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George Parsons Lathrop - "Dreams and Days: Poems"

Gilbert Parker - "The Trail of the Sword, Volume 1."

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Evan Harrington, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> Evan Harrington, Complete




'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 L100 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 L5000, but above L4000, 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 Fallow field, 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. Tete-a-tete, 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. O mio Deus! 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, Diacho! 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, MARM!'

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 Belmarana. 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 Belmarana, 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 Belmarana 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 Belmarana 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. Diacho! 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, mio
Deus!'

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?

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