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John Bunyan - "Miscellaneous Pieces"

Pelham Grenville Wodehouse - "A Damsel in Distress"

David Widger - "Widger's Quotations from Celebrated Crimes of Alexandre Dumas, Pere"

Marcus Clarke - "For the Term of His Natural Life"

Evan Harrington, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> Evan Harrington, Complete




Hearing her mother's name, Lady Jocelyn was about to return a
conventional answer. Recognizing Evan, she said:

'Ah! Mr. Harrington! Yes, I fear it's as bad as it can be. She can
scarcely outlive the night.'

Again he stood alone: his chance was gone. How could he speak to her in
her affliction? Her calm sedate visage had the beauty of its youth, when
lighted by the animation that attends meetings or farewells. In her bow
to Evan, he beheld a lovely kindness more unique, if less precious, than
anything he had ever seen on the face of Rose. Half exultingly, he
reflected that no opportunity would be allowed him now to teach that
noble head and truest of human hearts to turn from him: the clear-eyed
morrow would come: the days of the future would be bright as other days!

Wrapped in the comfort of his cowardice, he started to see Lady Jocelyn
advancing to him again.

'Mr. Harrington,' she said, 'Rose tells me you leave us early in the
morning. I may as well shake your hand now. We part very good friends. I
shall always be glad to hear of you.'

Evan pressed her hand, and bowed. 'I thank you, madam,' was all he could
answer.

'It will be better if you don't write to Rose.'

Her tone was rather that of a request than an injunction.

'I have no right to do so, my lady.'

'She considers that you have: I wish her to have, a fair trial.'

His voice quavered. The philosophic lady thought it time to leave him.

'So good-bye. I can trust you without extracting a promise. If you ever
have need of a friend, you know you are at liberty to write to me.'

'You are tired, my lady?' He put this question more to dally with what he
ought to be saying.

'Tolerably. Your sister, the Countess, relieves me in the night. I fancy
my mother finds her the better nurse of the two.'

Lady Jocelyn's face lighted in its gracious pleasant way, as she just
inclined her head: but the mention of the Countess and her attendance on
Mrs. Bonner had nerved Evan: the contrast of her hypocrisy and vile
scheming with this most open, noble nature, acted like a new force within
him. He begged Lady Jocelyn's permission to speak with her in private.
Marking his fervid appearance, she looked at him seriously.

'Is it really important?'

'I cannot rest, madam, till it is spoken.'

'I mean, it doesn't pertain to the delirium? We may sleep upon that.'

He divined her sufficiently to answer: 'It concerns a piece of injustice
done by you, madam, and which I can help you to set right.'

Lady Jocelyn stared somewhat. 'Follow me into my dressing-room,' she
said, and led the way.

Escape was no longer possible. He was on the march to execution, and into
the darkness of his brain danced John Raikes, with his grotesque
tribulations. It was the harsh savour of reality that conjured up this
flighty being, who probably never felt a sorrow or a duty. The farce Jack
lived was all that Evan's tragic bitterness could revolve, and seemed to
be the only light in his mind. You might have seen a smile on his mouth
when he was ready to ask for a bolt from heaven to crush him.

'Now,' said her ladyship, and he found that the four walls enclosed them,
'what have I been doing?'

She did not bid him be seated. Her brevity influenced him to speak to the
point.

'You have dismissed Mr. Laxley, my lady: he is innocent.'

'How do you know that?'

'Because,'--a whirl of sensations beset the wretched youth, 'because I am
guilty.'

His words had run ahead of his wits; and in answer to Lady Jocelyn's
singular exclamation he could but simply repeat them.

Her head drew back; her face was slightly raised; she looked, as he had
seen her sometimes look at the Countess, with a sort of speculative
amazement.

'And why do you come to tell me?'

'For the reason that I cannot allow you to be unjust, madam.'

'What on earth was your motive?'

Evan stood silent, flinching from her frank eyes.

'Well, well, well!' Her ladyship dropped into a chair, and thumped her
knees.

There was lawyer's blood in Lady Jocelyn's veins she had the judicial
mind. A confession was to her a confession. She tracked actions up to a
motive; but one who came voluntarily to confess needed no sifting. She
had the habit of treating things spoken as facts.

'You absolutely wrote that letter to Mrs. Evremonde's husband!'

Evan bowed, to avoid hearing his own lie.

'You discovered his address and wrote to him, and imitated Mr. Laxley's
handwriting, to effect the purpose you may have had?'

Her credulity did require his confirmation of it, and he repeated: 'It
is my deed.'

'Hum! And you sent that premonitory slip of paper to her?'

'To Mrs. Evremonde?'

'Somebody else was the author of that, perhaps?'

'It is all on me.'

'In that case, Mr. Harrington, I can only say that it's quite right you
should quit this house to-morrow morning.'

Her ladyship commenced rocking in her chair, and then added: 'May I ask,
have you madness in your family? No? Because when one can't discern a
motive, it's natural to ascribe certain acts to madness. Had Mrs.
Evremonde offended you? or Ferdinand--but one only hears of such
practices towards fortunate rivals, and now you have come to undo what
you did! I must admit, that taking the monstrousness of the act and the
inconsequence of your proceedings together, the whole affair becomes more
incomprehensible to me than it was before. Would it be unpleasant to you
to favour me with explanations?'

She saw the pain her question gave him, and, passing it, said:

'Of course you need not be told that Rose must hear of this?'

'Yes,' said Evan, 'she must hear it.'

'You know what that 's equivalent to? But, if you like, I will not speak
to her till you, have left us.'

'Instantly,' cried Evan. 'Now-to-night! I would not have her live a
minute in a false estimate of me.'

Had Lady Jocelyn's intellect been as penetrating as it was masculine, she
would have taken him and turned him inside out in a very short time; for
one who would bear to see his love look coldly on him rather than endure
a minute's false estimate of his character, and who could yet stoop to
concoct a vile plot, must either be mad or simulating the baseness for
some reason or other. She perceived no motive for the latter, and she
held him to be sound in the head, and what was spoken from the mouth she
accepted. Perhaps, also, she saw in the complication thus offered an
escape for Rose, and was the less inclined to elucidate it herself. But
if her intellect was baffled, her heart was unerring. A man proved guilty
of writing an anonymous letter would not have been allowed to stand long
in her room. She would have shown him to the door of the house speedily;
and Evan was aware in his soul that he had not fallen materially in her
esteem. He had puzzled and confused her, and partly because she had the
feeling that this young man was entirely trustworthy, and because she
never relied on her feelings, she let his own words condemn him, and did
not personally discard him. In fact, she was a veritable philosopher. She
permitted her fellows to move the world on as they would, and had no
other passions in the contemplation of the show than a cultured audience
will usually exhibit.

'Strange,--most strange! I thought I was getting old!' she said, and eyed
the culprit as judges generally are not wont to do. 'It will be a shock
to Rose. I must tell you that I can't regret it. I would not have
employed force with her, but I should have given her as strong a taste of
the world as it was in my power to give. Girls get their reason from
society. But, come! if you think you can make your case out better to
her, you shall speak to her first yourself.'

'No, my lady,' said Evan, softly.

'You would rather not?'

'I could not.'

'But, I suppose, she'll want to speak to you when she knows it.'

'I can take death from her hands, but I cannot slay myself.'

The language was natural to his condition, though the note was pitched
high. Lady Jocelyn hummed till the sound of it was over, and an idea
striking her, she said:

'Ah, by the way, have you any tremendous moral notions?'

'I don't think I have, madam.'

'People act on that mania sometimes, I believe. Do you think it an
outrage on decency for a wife to run away from a mad husband whom they
won't shut up, and take shelter with a friend? Is that the cause? Mr.
Forth is an old friend of mine. I would trust my daughter with him in a
desert, and stake my hand on his honour.'

'Oh, Lady Jocelyn!' cried Evan. 'Would to God you might ever have said
that of me! Madam, I love you. I shall never see you again. I shall never
meet one to treat me so generously. I leave you, blackened in
character--you cannot think of me without contempt. I can never hope that
this will change. But, for your kindness let me thank you.'

And as speech is poor where emotion is extreme--and he knew his own to be
especially so--he took her hand with petitioning eyes, and dropping on
one knee, reverentially kissed it.

Lady Jocelyn was human enough to like to be appreciated. She was a
veteran Pagan, and may have had the instinct that a peculiar virtue in
this young one was the spring of his conduct. She stood up and said:
'Don't forget that you have a friend here.'

The poor youth had to turn his head from her.

'You wish that I should tell Rose what you have told me at once, Mr.
Harrington?'

'Yes, my lady; I beg that you will do so.'

'Well!'

And the queer look Lady Jocelyn had been wearing dimpled into absolute
wonder. A stranger to Love's cunning, she marvelled why he should desire
to witness the scorn Rose would feel for him.

'If she's not asleep, then, she shall hear it now,' said her ladyship.
'You understand that it will be mentioned to no other person.'

'Except to Mr. Laxley, madam, to whom I shall offer the satisfaction he
may require. But I will undertake that.'

'Just as you think proper on that matter,' remarked her philosophical
ladyship, who held that man was a fighting animal, and must not have his
nature repressed.

She lighted him part of the way, and then turned off to Rose's chamber.

Would Rose believe it of him? Love combated his dismal foreboding.
Strangely, too, now that he had plunged into his pitch-bath, the guilt
seemed to cling to him, and instead of hoping serenely, or fearing
steadily, his spirit fell in a kind of abject supplication to Rose, and
blindly trusted that she would still love even if she believed him base.
In his weakness he fell so low as to pray that she might love that
crawling reptile who could creep into a house and shrink from no vileness
to win her.




CHAPTER XXXV

ROSE WOUNDED

The light of morning was yet cold along the passages of the house when
Polly Wheedle, hurrying to her young mistress, met her loosely dressed
and with a troubled face.

'What 's the matter, Polly? I was coming to you.'

'O, Miss Rose! and I was coming to you. Miss Bonner's gone back to her
convulsions again. She's had them all night. Her hair won't last till
thirty, if she keeps on giving way to temper, as I tell her: and I know
that from a barber.'

'Tush, you stupid Polly! Does she want to see me?'

'You needn't suspect that, Miss. But you quiet her best, and I thought
I'd come to you. But, gracious!'

Rose pushed past her without vouchsafing any answer to the look in her
face, and turned off to Juliana's chamber, where she was neither welcomed
nor repelled. Juliana said she was perfectly well, and that Polly was
foolishly officious: whereupon Rose ordered Polly out of the room, and
said to Juliana, kindly: 'You have not slept, dear, and I have not
either. I am so unhappy.'

Whether Rose intended by this communication to make Juliana eagerly
attentive, and to distract her from her own affair, cannot be said, but
something of the effect was produced.

'You care for him, too,' cried Rose, impetuously. 'Tell me, Juley: do you
think him capable of any base action? Do you think he would do what any
gentleman would be ashamed to own? Tell me.'

Juliana looked at Rose intently, but did not reply.

Rose jumped up from the bed. 'You hesitate, Juley? What? Could you think
so?'

Young women after a common game are shrewd. Juliana may have seen that
Rose was not steady on the plank she walked, and required support.

'I don't know,' she said, turning her cheek to her pillow.

'What an answer!' Rose exclaimed. 'Have you no opinion? What did you say
yesterday? It's silent as the grave with me: but if you do care for him,
you must think one thing or the other.'

'I suppose not, then--no,' said Juliana.

Repeating the languid words bitterly, Rose continued:

'What is it to love without having faith in him you love? You make my
mind easier.'

Juliana caught the implied taunt, and said, fretfully:

'I'm ill. You're so passionate. You don't tell me what it is. How can I
answer you?'

'Never mind,' said Rose, moving to the door, wondering why she had spoken
at all: but when Juliana sprang forward, and caught her by the dress to
stop her, and with a most unwonted outburst of affection, begged of her
to tell her all, the wound in Rose's breast began to bleed, and she was
glad to speak.

'Juley, do you-can you believe that he wrote that letter which poor
Ferdinand was--accused of writing?'

Juliana appeared to muse, and then responded: 'Why should he do such a
thing?'

'O my goodness, what a girl!' Rose interjected.

'Well, then, to please you, Rose, of course I think he is too
honourable.'

'You do think so, Juley? But if he himself confessed it--what then? You
would not believe him, would you?'

'Oh, then I can't say. Why should he condemn himself?'

'But you would know--you would know that he was a man to suffer death
rather than be guilty of the smallest baseness. His birth--what is that!'
Rose filliped her fingers: 'But his acts--what he is himself you would be
sure of, would you not? Dear Juley! Oh, for heaven's sake, speak out
plainly to me.'

A wily look had crept over Juliana's features.

'Certainly,' she said, in a tone that belied it, and drawing Rose to her
bosom, the groan she heard there was passing sweet to her.

'He has confessed it to Mama,' sobbed Rose. 'Why did he not come to me
first? He has confessed it--the abominable thing has come out of his own
mouth. He went to her last night . . .'

Juliana patted her shoulders regularly as they heaved. When words were
intelligible between them, Juliana said:

'At least, dear, you must admit that he has redeemed it.'

'Redeemed it? Could he do less?' Rose dried her eyes vehemently, as if
the tears shamed her. 'A man who could have let another suffer for his
crime--I could never have lifted my head again. I think I would have cut
off this hand that plighted itself to him! As it is, I hardly dare look
at myself. But you don't think it, dear? You know it to be false! false!
false!'

'Why should Mr. Harrington confess it?' said Juliana.

'Oh, don't speak his name!' cried Rose.

Her cousin smiled. 'So many strange things happen,' she said, and sighed.

'Don't sigh: I shall think you believe it!' cried Rose. An appearance of
constrained repose was assumed. Rose glanced up, studied for an instant,
and breathlessly uttered: 'You do, you do believe it, Juley?'

For answer, Juliana hugged her with much warmth, and recommenced the
patting.

'I dare say it's a mistake,' she remarked. 'He may have been jealous of
Ferdinand. You know I have not seen the letter. I have only heard of it.
In love, they say, you ought to excuse . . . And the want of religious
education! His sister . . .'

Rose interrupted her with a sharp shudder. Might it not be possible that
one who had the same blood as the Countess would stoop to a momentary
vileness.

How changed was Rose from the haughty damsel of yesterday!

'Do you think my lover could tell a lie?' 'He--would not love me long if
I did!'

These phrases arose and rang in Juliana's ears while she pursued the task
of comforting the broken spirit that now lay prone on the bed, and now
impetuously paced the room. Rose had come thinking the moment Juliana's
name was mentioned, that here was the one to fortify her faith in Evan:
one who, because she loved, could not doubt him. She moaned in a terror
of distrust, loathing her cousin: not asking herself why she needed
support. And indeed she was too young for much clear self-questioning,
and her blood was flowing too quickly for her brain to perceive more than
one thing at a time.

'Does your mother believe it?' said Juliana, evading a direct assault.

'Mama? She never doubts what you speak,' answered Rose, disconsolately.

'She does?'

'Yes.'

Whereat Juliana looked most grave, and Rose felt that it was hard to
breathe.

She had grown very cold and calm, and Juliana had to be expansive
unprovoked.

'Believe nothing, dear, till you hear it from his own lips. If he can
look in your face and say that he did it . . . well, then! But of course
he cannot. It must be some wonderful piece of generosity to his rival.'

'So I thought, Juley! so I thought,' cried Rose, at the new light, and
Juliana smiled contemptuously, and the light flickered and died, and all
was darker than before in the bosom of Rose. She had borne so much that
this new drop was poison.

'Of course it must be that, if it is anything,' Juliana pursued. 'You
were made to be happy, Rose. And consider, if it is true, people of very
low birth, till they have lived long with other people, and if they have
no religion, are so very likely to do things. You do not judge them as
you do real gentlemen, and one must not be too harsh--I only wish to
prepare you for the worst.'

A dim form of that very idea had passed through Rose, giving her small
comfort.

'Let him tell you with his own lips that what he has told your mother is
true, and then, and not till then, believe him,' Juliana concluded, and
they kissed kindly, and separated. Rose had suddenly lost her firm step,
but no sooner was Juliana alone than she left the bed, and addressed her
visage to the glass with brightening eyes, as one who saw the glimmer of
young hope therein.

'She love him! Not if he told me so ten thousand times would I believe
it! and before he has said a syllable she doubts him. Asking me in that
frantic way! as if I couldn't see that she wanted me to help her to her
faith in him, as she calls it. Not name his name? Mr. Harrington! I may
call him Evan: some day!'

Half-uttered, half-mused, the unconscious exclamations issued from her,
and for many a weary day since she had dreamed of love, and studied that
which is said to attract the creature, she had not been so glowingly
elated or looked so much farther in the glass than its pale reflection.




CHAPTER XXXVI

BEFORE BREAKFAST

Cold through the night the dark-fringed stream had whispered under Evan's
eyes, and the night breeze voiced 'Fool, fool!' to him, not without a
distant echo in his heart. By symbols and sensations he knew that Rose
was lost to him. There was no moon: the water seemed aimless, passing on
carelessly to oblivion. Now and then, the trees stirred and talked, or a
noise was heard from the pastures. He had slain the life that lived in
them, and the great glory they were to bring forth, and the end to which
all things moved. Had less than the loss of Rose been involved, the young
man might have found himself looking out on a world beneath notice, and
have been sighing for one more worthy of his clouded excellence but the
immense misery present to him in the contemplation of Rose's sad
restrained contempt, saved him from the silly elation which is the last,
and generally successful, struggle of human nature in those who can so
far master it to commit a sacrifice. The loss of that brave high young
soul-Rose, who had lifted him out of the mire with her own white hands:
Rose, the image of all that he worshipped: Rose, so closely wedded to him
that to be cut away from her was to fall like pallid clay from the
soaring spirit: surely he was stunned and senseless when he went to utter
the words to her mother! Now that he was awake, and could feel his
self-inflicted pain, he marvelled at his rashness and foolishness, as
perhaps numerous mangled warriors have done for a time, when the
battle-field was cool, and they were weak, and the uproar of their jarred
nerves has beset them, lying uncherished.

By degrees he grew aware of a little consolatory touch, like the point of
a needle, in his consciousness. Laxley would certainly insult him! In
that case he would not refuse to fight him. The darkness broke and
revealed this happy prospect, and Evan held to it an hour, and could
hardly reject it when better thoughts conquered. For would it not be
sweet to make the strength of his arm respected? He took a stick, and ran
his eye musingly along the length, trifling with it grimly. The great Mel
had been his son's instructor in the chivalrous science of fence, and a
maitre d'armes in Portugal had given him polish. In Mel's time duels with
swords had been occasionally fought, and Evan looked on the sword as the
weapon of combat. Face to face with his adversary--what then were birth
or position? Action!--action! he sighed for it, as I have done since I
came to know that his history must be morally developed. A glow of bitter
pleasure exalted him when, after hot passages, and parryings and thrusts,
he had disarmed Ferdinand Laxley, and bestowing on him his life, said:
'Accept this worthy gift of the son of a tailor!' and he wiped his sword,
haply bound up his wrist, and stalked off the ground, the vindicator of
man's natural dignity. And then he turned upon himself with laughter,
discovering a most wholesome power, barely to be suspected in him yet;
but of all the children of glittering Mel and his solid mate, Evan was
the best mixed compound of his parents.

He put the stick back in its corner and eyed his wrist, as if he had
really just gone through the pretty scene he had just laughed at. It was
nigh upon reality, for it suggested the employment of a handkerchief, and
he went to a place and drew forth one that had the stain of his blood on
it, and the name of Rose at one end. The beloved name was half-blotted by
the dull-red mark, and at that sight a strange tenderness took hold of
Evan. His passions became dead and of old date. This, then, would be his
for ever! Love, for whom earth had been too small, crept exultingly into
a nut-shell. He clasped the treasure on his breast, and saw a life beyond
his parting with her.

Strengthened thus, he wrote by the morning light to Laxley. The letter
was brief, and said simply that the act of which Laxley had been accused,
Evan Harrington was responsible for. The latter expressed regret that
Laxley should have fallen under a false charge, and, at the same time,
indicated that if Laxley considered himself personally aggrieved, the
writer was at his disposal.

A messenger had now to be found to convey it to the village-inn. Footmen
were stirring about the house, and one meeting Evan close by his door,
observed with demure grin, that he could not find the gentleman's
nether-garments. The gentleman, it appeared, was Mr. John Raikes, who
according to report, had been furnished with a bed at the house, because
of a discovery, made at a late period over-night, that farther the
gentleman could not go. Evan found him sleeping soundly. How much the
poor youth wanted a friend! Fortune had given him instead a born buffoon;
and it is perhaps the greatest evil of a position like Evan's, that, with
cultured feelings, you are likely to meet with none to know you. Society
does not mix well in money-pecking spheres. Here, however, was John
Raikes, and Evan had to make the best of him.

'Eh?' yawned Jack, awakened; 'I was dreaming I was Napoleon Bonaparte's
right-hand man.'

'I want you to be mine for half-an-hour,' said Evan.

Without replying, the distinguished officer jumped out of bed at a bound,
mounted a chair, and peered on tip-toe over the top, from which, with a
glance of self-congratulation, he pulled the missing piece of apparel,
sighed dejectedly as he descended, while he exclaimed:

'Safe! but no distinction can compensate a man for this state of
intolerable suspicion of everybody. I assure you, Harrington, I wouldn't
be Napoleon himself--and I have always been his peculiar admirer--to live
and be afraid of my valet! I believe it will develop cancer sooner or
later in me. I feel singular pains already. Last night, after crowning
champagne with ale, which produced a sort of French Revolution in my
interior--by the way, that must have made me dream of Napoleon last
night, with my lower members in revolt against my head, I had to sit and
cogitate for hours on a hiding-place for these-call them what you will.
Depend upon it, Harrington, this world is no such funny affair as we
fancy.'

'Then it is true, that you could let a man play pranks on you,' said
Evan. 'I took it for one of your jokes.'

'Just as I can't believe that you're a tailor,' returned Jack. 'It 's not
a bit more extraordinary.'

'But, Jack, if you cause yourself to be contemptible----'

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