Evan Harrington, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> Evan Harrington, Complete

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He had nothing to fear from Juliana. The moment they were alone she asked
him, 'Have you heard of it?'

Harry shook his head and shrugged.

'They haven't told you? Rose has engaged herself to Mr. Harrington, a
tradesman, a tailor!'

'Pooh! have you got hold of that story?' said Harry. 'But I'm sorry for
old Ferdy. He was fond of Rosey. Here's another bother!'

'You don't believe me, Harry?'

Harry was mentally debating whether, in this new posture of affairs, his
friend Ferdinand would press his claim for certain moneys lent.

'Oh, I believe you,' he said. 'Harrington has the knack with you women.
Why, you made eyes at him. It was a toss-up between you and Rosey once.'

Juliana let this accusation pass.

'He is a tradesman. He has a shop in Lymport, I tell you, Harry, and his
name on it. And he came here on purpose to catch Rose. And now he has
caught her, he tells her. And his mother is now at one of the village
inns, waiting to see him. Go to Mr. George Uplift; he knows the family.
Yes, the Countess has turned your head, of course; but she has schemed,
and schemed, and told such stories--God forgive her!'

The girl had to veil her eyes in a spasm of angry weeping.

'Oh, come! Juley!' murmured her killing cousin. Harry boasted an
extraordinary weakness at the sight of feminine tears. 'I say! Juley! you
know if you begin crying I'm done for, and it isn't fair.'

He dropped his arm on her waist to console her, and generously declared
to her that he always had been, very fond of her. These scenes were not
foreign to the youth. Her fits of crying, from which she would burst in a
frenzy of contempt at him, had made Harry say stronger things; and the
assurances of profound affection uttered in a most languid voice will
sting the hearts of women.

Harry still went on with his declarations, heating them rapidly, so as to
bring on himself the usual outburst and check. She was longer in coming
to it this time, and he had a horrid fear, that instead of dismissing him
fiercely, and so annulling his words, the strange little person was going
to be soft and hold him to them. There were her tears, however, which she
could not stop.

'Well, then, Juley, look. I do, upon my honour, yes--there, don't cry any
more--I do love you.'

Harry held his breath in awful suspense. Juliana quietly disengaged her
waist, and looking at him, said, 'Poor Harry! You need not lie any more
to please me.'

Such was Harry's astonishment, that he exclaimed,

'It isn't a lie! I say, I do love you.' And for an instant he thought and
hoped that he did love her.

'Well, then, Harry, I don't love you,' said Juliana; which revealed to
our friend that he had been mistaken in his own emotions. Nevertheless,
his vanity was hurt when he saw she was sincere, and he listened to her,
a moody being. This may account for his excessive wrath at Evan
Harrington after Juliana had given him proofs of the truth of what she
said.

But the Countess was Harrington's sister! The image of the Countess swam
before him. Was it possible? Harry went about asking everybody he met.
The initiated were discreet; those who had the whispers were open. A bare
truth is not so convincing as one that discretion confirms. Harry found
the detestable news perfectly true.

'Stop it by all means if you can,' said his father.

'Yes, try a fall with Rose,' said his mother.

'And I must sit down to dinner to-day with a confounded fellow, the son
of a tailor, who's had the impudence to make love to my sister!' cried
Harry. 'I'm determined to kick him out of the house!--half.'

'To what is the modification of your determination due?' Lady Jocelyn
inquired, probably suspecting the sweet and gracious person who divided
Harry's mind.

Her ladyship treated her children as she did mankind generally, from her
intellectual eminence. Harry was compelled to fly from her cruel shafts.
He found comfort with his Aunt Shorne, and she as much as told Harry that
he was the head of the house, and must take up the matter summarily. It
was expected of him. Now was the time for him to show his manhood.

Harry could think of but one way to do that.

'Yes, and if I do--all up with the old lady,' he said, and had to explain
that his Grandmama Bonner would never leave a penny to a fellow who had
fought a duel.

'A duel!' said Mrs. Shorne. 'No, there are other ways. Insist upon his
renouncing her. And Rose--treat her with a high hand, as becomes you.
Your mother is incorrigible, and as for your father, one knows him of
old. This devolves upon you. Our family honour is in your hands, Harry.'

Considering Harry's reputation, the family honour must have got low:
Harry, of course, was not disposed to think so. He discovered a great
deal of unused pride within him, for which he had hitherto not found an
agreeable vent. He vowed to his aunt that he would not suffer the
disgrace, and while still that blandishing olive-hued visage swam before
his eyes, he pledged his word to Mrs. Shorne that he would come to an
understanding with Harrington that night.

'Quietly,' said she. 'No scandal, pray.'

'Oh, never mind how I do it,' returned Harry, manfully. 'How am I to do
it, then?' he added, suddenly remembering his debt to Evan.

Mrs. Shorne instructed him how to do it quietly, and without fear of
scandal. The miserable champion replied that it was very well for her to
tell him to say this and that, but--and she thought him demented--he
must, previous to addressing Harrington in those terms, have money.

'Money!' echoed the lady. 'Money!'

'Yes, money!' he iterated doggedly, and she learnt that he had borrowed a
sum of Harrington, and the amount of the sum.

It was a disastrous plight, for Mrs. Shorne was penniless.

She cited Ferdinand Laxley as a likely lender.

'Oh, I'm deep with him already,' said Harry, in apparent dejection.

'How dreadful are these everlasting borrowings of yours!' exclaimed his
aunt, unaware of a trifling incongruity in her sentiments. 'You must
speak to him without--pay him by-and-by. We must scrape the money
together. I will write to your grandfather.'

'Yes; speak to him! How can I when I owe him? I can't tell a fellow he's
a blackguard when I owe him, and I can't speak any other way. I ain't a
diplomatist. Dashed if I know what to do!'

'Juliana,' murmured his aunt.

'Can't ask her, you know.'

Mrs. Shorne combated the one prominent reason for the objection: but
there were two. Harry believed that he had exhausted Juliana's treasury.
Reproaching him further for his wastefulness, Mrs. Shorne promised him
the money should be got, by hook or by crook, next day.

'And you will speak to this Mr. Harrington to-night, Harry? No allusion
to the loan till you return it. Appeal to his sense of honour.'

The dinner-bell assembled the inmates of the house. Evan was not among
them. He had gone, as the Countess said aloud, on a diplomatic mission to
Fallow field, with Andrew Cogglesby. The truth being that he had finally
taken Andrew into his confidence concerning the letter, the annuity, and
the bond. Upon which occasion Andrew had burst into a laugh, and said he
could lay his hand on the writer of the letter.

'Trust Old Tom for plots, Van! He'll blow you up in a twinkling, the
cunning old dog! He pretends to be hard--he 's as soft as I am, if it
wasn't for his crotchets. We'll hand him back the cash, and that's ended.
And--eh? what a dear girl she is! Not that I'm astonished. My Harry might
have married a lord--sit at top of any table in the land! And you're as
good as any man.

That's my opinion. But I say she's a wonderful girl to see it.'

Chattering thus, Andrew drove with the dear boy into Fallow field. Evan
was still in his dream. To him the generous love and valiant openness of
Rose, though they were matched in his own bosom, seemed scarcely human.
Almost as noble to him were the gentlemanly plainspeaking of Sir Franks
and Lady Jocelyn's kind commonsense. But the more he esteemed them, the
more unbounded and miraculous appeared the prospect of his calling their
daughter by the sacred name, and kneeling with her at their feet. Did the
dear heavens have that in store for him? The horizon edges were dimly
lighted.

Harry looked about under his eye-lids for Evan, trying at the same time
to compose himself for the martyrdom he had to endure in sitting at table
with the presumptuous fellow. The Countess signalled him to come within
the presence. As he was crossing the room, Rose entered, and moved to
meet him, with: 'Ah, Harry! back again! Glad to see you.'

Harry gave her a blunt nod, to which she was inattentive.

'What!' whispered the Countess, after he pressed the tips of her fingers.
'Have you brought back the grocer?'

Now this was hard to stand. Harry could forgive her her birth, and pass
it utterly by if she chose to fall in love with him; but to hear the
grocer mentioned, when he knew of the tailor, was a little too much, and
what Harry felt his ingenuous countenance was accustomed to exhibit. The
Countess saw it. She turned her head from him to the diplomatist, and he
had to remain like a sentinel at her feet. He did not want to be thanked
for the green box: still he thought she might have favoured him with one
of her much-embracing smiles:

In the evening, after wine, when he was warm, and had almost forgotten
the insult to his family and himself, the Countess snubbed him. It was
unwise on her part, but she had the ghastly thought that facts were
oozing out, and were already half known. She was therefore sensitive
tenfold to appearances; savage if one failed to keep up her lie to her,
and was guilty of a shadow of difference of behaviour. The pic-nic over,
our General would evacuate Beckley Court, and shake the dust off her
shoes, and leave the harvest of what she had sown to Providence. Till
then, respect, and the honours of war! So the Countess snubbed him, and
he being full of wine, fell into the hands of Juliana, who had witnessed
the little scene.

'She has made a fool of others as well as of you,' said Juliana.

'How has she?' he inquired.

'Never mind. Do you want to make her humble and crouch to you?'

'I want to see Harrington,' said Harry.

'He will not return to-night from Fallow field. He has gone there to get
Mr. Andrew Cogglesby's brother to do something for him. You won't have
such another chance of humbling them both--both! I told you his mother is
at an inn here. The Countess has sent Mr. Harrington to Fallow field to
be out of the way, and she has told her mother all sorts of falsehoods.'

'How do you know all that?' quoth Harry. 'By Jove, Juley! talk about
plotters! No keeping anything from you, ever!'

'Never mind. The mother is here. She must be a vulgar woman. Oh! if you
could manage, Harry, to get this woman to come--you could do it so
easily! while they are at the pie-nic tomorrow. It would have the best
effect on Rose. She would then understand! And the Countess!'

'I could send the old woman a message!' cried Harry, rushing into the
scheme, inspired by Juliana's fiery eyes. 'Send her a sort of message to
say where we all were.'

'Let her know that her son is here, in some way,' Juley resumed.

'And, egad! what an explosion!' pursued Harry. 'But, suppose--'

'No one shall know, if you leave it to me-if you do just as I tell you,
Harry. You won't be treated as you were this evening after that, if you
bring down her pride. And, Harry, I hear you want money--I can give you
some.'

'You're a perfect trump, Juley!' exclaimed her enthusiastic cousin.

'But, no; I can't take it. I must kiss you, though.'

He put a kiss upon her cheek. Once his kisses had left a red waxen stamp;
she was callous to these compliments now.

'Will you do what I advise you to-morrow?' she asked.

After a slight hesitation, during which the olive-hued visage flitted
faintly in the distances of his brain, Harry said:

'It 'll do Rose good, and make Harrington cut. Yes! I declare I will.'

Then they parted. Juliana went to her bed-room, and flung herself upon
the bed hysterically. As the tears came thick and fast, she jumped up to
lock the door, for this outrageous habit of crying had made her
contemptible in the eyes of Lady Jocelyn, and an object of pity to Rose.
Some excellent and noble natures cannot tolerate disease, and are
mystified by its ebullitions. It was very sad to see the slight thin
frame grasped by those wan hands to contain the violence of the frenzy
that possessed her! the pale, hapless face rigid above the torment in her
bosom! She had prayed to be loved like other girls, and her readiness to
give her heart in return had made her a by-word in the house. She went to
the window and leaned out on the casement, looking towards Fallowfield
over the downs, weeping bitterly, with a hard shut mouth. One brilliant
star hung above the ridge, and danced on her tears.

'Will he forgive me?' she murmured. 'Oh, my God! I wish we were dead
together!'

Her weeping ceased, and she closed the window, and undressed as far away
from the mirror as she could get; but its force was too much for her, and
drew her to it. Some undefined hope had sprung in her suddenly. With
nervous slow steps she approached the glass, and first brushing back the
masses of black hair from her brow, looked as for some new revelation.
Long and anxiously she perused her features: the wide bony forehead; the
eyes deep-set and rounded with the scarlet of recent tears, the thin
nose-sharp as the dead; the weak irritable mouth and sunken cheeks. She
gazed like a spirit disconnected from what she saw. Presently a sort of
forlorn negative was indicated by the motion of her head.

'I can pardon him,' she said, and sighed. 'How could he love such a
face!'

CHAPTER XXX

THE BATTLE OF THE BULL-DOGS. PART I

At the South-western extremity of the park, with a view extending over
wide meadows and troubled mill waters, yellow barn-roofs and weather-gray
old farm-walls, two grassy mounds threw their slopes to the margin of the
stream. Here the bull-dogs held revel. The hollow between the slopes was
crowned by a bending birch, which rose three-stemmed from the root, and
hung a noiseless green shower over the basin of green it shadowed.
Beneath it the interminable growl sounded pleasantly; softly shot the
sparkle of the twisting water, and you might dream things half-fulfilled.
Knots of fern were about, but the tops of the mounds were firm grass,
evidently well rolled, and with an eye to airy feet. Olympus one eminence
was called, Parnassus the other. Olympus a little overlooked Parnassus,
but Parnassus was broader and altogether better adapted for the games of
the Muses. Round the edges of both there was a well-trimmed bush of
laurel, obscuring only the feet of the dancers from the observing gods.
For on Olympus the elders reclined. Great efforts had occasionally been
made to dispossess and unseat them, and their security depended mainly on
a hump in the middle of the mound which defied the dance.

Watteau-like groups were already couched in the shade. There were ladies
of all sorts: town-bred and country-bred: farmers' daughters and
daughters of peers: for this pic-nic, as Lady Jocelyn, disgusting the
Countess, would call it, was in reality a 'fete champetre', given
annually, to which the fair offspring of the superior tenants were
invited the brothers and fathers coming to fetch them in the evening. It
struck the eye of the Countess de Saldar that Olympus would be a fitting
throne for her, and a point whence her shafts might fly without fear of a
return. Like another illustrious General at Salamanca, she directed a
detachment to take possession of the height. Courtly Sir John Loring ran
up at once, and gave the diplomatist an opportunity to thank her
flatteringly for gaining them two minutes to themselves. Sir John waved
his handkerchief in triumph, welcoming them under an awning where carpets
and cushions were spread, and whence the Countess could eye the field.
She was dressed ravishingly; slightly in a foreign style, the bodice
being peaked at the waist, as was then the Portuguese persuasion. The
neck, too, was deliciously veiled with fine lace--and thoroughly veiled,
for it was a feature the Countess did not care to expose to the vulgar
daylight. Off her gentle shoulders, as it were some fringe of cloud blown
by the breeze this sweet lady opened her bosom to, curled a lovely black
lace scarf: not Caroline's. If she laughed, the tinge of mourning lent
her laughter new charms. If she sighed, the exuberant array of her
apparel bade the spectator be of good cheer. Was she witty, men
surrendered reason and adored her. Only when she entered the majestic
mood, and assumed the languors of greatness, and recited musky anecdotes
of her intimacy with it, only then did mankind, as represented at Beckley
Court, open an internal eye and reflect that it was wonderful in a
tailor's daughter. And she felt that mankind did so reflect. Her
instincts did not deceive her. She knew not how much was known; in the
depths of her heart she kept low the fear that possibly all might be
known; and succeeding in this, she said to herself that probably nothing
was known after all. George Uplift, Miss Carrington, and Rose, were the
three she abhorred. Partly to be out of their way, and to be out of the
way of chance shots (for she had heard names of people coming that
reminded her of Dubbins's, where, in past days, there had been on one
awful occasion a terrific discovery made), the Countess selected Olympus
for her station. It was her last day, and she determined to be happy.
Doubtless, she was making a retreat, but have not illustrious Generals
snatched victory from their pursuers? Fair, then, sweet, and full of
grace, the Countess moved. As the restless shifting of colours to her
motions was the constant interchange of her semisorrowful manner and
ready archness. Sir John almost capered to please her, and the
diplomatist in talking to her forgot his diplomacy and the craft of his
tongue.

It was the last day also of Caroline and the Duke. The Countess clung to
Caroline and the Duke more than to Evan and Rose. She could see the first
couple walking under an avenue of limes, and near them that young man or
monkey, Raikes, as if in ambush. Twice they passed him, and twice he
doffed his hat and did homage.

'A most singular creature!' exclaimed the Countess. 'It is my constant
marvel where my brother discovered such a curiosity. Do notice him.'

'That man? Raikes?' said the diplomatist. 'Do you know he is our rival?
Harry wanted an excuse for another bottle last night, and proposed the
"Member" for Fallowfield. Up got this Mr. Raikes and returned thanks.'

'Yes?' the Countess negligently interjected in a way she had caught from
Lady Jocelyn.

'Cogglesby's nominee, apparently.'

'I know it all,' said the Countess. 'We need have no apprehension. He is
docile. My brother-in-law's brother, you see, is most eccentric. We can
manage him best through this Mr. Raikes, for a personal application would
be ruin. He quite detests our family, and indeed all the aristocracy.'

Melville's mouth pursed, and he looked very grave.

Sir John remarked: 'He seems like a monkey just turned into a man.'

'And doubtful about the tail,' added the Countess.

The image was tolerably correct, but other causes were at the bottom of
the air worn by John Raikes. The Countess had obtained an invitation for
him, with instructions that he should come early, and he had followed
them so implicitly that the curricle was flinging dust on the hedges
between Fallow field and Beckley but an hour or two after the chariot of
Apollo had mounted the heavens, and Mr. Raikes presented himself at the
breakfast table. Fortunately for him the Countess was there. After the
repast she introduced him to the Duke: and he bowed to the Duke, and the
Duke bowed to him: and now, to instance the peculiar justness in the mind
of Mr. Raikes, he, though he worshipped a coronet and would gladly have
recalled the feudal times to a corrupt land, could not help thinking that
his bow had beaten the Duke's and was better. He would rather not have
thought so, for it upset his preconceptions and threatened a revolution
in his ideas. For this reason he followed the Duke, and tried, if
possible, to correct, or at least chasten the impressions he had of
possessing a glaring advantage over the nobleman. The Duke's second
notice of him was hardly a nod. 'Well!' Mr. Raikes reflected, 'if this is
your Duke, why, egad! for figure and style my friend Harrington beats him
hollow.' And Raikes thought he knew who could conduct a conversation with
superior dignity and neatness. The torchlight of a delusion was
extinguished in him, but he did not wander long in that gloomy cavernous
darkness of the disenchanted, as many of us do, and as Evan had done,
when after a week at Beckley Court he began to examine of what stuff his
brilliant father, the great Mel, was composed. On the contrary, as the
light of the Duke dwindled, Raikes gained in lustre. 'In fact,' he said,
'there's nothing but the title wanting.' He was by this time on a level
with the Duke in his elastic mind.

Olympus had been held in possession by the Countess about half an hour,
when Lady Jocelyn mounted it, quite unconscious that she was scaling a
fortified point. The Countess herself fired off the first gun at her.

'It has been so extremely delightful up alone here, Lady Jocelyn: to look
at everybody below! I hope many will not intrude on us!'

'None but the dowagers who have breath to get up,' replied her ladyship,
panting. 'By the way, Countess, you hardly belong to us yet. You dance?'

'Indeed, I do not.'

'Oh, then you are in your right place. A dowager is a woman who doesn't
dance: and her male attendant is--what is he? We will call him a fogy.'

Lady Jocelyn directed a smile at Melville and Sir John, who both
protested that it was an honour to be the Countess's fogy.

Rose now joined them, with Laxley morally dragged in her wake.

'Another dowager and fogy!' cried the Countess, musically. 'Do you not
dance, my child?'

'Not till the music strikes up,' rejoined Rose. 'I suppose we shall have
to eat first.'

'That is the Hamlet of the pic-nic play, I believe,' said her mother.

'Of course you dance, don't you, Countess?' Rose inquired, for the sake
of amiable conversation.

The Countess's head signified: 'Oh, no! quite out of the question': she
held up a little bit of her mournful draperies, adding: 'Besides, you,
dear child, know your company, and can select; I do not, and cannot do
so. I understand we have a most varied assembly!'

Rose shut her eyes, and then looked at her mother. Lady Jocelyn's face
was undisturbed; but while her eyes were still upon the Countess, she
drew her head gently back, imperceptibly. If anything, she was admiring
the lady; but Rose could be no placid philosophic spectator of what was
to her a horrible assumption and hypocrisy. For the sake of him she
loved, she had swallowed a nauseous cup bravely. The Countess was too
much for her. She felt sick to think of being allied to this person. She
had a shuddering desire to run into the ranks of the world, and hide her
head from multitudinous hootings. With a pang of envy she saw her friend
Jenny walking by the side of William Harvey, happy, untried, unoffending:
full of hope, and without any bitter draughts to swallow!

Aunt Bel now came tripping up gaily.

'Take the alternative, 'douairiere or demoiselle'?' cried Lady Jocelyn.
'We must have a sharp distinction, or Olympus will be mobbed.'

'Entre les deux, s'il vous plait,' responded Aunt Bel. 'Rose, hurry down,
and leaven the mass. I see ten girls in a bunch. It's shocking.
Ferdinand, pray disperse yourself. Why is it, Emily, that we are always
in excess at pic-nics? Is man dying out?'

'From what I can see,' remarked Lady Jocelyn, 'Harry will be lost to his
species unless some one quickly relieves him. He's already half eaten up
by the Conley girls. Countess, isn't it your duty to rescue him?'

The Countess bowed, and murmured to Sir John:

'A dismissal!'

'I fear my fascinations, Lady Jocelyn, may not compete with those fresh
young persons.'

'Ha! ha! "fresh young persons,"' laughed Sir John for the ladies in
question were romping boisterously with Mr. Harry.

The Countess inquired for the names and condition of the ladies, and was
told that they sprang from Farmer Conley, a well-to-do son of the soil,
who farmed about a couple of thousand acres between Fallow field and
Beckley, and bore a good reputation at the county bank.

'But I do think,' observed the Countess, 'it must indeed be pernicious
for any youth to associate with that class of woman. A deterioration of
manners!'

Rose looked at her mother again. She thought 'Those girls would scorn to
marry a tradesman's son!'

The feeling grew in Rose that the Countess lowered and degraded her. Her
mother's calm contemplation of the lady was more distressing than if she
had expressed the contempt Rose was certain, according to her young
ideas, Lady Jocelyn must hold.

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