Good-bye, Countess.” Mrs. Strike’s hand she kindly shook.
+
+The few digs and slaps and thrusts at gloomy Harry and prim Miss
+Carrington and boorish Mr. George, wherewith the Countess, torn with
+wrath, thought it necessary to cover her retreat, need not be told. She
+struck the weak alone: Juliana she respected. Masterly tactics, for
+they showed her power, gratified her vengeance, and left her
+unassailed. On the road she had Andrew to tear to pieces. O delicious
+operation! And O shameful brother to reduce her to such joys! And, O
+Providence! may a poor desperate soul, betrayed through her devotion,
+unremunerated for her humiliation and absolute hard work, accuse thee?
+The Countess would have liked to. She felt it to be the instigation of
+the devil, and decided to remain on the safe side still.
+
+Happily for Evan, she was not ready with her packing by half-past
+eleven. It was near twelve when he, pacing in front of the inn,
+observed Polly Wheedle, followed some yards in the rear by John Raikes,
+advancing towards him. Now Polly had been somewhat delayed by Jack’s
+persecutions, and Evan declining to attend to the masked speech of her
+mission, which directed him to go at once down a certain lane in the
+neighbourhood of the park, some minutes were lost.
+
+“Why, Mr. Harrington,” said Polly, “it’s Miss Rose: she’s had leave
+from her Ma. Can you stop away, when it’s quite proper?”
+
+Evan hesitated. Before he could conquer the dark spirit, lo, Rose
+appeared, walking up the village street. Polly and her adorer fell
+back.
+
+Timidly, unlike herself, Rose neared him.
+
+“I have offended you, Evan. You would not come to me: I have come to
+you.”
+
+“I am glad to be able to say good-bye to you, Rose,” was his pretty
+response.
+
+Could she have touched his hand then, the blood of these lovers rushing
+to one channel must have made all clear. At least he could hardly have
+struck her true heart with his miserable lie. But that chance was lost:
+they were in the street, where passions have no play.
+
+“Tell me, Evan,—it is not true.”
+
+He, refining on his misery, thought, She would not ask it if she
+trusted me: and answered her: “You have heard it from your mother,
+Rose.”
+
+“But I will not believe it from any lips but yours, Evan. Oh, speak,
+speak!”
+
+It pleased him to think: How could one who loved me believe it even
+then?
+
+He said: “It can scarcely do good to make me repeat it, Rose.”
+
+And then, seeing her dear bosom heave quickly, he was tempted to fall
+on his knees to her with a wild outcry of love. The chance was lost.
+The inexorable street forbade it.
+
+There they stood in silence, gasping at the barrier that divided them.
+
+Suddenly a noise was heard. “Stop! stop!” cried the voice of John
+Raikes. “When a lady and gentleman are talking together, sir, do you
+lean your long ears over them—ha?”
+
+Looking round, Evan beheld Laxley a step behind, and Jack rushing up to
+him, seizing his collar, and instantly undergoing ignominious
+prostration for his heroic defence of the privacy of lovers.
+
+“Stand aside”; said Laxley, imperiously. “Rosey so you’ve come for me.
+Take my arm. You are under my protection.”
+
+Another forlorn “Is it true?” Rose cast toward Evan with her eyes. He
+wavered under them.
+
+“Did you receive my letter?” he demanded of Laxley.
+
+“I decline to hold converse with you,” said Laxley, drawing Rose’s hand
+on his arm.
+
+“You will meet me to-day or to-morrow?”
+
+“I am in the habit of selecting my own company.”
+
+Rose disengaged her hand. Evan grasped it. No word of farewell was
+uttered. Her mouth moved, but her eyes were hard shut, and nothing save
+her hand’s strenuous pressure, equalling his own, told that their
+parting had been spoken, the link violently snapped.
+
+Mr. John Raikes had been picked up and pulled away by Polly. She now
+rushed to Evan: “Good-bye, and God bless you, dear Mr. Harrington. I’ll
+find means of letting you know how she is. And he shan’t have her,
+mind!”
+
+Rose was walking by Laxley’s side, but not leaning on his arm. Evan
+blessed her for this. Ere she was out of sight the fly rolled down the
+street. She did not heed it, did not once turn her head. Ah, bitter
+unkindness!
+
+When Love is hurt, it is self-love that requires the opiate. Conning
+gave it him in the form of a note in a handwriting not known to him. It
+said:
+
+“I do not believe it, and nothing will ever make me.
+“JULIANA.”
+
+
+Evan could not forget these words. They coloured his farewell to
+Beckley: the dear old downs, the hopgardens, the long grey farms walled
+with clipped yew, the home of his lost love! He thought of them through
+weary nights when the ghostly image with the hard shut eyelids and the
+quivering lips would rise and sway irresolutely in air till a shape out
+of the darkness extinguished it. Pride is the God of Pagans. Juliana
+had honoured his God. The spirit of Juliana seemed to pass into the
+body of Rose, and suffer for him as that ghostly image visibly
+suffered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+IN WHICH WE HAVE TO SEE IN THE DARK
+
+
+So ends the fourth act of our comedy.
+
+After all her heroism and extraordinary efforts, after, as she feared,
+offending Providence—after facing Tailordom—the Countess was rolled
+away in a dingy fly unrewarded even by a penny, for what she had gone
+through. For she possessed eminently the practical nature of her sex;
+and though she would have scorned, and would have declined to handle
+coin so base, its absence was upbraidingly mentioned in her spiritual
+outcries. Not a penny!
+
+Nor was there, as in the miseries of retreat she affected indifferently
+to imagine, a Duke fished out of the ruins of her enterprise, to wash
+the mud off her garments and edge them with radiance. Caroline, it
+became clear to her, had been infected by Evan’s folly. Caroline, she
+subsequently learnt, had likewise been a fool. Instead of marvelling at
+the genius that had done so much in spite of the pair of fools that
+were the right and left wing of her battle array, the simple-minded
+lady wept. She wanted success, not genius. Admiration she was ever
+ready to forfeit for success.
+
+Nor did she say to the tailors of earth: “Weep, for I sought to
+emancipate you from opprobrium by making one of you a gentleman; I
+fought for a great principle and have failed.” Heroic to the end, she
+herself shed all the tears; took all the sorrow.
+
+Where was consolation? Would any Protestant clergyman administer
+comfort to her? Could he? might he do so? He might listen, and quote
+texts; but he would demand the harsh rude English for everything; and
+the Countess’s confessional thoughts were all innuendoish, aerial; too
+delicate to live in our shameless tongue. Confession by implication,
+and absolution; she could know this to be what she wished for, and yet
+not think it. She could see a haven of peace in that picture of the
+little brown box with the sleekly reverend figure bending his ear to
+the kneeling Beauty outside, thrice ravishing as she half-lifts the
+veil of her sins and her visage!—yet she started alarmed to hear it
+whispered that the fair penitent was the Countess de Saldar; urgently
+she prayed that no disgraceful brother might ever drive her to that!
+
+Never let it be a Catholic priest!—she almost fashioned her petition
+into words. Who was to save her? Alas! alas! in her dire distress—in
+her sense of miserable pennilessness, she clung to Mr. John Raikes, of
+the curricle, the mysteriously rich young gentleman; and on that
+picture, with Andrew roguishly contemplating it, and Evan, with
+feelings regarding his sister that he liked not to own, the curtain
+commiseratingly drops.
+
+As in the course of a stream you come upon certain dips, where, but
+here and there, a sparkle or a gloom of the full flowing water is
+caught through deepening foliage, so the history that concerns us
+wanders out of day for a time, and we must violate the post and open
+written leaves to mark the turn it takes.
+
+First we have a letter from Mr. Goren to Mrs. Mel, to inform her that
+her son has arrived and paid his respects to his future instructor in
+the branch of science practised by Mr. Goren.
+
+“He has arrived at last,” says the worthy tradesman. “His appearance in
+the shop will be highly gentlemanly, and when he looks a little more
+pleasing, and grows fond of it, nothing will be left to be desired. The
+ladies, his sisters, have not thought proper to call. I had hopes of
+the custom of Mr. Andrew Cogglesby. Of course you wish him to learn
+tailoring thoroughly?”
+
+Mrs. Mel writes back, thanking Mr. Goren, and saying that she had shown
+the letter to inquiring creditors, and that she does wish her son to
+learn his business from the root. This produces a second letter from
+Mr. Goren, which imparts to her that at the root of the tree, of
+tailoring the novitiate must sit no less than six hours a day with his
+legs crossed and doubled under him, cheerfully plying needle and
+thread; and that, without this probation, to undergo which the son
+resolutely objects, all hope of his climbing to the top of the lofty
+tree, and viewing mankind from an eminence, must be surrendered.
+
+“If you do not insist, my dear Mrs. Harrington, I tell you candidly,
+your son may have a shop, but he will be no tailor.”
+
+Mrs. Mel understands her son and his state of mind well enough not to
+insist, and is resigned to the melancholy consequence.
+
+Then Mr. Goren discovers an extraordinary resemblance between Evan and
+his father: remarking merely that the youth is not the gentleman his
+father was in a shop, while he admits, that had it been conjoined to
+business habits, he should have envied his departed friend.
+
+He has soon something fresh to tell; and it is that young Mr.
+Harrington is treating him cavalierly. That he should penetrate the
+idea or appreciate the merits of Mr. Goren’s Balance was hardly to be
+expected at present: the world did not, and Mr. Goren blamed no young
+man for his ignorance. Still a proper attendance was requisite. Mr.
+Goren thought it very singular that young Mr. Harrington should demand
+all the hours of the day for his own purposes, up to half-past four. He
+found it difficult to speak to him as a master, and begged that Mrs.
+Harrington would, as a mother.
+
+The reply of Mrs. Mel is dashed with a trifle of cajolery. She has
+heard from her son, and seeing that her son takes all that time from
+his right studies, to earn money wherewith to pay debts of which Mr.
+Goren is cognizant, she trusts that their oldest friend will overlook
+it.
+
+Mr. Goren rejoins that he considers that he need not have been excluded
+from young Mr. Harrington’s confidence. Moreover, it is a grief to him
+that the young gentleman should refrain from accepting any of his
+suggestions as to the propriety of requesting some, at least, of his
+rich and titled acquaintance to confer on him the favour of their
+patronage. “Which they would not repent,” adds Mr. Goren, “and might
+learn to be very much obliged to him for, in return for kindnesses
+extended to him.”
+
+Notwithstanding all my efforts, you see, the poor boy is thrust into
+the shop. There he is, without a doubt. He sleeps under Mr. Goren’s
+roof: he (since one cannot be too positive in citing the punishment of
+such a Pagan) stands behind a counter: he (and, oh! choke, young loves,
+that have hovered around him! shrink from him in natural horror, gentle
+ladies!) handles the shears. It is not my fault. He would be a Pagan.
+
+If you can think him human enough still to care to know how he feels
+it, I must tell you that he feels it hardly at all. After a big blow, a
+very little one scarcely counts. What are outward forms and social
+ignominies to him whose heart has been struck to the dust? His Gods
+have fought for him, and there he is! He deserves no pity.
+
+But he does not ask it of you, the callous Pagan! Despise him, if you
+please, and rank with the Countess, who despises him most heartily.
+Dipping further into the secrets of the post, we discover a brisk
+correspondence between Juliana Bonner and Mrs. Strike.
+
+“A thousand thanks to you, my dear Miss Bonner,” writes the latter
+lady. “The unaffected interest you take in my brother touches me
+deeply. I know him to be worthy of your good opinion. Yes, I will open
+my heart to you, dearest Juliana; and it shall, as you wish, be quite
+secret between us. Not to a soul!
+
+“He is quite alone. My sisters Harriet and Louisa will not see him, and
+I can only do so by stealth. His odd other little friend sometimes
+drives me out on Sundays, to a place where I meet him; and the Duke of
+Belfield kindly lends me his carriage. Oh, that we might never part! I
+am only happy with him!
+
+“Ah, do not doubt him, Juliana, for anything he does! You say, that now
+the Duke has obtained for him the Secretaryship to my husband’s
+Company, he should not stoop to that other thing, and you do not
+understand why. I will tell you. Our poor father died in debt, and Evan
+receives money which enables him by degrees to liquidate these debts,
+on condition that he consents to be what _I_ dislike as much as you
+can. He bears it; you can have no idea of his pride! He is too proud to
+own to himself that it debases him—too proud to complain. It is a
+tangle—a net that drags him down to it: but whatever he is outwardly,
+he is the noblest human being in the world to me, and but for him, oh,
+what should I be? Let me beg you to forgive it, if you can. My darling
+has no friends. Is his temper as sweet as ever? I can answer that. Yes,
+only he is silent, and looks—when you look into his eyes—colder, as men
+look when they will not bear much from other men.
+
+“He has not mentioned her name. I am sure she has not written.
+
+“Pity him, and pray for him.”
+
+Juliana then makes a communication, which draws forth the following:—
+
+“Mistress of all the Beckley property—dearest, dearest Juliana! Oh! how
+sincerely I congratulate you! The black on the letter alarmed me so, I
+could hardly open it, my fingers trembled so; for I esteem you all at
+Beckley; but when I had opened and read it, I was recompensed. You say
+you are sorry for Rose. But surely what your Grandmama has done is
+quite right. It is just, in every sense. But why am I not to tell Evan?
+I am certain it would make him very happy, and happiness of any kind he
+needs so much! I will obey you, of course, but I cannot see why. Do you
+know, my dear child, you are extremely mysterious, and puzzle me. Evan
+takes a pleasure in speaking of you. You and Lady Jocelyn are his great
+themes. Why is he to be kept ignorant of your good fortune? The
+spitting of blood is bad. You must winter in a warm climate. I do think
+that London is far better for you in the late Autumn than Hampshire.
+May I ask my sister Harriet to invite you to reside with her for some
+weeks? Nothing, I know, would give her greater pleasure.”
+
+Juliana answers this—
+
+“If you love me—I sometimes hope that you do—but the feeling of being
+loved is so strange to me that I can only believe it at times—but,
+Caroline—there, I have mustered up courage to call you by your
+Christian name at last—Oh, dear Caroline! if you do love me, do not
+tell Mr. Harrington. I go on my knees to you to beg you not to tell him
+a word. I have no reasons indeed not any; but I implore you again never
+even to hint that I am anything but the person he knew at Beckley.
+
+“Rose has gone to Elburne House, where Ferdinand, her friend, is to
+meet her. She rides and sings the same, and keeps all her colour.
+
+“She may not, as you imagine, have much sensibility. Perhaps not
+enough. I am afraid that Rose is turning into a very worldly woman!
+
+“As to what you kindly say about inviting me to London, I should like
+it, and I am my own mistress. Do you know, I think I am older than your
+brother! I am twenty-three. Pray, when you write, tell me if he is
+older than that. But should I not be a dreadful burden to you?
+Sometimes I have to keep to my chamber whole days and days. When that
+happens now, I think of you entirely. See how I open my heart to you.
+You say that you do to me. I wish I could really think it.”
+
+A postscript begs Caroline “not to forget about the ages.”
+
+In this fashion the two ladies open their hearts, and contrive to read
+one another perfectly in their mutual hypocrisies.
+
+Some letters bearing the signatures of Mr. John Raikes, and Miss Polly
+Wheedle, likewise pass. Polly inquires for detailed accounts of the
+health and doings of Mr. Harrington. Jack replies with full particulars
+of her own proceedings, and mild corrections of her grammar. It is to
+be noted that Polly grows much humbler to him on paper, which being
+instantly perceived by the mercurial one, his caressing condescension
+to her is very beautiful. She is taunted with Mr. Nicholas Frim, and
+answers, after the lapse of a week, that the aforesaid can be nothing
+to her, as he “went in a passion to church last Sunday and got
+married.” It appears that they had quarrelled, “because I danced with
+you that night.” To this Mr. Raikes rejoins in a style that would be
+signified by “ahem!” in language, and an arrangement of the shirt
+collar before the looking-glass, in action.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+IN THE DOMAIN OF TAILORDOM
+
+
+There was peace in Mr. Goren’s shop. Badgered Ministers, bankrupt
+merchants, diplomatists with a headache—any of our modern grandees
+under difficulties, might have envied that peace over which Mr. Goren
+presided: and he was an enviable man. He loved his craft, he believed
+that he had not succeeded the millions of antecedent tailors in vain;
+and, excepting that trifling coquetry with shirt-fronts, viz., the red
+crosses, which a shrewd rival had very soon eclipsed by representing
+nymphs triangularly posed, he devoted himself to his business from
+morning to night; as rigid in demanding respect from those beneath him,
+as he was profuse in lavishing it on his patrons. His public boast was,
+that he owed no man a farthing; his secret comfort, that he possessed
+two thousand pounds in the Funds. But Mr. Goren did not stop here.
+Behind these external characteristics he nursed a passion. Evan was
+astonished and pleased to find in him an enthusiastic fern-collector.
+Not that Mr. Harrington shared the passion, but the sight of these
+brown roots spread out, ticketed, on the stained paper, after supper,
+when the shutters were up and the house defended from the hostile outer
+world; the old man poring over them, and naming this and that spot
+where, during his solitary Saturday afternoon and Sunday excursions, he
+had lighted on the rare samples exhibited this contrast of the quiet
+evening with the sordid day humanized Mr. Goren to him. He began to see
+a spirit in the rigid tradesman not so utterly dissimilar to his own,
+and he fancied that he, too, had a taste for ferns. Round Beckley how
+they abounded!
+
+He told Mr. Goren so, and Mr. Goren said:
+
+“Some day we’ll jog down there together, as the saying goes.”
+
+Mr. Goren spoke of it as an ordinary event, likely to happen in the
+days to come: not as an incident the mere mention of which, as being
+probable, stopped the breath and made the pulses leap.
+
+For now Evan’s education taught him to feel that he was at his lowest
+degree. Never now could Rose stoop to him. He carried the shop on his
+back. She saw the brand of it on his forehead. Well! and what was Rose
+to him, beyond a blissful memory, a star that he had once touched?
+Self-love kept him strong by day, but in the darkness of night came his
+misery; wakening from tender dreams, he would find his heart sinking
+under a horrible pressure, and then the fair fresh face of Rose swam
+over him; the hours of Beckley were revived; with intolerable anguish
+he saw that she was blameless—that he alone was to blame. Yet worse was
+it when his closed eyelids refused to conjure up the sorrowful lovely
+nightmare, and he lay like one in a trance, entombed—wretched Pagan!
+feeling all that had been blindly; when the Past lay beside him like a
+corpse that he had slain.
+
+These nightly torments helped him to brave what the morning brought.
+Insensibly also, as Time hardened his sufferings, Evan asked himself
+what the shame of his position consisted in. He grew stiff-necked. His
+Pagan virtues stood up one by one to support him. Andrew, courageously
+evading the interdict that forbade him to visit Evan, would meet him by
+appointment at City taverns, and flatly offered him a place in the
+Brewery. Evan declined it, on the pretext that, having received Old
+Tom’s money for the year, he must at least work out that term according
+to the conditions. Andrew fumed and sneered at Tailordom. Evan said
+that there was peace in Mr. Goren’s shop. His sharp senses discerned in
+Andrew’s sneer a certain sincerity, and he revolted against it. Mr John
+Raikes, too, burlesqued Society so well, that he had the satisfaction
+of laughing at his enemy occasionally. The latter gentleman was still a
+pensioner, flying about town with the Countess de Saldar, in deadly
+fear lest that fascinating lady should discover the seat of his
+fortune; happy, notwithstanding. In the mirror of Evan’s little world,
+he beheld the great one from which he was banished.
+
+Now the dusk of a winter’s afternoon was closing over London, when a
+carriage drew up in front of Mr. Goren’s shop, out of which, to Mr.
+Goren’s chagrin, a lady stepped, with her veil down. The lady entered,
+and said that she wished to speak to Mr. Harrington. Mr. Goren made way
+for her to his pupil; and was amazed to see her fall into his arms, and
+hardly gratified to hear her say: “Pardon me, darling, for coming to
+you in this place.”
+
+Evan asked permission to occupy the parlour.
+
+“My place,” said Mr. Goren, with humble severity, over his spectacles,
+“is very poor. Such as it is, it is at the lady’s service.”
+
+Alone with her, Evan was about to ease his own feelings by remarking to
+the effect that Mr. Goren was human like the rest of us, but Caroline
+cried, with unwonted vivacity:
+
+“Yes, yes, I know; but I thought only of you. I have such news for you!
+You will and must pardon my coming—that’s my first thought, sensitive
+darling that you are!” She kissed him fondly. “Juliana Bonner is in
+town, staying with us!”
+
+“Is that your news?” asked Evan, pressing her against his breast.
+
+“No, dear love—but still! You have no idea what her fortune—Mrs. Bonner
+has died and left her—but I mustn’t tell you. Oh, my darling! how she
+admires you! She—she could recompense you; if you would! We will put
+that by, for the present. Dear! the Duke has begged you, through me, to
+accept—I think it’s to be a sort of bailiff to his estates—I don’t know
+rightly. It’s a very honourable post, that gentlemen take: and the
+income you are to have, Evan, will be near a thousand a year. Now, what
+do I deserve for my news?”
+
+She put up her mouth for another kiss, out of breath.
+
+“True?” looked Evan’s eyes.
+
+“True!” she said, smiling, and feasting on his bewilderment.
+
+After the bubbling in his brain had a little subsided, Evan breathed as
+a man on whom fresh air is blown. Were not these tidings of release?
+His ridiculous pride must nevertheless inquire whether Caroline had
+been begging this for him.
+
+“No, dear—indeed!” Caroline asserted with more than natural vehemence.
+“It’s something that you yourself have done that has pleased him. I
+don’t know what. Only he says, he believes you are a man to be trusted
+with the keys of anything—and so you are. You are to call on him
+to-morrow. Will you?”
+
+While Evan was replying, her face became white. She had heard the
+Major’s voice in the shop. His military step advanced, and Caroline,
+exclaiming, “Don’t let me see him!” bustled to a door. Evan nodded, and
+she slipped through. The next moment he was facing the stiff marine.
+
+“Well, young man,” the Major commenced, and, seating himself, added,
+“be seated. I want to talk to you seriously, sir. You didn’t think fit
+to wait till I had done with the Directors today. You’re devilishly out
+in your discipline, whatever you are at two and two. I suppose there’s
+no fear of being intruded on here? None of your acquaintances likely to
+be introducing themselves to me?”
+
+“There is not one that I would introduce to you,” said Evan.
+
+The Major nodded a brief recognition of the compliment, and then,
+throwing his back against the chair, fired out: “Come, sir, is this
+your doing?”
+
+In military phrase, Evan now changed front. His first thought had been
+that the Major had come for his wife. He perceived that he himself was
+the special object of his visitation.
+
+“I must ask you what you allude to,” he answered.
+
+“You are not at your office, but you will speak to me as if there was
+some distinction between us,” said the Major. “My having married your
+sister does not reduce me to the ranks, I hope.”
+
+The Major drummed his knuckles on the table, after this impressive
+delivery.
+
+“Hem!” he resumed. “Now, sir, understand, before you speak a word, that
+I can see through any number of infernal lies. I see that you’re
+prepared for prevarication. By George! it shall come out of you, if I
+get it by main force. The Duke compelled me to give you that
+appointment in my Company. Now, sir, did you, or did you not, go to him
+and deliberately state to him that you believed the affairs of the
+Company to be in a bad condition—infamously handled, likely to involve
+his honour as a gentleman? I ask you, sir, did you do this, or did you
+not do it?”
+
+Evan waited till the sharp rattle of the Major’s close had quieted.
+
+“If I am to answer the wording of your statement, I may say that I did
+not.”
+
+“Very good; very good; that will do. Are you aware that the Duke has
+sent in his resignation as a Director of our Company?”
+
+“I hear of it first from you.”
+
+“Confound your familiarity!” cried the irritable officer, rising. “Am I
+always to be told that I married your sister? Address me, sir, as
+becomes your duty.”
+
+Evan heard the words “beggarly tailor” mumbled “out of the gutters,”
+and “cursed connection.” He stood in the attitude of attention, while
+the Major continued:
+
+“Now, young man, listen to these facts. You came to me this day last
+week, and complained that you did not comprehend some of our
+transactions and affairs. I explained them to your damned stupidity.
+You went away. Three days after that, you had an interview with the
+Duke. Stop, sir! What the devil do you mean by daring to speak while I
+am speaking? You saw the Duke, I say. Now, what took place at that
+interview?”
+
+The Major tried to tower over Evan powerfully, as he put this query.
+They were of a common height, and to do so, he had to rise on his toes,
+so that the effect was but momentary.
+
+“I think I am not bound to reply,” said Evan.
+
+“Very well, sir; that will do.” The Major’s fingers were evidently
+itching for an absent rattan. “Confess it or not, you are dismissed
+from your post. Do you hear? You are kicked in the street. A beggarly
+tailor you were born, and a beggarly tailor you will die.”
+
+“I must beg you to stop, now,” said Evan. “I told you that I was not
+bound to reply: but I will. If you will sit down, Major Strike, you
+shall hear what you wish to know.”
+
+This being presently complied with, though not before a glare of the
+Major’s eyes had shown his doubt whether it might not be construed into
+insolence, Evan pursued:
+
+“I came to you and informed you that I could not reconcile the
+cash-accounts of the Company, and that certain of the later proceedings
+appeared to me to jeopardize its prosperity. Your explanations did not
+satisfy me. I admit that you enjoined me to be silent. But the Duke, as
+a Director, had as strong a right to claim me as his servant, and when
+he questioned me as to the position of the Company, I told him what I
+thought, just as I had told you.”
+
+“You told him we were jobbers and swindlers, sir!”
+
+“The Duke inquired of me whether I would, under the circumstances,
+while proceedings were going on which I did not approve of, take the
+responsibility of allowing my name to remain—”
+
+“Ha! ha! ha!” the Major burst out. This was too good a joke. The name
+of a miserable young tailor!” Go on, sir, go on!” He swallowed his
+laughter like oil on his rage.
+
+“I have said sufficient.”
+
+Jumping up, the Major swore by the Lord, that he had said sufficient.
+
+“Now, look you here, young man.” He squared his finger before Evan,
+eyeing him under a hard frown, “You have been playing your game again,
+as you did down at that place in Hampshire. I heard of it—deserved to
+be shot, by heaven! You think you have got hold of the Duke, and you
+throw me over. You imagine, I dare say, that I will allow my wife to be
+talked about to further your interests—you self-seeking young dog! As
+long as he lent the Company his name, I permitted a great many things.
+Do you think me a blind idiot, sir? But now she must learn to be
+satisfied with people who’ve got no titles, or carriages, and who can’t
+give hundred guinea compliments. You’re all of a piece—a set of....”
+
+The Major paused, for half a word was on his mouth which had drawn
+lightning to Evan’s eyes.
+
+Not to be baffled, he added: “But look you, sir. I may be ruined. I
+dare say the Company will go to the dogs—every ass will follow a Duke.
+But, mark, this goes on no more. I will be no woman’s tally. Mind, sir,
+I take excellent care that you don’t traffic in your sister!”
+
+The Major delivered this culminating remark with a well-timed
+deflection of his forefinger, and slightly turned aside when he had
+done.
+
+You might have seen Evan’s figure rocking, as he stood with his eyes
+steadily levelled on his sister’s husband.
+
+The Major, who, whatever he was, was physically no coward, did not fail
+to interpret the look, and challenge it.
+
+Evan walked to the door, opened it, and said, between his teeth, “You
+must go at once.”
+
+“Eh, sir, eh? what’s this?” exclaimed the warrior but the door was
+open, Mr. Goren was in the shop; the scandal of an assault in such a
+house, and the consequent possibility of his matrimonial alliance
+becoming bruited in the newspapers, held his arm after it had given an
+involuntary jerk. He marched through with becoming dignity, and marched
+out into the street; and if necks unelastic and heads erect may be
+taken as the sign of a proud soul and of nobility of mind, my artist
+has the Major for his model.
+
+Evan displayed no such a presence. He returned to the little parlour,
+shut and locked the door to the shop, and forgetting that one was near,
+sat down, covered his eyes, and gave way to a fit of tearless sobbing.
+With one foot in the room Caroline hung watching him. A pain that she
+had never known wrung her nerves. His whole manhood seemed to be
+shaken, as if by regular pulsations of intensest misery. She stood in
+awe of the sight till her limbs failed her, and then staggering to him
+she fell on her knees, clasping his, passionately kissing them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+IN WHICH THE COUNTESS STILL SCENTS GAME
+
+
+Mr. Raikes and his friend Frank Remand, surnamed Franko, to suit the
+requirements of metre, in which they habitually conversed, were walking
+arm-in-arm along the drive in Society’s Park on a fine frosty Sunday
+afternoon of midwinter. The quips and jokes of Franko were lively, and
+he looked into the carriages passing, as if he knew that a cheerful
+countenance is not without charms for their inmates. Raikes’ face, on
+the contrary, was barren and bleak. Being of that nature that when a
+pun was made he must perforce outstrip it, he fell into Franko’s humour
+from time to time, but albeit aware that what he uttered was good, and
+by comparison transcendent, he refused to enjoy it. Nor when Franko
+started from his arm to declaim a passage, did he do other than make
+limp efforts to unite himself to Franko again. A further sign of
+immense depression in him was that instead of the creative, it was the
+critical faculty he exercised, and rather than reply to Franko in his
+form of speech, he scanned occasional lines and objected to particular
+phrases. He had clearly exchanged the sanguine for the bilious
+temperament, and was fast stranding on the rocky shores of prose.
+Franko bore this very well, for he, like Raikes in happier days,
+claimed all the glances of lovely woman as his own, and on his right
+there flowed a stream of Beauties. At last he was compelled to observe:
+“This change is sudden: wherefore so downcast? With tigrine claw thou
+mangiest my speech, thy cheeks are like December’s pippin, and thy
+tongue most sour!”
+
+“Then of it make a farce!” said Raikes, for the making of farces was
+Franko’s profession. “Wherefore so downcast! What a line! There! let’s
+walk on. Let us the left foot forward stout advance. I care not for the
+herd.”
+
+“’Tis love!” cried Franko.
+
+“Ay, an’ it be!” Jack gloomily returned.
+
+“For ever cruel is the sweet Saldar?”
+
+Raikes winced at this name.
+
+“A truce to banter, Franko!” he said sternly: but the subject was
+opened, and the wound.
+
+“Love!” he pursued, mildly groaning. “Suppose you adored a fascinating
+woman, and she knew—positively knew—your manly weakness, and you saw
+her smiling upon everybody, and she told you to be happy, and egad,
+when you came to reflect, you found that after three months’ suit you
+were nothing better than her errand-boy? A thing to boast of, is it
+not, quotha?”
+
+“Love’s yellow-fever, jealousy, methinks,” Franko commenced in reply;
+but Raikes spat at the emphasized word.
+
+“Jealousy!—who’s jealous of clergymen and that crew? Not I, by Pluto! I
+carried five messages to one fellow with a coat-tail straight to his
+heels, last week. She thought I should drive my curricle—I couldn’t
+afford an omnibus! I had to run. When I returned to her I was dirty.
+She made remarks!”
+
+“Thy sufferings are severe—but such is woman!” said Franko. “’Gad, it’s
+a good idea, though.” He took out a note-book and pencilled down a
+point or two. Raikes watched the process sardonically.
+
+“My tragedy is, then, thy farce!” he exclaimed. “Well, be it so! I
+believe I shall come to song-writing again myself shortly—beneath the
+shield of Catnach I’ll a nation’s ballads frame. I’ve spent my income
+in four months, and now I’m living on my curricle. I underlet it. It’s
+like trade—it’s as bad as poor old Harrington, by Jove! But that isn’t
+the worst, Franko!” Jack dropped his voice: “I believe I’m furiously
+loved by a poor country wench.”
+
+“Morals!” was Franko’s most encouraging reproof.
+
+“Oh, I don’t think I’ve even kissed her,” rejoined Raikes, who doubted
+because his imagination was vivid. “It’s my intellect that dazzles her.
+I’ve got letters—she calls me clever. By Jove! since I gave up driving
+I’ve had thoughts of rushing down to her and making her mine in spite
+of home, family, fortune, friends, name, position—everything! I have,
+indeed.”
+
+Franko looked naturally astonished at this amount of self-sacrifice.
+“The Countess?” he shrewdly suggested.
+
+“I’d rather be my Polly’s prince,
+Than yon great lady’s errand-boy!”
+
+
+Raikes burst into song.
+
+He stretched out his hand, as if to discard all the great ladies who
+were passing. By the strangest misfortune ever known, the direction
+taken by his fingers was toward a carriage wherein, beautifully smiling
+opposite an elaborately reverend gentleman of middle age, the Countess
+de Saldar was sitting. This great lady is not to be blamed for deeming
+that her errand-boy was pointing her out vulgarly on a public
+promenade. Ineffable disdain curled off her sweet olive visage. She
+turned her head.
+
+“I’ll go down to that girl to-night,” said Raikes, with compressed
+passion. And then he hurried Franko along to the bridge, where, behold,
+the Countess alighted with the gentleman, and walked beside him into
+the gardens.
+
+“Follow her,” said Raikes, in agitation. “Do you see her? by yon
+long-tailed raven’s side? Follow her, Franko! See if he kisses her
+hand—anything! and meet me here in half an hour. I’ll have evidence!”
+
+Franko did not altogether like the office, but Raikes’ dinners,
+singular luck, and superiority in the encounter of puns, gave him the
+upper hand with his friend, and so Franko went.
+
+Turning away from the last glimpse of his Countess, Raikes crossed the
+bridge, and had not strolled far beneath the bare branches of one of
+the long green walks, when he perceived a gentleman with two ladies
+leaning on him.
+
+“Now, there,” moralized this youth; “now, what do you say to that? Do
+you call that fair? He can’t be happy, and it’s not in nature for them
+to be satisfied. And yet, if I went up and attempted to please them all
+by taking one away, the probabilities are that he would knock me down.
+Such is life! We won’t be made comfortable!”
+
+Nevertheless, he passed them with indifference, for it was merely the
+principle he objected to; and, indeed, he was so wrapped in his own
+conceptions, that his name had to be called behind him twice before he
+recognized Evan Harrington, Mrs. Strike, and Miss Bonner. The
+arrangement he had previously thought good, was then spontaneously
+adopted. Mrs. Strike reposed her fair hand upon his arm, and Juliana,
+with a timid glance of pleasure, walked ahead in Evan’s charge. Close
+neighbourhood between the couples was not kept. The genius of Mr.
+Raikes was wasted in manoeuvres to lead his beautiful companion into
+places where he could be seen with her, and envied. It was, perhaps,
+more flattering that she should betray a marked disposition to prefer
+solitude in his society. But this idea illumined him only near the
+moment of parting. Then he saw it; then he groaned in soul, and
+besought Evan to have one more promenade, saying, with characteristic
+cleverness in the masking of his real thoughts: “It gives us an
+appetite, you know.”
+
+In Evan’s face and Juliana’s there was not much sign that any
+protraction of their walk together would aid this beneficent process of
+nature. He took her hand gently, and when he quitted it, it dropped.
+
+“The Rose, the Rose of Beckley Court!” Raikes sang aloud. “Why, this is
+a day of meetings. Behold John Thomas in the rear—a tower of plush and
+powder! Shall I rush—shall I pluck her from the aged stem?”
+
+On the gravel-walk above them Rose passed with her aristocratic
+grandmother, muffled in furs. She marched deliberately, looking coldly
+before her. Evan’s face was white, and Juliana, whose eyes were fixed
+on him, shuddered.
+
+“I’m chilled,” she murmured to Caroline. “Let us go.” Caroline eyed
+Evan with a meaning sadness.
+
+“We will hurry to our carriage,” she said.
+
+They were seen to make a little circuit so as not to approach Rose;
+after whom, thoughtless of his cruelty, Evan bent his steps slowly,
+halting when she reached her carriage. He believed—rather, he knew that
+she had seen him. There was a consciousness in the composed outlines of
+her face as she passed: the indifference was too perfect. Let her hate
+him if she pleased. It recompensed him that the air she wore should
+make her appearance more womanly; and that black dress and
+crape-bonnet, in some way, touched him to mournful thoughts of her that
+helped a partial forgetfulness of wounded self.
+
+Rose had driven off. He was looking at the same spot, where Caroline’s
+hand waved from her carriage. Juliana was not seen. Caroline requested
+her to nod to him once, but she would not. She leaned back hiding her
+eyes, and moving a petulant shoulder at Caroline’s hand.
+
+“Has he offended you, my child?”
+
+Juliana answered harshly:
+
+“No-no.”
+
+The wheels rolled on, and Caroline tried other subjects, knowing
+possibly that they would lead Juliana back to this of her own accord.
+
+“You saw how she treated him?” the latter presently said, without
+moving her hand from before her eyes.
+
+“Yes, dear. He forgives her, and will forget it.”
+
+“Oh!” she clenched her long thin hand, “I pray that I may not die
+before I have made her repent it. She shall!”
+
+Juliana looked glitteringly in Caroline’s face, and then fell
+a-weeping, and suffered herself to be folded and caressed. The storm
+was long subsiding.
+
+“Dearest! you are better now?” said Caroline.
+
+She whispered: “Yes.”
+
+“My brother has only to know you, dear—”
+
+“Hush! That’s past.” Juliana stopped her; and, on a deep breath that
+threatened to break to sobs, she added in a sweeter voice than was
+common to her, “Ah, why—why did you tell him about the Beckley
+property?”
+
+Caroline vainly strove to deny that she had told him. Juliana’s head
+shook mournfully at her; and now Caroline knew what Juliana meant when
+she begged so earnestly that Evan should be kept ignorant of her change
+of fortune.
+
+Some days after this the cold struck Juliana’s chest, and she sickened.
+The three sisters held a sitting to consider what it was best to do
+with her. Caroline proposed to take her to Beckley without delay.
+Harriet was of opinion that the least they could do was to write to her
+relatives and make them instantly aware of her condition.
+
+But the Countess said “No,” to both. Her argument was, that Juliana
+being independent, they were by no means bound to “bundle” her, in her
+state, back to a place where she had been so shamefully maltreated:
+that here she would live, while there she would certainly die: that
+absence of excitement was her medicine, and that here she had it. Mrs.
+Andrew, feeling herself responsible as the young lady’s hostess, did
+not acquiesce in the Countess’s views till she had consulted Juliana;
+and then apologies for giving trouble were breathed on the one hand;
+sympathy, condolences, and professions of esteem, on the other. Juliana
+said, she was but slightly ill, would soon recover. Entreated not to
+leave them before she was thoroughly re-established, and to consent to
+be looked on as one of the family, she sighed, and said it was the
+utmost she could hope. Of course the ladies took this compliment to
+themselves, but Evan began to wax in importance. The Countess thought
+it nearly time to acknowledge him, and supported the idea by a citation
+of the doctrine, that to forgive is Christian. It happened, however,
+that Harriet, who had less art and more will than her sisters, was
+inflexible. She, living in a society but a few steps above Tailordom,
+however magnificent in expenditure and resources, abhorred it solemnly.
+From motives of prudence, as well as personal disgust, she continued
+firm in declining to receive her brother. She would not relent when the
+Countess pointed out a dim, a dazzling prospect, growing out of Evan’s
+proximity to the heiress of Beckley Court; she was not to be moved when
+Caroline suggested that the specific for the frail invalid was Evan’s
+presence. As to this, Juliana was sufficiently open, though, as she
+conceived, her art was extreme.
+
+“Do you know why I stay to vex and trouble you?” she asked Caroline.
+“Well, then, it is that I may see your brother united to you all: and
+then I shall go, happy.”
+
+The pretext served also to make him the subject of many conversations.
+Twice a week a bunch of the best flowers that could be got were sorted
+and arranged by her, and sent namelessly to brighten Evan’s chamber.
+
+“I may do such a thing as this, you know, without incurring blame,” she
+said.
+
+The sight of a love so humble in its strength and affluence, sent
+Caroline to Evan on a fruitless errand. What availed it, that accused
+of giving lead to his pride in refusing the heiress, Evan should
+declare that he did not love her? He did not, Caroline admitted as
+possible, but he might. He might learn to love her, and therefore he
+was wrong in wounding her heart. She related flattering anecdotes. She
+drew tearful pictures of Juliana’s love for him: and noticing how he
+seemed to prize his bouquet of flowers, said:
+
+“Do you love them for themselves, or the hand that sent them?”
+
+Evan blushed, for it had been a struggle for him to receive them, as he
+thought, from Rose in secret. The flowers lost their value; the song
+that had arisen out of them, “Thou livest in my memory,” ceased. But
+they came still. How many degrees from love gratitude may be, I have
+not reckoned. I rather fear it lies on the opposite shore. From a youth
+to a girl, it may yet be very tender; the more so, because their ages
+commonly exclude such a sentiment, and nature seems willing to make a
+transition stage of it. Evan wrote to Juliana. Incidentally he
+expressed a wish to see her. Juliana was under doctor’s interdict: but
+she was not to be prevented from going when Evan wished her to go. They
+met in the park, as before, and he talked to her five minutes through
+the carriage window.
+
+“Was it worth the risk, my poor child?” said Caroline, pityingly.
+
+Juliana cried: “Oh! I would give anything to live!”
+
+A man might have thought that she made no direct answer.
+
+“Don’t you think I am patient? Don’t you think I am very patient?” she
+asked Caroline, winningly, on their way home.
+
+Caroline could scarcely forbear from smiling at the feverish anxiety
+she showed for a reply that should confirm her words and hopes.
+
+“So we must all be!” she said, and that common-place remark caused
+Juliana to exclaim: “Prisoners have lived in a dungeon, on bread and
+water, for years!”
+
+Whereat Caroline kissed her so tenderly that Juliana tried to look
+surprised, and failing, her thin lips quivered; she breathed a soft
+“hush,” and fell on Caroline’s bosom.
+
+She was transparent enough in one thing; but the flame which burned
+within her did not light her through.
+
+Others, on other matters, were quite as transparent to her.
+
+Caroline never knew that she had as much as told her the moral suicide
+Evan had committed at Beckley; so cunningly had she been probed at
+intervals with little casual questions; random interjections, that one
+who loved him could not fail to meet; petty doubts requiring
+elucidations. And the Countess, kind as her sentiments had grown toward
+the afflicted creature, was compelled to proclaim her densely stupid in
+material affairs. For the Countess had an itch of the simplest feminine
+curiosity to know whether the dear child had any notion of
+accomplishing a certain holy duty of the perishable on this earth, who
+might possess worldly goods; and no hints—not even plain speaking,
+would do. Juliana did not understand her at all.
+
+The Countess exhibited a mourning-ring on her finger, Mrs. Bonner’s
+bequest to her.
+
+“How fervent is my gratitude to my excellent departed friend for this!
+A legacy, however trifling, embalms our dear lost ones in the memory!”
+
+It was of no avail. Juliana continued densely stupid. Was she not
+worse? The Countess could not, “in decency,” as she observed, reveal to
+her who had prompted Mrs. Bonner so to bequeath the Beckley estates as
+to “ensure sweet Juliana’s future”; but ought not Juliana to divine
+it?—Juliana at least had hints sufficient.
+
+Cold Spring winds were now blowing. Juliana had resided no less than
+two months with the Cogglesbys. She was entreated still to remain, and
+she did. From Lady Jocelyn she heard not a word of remonstrance; but
+from Miss Carrington and Mrs. Shorne she received admonishing letters.
+Finally, Mr. Harry Jocelyn presented himself. In London, and without
+any of that needful subsistence which a young gentleman feels the want
+of in London more than elsewhere, Harry began to have thoughts of his
+own, without any instigation from his aunts, about devoting himself to
+business. So he sent his card up to his cousin, and was graciously met
+in the drawing-room by the Countess, who ruffled him and smoothed him,
+and would possibly have distracted his soul from business had his
+circumstances been less straitened. Juliana was declared to be too
+unwell to see him that day. He called a second time, and enjoyed a
+similar greeting. His third visit procured him an audience alone with
+Juliana, when, at once, despite the warnings of his aunts, the frank
+fellow plunged, “medias res”. Mrs. Bonner had left him totally
+dependent on his parents and his chances.
+
+“A desperate state of things, isn’t it, Juley? I think I shall go for a
+soldier—common, you know.”
+
+Instead of shrieking out against such a debasement of his worth and
+gentility, as was to be expected, Juliana said:
+
+“That’s what Mr. Harrington thought of doing.”
+
+“He! If he’d had the pluck he would.”
+
+“His duty forbade it, and he did not.”
+
+“Duty! a confounded tailor! What fools we were to have him at Beckley!”
+
+“Has the Countess been unkind to you Harry?”
+
+“I haven’t seen her to-day, and don’t want to. It’s my little dear old
+Juley I came for.”
+
+“Dear Harry!” she thanked him with eyes and hands. “Come often, won’t
+you?”
+
+“Why, ain’t you coming back to us, Juley?”
+
+“Not yet. They are very kind to me here. How is Rose?”
+
+“Oh, quite jolly. She and Ferdinand are thick again. Balls every night.
+She dances like the deuce. They want me to go; but I ain’t the sort of
+figure for those places, and besides, I shan’t dance till I can lead
+you out.”
+
+A spur of laughter at Harry’s generous nod brought on Juliana’s cough.
+Harry watched her little body shaken and her reddened eyes. Some real
+emotion—perhaps the fear which healthy young people experience at the
+sight of deadly disease—made Harry touch her arm with the softness of a
+child’s touch.
+
+“Don’t be alarmed, Harry,” she said. “It’s nothing—only Winter. I’m
+determined to get well.”
+
+“That’s right,” quoth he, recovering. “I know you’ve got pluck, or you
+wouldn’t have stood that operation.”
+
+“Let me see: when was that?” she asked slyly.
+
+Harry coloured, for it related to a time when he had not behaved
+prettily to her.
+
+“There, Juley, that’s all forgotten. I was a fool—a scoundrel, if you
+like. I’m sorry for it now.”
+
+“Do you want money, Harry?”
+
+“Oh, money!”
+
+“Have you repaid Mr. Harrington yet?”
+
+“There—no, I haven’t. Bother it! that fellow’s name’s always on your
+tongue. I’ll tell you what, Juley—but it’s no use. He’s a low, vulgar
+adventurer.”
+
+“Dear Harry,” said Juliana, softly; “don’t bring your aunts with you
+when you come to see me.”
+
+“Well, then I’ll tell you, Juley. It’s enough that he’s a beastly
+tailor.”
+
+“Quite enough,” she responded; “and he is neither a fool nor a
+scoundrel.”
+
+Harry’s memory for his own speech was not quick. When Juliana’s calm
+glance at him called it up, he jumped from his chair, crying: “Upon my
+honour, I’ll tell you what, Juley! If I had money to pay him to-morrow,
+I’d insult him on the spot.”
+
+Juliana meditated, and said: “Then all your friends must wish you to
+continue poor.”
+
+This girl had once been on her knees to him. She had looked up to him
+with admiring love, and he had given her a crumb or so occasionally,
+thinking her something of a fool, and more of a pest; but now he could
+not say a word to her without being baffled in an elderly-sisterly tone
+exasperating him so far that he positively wished to marry her, and
+coming to the point, offered himself with downright sincerity, and was
+rejected. Harry left in a passion. Juliana confided the secret to
+Caroline, who suggested interested motives, which Juliana would not
+hear of.
+
+“Ah,” said the Countess, when Caroline mentioned the case to her, “of
+course the poor thing cherishes her first offer. She would believe a
+curate to be disinterested! But mind that Evan has due warning when she
+is to meet him. Mind that he is dressed becomingly.”
+
+Caroline asked why.
+
+“Because, my dear, she is enamoured of his person. These little
+unhealthy creatures are always attracted by the person. She thinks it
+to be Evan’s qualities. I know better: it is his person. Beckley Court
+may be lost by a shabby coat!”
+
+The Countess had recovered from certain spiritual languors into which
+she had fallen after her retreat. Ultimate victory hung still in the
+balance. Oh! if Evan would only marry this little sufferer, who was so
+sure to die within a year! or, if she lived (for marriage has often
+been as a resurrection to some poor female invalids), there was Beckley
+Court, a splendid basis for future achievements. Reflecting in this
+fashion, the Countess pardoned her brother. Glowing hopes hung fresh
+lamps in her charitable breast. She stepped across the threshold of
+Tailordom, won Mr. Goren’s heart by her condescension, and worked Evan
+into a sorrowful mood concerning the invalid. Was not Juliana his only
+active friend? In return, he said things which only required a little
+colouring to be very acceptable to her.
+
+The game waxed exciting again. The enemy (the Jocelyn party) was alert,
+but powerless. The three sisters were almost wrought to perform a
+sacrifice far exceeding Evan’s. They nearly decided to summon him to
+the house: but the matter being broached at table one evening, Major
+Strike objected to it so angrily that they abandoned it, with the
+satisfactory conclusion that if they did wrong it was the Major’s
+fault.
+
+Meantime Juliana had much on her conscience. She knew Evan to be
+innocent, and she allowed Rose to think him guilty. Could she bring her
+heart to join them? That was not in her power: but desiring to be
+lulled by a compromise, she devoted herself to make his relatives
+receive him; and on days of bitter winds she would drive out to meet
+him, answering all expostulations with—“I should not go if he were
+here.”
+
+The game waxed hot. It became a question whether Evan should be
+admitted to the house in spite of the Major. Juliana now made an
+extraordinary move. Having the Count with her in the carriage one day,
+she stopped in front of Mr. Goren’s shop, and Evan had to come out. The
+Count returned home extremely mystified. Once more the unhappy Countess
+was obliged to draw bills on the fabulous; and as she had recommenced
+the system, which was not without its fascinations to her, Juliana, who
+had touched the spring, had the full benefit of it. The Countess had
+deceived her before—what of that? She spoke things sweet to hear. Who
+could be false that gave her heart food on which it lived?
+
+One night Juliana returned from her drive alarmingly ill. She was
+watched through the night by Caroline and the Countess alternately. In
+the morning the sisters met.
+
+“She has consented to let us send for a doctor,” said Caroline.
+
+“Her chief desire seems to be a lawyer,” said the Countess.
+
+“Yes, but the doctor must be sent for first.”
+
+“Yes, indeed! But it behoves us to previse that the doctor does not
+kill her before the lawyer comes.”
+
+Caroline looked at Louisa, and said: “Are you ignorant?”
+
+“No—what?” cried the Countess eagerly.
+
+“Evan has written to tell Lady Jocelyn the state of her health, and—”
+
+“And that naturally has aggravated her malady!” The Countess cramped
+her long fingers. “The child heard it from him yesterday! Oh, I could
+swear at that brother!”
+
+She dropped into a chair and sat rigid and square-jawed, a sculpture of
+unutterable rage.
+
+In the afternoon Lady Jocelyn arrived. The doctor was there—the lawyer
+had gone. Without a word of protest Juliana accompanied her ladyship to
+Beckley Court. Here was a blow!
+
+But Andrew was preparing one more mighty still. What if the Cogglesby
+Brewery proved a basis most unsound? Where must they fall then? Alas!
+on that point whence they sprang. If not to Perdition—Tailordom!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.v
+REVEALS AN ABOMINABLE PLOT OF THE BROTHERS COGGLESBY
+
+
+A lively April day, with strong gusts from the Southwest, and long
+sweeping clouds, saluted the morning coach from London to Lymport.
+Thither Tailordom triumphant was bearing its victim at a rattling pace,
+to settle him, and seal him for ever out of the ranks of gentlemen:
+Society, meantime, howling exclusion to him in the background: “Out of
+our halls, degraded youth: The smiles of turbaned matrons: the sighs of
+delicate maids; genial wit, educated talk, refined scandal, vice in
+harness, dinners sentineled by stately plush: these, the flavour of
+life, are not for you, though you stole a taste of them, wretched
+impostor! Pay for it with years of remorse!”
+
+The coach went rushing against the glorious high wind. It stirred his
+blood, freshened his cheeks, gave a bright tone of zest to his eyes, as
+he cast them on the young green country. Not banished from the breath
+of heaven, or from self-respect, or from the appetite for the rewards
+that are to follow duties done! Not banished from the help that is
+always reached to us when we have fairly taken the right road: and that
+for him is the road to Lymport. Let the kingdom of Gilt Gingerbread
+howl as it will! We are no longer children, but men: men who have
+bitten hard at experience, and know the value of a tooth: who have had
+our hearts bruised, and cover them with armour: who live not to feed,
+but look to food that we may live! What matters it that yonder
+high-spiced kingdom should excommunicate such as we are? We have rubbed
+off the gilt, and have assumed the command of our stomachs. We are men
+from this day!
+
+Now, you would have thought Evan’s companions, right and left of him,
+were the wretches under sentence, to judge from appearances. In
+contrast with his look of insolent pleasure, Andrew, the moment an eye
+was on him, exhibited the cleverest impersonation of the dumps ever
+seen: while Mr. Raikes was from head to foot nothing better than a moan
+made visible. Nevertheless, they both agreed to rally Evan, and bid him
+be of good cheer.
+
+“Don’t be down, Van; don’t be down, my boy,” said Andrew, rubbing his
+hands gloomily.
+
+“I? do I look it?” Evan answered, laughing.
+
+“Capital acting!” exclaimed Raikes. “Try and keep it up.”
+
+“Well, I hope you’re acting too,” said Evan.
+
+Raikes let his chest fall like a collapsing bellows.
+
+At the end of five minutes, he remarked: “I’ve been sitting on it the
+whole morning! There’s violent inflammation, I’m persuaded. Another
+hour, and I jump slap from the summit of the coach!”
+
+Evan turned to Andrew.
+
+“Do you think he’ll be let off?”
+
+“Mr. Raikes? Can’t say. You see, Van, it depends upon how Old Tom has
+taken his bad luck. Ahem! Perhaps he’ll be all the stricter; and as a
+man of honour, Mr. Raikes, you see, can’t very well—”
+
+“By Jove! I wish I wasn’t a man of honour!” Raikes interposed, heavily.
+
+“You see, Van, Old Tom’s circumstances”—Andrew ducked, to smother a
+sort of laughter—“are now such that he’d be glad of the money to let
+him off, no doubt; but Mr. Raikes has spent it, I can’t lend it, and
+you haven’t got it, and there we all are. At the end of the year he’s
+free, and he—ha! ha! I’m not a bit the merrier for laughing, I can tell
+you.”
+
+Catching another glimpse of Evan’s serious face, Andrew fell into
+louder laughter; checking it with doleful solemnity.
+
+Up hill and down hill, and past little homesteads shining with yellow
+crocuses; across wide brown heaths, whose outlines raised in Evan’s
+mind the night of his funeral walk, and tossed up old feelings dead as
+the whirling dust. At last Raikes called out:
+
+“The towers of Fallowfield; heigho!”
+
+And Andrew said:
+
+“Now then, Van: if Old Tom’s anywhere, he’s here. You get down at the
+Dragon, and don’t you talk to me, but let me go in. It’ll be just the
+hour he dines in the country. Isn’t it a shame of him to make me face
+every man of the creditors—eh?”
+
+Evan gave Andrew’s hand an affectionate squeeze, at which Andrew had to
+gulp down something—reciprocal emotion, doubtless.
+
+“Hark,” said Raikes, as the horn of the guard was heard. “Once that
+sound used to set me caracoling before an abject multitude. I did
+wonders. All London looked on me! It had more effect on me than
+champagne. Now I hear it—the whole charm has vanished! I can’t see a
+single old castle. Would you have thought it possible that a small
+circular bit of tin on a man’s person could produce such changes in
+him?”
+
+“You are a donkey to wear it,” said Evan.
+
+“I pledged my word as a gentleman, and thought it small, for the
+money!” said Raikes. “This is the first coach I ever travelled on,
+without making the old whip burst with laughing. I’m not myself. I’m
+haunted. I’m somebody else.”
+
+The three passengers having descended, a controversy commenced between
+Evan and Andrew as to which should pay. Evan had his money out; Andrew
+dashed it behind him; Evan remonstrated.
+
+“Well, you mustn’t pay for us two, Andrew. I would have let you do it
+once, but—”
+
+“Stuff!” cried Andrew. “I ain’t paying—it’s the creditors of the
+estate, my boy!”
+
+Evan looked so ingenuously surprised and hurt at his lack of principle,
+that Andrew chucked a sixpence at a small boy, saying,
+
+“If you don’t let me have my own way, Van, I’ll shy my purse after it.
+What do you mean, sir, by treating me like a beggar?”
+
+“Our friend Harrington can’t humour us,” quoth Raikes. “For myself, I
+candidly confess I prefer being paid for”; and he leaned contentedly
+against one of the posts of the inn till the filthy dispute was
+arranged to the satisfaction of the ignobler mind. There Andrew left
+them, and went to Mrs. Sockley, who, recovered from her illness, smiled
+her usual placid welcome to a guest.
+
+“You know me, ma’am?”
+
+“Oh, yes! The London Mr. Cogglesby!”
+
+“Now, ma’am, look here. I’ve come for my brother. Don’t be alarmed. No
+danger as yet. But, mind! if you attempt to conceal him from his lawful
+brother, I’ll summon here the myrmidons of the law.”
+
+Mrs. Sockley showed a serious face.
+
+“You know his habits, Mr. Cogglesby; and one doesn’t go against any one
+of his whimsies, or there’s consequences: but the house is open to you,
+sir. I don’t wish to hide him.”
+
+Andrew accepted this intelligent evasion of Tom Cogglesby’s orders as
+sufficient, and immediately proceeded upstairs. A door shut on the
+first landing. Andrew went to this door and knocked. No answer. He
+tried to open it, but found that he had been forestalled. After
+threatening to talk business through the key-hole, the door was
+unlocked, and Old Tom appeared.
+
+“So! now you’re dogging me into the country. Be off; make an
+appointment. Saturday’s my holiday. You know that.”
+
+Andrew pushed through the doorway, and, by way of an emphatic reply and
+a silencing one, delivered a punch slap into Old Tom’s belt.
+
+“Confound you, Nan!” said Old Tom, grimacing, but friendly, as if his
+sympathies had been irresistibly assailed.
+
+“It’s done, Tom! I’ve done it. Won my bet, now,” Andrew exclaimed. “The
+women—poor creatures! What a state they’re in. I pity ’em.”
+
+Old Tom pursed his lips, and eyed his brother incredulously, but with
+curious eagerness.
+
+“Oh, Lord! what a face I’ve had to wear!” Andrew continued, and while
+he sank into a chair and rubbed his handkerchief over his crisp hair,
+Old Tom let loose a convinced and exulting, “ha! ha!”
+
+“Yes, you may laugh. I’ve had all the bother,” said Andrew.
+
+“Serve ye right—marrying such cattle,” Old Tom snapped at him.
+
+“They believe we’re bankrupt—owe fifty thousand clear, Tom!”
+
+“Ha! ha!”
+
+“Brewery stock and household furniture to be sold by general auction,
+Friday week.”
+
+“Ha! ha!”
+
+“Not a place for any of us to poke our heads into. I talked about
+‘pitiless storms’ to my poor Harry—no shelter to be had unless we go
+down to Lymport, and stop with their brother in shop!”
+
+Old Tom did enjoy this. He took a great gulp of air for a tremendous
+burst of laughter, and when this was expended and reflection came, his
+features screwed, as if the acidest of flavours had ravished his
+palate.
+
+“Bravo, Nan! Didn’t think you were man enough. Ha! ha! Nan—I say—eh?
+how did ye get on behind the curtains?”
+
+The tale, to guess by Andrew’s face, appeared to be too strongly
+infused with pathos for revelation.
+
+“Will they go, Nan, eh? d’ ye think they’ll go?”
+
+“Where else can they go, Tom? They must go there, or on the parish, you
+know.”
+
+“They’ll all troop down to the young tailor—eh?”
+
+“They can’t sleep in the parks, Tom.”
+
+“No. They can’t get into Buckingham Palace, neither—’cept as
+housemaids. ’Gad, they’re howling like cats, I’d swear—nuisance to the
+neighbourhood—ha! ha!”
+
+Old Tom’s cruel laughter made Andrew feel for the unhappy ladies. He
+stuck his forehead, and leaned forward, saying: “I don’t know—’pon my
+honour, I don’t know—can’t think we’ve—quite done right to punish ’em
+so.”
+
+This acted like cold water on Old Tom’s delight. He pitched it back in
+the shape of a doubt of what Andrew had told him. Whereupon Andrew
+defied him to face three miserable women on the verge of hysterics; and
+Old Tom, beginning to chuckle again, rejoined that it would bring them
+to their senses, and emancipate him.
+
+“You may laugh, Mr. Tom,” said Andrew; “but if poor Harry should find
+me out, deuce a bit more home for me.”
+
+Old Tom looked at him keenly, and rapped the table. “Swear you did it,
+Nan.”
+
+“You promise you’ll keep the secret,” said Andrew.
+
+“Never make promises.”
+
+“Then there’s a pretty life for me! I did it for that poor dear boy.
+You were only up to one of your jokes—I see that. Confound you, Old
+Tom, you’ve been making a fool of me.”
+
+The flattering charge was not rejected by Old Tom, who now had his
+brother to laugh at as well. Andrew affected to be indignant and
+desperate.
+
+“If you’d had a heart, Tom, you’d have saved the poor fellow without
+any bother at all. What do you think? When I told him of our smash—ha!
+ha! it isn’t such a bad joke—well, I went to him, hanging my head, and
+he offered to arrange our affairs—that is—”
+
+“Damned meddlesome young dog!” cried Old Tom, quite in a rage.
+
+“There—you’re up in a twinkling,” said Andrew. “Don’t you see he
+believed it, you stupid Old Tom? Lord! to hear him say how sorry he
+was, and to see how glad he looked at the chance of serving us!”
+
+“Serving us!” Tom sneered.
+
+“Ha!” went Andrew. “Yes. There. You’re a deuced deal prouder than fifty
+peers. You’re an upside-down old despot!”
+
+No sharper retort rising to Old Tom’s lips, he permitted his brother’s
+abuse of him to pass, declaring that bandying words was not his
+business, he not being a Parliament man.
+
+“How about the Major, Nan? He coming down, too?”
+
+“Major!” cried Andrew. “Lucky if he keeps his commission. Coming down?
+No. He’s off to the Continent.”
+
+“Find plenty of scamps there to keep him company,” added Tom. “So he’s
+broke—eh? ha! ha!”
+
+“Tom,” said Andrew, seriously, “I’ll tell you all about it, if you’ll
+swear not to split on me, because it would really upset poor Harry so.
+She’d think me such a beastly hypocrite, I couldn’t face her
+afterwards.”
+
+“Lose what pluck you have—eh?” Tom jerked out his hand, and bade his
+brother continue.
+
+Compelled to trust in him without a promise, Andrew said: “Well, then,
+after we’d arranged it, I went back to Harry, and begged her to have
+poor Van at the house: told her what I hoped you’d do for him about
+getting him into the Brewery. She’s very kind, Tom, ’pon my honour she
+is. She was willing, only—”
+
+“Only—eh?”
+
+“Well, she was so afraid it’d hurt her sisters to see him there.”
+
+Old Tom saw he was in for excellent fun, and wouldn’t spoil it for the
+world.
+
+“Yes, Nan?”
+
+“So I went to Caroline. She was easy enough; and she went to the
+Countess.”
+
+“Well, and she—?”
+
+“She was willing, too, till Lady Jocelyn came and took Miss Bonner home
+to Beckley, and because Evan had written to my lady to fetch her, the
+Countess—she was angry. That was all. Because of that, you know. But
+yet she agreed. But when Miss Bonner had gone, it turned out that the
+Major was the obstacle. They were all willing enough to have Evan
+there, but the Major refused. I didn’t hear him. I wasn’t going to ask
+him. I mayn’t be a match for three women, but man to man, eh, Tom?
+You’d back me there? So Harry said the Major’d make Caroline miserable,
+if his wishes were disrespected. By George, I wish I’d known, then.
+Don’t you think it odd, Tom, now? There’s a Duke of Belfield the fellow
+had hooked into his Company; and—through Evan I heard—the Duke had his
+name struck off. After that, the Major swore at the Duke once or twice,
+and said Caroline wasn’t to go out with him. Suddenly, he insists that
+she shall go. Days the poor thing kept crying! One day, he makes her
+go. She hasn’t the spirit of my Harry or the Countess. By good luck,
+Van, who was hunting ferns for some friends of his, met them on Sunday
+in Richmond Park, and Van took her away from the Duke. But, Tom, think
+of Van seeing a fellow watching her wherever she went, and hearing the
+Duke’s coachman tell that fellow he had orders to drive his master and
+a lady hard on to the sea that night. I don’t believe it—it wasn’t
+Caroline! But what do you think of our finding out that beast of a spy
+to be in the Major’s pay? We did. Van put a constable on his track; we
+found him out, and he confessed it. A fact, Tom! That decided me. If it
+was only to get rid of a brute, I determined I’d do it, and I did.
+Strike came to me to get my name for a bill that night. ’Gad, he looked
+blanker than his bill when he heard of us two bankrupt. I showed him
+one or two documents I’d got ready. Says he: ‘Never mind; it’ll only be
+a couple of hundred more in the schedule.’ Stop, Tom! he’s got some of
+our blood. I don’t think he meant it. He is hard pushed. Well, I gave
+him a twentier, and he was off the next night. You’ll soon see all
+about the Company in the papers.”
+
+At the conclusion of Andrew’s recital, Old Tom thrummed and looked on
+the floor under a heavy frown. His mouth worked dubiously, and, from
+moment to moment, he plucked at his waistcoat and pulled it down,
+throwing back his head and glaring.
+
+“I’ve knocked that fellow over once,” he said. “Wish he hadn’t got up
+again.”
+
+Andrew nodded.
+
+“One good thing, Nan. He never boasted of our connection. Much obliged
+to him.”
+
+“Yes,” said Andrew, who was gladly watching Old Tom’s change of mood
+with a quiescent aspect.
+
+“Um!—must keep it quiet from his poor old mother.”
+
+Andrew again affirmatived his senior’s remarks. That his treatment of
+Old Tom was sound, he presently had proof of. The latter stood up, and
+after sniffing in an injured way for about a minute, launched out his
+right leg, and vociferated that he would like to have it in his power
+to kick all the villains out of the world: a modest demand Andrew at
+once chimed in with; adding that, were such a faculty extended to him,
+he would not object to lose the leg that could benefit mankind so
+infinitely, and consented to its following them. Then, Old Tom, who was
+of a practical turn, meditated, swung his foot, and gave one grim kick
+at the imaginary bundle of villains, discharged them headlong straight
+into space. Andrew, naturally imitative, and seeing that he had now to
+kick them flying, attempted to excel Old Tom in the vigour of his
+delivery. No wonder that the efforts of both were heating: they were
+engaged in the task of ridding the globe of the larger half of its
+inhabitants. Tom perceived Andrew’s useless emulation, and with a sound
+translated by “yack,” sent his leg out a long way. Not to be outdone,
+Andrew immediately, with a still louder “yack,” committed himself to an
+effort so violent that the alternative between his leg coming off, or
+his being taken off his leg, was propounded by nature, and decided by
+the laws of gravity in a trice. Joyful grunts were emitted by Old Tom
+at the sight of Andrew prostrate, rubbing his pate. But Mrs. Sockley,
+to whom the noise of Andrew’s fall had suggested awful fears of a
+fratricidal conflict upstairs, hurried forthwith to announce to them
+that the sovereign remedy for human ills, the promoter of concord, the
+healer of feuds, the central point of man’s destiny in the
+flesh—Dinner, was awaiting them.
+
+To the dinner they marched.
+
+Of this great festival be it simply told that the supply was copious
+and of good quality—much too good and copious for a bankrupt host: that
+Evan and Mr. John Raikes were formally introduced to Old Tom before the
+repast commenced, and welcomed some three minutes after he had decided
+the flavour of his first glass; that Mr. Raikes in due time preferred
+his petition for release from a dreadful engagement, and furnished vast
+amusement to the company under Old Tom’s hand, until, by chance, he
+quoted a scrap of Latin, at which the brothers Cogglesby, who would
+have faced peers and princes without being disconcerted, or performing
+mental genuflexions, shut their mouths and looked injured, unhappy, and
+in the presence of a superior: Mr. Raikes not being the man to spare
+them. Moreover, a surprise was afforded to Evan. Andrew stated to Old
+Tom that the hospitality of Main Street, Lymport,—was open to him.
+Strange to say, Old Tom accepted it on the spot, observing, “You’re
+master of the house—can do what you like, if you’re man enough,” and
+adding that he thanked him, and would come in a day or two. The case of
+Mr. Raikes was still left uncertain, for as the bottle circulated, he
+exhibited such a faculty for apt, but to the brothers, totally
+incomprehensible quotation, that they fled from him without leaving him
+time to remember what special calamity was on his mind, or whether this
+earth was other than an abode conceived in great jollity for his
+life-long entertainment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+JULIANA
+
+
+The sick night-light burned steadily in Juliana’s chamber. On a couch,
+beside her bed, Caroline lay sleeping, tired with a long watch. Two
+sentences had been passed on Juliana: one on her heart: one on her
+body: “Thou art not loved”; and, “Thou must die.” The frail passion of
+her struggle against her destiny was over with her. Quiet as that quiet
+which Nature was taking her to, her body reposed. Calm as the solitary
+night-light before her open eyes, her spirit was wasting away. “If I am
+not loved, then let me die!” In such a sense she bowed to her fate.
+
+At an hour like this, watching the round of light on the ceiling, with
+its narrowing inner rings, a sufferer from whom pain has fled looks
+back to the shores she is leaving, and would be well with them who walk
+there. It is false to imagine that schemers and workers in the dark are
+destitute of the saving gift of conscience. They have it, and it is
+perhaps made livelier in them than with easy people; and therefore,
+they are imperatively spurred to hoodwink it. Hence, their
+self-delusion is deep and endures. They march to their object, and
+gaining or losing it, the voice that calls to them is the voice of a
+blind creature, whom any answer, provided that the answer is ready,
+will silence. And at an hour like this, when finally they snatch their
+minute of sight on the threshold of black night, their souls may
+compare with yonder shining circle on the ceiling, which, as the light
+below gasps for air, contracts, and extends but to mingle with the
+darkness. They would be nobler, better, boundlessly good to all;—to
+those who have injured them to those whom they have injured. Alas! for
+any definite deed the limit of their circle is immoveable, and they
+must act within it. The trick they have played themselves imprisons
+them. Beyond it, they cease to be.
+
+Lying in this utter stillness, Juliana thought of Rose; of her beloved
+by Evan. The fever that had left her blood, had left it stagnant, and
+her thoughts were quite emotionless. She looked faintly on a far
+picture. She saw Rose blooming with pleasures in Elburne House, sliding
+as a boat borne by the river’s tide to sea, away from her living joy.
+The breast of Rose was lucid to her, and in that hour of insight she
+had clear knowledge of her cousin’s heart; how it scoffed at its base
+love, and unwittingly betrayed the power on her still, by clinging to
+the world and what it would give her to fill the void; how externally
+the lake was untroubled, and a mirror to the passing day; and how
+within there pressed a flood against an iron dam. Evan, too, she saw.
+The Countess was right in her judgement of Juliana’s love. Juliana
+looked very little to his qualities. She loved him when she thought him
+guilty, which made her conceive that her love was of a diviner cast
+than Rose was capable of. Guilt did not spoil his beauty to her; his
+gentleness and glowing manhood were unchanged; and when she knew him as
+he was, the revelation of his high nature simply confirmed her
+impression of his physical perfections. She had done him a wrong; at
+her death news would come to him, and it might be that he would bless
+her name. Because she sighed no longer for those dear lips and strong
+arms to close about her tremulous frame, it seemed to her that she had
+quite surrendered him. Generous to Evan, she would be just to Rose.
+Beneath her pillow she found pencil and paper, and with difficulty,
+scarce seeing her letters in the brown light, she began to trace lines
+of farewell to Rose. Her conscience dictated to her thus, “Tell Rose
+that she was too ready to accept his guilt; and that in this as in all
+things, she acted with the precipitation of her character. Tell her
+that you always trusted, and that now you know him innocent. Give her
+the proofs you have. Show that he did it to shield his intriguing
+sister. Tell her that you write this only to make her just to him. End
+with a prayer that Rose may be happy.”
+
+Ere Juliana had finished one sentence, she resigned the pencil. Was it
+not much, even at the gates of death, to be the instrument to send Rose
+into his arms? The picture swayed before her, helping her weakness. She
+found herself dreaming that he had kissed her once. Dorothy, she
+remembered, had danced up to her one day, to relate what the maids of
+the house said of the gentleman—(at whom, it is known, they look with
+the licence of cats toward kings); and Dorothy’s fresh careless mouth
+had told how one observant maid, amorously minded, proclaimed of Evan,
+to a companion of her sex, that, “he was the only gentleman who gave
+you an idea of how he would look when he was kissing you.” Juliana
+cherished that vision likewise. Young ladies are not supposed to do so,
+if menial maids are; but Juliana did cherish it, and it possessed her
+fancy. Bear in your recollection that she was not a healthy person.
+Diseased little heroines may be made attractive, and are now popular;
+but strip off the cleverly woven robe which is fashioned to cover them,
+and you will find them in certain matters bearing a resemblance to
+menial maids.
+
+While the thoughts of his kiss lasted, she could do nothing; but lay
+with her two hands out on the bed, and her eyelids closed. Then waking,
+she took the pencil again. It would not move: her bloodless fingers
+fell from it.
+
+“If they do not meet, and he never marries, I may claim him in the next
+world,” she mused.
+
+But conscience continued uneasy. She turned her wrist and trailed a
+letter from beneath the pillow. It was from Mrs. Shorne. Juliana knew
+the contents. She raised it unopened as high as her faltering hands
+permitted, and read like one whose shut eyes read syllables of fire on
+the darkness.
+
+“Rose has at last definitely engaged herself to Ferdinand, you will be
+glad to hear, and we may now treat her as a woman.”
+
+Having absorbed these words, Juliana’s hand found strength to write,
+with little difficulty, what she had to say to Rose. She conceived it
+to be neither sublime nor generous: not even good; merely her peculiar
+duty. When it was done, she gave a long, low sigh of relief.
+
+Caroline whispered, “Dearest child, are you awake?”
+
+“Yes,” she answered.
+
+“Sorrowful, dear?”
+
+“Very quiet.”
+
+Caroline reached her hand over to her, and felt the paper. “What is
+this?”
+
+“My good-bye to Rose. I want it folded now.”
+
+Caroline slipped from the couch to fulfil her wish. She enclosed the
+pencilled scrap of paper, sealed it, and asked, “Is that right?”
+
+“Now unlock my desk,” Juliana uttered, feebly. “Put it beside a letter
+addressed to a law-gentleman. Post both the morning I am gone.”
+
+Caroline promised to obey, and coming to Juliana to mark her looks,
+observed a faint pleased smile dying away, and had her hand gently
+squeezed. Juliana’s conscience had preceded her contentedly to its last
+sleep; and she, beneath that round of light on the ceiling, drew on her
+counted breaths in peace till dawn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+ROSE
+
+
+Have you seen a young audacious spirit smitten to the earth? It is a
+singular study; and, in the case of young women, a trap for
+inexperienced men. Rose, who had commanded and managed every one
+surrounding her since infancy, how humble had she now become!—how much
+more womanly in appearance, and more child-like at heart! She was as
+wax in Lady Elburne’s hands. A hint of that veiled episode, the Beckley
+campaign, made Rose pliant, as if she had woven for herself a rod of
+scorpions. The high ground she had taken; the perfect trust in one; the
+scorn of any judgement, save her own; these had vanished from her.
+Rose, the tameless heroine who had once put her mother’s philosophy in
+action, was the easiest filly that turbaned matron ever yet drove into
+the straight road of the world. It even surprised Lady Jocelyn to see
+how wonderfully she had been broken in by her grandmother. Her ladyship
+wrote to Drummond to tell him of it, and Drummond congratulated her,
+saying, however: “Changes of this sort don’t come of conviction. Wait
+till you see her at home. I think they have been sticking pins into the
+sore part.”
+
+Drummond knew Rose well. In reality there was no change in her. She was
+only a suppliant to be spared from ridicule: spared from the
+application of the scourge she had woven for herself.
+
+And, ah! to one who deigned to think warmly still of such a disgraced
+silly creature, with what gratitude she turned! He might well suppose
+love alone could pour that profusion of jewels at his feet.
+
+Ferdinand, now Lord Laxley, understood the merits of his finger-nails
+better than the nature of young women; but he is not to be blamed for
+presuming that Rose had learnt to adore him. Else why did she like his
+company so much? He was not mistaken in thinking she looked up to him.
+She seemed to beg to be taken into his noble serenity. In truth she
+sighed to feel as he did, above everybody!—she that had fallen so low!
+Above everybody!—born above them, and therefore superior by grace
+divine! To this Rose Jocelyn had come—she envied the mind of Ferdinand.
+
+He, you may be sure, was quite prepared to accept her homage. Rose he
+had always known to be just the girl for him; spirited, fresh, and with
+fine teeth; and once tied to you safe to be staunch. They walked
+together, rode together, danced together. Her soft humility touched him
+to eloquence. Say she was a little hypocrite, if you like, when the
+blood came to her cheeks under his eyes. Say she was a heartless minx
+for allowing it to be bruited that she and Ferdinand were betrothed. I
+can but tell you that her blushes were blushes of gratitude to one who
+could devote his time to such a disgraced silly creature, and that she,
+in her abject state, felt a secret pleasure in the protection
+Ferdinand’s name appeared to extend over her, and was hardly willing to
+lose it.
+
+So far Lady Elburne’s tact and discipline had been highly successful.
+One morning, in May, Ferdinand, strolling with Rose down the garden
+made a positive appeal to her common sense and friendly feeling; by
+which she understood that he wanted her consent to his marriage with
+her.
+
+Rose answered:
+
+“Who would have me?”
+
+Ferdinand spoke pretty well, and ultimately got possession of her hand.
+She let him keep it, thinking him noble for forgetting that another had
+pressed it before him.
+
+Some minutes later the letters were delivered. One of them contained
+Juliana’s dark-winged missive.
+
+“Poor, poor Juley!” said Rose, dropping her head, after reading all
+that was on the crumpled leaf with an inflexible face. And then,
+talking on, long low sighs lifted her bosom at intervals. She gazed
+from time to time with a wistful conciliatory air on Ferdinand. Rushing
+to her chamber, the first cry her soul framed was:
+
+“He did not kiss me!”
+
+The young have a superstitious sense of something incontestably true in
+the final protestations of the dead. Evan guiltless! she could not
+quite take the meaning this revelation involved. That which had been
+dead was beginning to move within her; but blindly: and now it stirred
+and troubled; now sank. Guiltless all she had thought him! Oh! she knew
+she could not have been deceived. But why, why had he hidden his
+sacrifice from her?
+
+“It is better for us both, of course,” said Rose, speaking the world’s
+wisdom, parrot-like, and bursting into tears the next minute.
+Guiltless, and gloriously guiltless! but nothing—nothing to her!
+
+She tried to blame him. It would not do. She tried to think of that
+grovelling loathsome position painted to her by Lady Elburne’s graphic
+hand. Evan dispersed the gloomy shades like sunshine. Then in a sort of
+terror she rejoiced to think she was partially engaged to Ferdinand,
+and found herself crying again with exultation, that he had not kissed
+her: for a kiss on her mouth was to Rose a pledge and a bond.
+
+The struggle searched her through: bared her weakness, probed her
+strength; and she, seeing herself, suffered grievously in her
+self-love. Am I such a coward, inconstant, cold? she asked.
+Confirmatory answers coming, flung her back under the shield of
+Ferdinand if for a moment her soul stood up armed and defiant, it was
+Evan’s hand she took.
+
+To whom do I belong? was another terrible question. In her ideas, if
+Evan was not chargeable with that baseness which had sundered them he
+might claim her yet, if he would. If he did, what then? Must she go to
+him?
+
+Impossible: she was in chains. Besides, what a din of laughter there
+would be to see her led away by him. Twisting her joined hands: weeping
+for her cousin, as she thought, Rose passed hours of torment over
+Juliana’s legacy to her.
+
+“Why did I doubt him?” she cried, jealous that any soul should have
+known and trusted him better. Jealous and I am afraid that the kindling
+of that one feature of love relighted the fire of her passion thus
+fervidly. To be outstripped in generosity was hateful to her. Rose,
+naturally, could not reflect that a young creature like herself,
+fighting against the world, as we call it, has all her faculties at the
+utmost stretch, and is often betrayed by failing nature when the will
+is still valiant.
+
+And here she sat—in chains! “Yes! I am fit only to be the wife of an
+idle brainless man, with money and a title,” she said, in extreme
+self-contempt. She caught a glimpse of her whole life in the horrid
+tomb of his embrace, and questions whether she could yield her hand to
+him—whether it was right in the eyes of heaven, rushed impetuously to
+console her, and defied anything in the shape of satisfactory
+affirmations. Nevertheless, the end of the struggle was, that she felt
+that she was bound to Ferdinand.
+
+“But this I will do,” said Rose, standing with heat-bright eyes and
+deep-coloured cheeks before the glass. “I will clear his character at
+Beckley. I will help him. I will be his friend. I will wipe out the
+injustice I did him.” And this bride-elect of a lord absolutely added
+that she was unworthy to be the wife of a tailor!
+
+“He! how unequalled he is! There is nothing he fears except shame. Oh!
+how sad it will be for him to find no woman in his class to understand
+him and be his helpmate!”
+
+Over, this sad subject, of which we must presume her to be accurately
+cognizant, Rose brooded heavily. By mid-day she gave her Grandmother
+notice that she was going home to Juliana’s funeral.
+
+“Well, Rose, if you think it necessary to join the ceremony,” said Lady
+Elburne. “Beckley is bad quarters for you, as you have learnt. There
+was never much love between you cousins.”
+
+“No, and I don’t pretend to it,” Rose answered. “I am sorry poor
+Juley’s gone.”
+
+“She’s better gone for many reasons—she appears to have been a little
+venomous toad,” said Lady Elburne; and Rose, thinking of a snakelike
+death-bite working through her blood, rejoined: “Yes, she isn’t to be
+pitied: she’s better off than most people.”
+
+So it was arranged that Rose should go. Ferdinand and her aunt, Mrs.
+Shorne, accompanied her. Mrs. Shorne gave them their opportunities,
+albeit they were all stowed together in a carriage, and Ferdinand
+seemed willing to profit by them; but Rose’s hand was dead, and she sat
+by her future lord forming the vow on her lips that they should never
+be touched by him.
+
+Arrived at Beckley, she, to her great delight, found Caroline there,
+waiting for the funeral. In a few minutes she got her alone, and after
+kisses, looked penetratingly into her lovely eyes, shook her head, and
+said: “Why were you false to me?”
+
+“False?” echoed Caroline.
+
+“You knew him. You knew why he did that. Why did you not save me?”
+
+Caroline fell upon her neck, asking pardon. She spared her the recital
+of facts further than the broad avowal. Evan’s present condition she
+plainly stated: and Rose, when the bitter pangs had ceased, made oath
+to her soul she would rescue him from it.
+
+In addition to the task of clearing Evan’s character, and rescuing him,
+Rose now conceived that her engagement to Ferdinand must stand
+ice-bound till Evan had given her back her troth. How could she obtain
+it from him? How could she take anything from one so noble and so poor!
+Happily there was no hurry; though before any bond was ratified, she
+decided conscientiously that it must be done.
+
+You see that like a lithe snake she turns on herself, and must be
+tracked in and out. Not being a girl to solve the problem with tears,
+or outright perfidy, she had to ease her heart to the great shock
+little by little—sincere as far as she knew: as far as one who loves
+may be. The day of the funeral came and went. The Jocelyns were of
+their mother’s opinion: that for many reasons Juliana was better out of
+the way. Mrs. Bonner’s bequest had been a severe blow to Sir Franks.
+However, all was now well. The estate naturally lapsed to Lady Jocelyn.
+No one in the house dreamed of a will, signed with Juliana’s name,
+attested, under due legal forms, being in existence. None of the
+members of the family imagined that at Beckley Court they were then
+residing on somebody else’s ground.
+
+Want of hospitable sentiments was not the cause that led to an
+intimation from Sir Franks to his wife, that Mrs. Strike must not be
+pressed to remain, and that Rose must not be permitted to have her own
+way in this. Knowing very well that Mrs. Shorne spoke through her
+husband’s mouth, Lady Jocelyn still acquiesced, and Rose, who had
+pressed Caroline publicly to stay, had to be silent when the latter
+renewed her faint objections; so Caroline said she would leave on the
+morrow morning.
+
+Juliana, with her fretfulness, her hand bounties, her petty egoisms,
+and sudden far-leaping generosities, and all the contradictory impulses
+of her malady, had now departed utterly. The joys of a landed
+proprietor mounted into the head of Sir Franks. He was up early the
+next morning, and he and Harry walked over a good bit of the ground
+before breakfast. Sir Franks meditated making it entail, and favoured
+Harry with a lecture on the duty of his shaping the course of his
+conduct at once after the model of the landed gentry generally.
+
+“And you may think yourself lucky to come into that catalogue—the son
+of a younger son!” said Sir Franks, tapping Mr. Harry’s shoulder. Harry
+also began to enjoy the look and smell of land. At the breakfast,
+which, though early, was well attended, Harry spoke of the
+adviseability of felling timber here, planting there, and so forth,
+after the model his father held up. Sir Franks nodded approval of his
+interest in the estate, but reserved his opinion on matters of detail.
+
+“All I beg of you is,” said Lady Jocelyn, “that you won’t let us have
+turnips within the circuit of a mile”; which was obligingly promised.
+
+The morning letters were delivered and opened with the customary
+calmness.
+
+“Letter from old George,” Harry sings out, and buzzes over a few lines.
+“Halloa!—Hum!” He was going to make a communication, but catching sight
+of Caroline, tossed the letter over to Ferdinand, who read it and
+tossed it back with the comment of a careless face.
+
+“Read it, Rosey?” says Harry, smiling bluntly.
+
+Rather to his surprise, Rose took the letter. Study her eyes if you
+wish to gauge the potency of one strong dose of ridicule on an
+ingenuous young heart. She read that Mr. George Uplift had met “our
+friend Mr. Snip” riding, by moonlight, on the road to Beckley. That
+great orbed night of their deep tender love flashed luminously through
+her frame, storming at the base epithet by which her lover was
+mentioned, flooding grandly over the ignominies cast on him by the
+world. She met the world, as it were, in a death-grapple; she matched
+the living heroic youth she felt him to be, with that dead wooden image
+of him which it thrust before her. Her heart stood up singing like a
+craven who sees the tide of victory setting toward him. But this passed
+beneath her eyelids. When her eyes were lifted, Ferdinand could have
+discovered nothing in them to complain of, had his suspicions been
+light to raise: nor could Mrs. Shorne perceive that there was the
+opening for a shrewd bodkin-thrust. Rose had got a mask at last: her
+colour, voice, expression, were perfectly at command. She knew it to be
+a cowardice to wear any mask: but she had been burnt, horribly burnt:
+how much so you may guess from the supple dissimulation of such a bold
+clear-visaged girl. She conquered the sneers of the world in her soul:
+but her sensitive skin was yet alive to the pangs of the scorching it
+had been subjected to when weak, helpless, and betrayed by Evan, she
+stood with no philosophic parent to cry fair play for her, among the
+skilful torturers of Elburne House.
+
+Sir Franks had risen and walked to the window.
+
+“News?” said Lady Jocelyn, wheeling round in her chair.
+
+The one eyebrow up of the easy-going baronet signified trouble of mind.
+He finished his third perusal of a letter that appeared to be written
+in a remarkably plain legal hand, and looking as men do when their
+intelligences are just equal to the comprehension or expression of an
+oath, handed the letter to his wife, and observed that he should be
+found in the library. Nevertheless he waited first to mark its effect
+on Lady Jocelyn. At one part of the document her forehead wrinkled
+slightly.
+
+“Doesn’t sound like a joke!” he said.
+
+She answered:
+
+“No.”
+
+Sir Franks, apparently quite satisfied by her ready response, turned on
+his heel and left the room quickly.
+
+An hour afterward it was rumoured and confirmed that Juliana Bonner had
+willed all the worldly property she held in her own right, comprising
+Beckley Court, to Mr. Evan Harrington, of Lymport, tailor. An abstract
+of the will was forwarded. The lawyer went on to say, that he had
+conformed to the desire of the testatrix in communicating the existence
+of the aforesaid will six days subsequent to her death, being the day
+after her funeral.
+
+There had been railing and jeering at the Countess de Saldar, the
+clever outwitted exposed adventuress, at Elburne House and Beckley
+Court. What did the crowing cleverer aristocrats think of her now?
+
+On Rose the blow fell bitterly. Was Evan also a foul schemer? Was he of
+a piece with his intriguing sister? His close kinship with the Countess
+had led her to think baseness possible to him when it was confessed by
+his own mouth once. She heard black names cast at him and the whole of
+the great Mel’s brood, and incapable of quite disbelieving them
+merited, unable to challenge and rebut them, she dropped into her
+recent state of self-contempt: into her lately-instilled doubt whether
+it really was in Nature’s power, unaided by family-portraits,
+coats-of-arms, ball-room practice, and at least one small phial of
+Essence of Society, to make a Gentleman.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+CONTAINS A WARNING TO ALL CONSPIRATORS
+
+
+This, if you have done me the favour to read it aright, has been a
+chronicle of desperate heroism on the part of almost all the principal
+personages represented. But not the Countess de Saldar, scaling the
+embattled fortress of Society; nor Rose, tossing its keys to her lover
+from the shining turret-tops; nor Evan, keeping bright the lamp of
+self-respect in his bosom against South wind and East; none excel
+friend Andrew Cogglesby, who, having fallen into Old Tom’s plot to
+humiliate his wife and her sisters, simply for Evan’s sake, and without
+any distinct notion of the terror, confusion, and universal upset he
+was bringing on his home, could yet, after a scared contemplation of
+the scene when he returned from his expedition to Fallowfield, continue
+to wear his rueful mask; and persevere in treacherously outraging his
+lofty wife.
+
+He did it to vindicate the ties of blood against accidents of position.
+Was he justified? I am sufficiently wise to ask my own sex alone.
+
+On the other side, be it said (since in our modern days every hero must
+have his weak heel), that now he had gone this distance it was
+difficult to recede. It would be no laughing matter to tell his solemn
+Harriet that he had been playing her a little practical joke. His
+temptations to give it up were incessant and most agitating; but if to
+advance seemed terrific, there was, in stopping short, an awfulness so
+overwhelming that Andrew abandoned himself to the current, his real
+dismay adding to his acting powers.
+
+The worst was, that the joke was no longer his: it was Old Tom’s. He
+discovered that he was in Old Tom’s hands completely. Andrew had
+thought that he would just frighten the women a bit, get them down to
+Lymport for a week or so, and then announce that matters were not so
+bad with the Brewery as he had feared; concluding the farce with a few
+domestic fireworks. Conceive his dismay when he entered the house, to
+find there a man in possession.
+
+Andrew flew into such a rage that he committed an assault on the man.
+So ungovernable was his passion, that for some minutes Harriet’s
+measured voice summoned him from over the banisters above, quite in
+vain. The miserable Englishman refused to be taught that his house had
+ceased to be his castle. It was something beyond a joke, this! The
+intruder, perfectly docile, seeing that by accurate calculation every
+shake he got involved a bottle of wine for him, and ultimate
+compensation probably to the amount of a couple of sovereigns, allowed
+himself to be lugged up stairs, in default of summary ejection on the
+point of Andrew’s toe into the street. There he was faced to the lady
+of the house, who apologized to him, and requested her husband to state
+what had made him guilty of this indecent behaviour. The man showed his
+papers. They were quite in order. “At the suit of Messrs. Grist.”
+
+“My own lawyers!” cried Andrew, smacking his forehead; and Old Tom’s
+devilry flashed on him at once. He sank into a chair.
+
+“Why did you bring this person up here?” said Harriet, like a speaking
+statue.
+
+“My dear!” Andrew answered, and spread out his hand, and waggled his
+head; “My—please!—I—I don’t know. We all want exercise.”
+
+The man laughed, which was kindly of him, but offensive to Mrs.
+Cogglesby, who gave Andrew a glance which was full payment for his
+imbecile pleasantry, and promised more.
+
+With a hospitable inquiry as to the condition of his appetite, and a
+request that he would be pleased to satisfy it to the full, the man was
+dismissed: whereat, as one delivered of noxious presences, the Countess
+rustled into sight. Not noticing Andrew, she lisped to Harriet:
+“Misfortunes are sometimes no curses! I bless the catarrh that has
+confined Silva to his chamber, and saved him from a bestial
+exhibition.”
+
+The two ladies then swept from the room, and left Andrew to perspire at
+leisure.
+
+Fresh tribulations awaited him when he sat down to dinner. Andrew liked
+his dinner to be comfortable, good, and in plenty. This may not seem
+strange. The fact is stated that I may win for him the warm sympathies
+of the body of his countrymen. He was greeted by a piece of cold boiled
+neck of mutton and a solitary dish of steaming potatoes. The blank
+expanse of table-cloth returned his desolate stare.
+
+“Why, what’s the meaning of this?” Andrew brutally exclaimed, as he
+thumped the table.
+
+The Countess gave a start, and rolled a look as of piteous supplication
+to spare a lady’s nerves, addressed to a ferocious brigand. Harriet
+answered: “It means that I will have no butcher’s bills.”
+
+“Butcher’s bills! butcher’s bills!” echoed Andrew; “why, you must have
+butcher’s bills; why, confound! why, you’ll have a bill for this, won’t
+you, Harry? eh? of course!”
+
+“There will be no more bills dating from yesterday,” said his wife.
+
+“What! this is paid for, then?”
+
+“Yes, Mr. Cogglesby; and so will all household expenses be, while my
+pocket-money lasts.”
+
+Resting his eyes full on Harriet a minute, Andrew dropped them on the
+savourless white-rimmed chop, which looked as lonely in his plate as
+its parent dish on the table. The poor dear creature’s pocket-money had
+paid for it! The thought, mingling with a rush of emotion, made his
+ideas spin. His imagination surged deliriously. He fancied himself at
+the Zoological Gardens, exchanging pathetic glances with a melancholy
+marmoset. Wonderfully like one the chop looked! There was no use in his
+trying to eat it. He seemed to be fixing his teeth in solid tears. He
+choked. Twice he took up knife and fork, put them down again, and
+plucking forth his handkerchief, blew a tremendous trumpet, that sent
+the Countess’s eyes rolling to the ceiling, as if heaven were her sole
+refuge from such vulgarity.
+
+“Damn that Old Tom!” he shouted at last, and pitched back in his chair.
+
+“Mr. Cogglesby!” and “In the presence of ladies!” were the admonishing
+interjections of the sisters, at whom the little man frowned in turns.
+
+“Do you wish us to quit the room, sir?” inquired his wife.
+
+“God bless your soul, you little darling!” he apostrophized that
+stately person. “Here, come along with me, Harry. A wife’s a wife, I
+say—hang it! Just outside the room—just a second! or up in a corner
+will do.”
+
+Mrs. Cogglesby was amazed to see him jump up and run round to her. She
+was prepared to defend her neck from his caress, and refused to go: but
+the words, “Something particular to tell you,” awakened her curiosity,
+which urged her to compliance. She rose and went with him to the door.
+
+“Well, sir; what is it?”
+
+No doubt he was acting under a momentary weakness he was about to
+betray the plot and take his chance of forgiveness; but her towering
+port, her commanding aspect, restored his courage. (There may be a
+contrary view of the case.) He enclosed her briskly in a connubial hug,
+and remarked with mad ecstasy: “What a duck you are, Harry! What a
+likeness between you and your mother.”
+
+Mrs. Cogglesby disengaged herself imperiously. Had he called her aside
+for this gratuitous insult? Contrite, he saw his dreadful error.
+
+“Harry! I declare!” was all he was allowed to say. Mrs. Cogglesby
+marched back to her chair, and recommenced the repast in majestic
+silence.
+
+Andrew sighed; he attempted to do the same. He stuck his fork in the
+blanched whiskerage of his marmoset, and exclaimed: “I can’t!”
+
+He was unnoticed.
+
+“You do not object to plain diet?” said Harriet to Louisa.
+
+“Oh, no, in verity!” murmured the Countess. “However plain it be!
+Absence of appetite, dearest. You are aware I partook of luncheon at
+mid-day with the Honourable and Reverend Mr. Duffian. You must not look
+condemnation at your Louy for that. Luncheon is not conversion!”
+
+Harriet observed that this might be true; but still, to her mind, it
+was a mistake to be too intimate with dangerous people. “And besides,”
+she added, “Mr. Duffian is no longer ‘the Reverend.’ We deprive all
+renegades of their spiritual titles. His worldly ones let him keep.”
+
+Her superb disdain nettled the Countess.
+
+“Dear Harriet!” she said, with less languor, “You are utterly and
+totally and entirely mistaken. I tell you so positively. Renegade! The
+application of such a word to such a man! Oh! and it is false, Harriet
+quite! Renegade means one who has gone over to the Turks, my dear. I am
+almost certain I saw it in Johnson’s Dictionary, or an improvement upon
+Johnson, by a more learned author. But there is the fact, if Harriet
+can only bring her—shall I say stiff-necked prejudices to envisage it?”
+
+Harriet granted her sister permission to apply the phrases she stood in
+need of, without impeaching her intimacy with the most learned among
+lexicographers.
+
+“And is there no such thing as being too severe?” the Countess resumed.
+“What our enemies call unchristian!”
+
+“Mr. Duffian has no cause to complain of us,” said Harriet.
+
+“Nor does he do so, dearest. Calumny may assail him; you may utterly
+denude him—”
+
+“Adam!” interposed Andrew, distractedly listening. He did not disturb
+the Countess’s flow.
+
+“You may vilify and victimize Mr. Duffian, and strip him of the honours
+of his birth, but, like the Martyrs, he will still continue the perfect
+nobleman. Stoned, I assure you that Mr. Duffian would preserve his
+breeding. In character he is exquisite; a polish to defy misfortune.”
+
+“I suppose his table is good?” said Harriet, almost ruffled by the
+Countess’s lecture.
+
+“Plate,” was remarked in the cold tone of supreme indifference.
+
+“Hem! good wines?” Andrew asked, waking up a little and not wishing to
+be excluded altogether.
+
+“All is of the very best,” the Countess pursued her eulogy, not looking
+at him.
+
+“Don’t you think you could—eh, Harry?—manage a pint for me, my dear?”
+Andrew humbly petitioned. “This cold water—ha! ha! my stomach don’t
+like cold bathing.”
+
+His wretched joke rebounded from the impenetrable armour of the ladies.
+
+“The wine-cellar is locked,” said his wife. “I have sealed up the key
+till an inventory can be taken by some agent of the creditors.”
+
+“What creditors?” roared Andrew.
+
+“You can have some of the servants’ beer,” Mrs. Cogglesby appended.
+
+Andrew studied her face to see whether she really was not hoisting him
+with his own petard. Perceiving that she was sincerely acting according
+to her sense of principle, he fumed, and departed to his privacy,
+unable to stand it any longer.
+
+Then like a kite the Countess pounced upon his character. Would the
+Honourable and Reverend Mr. Duffian decline to participate in the
+sparest provender? Would he be guilty of the discourtesy of leaving
+table without a bow or an apology, even if reduced to extremest
+poverty? No, indeed! which showed that, under all circumstances, a
+gentleman was a gentleman. And, oh! how she pitied her poor
+Harriet—eternally tied to a most vulgar little man, without the gilding
+of wealth.
+
+“And a fool in his business to boot, dear!”
+
+“These comparisons do no good,” said Harriet. “Andrew at least is not a
+renegade, and never shall be while I live. I will do my duty by him,
+however poor we are. And now, Louisa, putting my husband out of the
+question, what are your intentions? I don’t understand bankruptcy, but
+I imagine they can do nothing to wife and children. My little ones must
+have a roof over their heads; and, besides, there is little Maxwell.
+You decline to go down to Lymport, of course.”
+
+“Decline!” cried the Countess, melodiously; “and do not you?”
+
+“As far as I am concerned—yes. But I am not to think of myself.”
+
+The Countess meditated, and said: “Dear Mr. Duffian has offered me his
+hospitality. Renegades are not absolutely inhuman. They may be
+generous. I have no moral doubt that Mr. Duffian would, upon my
+representation—dare I venture?”
+
+“Sleep in his house! break bread with him!” exclaimed Harriet. “What do
+you think I am made of? I would perish—go to the workhouse, rather!”
+
+“I see you trooping there,” said the Countess, intent on the vision.
+
+“And have you accepted his invitation for yourself, Louisa?”
+
+The Countess was never to be daunted by threatening aspects. She gave
+her affirmative with calmness and a deliberate smile.
+
+“You are going to live with him?”
+
+“Live with him! What expressions! My husband accompanies me.”
+
+Harriet drew up.
+
+“I know nothing, Louisa, that could give me more pain.”
+
+The Countess patted Harriet’s knee. “It succeeds to bankruptcy,
+assuredly. But would you have me drag Silva to the—the shop, Harriet,
+love? Alternatives!”
+
+Mrs. Andrew got up and rang the bell to have the remains of their
+dinner removed. When this was done, she said,
+
+“Louisa, I don’t know whether I am justified: you told me to-day I
+might keep my jewels, trinkets, and lace, and such like. To me, I know
+they do not belong now: but I will dispose of them to procure you an
+asylum somewhere—they will fetch, I should think, £400,—to prevent your
+going to Mr. Duffian.”
+
+No exhibition of great-mindedness which the Countess could perceive,
+ever found her below it.
+
+“Never, love, never!” she said.
+
+“Then, will you go to Evan?”
+
+“Evan? I hate him!” The olive-hued visage was dark. It brightened as
+she added, “At least as much as my religious sentiments permit me to. A
+boy who has thwarted me at every turn!—disgraced us! Indeed, I find it
+difficult to pardon you the supposition of such a possibility as your
+own consent to look on him ever again, Harriet.”
+
+“You have no children,” said Mrs. Andrew.
+
+The Countess mournfully admitted it.
+
+“There lies your danger with Mr. Duffian, Louisa!”
+
+“What! do you doubt my virtue?” asked the Countess.
+
+“Pish! I fear something different. You understand me. Mr. Duffian’s
+moral reputation is none of the best, perhaps.”
+
+“That was before he renegaded,” said the Countess.
+
+Harriet bluntly rejoined: “You will leave that house a Roman Catholic.”
+
+“Now you have spoken,” said the Countess, pluming. “Now let me explain
+myself. My dear, I have fought worldly battles too long and too
+earnestly. I am rightly punished. I do but quote Herbert Duffian’s own
+words: he is no flatterer though you say he has such soft fingers. I am
+now engaged in a spiritual contest. He is very wealthy! I have resolved
+to rescue back to our Church what can benefit the flock of which we
+form a portion, so exceedingly!”
+
+At this revelation of the Countess’s spiritual contest, Mrs. Andrew
+shook a worldly head.
+
+“You have no chance with men there, Louisa.”
+
+“My Harriet complains of female weakness!”
+
+“Yes. We are strong in our own element, Louisa. Don’t be tempted out of
+it.”
+
+Sublime, the Countess rose:
+
+“Element! am I to be confined to one? What but spiritual solaces could
+assist me to live, after the degradations I have had heaped on me? I
+renounce the world. I turn my sight to realms where caste is unknown. I
+feel no shame there of being a tailor’s daughter. You see, I can bring
+my tongue to name the thing in its actuality. Once, that member would
+have blistered. Confess to me that, in spite of your children, you are
+tempted to howl at the idea of Lymport—”
+
+The Countess paused, and like a lady about to fire off a gun, appeared
+to tighten her nerves, crying out rapidly:
+
+“Shop! Shears! Geese! Cabbage! Snip! Nine to a man!”
+
+Even as the silence after explosions of cannon, that which reigned in
+the room was deep and dreadful.
+
+“See,” the Countess continued, “you are horrified you shudder. I name
+all our titles, and if I wish to be red in my cheeks, I must rouge. It
+is, in verity, as if my senseless clay were pelted, as we heard of Evan
+at his first Lymport boys’ school. You remember when he told us the
+story? He lisped a trifle then. ‘I’m the thon of a thnip.’ Oh! it was
+hell-fire to us, then; but now, what do I feel? Why, I avowed it to
+Herbert Duffian openly, and he said, that the misfortune of dear Papa’s
+birth did not the less enable him to proclaim himself in conduct a
+nobleman’s offspring—”
+
+“Which he never was.” Harriet broke the rhapsody in a monotonous low
+tone: the Countess was not compelled to hear:
+
+“—and that a large outfitter—one of the very largest, was in reality a
+merchant, whose daughters have often wedded nobles of the land, and
+become ancestresses! Now, Harriet, do you see what a truly religious
+mind can do for us in the way of comfort? Oh! I bow in gratitude to
+Herbert Duffian. I will not rest till I have led him back to our fold,
+recovered from his error. He was our own preacher and pastor. He
+quitted us from conviction. He shall return to us from conviction.”
+
+The Countess quoted texts, which I respect, and will not repeat. She
+descanted further on spiritualism, and on the balm that it was to
+tailors and their offspring; to all outcasts from Society.
+
+Overpowered by her, Harriet thus summed up her opinions: “You were
+always self-willed, Louisa.”
+
+“Say, full of sacrifice, if you would be just,” added the Countess;
+“and the victim of basest ingratitude.”
+
+“Well, you are in a dangerous path, Louisa.”
+
+Harriet had the last word, which usually the Countess was not disposed
+to accord; but now she knew herself strengthened to do so, and was
+content to smile pityingly on her sister.
+
+Full upon them in this frame of mind, arrived Caroline’s great news
+from Beckley.
+
+It was then that the Countess’s conduct proved a memorable refutation
+of cynical philosophy: she rejoiced in the good fortune of him who had
+offended her! Though he was not crushed and annihilated (as he deserved
+to be) by the wrong he had done, the great-hearted woman pardoned him!
+
+Her first remark was: “Let him thank me for it or not, I will lose no
+moment in hastening to load him with my congratulations.”
+
+Pleasantly she joked Andrew, and defended him from Harriet now.
+
+“So we are not all bankrupts, you see, dear brother-in-law.”
+
+Andrew had become so demoralized by his own plot, that in every turn of
+events he scented a similar piece of human ingenuity. Harriet was angry
+with his disbelief, or say, the grudging credit he gave to the glorious
+news. Notwithstanding her calmness, the thoughts of Lymport had
+sickened her soul, and it was only for the sake of her children, and
+from a sense of the dishonesty of spending a farthing of the money
+belonging, as she conceived, to the creditors, that she had consented
+to go.
+
+“I see your motive, Mr. Cogglesby,” she observed. “Your measures are
+disconcerted. I will remain here till my brother gives me shelter.”
+
+“Oh, that’ll do, my love; that’s all I want,” said Andrew, sincerely.
+
+“Both of you, fools!” the Countess interjected. “Know you Evan so
+little? He will receive us anywhere: his arms are open to his kindred:
+but to his heart the road is through humiliation, and it is to his
+heart we seek admittance.”
+
+“What do you mean?” Harriet inquired.
+
+“Just this,” the Countess answered in bold English and her eyes were
+lively, her figure elastic: “We must all of us go down to the old shop
+and shake his hand there—every man Jack of us!—I’m only quoting the
+sailors, Harriet—and that’s the way to win him.”
+
+She snapped her fingers, laughing. Harriet stared at her, and so did
+Andrew, though for a different reason. She seemed to be transformed.
+Seeing him inclined to gape, she ran up to him, caught up his chin
+between her ten fingers, and kissed him on both cheeks, saying:
+
+“You needn’t come, if you’re too proud, you know, little man!”
+
+And to Harriet’s look of disgust, the cause for which she divined with
+her native rapidity, she said: “What does it matter? They will talk,
+but they can’t look down on us now. Why, this is my doing!”
+
+She came tripping to her tall sister, to ask plaintively “Mayn’t I be
+glad?” and bobbed a curtsey.
+
+Harriet desired Andrew to leave them. Flushed and indignant she then
+faced the Countess.
+
+“So unnecessary!” she began. “What can excuse your indiscretion,
+Louisa?”
+
+The Countess smiled to hear her talking to her younger sister once
+more. She shrugged.
+
+“Oh, if you will keep up the fiction, do. Andrew knows—he isn’t an
+idiot—and to him we can make light of it now. What does anybody’s birth
+matter, who’s well off!”
+
+It was impossible for Harriet to take that view. The shop, if not the
+thing, might still have been concealed from her husband, she thought.
+
+“It mattered to me when I was well off,” she said, sternly.
+
+“Yes; and to me when I was; but we’ve had a fall and a lesson since
+that, my dear. Half the aristocracy of England spring from shops!—Shall
+I measure you?”
+
+Harriet never felt such a desire to inflict a slap upon mortal cheek.
+She marched away from her in a tiff. On the other hand, Andrew was half
+fascinated by the Countess’s sudden re-assumption of girlhood, and
+returned—silly fellow! to have another look at her. She had ceased, on
+reflection, to be altogether so vivacious: her stronger second nature
+had somewhat resumed its empire: still she was fresh, and could at
+times be roguishly affectionate and she patted him, and petted him, and
+made much of him; slightly railed at him for his uxoriousness and
+domestic subjection, and proffered him her fingers to try the taste of.
+The truth must be told: Mr. Duffian not being handy, she in her renewed
+earthly happiness wanted to see her charms in a woman’s natural mirror:
+namely, the face of man: if of man on his knees, all the better and
+though a little man is not much of a man, and a sister’s husband is, or
+should be, hardly one at all, still some sort of a reflector he must
+be. Two or three jests adapted to Andrew’s palate achieved his
+momentary captivation.
+
+He said: “’Gad, I never kissed you in my life, Louy.”
+
+And she, with a flavour of delicate Irish brogue, “Why don’t ye catch
+opportunity by the tail, then?”
+
+Perfect innocence, I assure you, on both sides.
+
+But mark how stupidity betrays. Andrew failed to understand her, and
+act on the hint immediately. Had he done so, the affair would have been
+over without a witness. As it happened, delay permitted Harriet to
+assist at the ceremony.
+
+“It wasn’t your mouth, Louy,” said Andrew.
+
+“Oh, my mouth!—that I keep for, my chosen,” was answered.
+
+“’Gad, you make a fellow almost wish—” Andrew’s fingers worked over his
+poll, and then the spectre of righteous wrath flashed on him—naughty
+little man that he was! He knew himself naughty, for it was the only
+time since his marriage that he had ever been sorry to see his wife.
+This is a comedy, and I must not preach lessons of life here: but I am
+obliged to remark that the husband must be proof, the sister-in-law
+perfect, where arrangements exist that keep them under one roof. She
+may be so like his wife! Or, from the knowledge she has of his
+circumstances, she may talk to him almost as his wife. He may forget
+that she is not his wife! And then again, the small beginnings, which
+are in reality the mighty barriers, are so easily slid over. But what
+is the use of telling this to a pure generation? My constant error is
+in supposing that I write for the wicked people who begat us.
+
+Note, however, the difference between the woman and the man! Shame
+confessed Andrew’s naughtiness; he sniggered pitiably: whereas the
+Countess jumped up, and pointing at him, asked her sister what she
+thought of that. Her next sentence, coolly delivered, related to some
+millinery matter. If this was not innocence, what is?
+
+Nevertheless, I must here state that the scene related, innocent as it
+was, and, as one would naturally imagine, of puny consequence, if any,
+did no less a thing than, subsequently, to precipitate the Protestant
+Countess de Saldar into the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church. A
+little bit of play!
+
+It seems barely just. But if, as I have heard, a lady has trod on a
+pebble and broken her nose, tremendous results like these warn us to be
+careful how we walk. As for play, it was never intended that we should
+play with flesh and blood.
+
+And, oh, be charitable, matrons of Britain! See here, Andrew Cogglesby,
+who loved his wife as his very soul, and who almost disliked her
+sister; in ten minutes the latter had set his head spinning! The whole
+of the day he went about the house meditating frantically on the
+possibility of his Harriet demanding a divorce.
+
+She was not the sort of woman to do that. But one thing she resolved to
+do; and it was, to go to Lymport with Louisa, and having once got her
+out of her dwelling-place, never to allow her to enter it, wherever it
+might be, in the light of a resident again. Whether anything but the
+menace of a participation in her conjugal possessions could have
+despatched her to that hateful place, I doubt. She went: she would not
+let Andrew be out of her sight. Growing haughtier toward him at every
+step, she advanced to the strange old shop. EVAN HARRINGTON over the
+door! There the Countess, having meantime returned to her state of
+womanhood, shared her shudders. They entered, and passed in to Mrs.
+Mel, leaving their footman, apparently, in the rear. Evan was not
+visible. A man in the shop, with a yard measure negligently adorning
+his shoulders, said that Mr. Harrington was in the habit of quitting
+the shop at five.
+
+“Deuced good habit, too,” said Andrew.
+
+“Why, sir,” observed another, stepping forward, “as you truly say—yes.
+But—ah! Mr. Andrew Cogglesby? Pleasure of meeting you once in
+Fallowfield! Remember Mr. Perkins?—the lawyer, not the maltster. Will
+you do me the favour to step out with me?”
+
+Andrew followed him into the street.
+
+“Are you aware of our young friend’s good fortune?” said Lawyer
+Perkins. “Yes. Ah! Well!—Would you believe that any sane person in his
+condition, now—nonsense apart—could bring his mind wilfully to continue
+a beggar? No. Um! Well; Mr. Cogglesby, I may tell you that I hold here
+in my hands a document by which Mr. Evan Harrington transfers the whole
+of the property bequeathed to him to Lady Jocelyn, and that I have his
+orders to execute it instantly, and deliver it over to her ladyship,
+after the will is settled, probate, and so forth: I presume there will
+be an arrangement about his father’s debts. Now what do you think of
+that?”
+
+“Think, sir,—think!” cried Andrew, cocking his head at him like an
+indignant bird, “I think he’s a damned young idiot to do so, and you’re
+a confounded old rascal to help him.”
+
+Leaving Mr. Perkins to digest his judgement, which he had solicited,
+Andrew bounced back into the shop.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+IN WHICH THE SHOP BECOMES THE CENTRE OF ATTRACTION
+
+
+Under the first lustre of a May-night, Evan was galloping over the
+moon-shadowed downs toward Beckley. At the ridge commanding the woods,
+the park, and the stream, his horse stopped, as if from habit, snorted,
+and puffed its sides, while he gazed steadily across the long lighted
+vale. Soon he began to wind down the glaring chalk-track, and reached
+grass levels. Here he broke into a round pace, till, gaining the first
+straggling cottages of the village, he knocked the head of his whip
+against the garden-gate of one, and a man came out, who saluted him,
+and held the reins.
+
+“Animal does work, sir,” said the man.
+
+Evan gave directions for it to be looked to, and went on to the
+doorway, where he was met by a young woman. She uttered a respectful
+greeting, and begged him to enter.
+
+The door closed, he flung himself into a chair, and said:
+
+“Well, Susan, how is the child?”
+
+“Oh! he’s always well, Mr. Harrington; he don’t know the tricks o’
+trouble yet.”
+
+“Will Polly be here soon?”
+
+“At a quarter after nine, she said, sir.”
+
+Evan bade her sit down. After examining her features quietly, he said:
+
+“I’m glad to see you here, Susan. You don’t regret that you followed my
+advice?”
+
+“No, sir; now it’s over, I don’t. Mother’s kind enough, and father
+doesn’t mention anything. She’s a-bed with bile—father’s out.”
+
+“But what? There’s something on your mind.”
+
+“I shall cry, if I begin, Mr. Harrington.”
+
+“See how far you can get without.”
+
+“Oh! Sir, then,” said Susan, on a sharp rise of her bosom, “it ain’t my
+fault. I wouldn’t cause trouble to Mr. Harry, or any friend of yours;
+but, sir, father have got hold of his letters to me, and he says,
+there’s a promise in ’em—least, one of ’em; and it’s as good as law, he
+says—he heard it in a public-house; and he’s gone over to Fall’field to
+a law-gentleman there.” Susan was compelled to give way to some sobs.
+“It ain’t for me—father does it, sir,” she pleaded. “I tried to stop
+him, knowing how it’d vex you, Mr. Harrington; but he’s heady about
+points, though a quiet man ordinary; and he says he don’t expect—and I
+know now no gentleman’d marry such as me—I ain’t such a stupid gaper at
+words as I used to be; but father says it’s for the child’s sake, and
+he does it to have him provided for. Please, don’t ye be angry with me,
+sir.”
+
+Susan’s half-controlled spasms here got the better of her.
+
+While Evan was awaiting the return of her calmer senses, the latch was
+lifted, and Polly appeared.
+
+“At it again!” was her sneering comment, after a short survey of her
+apron-screened sister; and then she bobbed to Evan.
+
+“It’s whimper, whimper, and squeak, squeak, half their lives with some
+girls. After that they go wondering they can’t see to thread a needle!
+The neighbours, I suppose. I should like to lift the top off some o’
+their houses. I hope I haven’t kept you, sir.”
+
+“No, Polly,” said Evan; “but you must be charitable, or I shall think
+you want a lesson yourself. Mr. Raikes tells me you want to see me.
+What is it? You seem to be correspondents.”
+
+Polly replied: “Oh, no, Mr. Harrington: only accidental ones—when
+something particular’s to be said. And he dances-like on the paper, so
+that you can’t help laughing. Isn’t he a very eccentric gentleman,
+sir?”
+
+“Very,” said Evan. “I’ve no time to lose, Polly.”
+
+“Here, you must go,” the latter called to her sister. “Now pack at
+once, Sue. Do rout out, and do leave off thinking you’ve got a candle
+at your eyes, for Goodness’ sake!”
+
+Susan was too well accustomed to Polly’s usage to complain. She
+murmured a gentle “Good night, sir,” and retired. Whereupon Polly
+exclaimed: “Bless her poor dear soft heart! It’s us hard ones that get
+on best in the world. I’m treated better than her, Mr. Harrington, and
+I know I ain’t worth half of her. It goes nigh to make one religious,
+only to see how exactly like Scripture is the way Beckley treats her,
+whose only sin is her being so soft as to believe in a man! Oh, dear!
+Mr. Harrington! I wish I had good news for you.”
+
+In spite of all his self-control, Evan breathed quickly and looked
+eagerly.
+
+“Speak it out, Polly.”
+
+“Oh, dear! I must, I suppose,” Polly answered. “Mr. Laxley’s become a
+lord now, Mr. Harrington.”
+
+Evan tasted in his soul the sweets of contrast. “Well?”
+
+“And my Miss Rose—she—”
+
+“What?”
+
+Moved by the keen hunger of his eyes, Polly hesitated. Her face
+betrayed a sudden change of mind.
+
+“Wants to see you, sir,” she said, resolutely.
+
+“To see me?”
+
+Evan stood up, so pale that Polly was frightened.
+
+“Where is she? Where can I meet her?”
+
+“Please don’t take it so, Mr. Harrington.”
+
+Evan commanded her to tell him what her mistress had said.
+
+Now up to this point Polly had spoken truth. She was positive her
+mistress did want to see him. Polly, also, with a maiden’s tender
+guile, desired to bring them together for once, though it were for the
+last time, and for no good on earth. She had been about to confide to
+him her young mistress’s position toward Lord Laxley, when his sharp
+interrogation stopped her. Shrinking from absolute invention, she
+remarked that of course she could not exactly remember Miss Rose’s
+words; which seemed indeed too much to expect of her.
+
+“She will see me to-night?” said Evan.
+
+“I don’t know about to-night,” Polly replied.
+
+“Go to her instantly. Tell her I am ready. I will be at the West
+park-gates. This is why you wrote, Polly? Why did you lose time? Don’t
+delay, my good girl! Come!”
+
+Evan had opened the door. He would not allow Polly an instant for
+expostulation; but drew her out, saying, “You will attend to the gates
+yourself. Or come and tell me the day, if she appoints another.”
+
+Polly made a final effort to escape from the pit she was being pushed
+into.
+
+“Mr. Harrington! it wasn’t to tell you this I wrote.
+
+Miss Rose is engaged, sir.”
+
+“I understand,” said Evan, hoarsely, scarcely feeling it, as is the
+case with men who are shot through the heart.
+
+Ten minutes later he was on horseback by the Fallowfield gates, with
+the tidings shrieking through his frame. The night was still, and
+stiller in the pauses of the nightingales. He sat there, neither
+thinking of them nor reproached in his manhood for the tears that
+rolled down his cheeks. Presently his horse’s ears pricked, and the
+animal gave a low neigh. Evan’s eyes fixed harder on the length of
+gravel leading to the house. There was no sign, no figure. Out from the
+smooth grass of the lane a couple of horsemen issued, and came straight
+to the gates. He heard nothing till one spoke. It was a familiar voice.
+
+“By Jove, Ferdy, here is the fellow, and we’ve been all the way to
+Lymport!”
+
+Evan started from his trance.
+
+“It’s you, Harrington?”
+
+“Yes, Harry.”
+
+“Sir!” exclaimed that youth, evidently flushed with wine, “what the
+devil do you mean by addressing me by my Christian name?”
+
+Laxley pushed his horse’s head in front of Harry. In a manner
+apparently somewhat improved by his new dignity, he said: “We have
+ridden to Lymport to speak to you, sir. Favour me by moving a little
+ahead of the lodge.”
+
+Evan bowed, and moved beside him a short way down the lane, Harry
+following.
+
+“The purport of my visit, sir,” Laxley began, “was to make known to you
+that Miss Jocelyn has done me the honour to accept me as her husband. I
+learn from her that during the term of your residence in the house, you
+contrived to extract from her a promise to which she attaches certain
+scruples. She pleases to consider herself bound to you till you release
+her. My object is to demand that you will do so immediately.”
+
+There was no reply.
+
+“Should you refuse to make this reparation for the harm you have done
+to her and her family,” Laxley pursued, “I must let you know that there
+are means of compelling you to it, and that those means will be
+employed.”
+
+Harry, fuming at these postured sentences, burst out:
+
+“What do you talk to the fellow in that way for? A fellow who makes a
+fool of my cousin, and then wants to get us to buy off my sister!
+What’s he spying after here? The place is ours till we troop. I tell
+you there’s only one way of dealing with him, and if you don’t do it, I
+will.”
+
+Laxley pulled his reins with a jerk that brought him to the rear.
+
+“Miss Jocelyn has commissioned you to make this demand on me in her
+name?” said Evan.
+
+“I make it in my own right,” returned—Laxley. “I demand a prompt
+reply.”
+
+“My lord, you shall have it. Miss Jocelyn is not bound to me by any
+engagement. Should she entertain scruples which I may have it in my
+power to obliterate, I shall not hesitate to do so—but only to her.
+What has passed between us I hold sacred.”
+
+“Hark at that!” shouted Harry. “The damned tradesman means money! You
+ass, Ferdinand! What did we go to Lymport for? Not to bandy words.
+Here! I’ve got my own quarrel with you, Harrington. You’ve been setting
+that girl’s father on me. Can you deny that?”
+
+It was enough for Harry that Evan did not deny it. The calm disdain
+which he read on Evan’s face acted on his fury, and digging his heels
+into his horse’s flanks he rushed full at him and dealt him a sharp
+flick with his whip. Evan’s beast reared.
+
+“Accept my conditions, sir, or afford me satisfaction,” cried Laxley.
+
+“You do me great honour, my lord; but I have told you I cannot,” said
+Evan, curbing his horse.
+
+At that moment Rose came among them. Evan raised his hat, as did
+Laxley. Harry, a little behind the others, performed a laborious mock
+salute, and then ordered her back to the house. A quick altercation
+ensued; the end being that Harry managed to give his sister the context
+of the previous conversation.
+
+“Now go back, Rose,” said Laxley. “I have particular business with Mr.
+Harrington.”
+
+“I came to see him,” said Rose, in a clear voice.
+
+Laxley reddened angrily.
+
+“Then tell him at once you want to be rid of him,” her brother called
+to her.
+
+Rose looked at Evan. Could he not see that she had no word in her soul
+for him of that kind? Yes: but love is not always to be touched to
+tenderness even at the sight of love.
+
+“Rose,” he said, “I hear from Lord Laxley, that you fancy yourself not
+at liberty; and that you require me to disengage you.”
+
+He paused. Did he expect her to say there that she wished nothing of
+the sort? Her stedfast eyes spoke as much: but misery is wanton, and
+will pull all down to it. Even Harry was checked by his tone, and
+Laxley sat silent. The fact that something more than a tailor was
+speaking seemed to impress them.
+
+“Since I have to say it, Rose, I hold you in no way bound to me. The
+presumption is forced upon me. May you have all the happiness I pray
+God to give you.
+
+Gentlemen, good night!”
+
+He bowed and was gone. How keenly she could have retorted on that false
+prayer for her happiness! Her limbs were nerveless, her tongue
+speechless. He had thrown her off—there was no barrier now between
+herself and Ferdinand. Why did Ferdinand speak to her with that air of
+gentle authority, bidding her return to the house? She was incapable of
+seeing, what the young lord acutely felt, that he had stooped very much
+in helping to bring about such a scene. She had no idea of having
+trifled with him and her own heart, when she talked feebly of her
+bondage to another, as one who would be warmer to him were she free.
+Swiftly she compared the two that loved her, and shivered as if she had
+been tossed to the embrace of a block of ice.
+
+“You are cold, Rose,” said Laxley, bending to lay his hand on her
+shoulder.
+
+“Pray, never touch me,” she answered, and walked on hastily to the
+house.
+
+Entering it, she remembered that Evan had dwelt there. A sense of
+desolation came over her. She turned to Ferdinand remorsefully, saying:
+“Dear Ferdinand!” and allowed herself to be touched and taken close to
+him. When she reached her bed-room, she had time to reflect that he had
+kissed her on the lips, and then she fell down and shed such tears as
+had never been drawn from her before.
+
+Next day she rose with an undivided mind. Belonging henceforth to
+Ferdinand, it was necessary that she should invest him immediately with
+transcendent qualities. The absence of character in him rendered this
+easy. What she had done for Evan, she did for him. But now, as if the
+Fates had been lying in watch to entrap her and chain her, that they
+might have her at their mercy, her dreams of Evan’s high
+nature—hitherto dreams only—were to be realized. With the purposeless
+waywardness of her sex, Pony Wheedle, while dressing her young
+mistress, and though quite aware that the parting had been spoken, must
+needs relate her sister’s story and Evan’s share in it. Rose praised
+him like one forever aloof from him. Nay, she could secretly
+congratulate herself on not being deceived. Upon that came a letter
+from Caroline:
+
+“Do not misjudge my brother. He knew Juliana’s love for him and
+rejected it. You will soon have proofs of his disinterestedness. Then
+do not forget that he works to support us all. I write this with no
+hope save to make you just to him. That is the utmost he will ever
+anticipate.”
+
+It gave no beating of the heart to Rose to hear good of Evan now: but
+an increased serenity of confidence in the accuracy of her judgement of
+persons.
+
+The arrival of Lawyer Perkins supplied the key to Caroline’s
+communication. No one was less astonished than Rose at the news that
+Evan renounced the estate. She smiled at Harry’s contrite stupefaction,
+and her father’s incapacity of belief in conduct so singular, caused
+her to lift her head and look down on her parent.
+
+“Shows he knows nothing of the world, poor young fellow!” said Sir
+Franks.
+
+“Nothing more clearly,” observed Lady Jocelyn. “I presume I shall cease
+to be blamed for having had him here?”
+
+“Upon my honour, he must have the soul of a gentleman!” said the
+baronet. “There’s nothing he can expect in return, you know!”
+
+“One would think, Papa, you had always been dealing with tradesmen!”
+remarked Rose, to whom her father now accorded the treatment due to a
+sensible girl.
+
+Laxley was present at the family consultation. What was his opinion?
+Rose manifested a slight anxiety to hear it.
+
+“What those sort of fellows do never surprises me,” he said, with a
+semi-yawn.
+
+Rose felt fire on her cheeks.
+
+“It’s only what the young man is bound to do,” said Mrs. Shorne.
+
+“His duty, aunt? I hope we may all do it!” Rose interjected.
+
+“Championing him again?”
+
+Rose quietly turned her face, too sure of her cold appreciation of him
+to retort. But yesterday night a word from him might have made her his;
+and here she sat advocating the nobility of his nature with the zeal of
+a barrister in full swing of practice. Remember, however, that a kiss
+separates them: and how many millions of leagues that counts for in
+love, in a pure girl’s thought, I leave you to guess.
+
+Now, in what way was Evan to be thanked? how was he to be treated? Sir
+Franks proposed to go down to him in person, accompanied by Harry. Lady
+Jocelyn acquiesced. But Rose said to her mother:
+
+“Will not you wound his sensitiveness by going to him there?”
+
+“Possibly,” said her ladyship. “Shall we write and ask him to come to
+us?”
+
+“No, Mama. Could we ask him to make a journey to receive our thanks?”
+
+“Not till we have solid ones to offer, perhaps.”
+
+“He will not let us help him, Mama, unless we have all given him our
+hands.”
+
+“Probably not. There’s always a fund of nonsense in those who are
+capable of great things, I observe. It shall be a family expedition, if
+you like.”
+
+“What!” exclaimed Mrs. Shorne. “Do you mean that you intend to allow
+Rose to make one of the party? Franks! is that your idea?”
+
+Sir Franks looked at his wife.
+
+“What harm?” Lady Jocelyn asked; for Rose’s absence of conscious guile
+in appealing to her reason had subjugated that great faculty.
+
+“Simply a sense of propriety, Emily,” said Mrs. Shorne, with a glance
+at Ferdinand.
+
+“You have no objection, I suppose!” Lady Jocelyn addressed him.
+
+“Ferdinand will join us,” said Rose.
+
+“Thank you, Rose, I’d rather not,” he replied. “I thought we had done
+with the fellow for good last night.”
+
+“Last night?” quoth Lady Jocelyn.
+
+No one spoke. The interrogation was renewed. Was it Rose’s swift
+instinct which directed her the shortest way to gain her point? or that
+she was glad to announce that her degrading engagement was at an end?
+She said:
+
+“Ferdinand and Mr. Harrington came to an understanding last night, in
+my presence.”
+
+That, strange as it struck on their ears, appeared to be quite
+sufficient to all, albeit the necessity for it was not so very clear.
+The carriage was ordered forthwith; Lady Jocelyn went to dress; Rose
+drew Ferdinand away into the garden. Then, with all her powers, she
+entreated him to join her.
+
+“Thank you, Rose,” he said; “I have no taste for the genus.”
+
+“For my sake, I beg it, Ferdinand.”
+
+“It’s really too much to ask of me, Rose.”
+
+“If you care for me, you will.”
+
+“’Pon my honour, quite impossible!”
+
+“You refuse, Ferdinand?”
+
+“My London tailor’d find me out, and never forgive me.”
+
+This pleasantry stopped her soft looks. Why she wished him to be with
+her, she could not have said. For a thousand reasons: which implies no
+distinct one something prophetically pressing in her blood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI.
+A LOVERS’ PARTING
+
+
+Now, to suppose oneself the fashioner of such a chain of events as this
+which brought the whole of the Harrington family in tender unity
+together once more, would have elated an ordinary mind. But to the
+Countess de Saldar, it was simply an occasion for reflecting that she
+had misunderstood—and could most sincerely forgive—Providence. She
+admitted to herself that it was not entirely her work; for she never
+would have had their place of meeting to be the Shop. Seeing, however,
+that her end was gained, she was entitled to the credit of it, and
+could pardon the means adopted. Her brother lord of Beckley Court, and
+all of them assembled in the old 193, Main Street, Lymport! What matter
+for proud humility! Providence had answered her numerous petitions, but
+in its own way. Stipulating that she must swallow this pill, Providence
+consented to serve her. She swallowed it with her wonted courage. In
+half an hour subsequent to her arrival at Lymport, she laid siege to
+the heart of Old Tom Cogglesby, whom she found installed in the
+parlour, comfortably sipping at a tumbler of rum-and-water. Old Tom was
+astonished to meet such an agreeable unpretentious woman, who talked of
+tailors and lords with equal ease, appeared to comprehend a man’s
+habits instinctively, and could amuse him while she ministered to them.
+
+“Can you cook, ma’am?” asked Old Tom.
+
+“All but that,” said the Countess, with a smile of sweet meaning.
+
+“Ha! then you won’t suit me as well as your mother.”
+
+“Take care you do not excite my emulation,” she returned, graciously,
+albeit disgusted at his tone.
+
+To Harriet, Old Tom had merely nodded. There he sat, in the arm-chair,
+sucking the liquor, with the glimpse of a sour chuckle on his cheeks.
+Now and then, during the evening, he rubbed his hands sharply, but
+spoke little. The unbending Harriet did not conceal her disdain of him.
+When he ventured to allude to the bankruptcy, she cut him short.
+
+“Pray, excuse me—I am unacquainted with affairs of business—I cannot
+even understand my husband.”
+
+“Lord bless my soul!” Old Tom exclaimed, rolling his eyes.
+
+Caroline had informed her sisters up-stairs that their mother was
+ignorant of Evan’s change of fortune, and that Evan desired her to
+continue so for the present. Caroline appeared to be pained by the
+subject, and was glad when Louisa sounded his mysterious behaviour by
+saying:
+
+“Evan has a native love of concealment—he must be humoured.”
+
+At the supper, Mr. Raikes made his bow. He was modest and reserved. It
+was known that this young gentleman acted as shopman there. With a
+tenderness for his position worthy of all respect, the Countess spared
+his feelings by totally ignoring his presence; whereat he, unaccustomed
+to such great-minded treatment, retired to bed, a hater of his kind.
+Harriet and Caroline went next. The Countess said she would wait up for
+Evan, but hearing that his hours of return were about the chimes of
+matins, she cried exultingly: “Darling Papa all over!” and departed
+likewise. Mrs. Mel, when she had mixed Old Tom’s third glass, wished
+the brothers good night, and they were left to exchange what sentiments
+they thought proper for the occasion. The Countess had certainly,
+disappointed Old Tom’s farce, in a measure; and he expressed himself
+puzzled by her. “You ain’t the only one,” said his brother. Andrew,
+with some effort, held his tongue concerning the news of Evan—his
+fortune and his folly, till he could talk to the youth in person.
+
+All took their seats at the early breakfast next morning.
+
+“Has Evan not come—home yet?” was the Countess’s first question.
+
+Mrs. Mel replied, “No.”
+
+“Do you know where he has gone, dear Mama?”
+
+“He chooses his own way.”
+
+“And you fear that it leads somewhere?” added the Countess.
+
+“I fear that it leads to knocking up the horse he rides.”
+
+“The horse, Mama! He is out on a horse all night! But don’t you see,
+dear old pet! his morals, at least, are safe on horseback.”
+
+“The horse has to be paid for, Louisa,” said her mother, sternly; and
+then, for she had a lesson to read to the guests of her son, “Ready
+money doesn’t come by joking. What will the creditors think? If he
+intends to be honest in earnest, he must give up four-feet mouths.”
+
+“Fourteen-feet, ma’am, you mean,” said Old Tom, counting the heads at
+table.
+
+“Bravo, Mama!” cried the Countess, and as she was sitting near her
+mother, she must show how prettily she kissed, by pouting out her
+playful lips to her parent. “Do be economical always! And mind! for the
+sake of the wretched animals, I will intercede for you to be his
+inspector of stables.”
+
+This, with a glance of intelligence at her sisters.
+
+“Well, Mr. Raikes,” said Andrew, “you keep good hours, at all
+events—eh?”
+
+“Up with the lark,” said Old Tom. “Ha! ’fraid he won’t be so early when
+he gets rid of his present habits—eh?”
+
+“Nec dierum numerum, ut nos, sed noctium computant,” said Mr. Raikes,
+and both the brothers sniffed like dogs that have put their noses to a
+hot coal, and the Countess, who was less insensible to the aristocracy
+of the dead languages than are women generally, gave him the
+recognition that is occasionally afforded the family tutor.
+
+About the hour of ten Evan arrived. He was subjected to the hottest
+embrace he had ever yet received from his sister Louisa.
+
+“Darling!” she called him before them all. “Oh! how I suffer for this
+ignominy I see you compelled for a moment to endure. But it is but for
+a moment. They must vacate; and you will soon be out of this horrid
+hole.”
+
+“Where he just said he was glad to give us a welcome,” muttered Old
+Tom.
+
+Evan heard him, and laughed. The Countess laughed too.
+
+“No, we will not be impatient. We are poor insignificant people!” she
+said; and turning to her mother, added: “And yet I doubt not you think
+the smallest of our landed gentry equal to great continental seigneurs.
+I do not say the contrary.”
+
+“You will fill Evan’s head with nonsense till you make him knock up a
+horse a week, and never go to his natural bed,” said Mrs. Mel, angrily.
+“Look at him! Is a face like that fit for business?”
+
+“Certainly, certainly not!” said the Countess.
+
+“Well, Mother, the horse is dismissed,—you won’t have to complain any
+more,” said Evan, touching her hand. “Another history commences from
+to-day.”
+
+The Countess watched him admiringly. Such powers of acting she could
+not have ascribed to him.
+
+“Another history, indeed!” she said. “By the way, Van, love! was it out
+of Glamorganshire—were we Tudors, according to Papa? or only Powys
+chieftains? It’s of no moment, but it helps one in conversation.”
+
+“Not half so much as good ale, though!” was Old Tom’s comment.
+
+The Countess did not perceive its fitness, till Evan burst into a
+laugh, and then she said:
+
+“Oh! we shall never be ashamed of the Brewery. Do not fear that, Mr.
+Cogglesby.”
+
+Old Tom saw his farce reviving, and encouraged the Countess to
+patronize him. She did so to an extent that called on her Mrs. Mel’s
+reprobation, which was so cutting and pertinent, that Harriet was
+compelled to defend her sister, remarking that perhaps her mother would
+soon learn that Louisa was justified in not permitting herself and
+family to be classed too low. At this Andrew, coming from a private
+interview with Evan, threw up his hands and eyes as one who foretold
+astonishment but counselled humility. What with the effort of those who
+knew a little to imply a great deal; of those who knew all to betray
+nothing; and of those who were kept in ignorance to strain a fact out
+of the conflicting innuendos the general mystification waxed apace, and
+was at its height, when a name struck on Evan’s ear that went through
+his blood like a touch of the torpedo.
+
+He had been called into the parlour to assist at a consultation over
+the Brewery affairs. Raikes opened the door, and announced, “Sir Franks
+and Lady Jocelyn.”
+
+Them he could meet, though it was hard for his pride to pardon their
+visit to him there. But when his eyes discerned Rose behind them, the
+passions of his lower nature stood up armed. What could she have come
+for but to humiliate, or play with him?
+
+A very few words enabled the Countess to guess the cause for this
+visit. Of course, it was to beg time! But they thanked Evan. For
+something generous, no doubt.
+
+Sir Franks took him aside, and returning remarked to his wife that she
+perhaps would have greater influence with him. All this while Rose sat
+talking to Mrs. Andrew Cogglesby, Mrs. Strike, and Evan’s mother. She
+saw by his face the offence she had committed, and acted on by one of
+her impulses, said: “Mama, I think if I were to speak to Mr.
+Harrington—”
+
+Ere her mother could make light of the suggestion, Old Tom had jumped
+up, and bowed out his arm.
+
+“Allow me to conduct ye to the drawing room, upstairs, young lady.
+He’ll follow, safe enough!”
+
+Rose had not stipulated for that. Nevertheless, seeing no cloud on her
+mother’s face, or her father’s, she gave Old Tom her hand, and awaited
+a movement from Evan. It was too late to object to it on either side.
+Old Tom had caught the tide at the right instant. Much as if a grim old
+genie had planted them together, the lovers found themselves alone.
+
+“Evan, you forgive me?” she began, looking up at him timidly.
+
+“With all my heart, Rose,” he answered, with great cheerfulness.
+
+“No. I know your heart better. Oh, Evan! you must be sure that we
+respect you too much to wound you. We came to thank you for your
+generosity. Do you refuse to accept anything from us? How can we take
+this that you thrust on us, unless in some way—”
+
+“Say no more,” he interposed. “You see me here. You know me as I am,
+now.”
+
+“Yes, yes!” the tears stood in her eyes. “Why did I come, you would
+ask? That is what you cannot forgive! I see now how useless it was.
+Evan! why did you betray me?”
+
+“Betray you, Rose?”
+
+“You said that you loved me once.”
+
+She was weeping, and all his spirit melted, and his love cried out: “I
+said ‘till death,’ and till death it will be, Rose.”
+
+“Then why, why did you betray me, Evan? I know it all. But if you
+blackened yourself to me, was it not because you loved something better
+than me? And now you think me false! Which of us two has been false?
+It’s silly to talk of these things now too late! But be just. I wish
+that we may be friends. Can we, unless you bend a little?”
+
+The tears streamed down her cheeks, and in her lovely humility he saw
+the baseness of that pride of his which had hitherto held him up.
+
+“Now that you are in this house where I was born and am to live, can
+you regret what has come between us, Rose?”
+
+Her lips quivered in pain.
+
+“Can I do anything else but regret it all my life, Evan?”
+
+How was it possible for him to keep his strength?
+
+“Rose!” he spoke with a passion that made her shrink, “are you bound to
+this man?” and to the drooping of her eyes, “No. Impossible, for you do
+not love him. Break it. Break the engagement you cannot fulfil. Break
+it and belong to me. It sounds ill for me to say that in such a place.
+But Rose, I will leave it. I will accept any assistance that your
+father—that any man will give me. Beloved—noble girl! I see my
+falseness to you, though I little thought it at the time—fool that I
+was! Be my help, my guide—as the soul of my body! Be mine!”
+
+“Oh, Evan!” she clasped her hands in terror at the change in him, that
+was hurrying her she knew not whither, and trembling, held them
+supplicatingly.
+
+“Yes, Rose: you have taught me what love can be. You cannot marry that
+man.”
+
+“But, my honour, Evan! No. I do not love him; for I can love but one.
+He has my pledge. Can I break it?”
+
+The stress on the question choked him, just as his heart sprang to her.
+
+“Can you face the world with me, Rose?”
+
+“Oh, Evan! is there an escape for me? Think Decide!—No—no! there is
+not. My mother, I know, looks on it so. Why did she trust me to be with
+you here, but that she thinks me engaged to him, and has such faith in
+me? Oh, help me!—be my guide. Think whether you would trust me
+hereafter! I should despise myself.”
+
+“Not if you marry him!” said Evan, bitterly. And then thinking as men
+will think when they look on the figure of a fair girl marching
+serenely to a sacrifice, the horrors of which they insist that she
+ought to know: half-hating her for her calmness—adoring her for her
+innocence: he said: “It rests with you, Rose. The world will approve
+you, and if your conscience does, why—farewell, and may heaven be your
+help.”
+
+She murmured, “Farewell.”
+
+Did she expect more to be said by him? What did she want or hope for
+now? And yet a light of hunger grew in her eyes, brighter and brighter,
+as it were on a wave of yearning.
+
+“Take my hand once,” she faltered.
+
+Her hand and her whole shape he took, and she with closed eyes let him
+strain her to his breast.
+
+Their swoon was broken by the opening of the door, where Old Tom
+Cogglesby and Lady Jocelyn appeared.
+
+“’Gad! he seems to have got his recompense—eh, my lady?” cried Old Tom.
+However satisfactorily they might have explained the case, it certainly
+did seem so.
+
+Lady Jocelyn looked not absolutely displeased. Old Tom was chuckling at
+her elbow. The two principal actors remained dumb.
+
+“I suppose, if we leave young people to settle a thing, this is how
+they do it,” her ladyship remarked.
+
+“’Gad, and they do it well!” cried Old Tom.
+
+Rose, with a deep blush on her cheeks, stepped from Evan to her mother.
+Not in effrontery, but earnestly, and as the only way of escaping from
+the position, she said: “I have succeeded, Mama. He will take what I
+offer.”
+
+“And what’s that, now?” Old Tom inquired.
+
+Rose turned to Evan. He bent and kissed her hand.
+
+“Call it ‘recompense’ for the nonce,” said Lady Jocelyn. “Do you still
+hold to your original proposition, Tom?”
+
+“Every penny, my lady. I like the young fellow, and she’s a jolly
+little lass—if she means it:—she’s a woman.”
+
+“True,” said Lady Jocelyn. “Considering that fact, you will oblige me
+by keeping the matter quiet.”
+
+“Does she want to try whether the tailor’s a gentleman still, my
+lady—eh?”
+
+“No. I fancy she will have to see whether a certain nobleman may be
+one.”
+
+The Countess now joined them. Sir Franks had informed her of her
+brother’s last fine performance. After a short, uneasy pause, she said,
+glancing at Evan:—
+
+“You know his romantic nature. I can assure you he was sincere; and
+even if you could not accept, at least—”
+
+“But we have accepted, Countess,” said Rose.
+
+“The estate!”
+
+“The estate, Countess. And what is more, to increase the effect of his
+generosity, he has consented to take a recompense.”
+
+“Indeed!” exclaimed the Countess, directing a stony look at her
+brother.
+
+“May I presume to ask what recompense?”
+
+Rose shook her head. “Such a very poor one, Countess! He has no idea of
+relative value.”
+
+The Countess’s great mind was just then running hot on estates, and
+thousands, or she would not have played goose to them, you may be sure.
+She believed that Evan had been wheedled by Rose into the acceptance of
+a small sum of money, in return for his egregious gift.
+
+With an internal groan, the outward aspect of which she had vast
+difficulty in masking, she said: “You are right—he has no head. Easily
+cajoled!”
+
+Old Tom sat down in a chair, and laughed outright. Lady Jocelyn, in
+pity for the poor lady, who always amused her, thought it time to put
+an end to the scene.
+
+“I hope your brother will come to us in about a week,” she said. “May I
+expect the favour of your company as well?”
+
+The Countess felt her dignity to be far superior as she responded:
+“Lady Jocelyn, when next I enjoy the gratification of a visit to your
+hospitable mansion, I must know that I am not at a disadvantage. I
+cannot consent to be twice pulled down to my brother’s level.”
+
+Evan’s heart was too full of its dim young happiness to speak, or care
+for words. The cold elegance of the Countess’s curtsey to Lady Jocelyn:
+her ladyship’s kindly pressure of his hand: Rose’s stedfast look into
+his eyes: Old Tom’s smothered exclamation that he was not such a fool
+as he seemed: all passed dream-like, and when he was left to the fury
+of the Countess, he did not ask her to spare him, nor did he defend
+himself. She bade adieu to him and their mutual relationship that very
+day. But her star had not forsaken her yet. Chancing to peep into the
+shop, to intrust a commission to Mr. John Raikes, who was there doing
+penance for his career as a gentleman, she heard Old Tom and Andrew
+laughing, utterly unlike bankrupts.
+
+“Who’d have thought the women such fools! and the Countess, too!”
+
+This was Andrew’s voice. He chuckled as one emancipated. The Countess
+had a short interview with him (before she took her departure to join
+her husband, under the roof of the Honourable Herbert Duffian), and
+Andrew chuckled no more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII.
+A YEAR LATER, THE COUNTESS DE SALDAR DE SANCORVO TO HER SISTER CAROLINE
+
+
+“Rome.
+
+
+“Let the post-mark be my reply to your letter received through the
+Consulate, and most courteously delivered with the Consul’s
+compliments. We shall yet have an ambassador at Rome—mark your Louisa’s
+words. Yes, dearest! I am here, body and spirit! I have at last found a
+haven, a refuge, and let those who condemn me compare the peace of
+their spirits with mine. You think that you have quite conquered the
+dreadfulness of our origin. My love, I smile at you! I know it to be
+impossible for the Protestant heresy to offer a shade of consolation.
+Earthly-born, it rather encourages earthly distinctions. It is the
+sweet sovereign Pontiff alone who gathers all in his arms, not
+excepting tailors. Here, if they could know it, is their blessed
+comfort!
+
+“Thank Harriet for her message. She need say nothing. By refusing me
+her hospitality, when she must have known that the house was as free of
+creditors as any foreigner under the rank of Count is of soap, she
+drove me to Mr. Duffian. Oh! how I rejoice at her exceeding unkindness!
+How warmly I forgive her the unsisterly—to say the least—vindictiveness
+of her unaccountable conduct! Her sufferings will one day be terrible.
+Good little Andrew supplies her place to me. Why do you refuse his
+easily afforded bounty? No one need know of it. I tell you candidly, I
+take double, and the small good punch of a body is only too delighted.
+But then, I can be discreet.
+
+“Oh! the gentlemanliness of these infinitely maligned Jesuits! They
+remind me immensely of Sir Charles Grandison, and those frontispiece
+pictures to the novels we read when girls—I mean in manners and the
+ideas they impose—not in dress or length of leg, of course. The same
+winning softness; the same irresistible ascendancy over the female
+mind! They require virtue for two, I assure you, and so I told Silva,
+who laughed.
+
+“But the charms of confession, my dear! I will talk of Evan first. I
+have totally forgiven him. Attaché to the Naples embassy, sounds
+tol-lol. In such a position I can rejoice to see him, for it permits me
+to acknowledge him. I am not sure that, spiritually, Rose will be his
+most fitting helpmate. However, it is done, and I did it, and there is
+no more to be said. The behaviour of Lord Laxley in refusing to
+surrender a young lady who declared that her heart was with another,
+exceeds all I could have supposed. One of the noble peers among his
+ancestors must have been a pig! Oh! the Roman nobility! Grace,
+refinement, intrigue, perfect comprehension of your ideas, wishes—the
+meanest trifles! Here you have every worldly charm, and all crowned by
+Religion! This is my true delight. I feel at last that whatsoever I do,
+I cannot go far wrong while I am within hail of my gentle priest. I
+never could feel so before.
+
+“The idea of Mr. Parsley proposing for the beautiful widow Strike! It
+was indecent to do so so soon—widowed under such circumstances! But I
+dare say he was as disinterested as a Protestant curate ever can be.
+Beauty is a good dowry to bring a poor, lean, worldly curate of your
+Church, and he knows that. Your bishops and arches are quite
+susceptible to beautiful petitioners, and we know here how your livings
+and benefices are dispensed. What do you intend to do? Come to me; come
+to the bosom of the old and the only true Church, and I engage to marry
+you to a Roman prince the very next morning or two. That is, if you
+have no ideas about prosecuting a certain enterprise which I should not
+abandon. In that case, stay. As Duchess of B., Mr. Duffian says you
+would be cordially welcome to his Holiness, who may see women. That
+absurd report is all nonsense. We do not kiss his toe, certainly, but
+we have privileges equally enviable. Herbert is all charm. I confess he
+is a little wearisome with his old ruins, and his Dante, the poet. He
+is quite of my opinion, that Evan will never wash out the trade stain
+on him until he comes over to the Church of Rome. I adjure you,
+Caroline, to lay this clearly before our dear brother. In fact, while
+he continues a Protestant, to me he is a tailor. But here Rose is the
+impediment. I know her to be just one of those little dogged minds that
+are incapable of receiving new impressions. Was it not evident in the
+way she stuck to Evan after I had once brought them together? I am not
+at all astonished that Mr. Raikes should have married her maid. It is a
+case of natural selection. But it is amusing to think of him carrying
+on the old business in 193, and with credit! I suppose his parents are
+to be pitied; but what better is the creature fit for? Mama displeases
+me in consenting to act as housekeeper to old Grumpus. I do not object
+to the fact, for it is prospective; but she should have insisted on
+another place of resort than Fallowfield. I do not agree with you in
+thinking her right in refusing a second marriage. Her age does not
+shelter her from scandal in your Protestant communities.
+
+“I am every day expecting Harry Jocelyn to turn up. He was rightly sent
+away, for to think of the folly Evan put into his empty head! No; he
+shall have another wife, and Protestantism shall be his forsaken
+mistress!
+
+“See how your Louy has given up the world and its vanities! You
+expected me to creep up to you contrite and whimpering? On the
+contrary, I never felt prouder. And I am not going to live a lazy life,
+I can assure you. The Church hath need of me! If only for the peace it
+hath given me on one point, I am eternally bound to serve it.
+
+“Postscript: I am persuaded of this; that it is utterly impossible for
+a man to be a true gentleman who is not of the true Church. What it is
+I cannot say; but it is as a convert that I appreciate my husband. Love
+is made to me, dear, for Catholics are human. The other day it was a
+question whether a lady or a gentleman should be compromised. It
+required the grossest fib. The gentleman did not hesitate. And why? His
+priest was handy. Fancy Lord Laxley in such a case. I shudder. This
+shows that your religion precludes any possibility of the being the
+real gentleman, and whatever Evan may think of himself, or Rose think
+of him, I KNOW THE THING.”
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EVAN HARRINGTON ***
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