Evan Harrington, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> Evan Harrington, Complete

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'I know a young creature who would exactly suit him,' said the Countess.
'She is related to the embassy, and is in Lisbon now. A charming
child--just sixteen! Dios! how the men rave about her! and she isn't a
beauty,--there's the wonder; and she is a little too gauche too English
in her habits and ways of thinking; likes to be admired, of course, but
doesn't know yet how to set about getting it. She rather scandalizes our
ladies, but when you know her!--She will have, they say, a hundred
'thousand pounds in her own right! Rose Jocelyn, the daughter of Sir
Franks, and that eccentric Lady Jocelyn. She is with her uncle, Melville,
the celebrated diplomate though, to tell you the truth, we turn him round
our fingers, and spin him as the boys used to do the cockchafers. I
cannot forget our old Fallow field school-life, you see, my dears. Well,
Rose Jocelyn would just suit Evan. She is just of an age to receive an
impression. And I would take care she did. Instance me a case where I
have failed?

'Or there is the Portuguese widow, the Rostral. She's thirty, certainly;
but she possesses millions! Estates all over the kingdom, and the
sweetest creature. But, no. Evan would be out of the way there,
certainly. But--our women are very nice: they have the dearest, sweetest
ways: but I would rather Evan did not marry one of them. And then there
's the religion!'

This was a sore of the Countess's own, and she dropped a tear in coming
across it.

'No, my dears, it shall be Rose Jocelyn!' she concluded: 'I will take
Evan over with me, and see that he has opportunities. It shall be Rose,
and then I can call her mine; for in verity I love the child.'

It is not my part to dispute the Countess's love for Miss Jocelyn; and I
have only to add that Evan, unaware of the soft training he was to
undergo, and the brilliant chance in store for him, offered no impediment
to the proposition that he should journey to Portugal with his sister
(whose subtlest flattery was to tell him that she should not be ashamed
to own him there); and ultimately, furnished with cash for the trip by
the remonstrating brewer, went.

So these Parcae, daughters of the shears, arranged and settled the young
man's fate. His task was to learn the management of his mouth, how to
dress his shoulders properly, and to direct his eyes--rare qualities in
man or woman, I assure you; the management of the mouth being especially
admirable, and correspondingly difficult. These achieved, he was to place
his battery in position, and win the heart and hand of an heiress.

Our comedy opens with his return from Portugal, in company with Miss
Rose, the heiress; the Honourable Melville Jocelyn, the diplomate; and
the Count and Countess de Saldar, refugees out of that explosive little
kingdom.

CHAPTER IV

ON BOARD THE JOCASTA

From the Tagus to the Thames the Government sloop-of-war, Jocasta, had
made a prosperous voyage, bearing that precious freight, a removed
diplomatist and his family; for whose uses let a sufficient vindication
be found in the exercise he affords our crews in the science of
seamanship. She entered our noble river somewhat early on a fine July
morning. Early as it was, two young people, who had nothing to do with
the trimming or guiding of the vessel, stood on deck, and watched the
double-shore, beginning to embrace them more and more closely as they
sailed onward. One, a young lady, very young in manner, wore a black felt
hat with a floating scarlet feather, and was clad about the shoulders in
a mantle of foreign style and pattern. The other you might have taken for
a wandering Don, were such an object ever known; so simply he assumed the
dusky sombrero and dangling cloak, of which one fold was flung across his
breast and drooped behind him. The line of an adolescent dark moustache
ran along his lip, and only at intervals could you see that his eyes were
blue and of the land he was nearing. For the youth was meditative, and
held his head much down. The young lady, on the contrary, permitted an
open inspection of her countenance, and seemed, for the moment at least,
to be neither caring nor thinking of what kind of judgement would be
passed on her. Her pretty nose was up, sniffing the still salt breeze
with vivacious delight.

'Oh!' she cried, clapping her hands, 'there goes a dear old English gull!
How I have wished to see him! I haven't seen one for two years and seven
months. When I 'm at home, I 'll leave my window open all night, just to
hear the rooks, when they wake in the morning. There goes another!'

She tossed up her nose again, exclaiming:

'I 'm sure I smell England nearer and nearer! I smell the fields, and the
cows in them. I'd have given anything to be a dairy-maid for half an
hour! I used to lie and pant in that stifling air among those stupid
people, and wonder why anybody ever left England. Aren't you glad to come
back?'

This time the fair speaker lent her eyes to the question, and shut her
lips; sweet, cold, chaste lips she had: a mouth that had not yet dreamed
of kisses, and most honest eyes.

The young man felt that they were not to be satisfied by his own, and
after seeking to fill them with a doleful look, which was immediately
succeeded by one of superhuman indifference, he answered:

'Yes! We shall soon have to part!' and commenced tapping with his foot
the cheerful martyr's march.

Speech that has to be hauled from the depths usually betrays the effort.
Listening an instant to catch the import of this cavernous gasp upon the
brink of sound, the girl said:

'Part? what do you mean?'

Apparently it required a yet vaster effort to pronounce an explanation.
The doleful look, the superhuman indifference, were repeated in due
order: sound, a little more distinct, uttered the words:

'We cannot be as we have been, in England!' and then the cheerful martyr
took a few steps farther.

'Why, you don't mean to say you're going to give me up, and not be
friends with me, because we've come back to England?' cried the girl in a
rapid breath, eyeing him seriously.

Most conscientiously he did not mean it! but he replied with the quietest
negative.

'No?' she mimicked him. 'Why do you say "No" like that? Why are you so
mysterious, Evan? Won't you promise me to come and stop with us for
weeks? Haven't you said we would ride, and hunt, and fish together, and
read books, and do all sorts of things?'

He replied with the quietest affirmative.

'Yes? What does "Yes!" mean?' She lifted her chest to shake out the
dead-alive monosyllable, as he had done. 'Why are you so singular this
morning, Evan? Have I offended you? You are so touchy!'

The slur on his reputation for sensitiveness induced the young man to
attempt being more explicit.

'I mean,' he said, hesitating; 'why, we must part. We shall not see each
other every day. Nothing more than that.' And away went the cheerful
martyr in sublimest mood.

'Oh! and that makes you, sorry?' A shade of archness was in her voice.

The girl waited as if to collect something in her mind, and was now a
patronizing woman.

'Why, you dear sentimental boy! You don't suppose we could see each other
every day for ever?'

It was perhaps the cruelest question that could have been addressed to
the sentimental boy from her mouth. But he was a cheerful martyr!

'You dear Don Doloroso!' she resumed. 'I declare if you are not just like
those young Portugals this morning; and over there you were such a dear
English fellow; and that's why I liked you so much! Do change! Do,
please, be lively, and yourself again. Or mind; I'll call you
Don Doloroso, and that shall be your name in England. See
there!--that's--that's? what's the name of that place? Hoy! Mr. Skerne!'
She hailed the boatswain, passing, 'Do tell me the name of that place.'

Mr. Skerne righted about to satisfy her minutely, and then coming up to
Evan, he touched his hat, and said:

'I mayn't have another opportunity--we shall be busy up there--of
thankin' you again, sir, for what you did for my poor drunken brother
Bill, and you may take my word I won't forget it, sir, if he does; and I
suppose he'll be drowning his memory just as he was near drowning
himself.'

Evan muttered something, grimaced civilly, and turned away. The girl's
observant brows were moved to a faintly critical frown, and nodding
intelligently to the boatswain's remark, that the young gentleman did not
seem quite himself, now that he was nearing home, she went up to Evan,
and said:

'I'm going to give you a lesson in manners, to be quits with you. Listen,
sir. Why did you turn away so ungraciously from Mr. Skerne, while he was
thanking you for having saved his brother's life? Now there's where
you're too English. Can't you bear to be thanked?'

'I don't want to be thanked because I can swim,' said Evan.

'But it is not that. Oh, how you trifle!' she cried. 'There's nothing
vexes me so much as that way you have. Wouldn't my eyes have sparkled if
anybody had come up to me to thank me for such a thing? I would let them
know how glad I was to have done such a thing! Doesn't it make them
happier, dear Evan?'

'My dear Miss Jocelyn!'

'What?'

The honest grey eyes fixed on him, narrowed their enlarged lids. She
gazed before her on the deck, saying:

'I'm sure I can't understand you. I suppose it's because I'm a girl, and
I never shall till I'm a woman. Heigho!'

A youth who is engaged in the occupation of eating his heart, cannot
shine to advantage, and is as much a burden to himself as he is an enigma
to others. Evan felt this; but he could do nothing and say nothing; so he
retired deeper into the folds of the Don, and remained picturesque and
scarcely pleasant.

They were relieved by a summons to breakfast from below.

She brightened and laughed. 'Now, what will you wager me, Evan, that the
Countess doesn't begin:

"Sweet child! how does she this morning? blooming?" when she kisses me?'

Her capital imitation of his sister's manner constrained him to join in
her laugh, and he said:

'I'll back against that, I get three fingers from your uncle, and
"Morrow, young sir!"'

Down they ran together, laughing; and, sure enough, the identical words
of the respective greetings were employed, which they had to enjoy with
all the discretion they could muster.

Rose went round the table to her little cousin Alec, aged seven, kissed
his reluctant cheek, and sat beside him, announcing a sea appetite and
great capabilities, while Evan silently broke bread. The Count de Saldar,
a diminutive tawny man, just a head and neck above the tablecloth, sat
sipping chocolate and fingering dry toast, which he would now and then
dip in jelly, and suck with placidity, in the intervals of a curt
exchange of French with the wife of the Hon. Melville, a ringleted
English lady, or of Portuguese with the Countess; who likewise sipped
chocolate and fingered dry toast, and was mournfully melodious. The Hon.
Melville, as became a tall islander, carved beef, and ate of it, like a
ruler of men. Beautiful to see was the compassionate sympathy of the
Countess's face when Rose offered her plate for a portion of the
world-subjugating viand, as who should say: 'Sweet child! thou knowest
not yet of sorrows, thou canst ballast thy stomach with beef!' In any
other than an heiress, she would probably have thought: 'This is indeed a
disgusting little animal, and most unfeminine conduct!'

Rose, unconscious of praise or blame, rivalled her uncle in enjoyment of
the fare, and talked of her delight in seeing England again, and anything
that belonged to her native land. Mrs. Melville perceived that it pained
the refugee Countess, and gave her the glance intelligible; but the
Countess never missed glances, or failed to interpret them. She said:

'Let her. I love to hear the sweet child's prattle.'

'It was fortunate' (she addressed the diplomatist) 'that we touched at
Southampton and procured fresh provision!'

'Very lucky for US!' said he, glaring shrewdly between a mouthful.

The Count heard the word 'Southampton,' and wished to know how it was
comprised. A passage of Portuguese ensued, and then the Countess said:

'Silva, you know, desired to relinquish the vessel at Southampton. He
does not comprehend the word "expense," but' (she shook a dumb Alas!) 'I
must think of that for him now!'

'Oh! always avoid expense,' said the Hon. Melville, accustomed to be paid
for by his country.

'At what time shall we arrive, may I ask, do you think?' the Countess
gently inquired.

The watch of a man who had his eye on Time was pulled out, and she was
told it might be two hours before dark. Another reckoning, keenly
balanced, informed the company that the day's papers could be expected on
board somewhere about three o'clock in the afternoon.

'And then,' said the Hon. Melville, nodding general gratulation, 'we
shall know how the world wags.'

How it had been wagging the Countess's straining eyes under closed
eyelids were eloquent of.

'Too late, I fear me, to wait upon Lord Livelyston to-night?' she
suggested.

'To-night?' The Hon. Melville gazed blank astonishment at the notion.
'Oh! certainly, too late tonight. A-hum! I think, madam, you had better
not be in too great a hurry to see him. Repose a little. Recover your
fatigue.'

'Oh!' exclaimed the Countess, with a beam of utter confidence in him, 'I
shall be too happy to place myself in your hands--believe me.'

This was scarcely more to the taste of the diplomatist. He put up his
mouth, and said, blandly:

'I fear--you know, madam, I must warn you beforehand--I, personally, am
but an insignificant unit over here, you know; I, personally, can't
guarantee much assistance to you--not positive. What I can do--of course,
very happy!' And he fell to again upon the beef.

'Not so very insignificant!' said the Countess, smiling, as at a softly
radiant conception of him.

'Have to bob and bow like the rest of them over here,' he added, proof
against the flattery.

'But that you will not forsake Silva, I am convinced,' said the Countess;
and, paying little heed to his brief 'Oh! what I can do,' continued: 'For
over here, in England, we are almost friendless. My relations--such as
are left of them--are not in high place.' She turned to Mrs. Melville,
and renewed the confession with a proud humility. 'Truly, I have not a
distant cousin in the Cabinet!'

Mrs. Melville met her sad smile, and returned it, as one who understood
its entire import.

'My brother-in-law-my sister, I think, you know--married a--a brewer! He
is rich; but, well! such was her taste! My brother-in-law is indeed in
Parliament, and he--'

'Very little use, seeing he votes with the opposite party,' the
diplomatist interrupted her.

'Ah! but he will not,' said the Countess, serenely. 'I can trust with
confidence that, if it is for Silva's interest, he will assuredly so
dispose of his influence as to suit the desiderations of his family, and
not in any way oppose his opinions to the powers that would willingly
stoop to serve us!'

It was impossible for the Hon. Melville to withhold a slight grimace at
his beef, when he heard this extremely alienized idea of the nature of a
member of the Parliament of Great Britain. He allowed her to enjoy her
delusion, as she pursued:

'No. So much we could offer in repayment. It is little! But this, in
verity, is a case. Silva's wrongs have only to be known in England, and I
am most assured that the English people will not permit it. In the days
of his prosperity, Silva was a friend to England, and England should
not--should not--forget it now. Had we money! But of that arm our enemies
have deprived us: and, I fear, without it we cannot hope to have the
justice of our cause pleaded in the English papers. Mr. Redner, you know,
the correspondent in Lisbon, is a sworn foe to Silva. And why but because
I would not procure him an invitation to Court! The man was so horridly
vulgar; his gloves were never clean; I had to hold a bouquet to my nose
when I talked to him. That, you say, was my fault! Truly so. But what
woman can be civil to a low-bred, pretentious, offensive man?'

Mrs. Melville, again appealed to, smiled perfect sympathy, and said, to
account for his character:

'Yes. He is the son of a small shopkeeper of some kind, in Southampton, I
hear.'

'A very good fellow in his way,' said her husband.

'Oh! I can't bear that class of people,' Rose exclaimed. 'I always keep
out of their way. You can always tell them.'

The Countess smiled considerate approbation of her exclusiveness and
discernment. So sweet a smile!

'You were on deck early, my dear?' she asked Evan, rather abruptly.

Master Alec answered for him: 'Yes, he was, and so was Rose. They made an
appointment, just as they used to do under the oranges.'

'Children!' the Countess smiled to Mrs. Melville.

'They always whisper when I'm by,' Alec appended.

'Children!' the Countess's sweetened visage entreated Mrs. Melville to
re-echo; but that lady thought it best for the moment to direct Rose to
look to her packing, now that she had done breakfast.

'And I will take a walk with my brother on deck,' said the Countess.
'Silva is too harassed for converse.'

The parties were thus divided. The silent Count was left to meditate on
his wrongs in the saloon; and the diplomatist, alone with his lady,
thought fit to say to her, shortly: 'Perhaps it would be as well to draw
away from these people a little. We 've done as much as we could for
them, in bringing them over here. They may be trying to compromise us.
That woman's absurd. She 's ashamed of the brewer, and yet she wants to
sell him--or wants us to buy him. Ha! I think she wants us to send a
couple of frigates, and threaten bombardment of the capital, if they
don't take her husband back, and receive him with honours.'

'Perhaps it would be as well,' said Mrs. Melville. 'Rose's invitation to
him goes for nothing.'

'Rose? inviting the Count? down to Hampshire?' The diplomatist's brows
were lifted.

'No, I mean the other,' said the diplomatist's wife.

'Oh! the young fellow! very good young fellow. Gentlemanly. No harm in
him.'

'Perhaps not,' said the diplomatist's wife.

'You don't suppose he expects us to keep him on, or provide for him over
here--eh?'

The diplomatist's wife informed him that such was not her thought, that
he did not understand, and that it did not matter; and as soon as the
Hon. Melville saw that she was brooding something essentially feminine,
and which had no relationship to the great game of public life, curiosity
was extinguished in him.

On deck the Countess paced with Evan, and was for a time pleasantly
diverted by the admiration she could, without looking, perceive that her
sorrow-subdued graces had aroused in the breast of a susceptible naval
lieutenant. At last she spoke:

'My dear! remember this. Your last word to Mr. Jocelyn will be: "I will
do myself the honour to call upon my benefactor early." To Rose you will
say: "Be assured, Miss Jocelyn 'Miss Jocelyn--' I shall not fail in
hastening to pay my respects to your family in Hampshire." You will
remember to do it, in the exact form I speak it.'

Evan laughed: 'What! call him benefactor to his face? I couldn't do it.'

'Ah! my child!'

'Besides, he isn't a benefactor at all. His private secretary died, and I
stepped in to fill the post, because nobody else was handy.'

'And tell me of her who pushed you forward, Evan?'

'My dear sister, I'm sure I'm not ungrateful.'

'No; but headstrong: opinionated. Now these people will endeavour--Oh! I
have seen it in a thousand little things--they wish to shake us off. Now,
if you will but do as I indicate! Put your faith in an older head, Evan.
It is your only chance of society in England. For your brother-in-law--I
ask you, what sort of people will you meet at the Cogglesbys? Now and
then a nobleman, very much out of his element. In short, you have fed
upon a diet which will make you to distinguish, and painfully to know the
difference! Indeed! Yes, you are looking about for Rose. It depends upon
your behaviour now, whether you are to see her at all in England. Do you
forget? You wished once to inform her of your origin. Think of her words
at the breakfast this morning!'

The Countess imagined she had produced an impression. Evan said: 'Yes,
and I should have liked to have told her this morning that I'm myself
nothing more than the son of a--'

'Stop! cried his sister, glancing about in horror. The admiring
lieutenant met her eye. Blandishingly she smiled on him: 'Most beautiful
weather for a welcome to dear England?' and passed with majesty.

'Boy!' she resumed, 'are you mad?'

'I hate being such a hypocrite, madam.'

'Then you do not love her, Evan?'

This may have been dubious logic, but it resulted from a clear sequence
of ideas in the lady's head. Evan did not contest it.

'And assuredly you will lose her, Evan. Think of my troubles! I have to
intrigue for Silva; I look to your future; I smile, Oh heaven! how do I
not smile when things are spoken that pierce my heart! This morning at
the breakfast!'

Evan took her hand, and patted it.

'What is your pity?' she sighed.

'If it had not been for you, my dear sister, I should never have held my
tongue.'

'You are not a Harrington! You are a Dawley!' she exclaimed, indignantly.

Evan received the accusation of possessing more of his mother's spirit
than his father's in silence.

'You would not have held your tongue,' she said, with fervid severity:
'and you would have betrayed yourself! and you would have said you were
that! and you in that costume! Why, goodness gracious! could you bear to
appear so ridiculous?'

The poor young man involuntarily surveyed his person. The pains of an
impostor seized him. The deplorable image of the Don making confession
became present to his mind. It was a clever stroke of this female
intriguer. She saw him redden grievously, and blink his eyes; and not
wishing to probe him so that he would feel intolerable disgust at his
imprisonment in the Don, she continued:

'But you have the sense to see your duties, Evan. You have an excellent
sense, in the main. No one would dream--to see you. You did not, I must
say, you did not make enough of your gallantry. A Portuguese who had
saved a man's life, Evan, would he have been so boorish? You behaved as
if it was a matter of course that you should go overboard after anybody,
in your clothes, on a dark night. So, then, the Jocelyns took it. I
barely heard one compliment to you. And Rose--what an effect it should
have had on her! But, owing to your manner, I do believe the girl thinks
it nothing but your ordinary business to go overboard after anybody, in
your clothes, on a dark night. 'Pon my honour, I believe she expects to
see you always dripping!' The Countess uttered a burst of hysterical
humour. 'So you miss your credit. That inebriated sailor should really
have been gold to you. Be not so young and thoughtless.'

The Countess then proceeded to tell him how foolishly he had let slip his
great opportunity. A Portuguese would have fixed the young lady long
before. By tender moonlight, in captivating language, beneath the
umbrageous orange-groves, a Portuguese would have accurately calculated
the effect of the perfume of the blossom on her sensitive nostrils, and
know the exact moment when to kneel, and declare his passion sonorously.

'Yes,' said Evan, 'one of them did. She told me.'

'She told you? And you--what did you do?'

'Laughed at him with her, to be sure.'

'Laughed at him! She told you, and you helped her to laugh at love! Have
you no perceptions? Why did she tell you?'

'Because she thought him such a fool, I suppose.'

'You never will know a woman,' said the Countess, with contempt.

Much of his worldly sister at a time was more than Evan could bear.
Accustomed to the symptoms of restiveness, she finished her discourse,
enjoyed a quiet parade up and down under the gaze of the lieutenant, and
could find leisure to note whether she at all struck the inferior seamen,
even while her mind was absorbed by the multiform troubles and anxieties
for which she took such innocent indemnification.

The appearance of the Hon. Melville Jocelyn on deck, and without his
wife, recalled her to business. It is a peculiarity of female
diplomatists that they fear none save their own sex. Men they regard as
their natural prey: in women they see rival hunters using their own
weapons. The Countess smiled a slowly-kindling smile up to him, set her
brother adrift, and delicately linked herself to Evan's benefactor.

'I have been thinking,' she said, 'knowing your kind and most considerate
attentions, that we may compromise you in England.'

He at once assured her he hoped not, he thought not at all.

'The idea is due to my brother,' she went on; 'for I--women know so
little!--and most guiltlessly should we have done so. My brother perhaps
does not think of us foremost; but his argument I can distinguish. I can
see, that were you openly to plead Silva's cause, you might bring
yourself into odium, Mr. Jocelyn; and heaven knows I would not that! May
I then ask, that in England we may be simply upon the same footing of
private friendship?'

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