Evan Harrington, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> Evan Harrington, Complete

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'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 Fallow
field 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 Fallow field, 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 Fallow field, 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 Fallow field. 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.

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