'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 anEnglish gentleman, Evan. I like that better.'
'Would your 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 intoisolation. '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!
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 whyHarriet 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 glace 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 deSaldar, 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.
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 Fallow field: 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.
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 Fallow field 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 Fallow field 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 onKilne'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.