Evan Harrington, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> Evan Harrington, Complete

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Why did our General see herself cut off from her stronghold, as by a
hostile band? She saw it by that sombre light in Juliana's eyes, which
had shown its ominous gleam whenever disasters were on the point of
unfolding.

Turning to Caroline, she said: 'Is there a back way?'

Too late! Andrew called.

'Come along, Louisa, Just time, and no more. Carry, are you packed?'

This in reality was the first note of the retreat from Beckley; and
having blown it, the hideous little trumpeter burst into scarlet
perspirations, mumbling to Lady Jocelyn: 'Now, my lady, mind you stand by
me.'

The Countess walked straight up to him.

'Dear Andrew! this sun is too powerful for you. I beg you, withdraw into
the shade of the house.'

She was about to help him with all her gentleness.

'Yes, yes. All right, Louisa rejoined Andrew. 'Come, go and pack. The fly
'll be here, you know--too late for the coach, if you don't mind, my
lass. Ain't you packed yet?'

The horrible fascination of vulgarity impelled the wretched lady to
answer: 'Are we herrings?' And then she laughed, but without any
accompaniment.

'I am now going to dear Mrs. Bonner,' she said, with a tender glance at
Lady Jocelyn.

'My mother is sleeping,' her ladyship remarked.

'Come, Carry, my darling!' cried Andrew.

Caroline looked at her sister. The Countess divined Andrew's shameful
trap.

'I was under an engagement to go and canvass this afternoon,' she said.

'Why, my dear Louisa, we've settled that in here this morning,' said
Andrew. 'Old Tom only stuck up a puppet to play with. We've knocked him
over, and march in victorious--eh, my lady?'

'Oh!' exclaimed the Countess, 'if Mr. Raikes shall indeed have listened
to my inducements!'

'Deuce a bit of inducements!' returned Andrew. 'The fellow's ashamed of
himself-ha! ha! Now then, Louisa.'

While they talked, Juliana had loosed Dorothy and Alec, and these imps
were seen rehearsing a remarkable play, in which the damsel held forth a
hand and the cavalier advanced and kissed it with a loud smack, being at
the same time reproached for his lack of grace.

'You are so English!' cried Dorothy, with perfect languor, and a
malicious twitter passed between two or three. Mr. George spluttered
indiscreetly.

The Countess observed the performance. Not to convert the retreat into a
total rout, she, with that dark flush which was her manner of blushing,
took formal leave of Lady Jocelyn, who, in return, simply said:
'Good-bye, Countess.' Mrs. Strike's hand she kindly shook.

The few digs and slaps and thrusts at gloomy Harry and prim Miss
Carrington and boorish Mr. George, wherewith the Countess, torn with
wrath, thought it necessary to cover her retreat, need not be told. She
struck the weak alone: Juliana she respected. Masterly tactics, for they
showed her power, gratified her vengeance, and left her unassailed. On
the road she had Andrew to tear to pieces. O delicious operation! And O
shameful brother to reduce her to such joys! And, O Providence! may a
poor desperate soul, betrayed through her devotion, unremunerated for her
humiliation and absolute hard work, accuse thee? The Countess would have
liked to. She felt it to be the instigation of the devil, and decided to
remain on the safe side still.

Happily for Evan, she was not ready with her packing by half-past eleven.
It was near twelve when he, pacing in front of the inn, observed Polly
Wheedle, followed some yards in the rear by John Raikes, advancing
towards him. Now Polly had been somewhat delayed by Jack's persecutions,
and Evan declining to attend to the masked speech of her mission, which
directed him to go at once down a certain lane in the neighbourhood of
the park, some minutes were lost.

'Why, Mr. Harrington,' said Polly, 'it's Miss Rose: she's had leave from
her Ma. Can you stop away, when it's quite proper?'

Evan hesitated. Before he could conquer the dark spirit, lo, Rose
appeared, walking up the village street. Polly and her adorer fell back.

Timidly, unlike herself, Rose neared him.

'I have offended you, Evan. You would not come to me: I have come to
you.'

'I am glad to be able to say good-bye to you, Rose,' was his pretty
response.

Could she have touched his hand then, the blood of these lovers rushing
to one channel must have made all clear. At least he could hardly have
struck her true heart with his miserable lie. But that chance was lost
they were in the street, where passions have no play.

'Tell me, Evan,--it is not true.'

He, refining on his misery, thought, She would not ask it if she trusted
me: and answered her: 'You have heard it from your mother, Rose.'

'But I will not believe it from any lips but yours, Evan. Oh, speak,
speak!'

It pleased him to think: How could one who loved me believe it even then?

He said: 'It can scarcely do good to make me repeat it, Rose.'

And then, seeing her dear bosom heave quickly, he was tempted to fall on
his knees to her with a wild outcry of love. The chance was lost. The
inexorable street forbade it.

There they stood in silence, gasping at the barrier that divided them.

Suddenly a noise was heard. 'Stop! stop!' cried the voice of John Raikes.
'When a lady and gentleman are talking together, sir, do you lean your
long ears over them--ha?'

Looking round, Evan beheld Laxley a step behind, and Jack rushing up to
him, seizing his collar, and instantly undergoing ignominious prostration
for his heroic defence of the privacy of lovers.

'Stand aside'; said Laxley, imperiously. 'Rosey so you've come for me.
Take my arm. You are under my protection.'

Another forlorn 'Is it true?' Rose cast toward Evan with her eyes. He
wavered under them.

'Did you receive my letter?' he demanded of Laxley.

'I decline to hold converse with you,' said Laxley, drawing Rose's hand
on his arm.

'You will meet me to-day or to-morrow?'

'I am in the habit of selecting my own company.'

Rose disengaged her hand. Evan grasped it. No word of farewell was
uttered. Her mouth moved, but her eyes were hard shut, and nothing save
her hand's strenuous pressure, equalling his own, told that their parting
had been spoken, the link violently snapped.

Mr. John Raikes had been picked up and pulled away by Polly. She now
rushed to Evan: 'Good-bye, and God bless you, dear Mr. Harrington. I'll
find means of letting you know how she is. And he shan't have her, mind!'

Rose was walking by Laxley's side, but not leaning on his arm. Evan
blessed her for this. Ere she was out of sight the fly rolled down the
street. She did not heed it, did not once turn her head. Ah, bitter
unkindness!

When Love is hurt, it is self-love that requires the opiate. Conning gave
it him in the form of a note in a handwriting not known to him. It said:

'I do not believe it, and nothing will ever make me.
'JULIANA.'

Evan could not forget these words. They coloured his farewell to Beckley:
the dear old downs, the hopgardens, the long grey farms walled with
clipped yew, the home of his lost love! He thought of them through weary
nights when the ghostly image with the hard shut eyelids and the
quivering lips would rise and sway irresolutely in air till a shape out
of the darkness extinguished it. Pride is the God of Pagans. Juliana had
honoured his God. The spirit of Juliana seemed to pass into the body of
Rose, and suffer for him as that ghostly image visibly suffered.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

IN WHICH WE HAVE TO SEE IN THE DARK

So ends the fourth act of our comedy.

After all her heroism and extraordinary efforts, after, as she feared,
offending Providence--after facing Tailordom--the Countess was rolled
away in a dingy fly unrewarded even by a penny, for what she had gone
through. For she possessed eminently the practical nature of her sex; and
though she would have scorned, and would have declined to handle coin so
base, its absence was upbraidingly mentioned in her spiritual outcries.
Not a penny!

Nor was there, as in the miseries of retreat she affected indifferently
to imagine, a Duke fished out of the ruins of her enterprise, to wash the
mud off her garments and edge them with radiance. Caroline, it became
clear to her, had been infected by Evan's folly. Caroline, she
subsequently learnt, had likewise been a fool. Instead of marvelling at
the genius that had done so much in spite of the pair of fools that were
the right and left wing of her battle array, the simple-minded lady wept.
She wanted success, not genius. Admiration she was ever ready to forfeit
for success.

Nor did she say to the tailors of earth: 'Weep, for I sought to
emancipate you from opprobrium by making one of you a gentleman; I fought
for a great principle and have failed.' Heroic to the end, she herself
shed all the tears; took all the sorrow.

Where was consolation? Would any Protestant clergyman administer comfort
to her? Could he? might he do so? He might listen, and quote texts; but
he would demand the harsh rude English for everything; and the Countess's
confessional thoughts were all innuendoish, aerial; too delicate to live
in our shameless tongue. Confession by implication, and absolution; she
could know this to be what she wished for, and yet not think it. She
could see a haven of peace in that picture of the little brown box with
the sleekly reverend figure bending his ear to the kneeling Beauty
outside, thrice ravishing as she half-lifts the veil of her sins and her
visage!--yet she started alarmed to hear it whispered that the fair
penitent was the Countess de Saldar; urgently she prayed that no
disgraceful brother might ever drive her to that!

Never let it be a Catholic priest!--she almost fashioned her petition
into words. Who was to save her? Alas! alas! in her dire distress--in her
sense of miserable pennilessness, she clung to Mr. John Raikes, of the
curricle, the mysteriously rich young gentleman; and on that picture,
with Andrew roguishly contemplating it, and Evan, with feelings regarding
his sister that he liked not to own, the curtain commiseratingly drops.

As in the course of a stream you come upon certain dips, where, but here
and there, a sparkle or a gloom of the full flowing water is caught
through deepening foliage, so the history that concerns us wanders out of
day for a time, and we must violate the post and open written leaves to
mark the turn it takes.

First we have a letter from Mr. Goren to Mrs. Mel, to inform her that her
son has arrived and paid his respects to his future instructor in the
branch of science practised by Mr. Goren.

'He has arrived at last,' says the worthy tradesman. 'His appearance in
the shop will be highly gentlemanly, and when he looks a little more
pleasing, and grows fond of it, nothing will be left to be desired. The
ladies, his sisters, have not thought proper to call. I had hopes of the
custom of Mr. Andrew Cogglesby. Of course you wish him to learn tailoring
thoroughly?'

Mrs. Mel writes back, thanking Mr. Goren, and saying that 'she had shown
the letter to inquiring creditors, and that she does wish her son to
learn his business from the root. This produces a second letter from Mr.
Goren, which imparts to her that at the root of the tree, of tailoring
the novitiate must sit no less than six hours a day with his legs crossed
and doubled under him, cheerfully plying needle and thread; and that,
without this probation, to undergo which the son resolutely objects, all
hope of his climbing to the top of the lofty tree, and viewing mankind
from an eminence, must be surrendered.

'If you do not insist, my dear Mrs. Harrington, I tell you candidly, your
son may have a shop, but he will be no tailor.'

Mrs. Mel understands her son and his state of mind well enough not to
insist, and is resigned to the melancholy consequence.

Then Mr. Goren discovers an extraordinary resemblance between Evan and
his father: remarking merely that the youth is not the gentleman his
father was in a shop, while he admits, that had it been conjoined to
business habits, he should have envied his departed friend.

He has soon something fresh to tell; and it is that young Mr. Harrington
is treating him cavalierly. That he should penetrate the idea or
appreciate the merits of Mr. Goren's Balance was hardly to be expected at
present: the world did not, and Mr. Goren blamed no young man for his
ignorance. Still a proper attendance was requisite. Mr. Goren thought it
very singular that young Mr. Harrington should demand all the hours of
the day for his own purposes, up to half-past four. He found it difficult
to speak to him as a master, and begged that Mrs. Harrington would, as a
mother.

The reply of Mrs. Mel is dashed with a trifle of cajolery. She has heard
from her son, and seeing that her son takes all that time from his right
studies, to earn money wherewith to pay debts of which Mr. Goren is
cognizant, she trusts that their oldest friend will overlook it.

Mr. Goren rejoins that he considers that he need not have been excluded
from young Mr. Harrington's confidence. Moreover, it is a grief to him
that the young gentleman should refrain from accepting any of his
suggestions as to the propriety of requesting some, at least, of his rich
and titled acquaintance to confer on him the favour of their patronage.
'Which they would not repent,' adds Mr. Goren, 'and might learn to be
very much obliged to him for, in return for kindnesses extended to him.'

Notwithstanding all my efforts, you see, the poor boy is thrust into the
shop. There he is, without a doubt. He sleeps under Mr. Goren's roof: he
(since one cannot be too positive in citing the punishment of such a
Pagan) stands behind a counter: he (and, oh! choke, young loves, that
have hovered around him! shrink from him in natural horror, gentle
ladies!) handles the shears. It is not my fault. He would be a Pagan. If
you can think him human enough still to care to know how he feels it, I
must tell you that he feels it hardly-at all. After a big blow, a very
little one scarcely counts. What are outward forms and social ignominies
to him whose heart has been struck to the dust? His Gods have fought for
him, and there he is! He deserves no pity.

But he does not ask it of you, the callous Pagan! Despise him, if you
please, and rank with the Countess, who despises him most heartily.
Dipping further into the secrets of the post, we discover a brisk
correspondence between Juliana Bonner and Mrs. Strike.

'A thousand thanks to you, my dear Miss Bonner,' writes the latter lady.
'The unaffected interest you take in my brother touches me deeply. I know
him to be worthy of your good opinion. Yes, I will open my heart to you,
dearest Juliana; and it shall, as you wish, be quite secret between us.
Not to a soul!

'He is quite alone. My sisters Harriet and Louisa will not see him, and I
can only do so by stealth. His odd other little friend sometimes drives
me out on Sundays, to a place where I meet him; and the Duke of Belfield
kindly lends me his carriage. Oh, that we might never part! I am only
happy with him!

'Ah, do not doubt him, Juliana, for anything he does! You say, that now
the Duke has obtained for him the Secretaryship to my husband's Company,
he should not thing, and you do not understand why. I will tell you. Our
poor father died in debt, and Evan receives money which enables him by
degrees to liquidate these debts, on condition that he consents to be
what I dislike as much as you can. He bears it; you can have no idea of
his pride! He is too proud to own to himself that it debases him--too
proud to complain. It is a tangle--a net that drags him down to it but
whatever he is outwardly, he is the noblest human being in the world to
me, and but for him, oh, what should I be? Let me beg you to forgive it,
if you can. My darling has no friends. Is his temper as sweet as ever? I
can answer that. Yes, only he is silent, and looks--when you look into
his eyes--colder, as men look when they will not bear much from other
men.

'He has not mentioned her name. I am sure she has not written.

'Pity him, and pray for him.'

Juliana then makes a communication, which draws forth the following:--

'Mistress of all the Beckley property-dearest, dearest Juliana! Oh! how
sincerely I congratulate you! The black on the letter alarmed me so, I
could hardly open it, my fingers trembled so; for I esteem you all at
Beckley; but when I had opened and read it, I was recompensed. You say
you are sorry for Rose. But surely what your Grandmama has done is quite
right. It is just, in every sense. But why am I not to tell Evan? I am
certain it would make him very happy, and happiness of any kind he needs
so much! I will obey you, of course, but I cannot see why. Do you know,
my dear child, you are extremely mysterious, and puzzle me. Evan takes a
pleasure in speaking of you. You and Lady Jocelyn are his great themes.
Why is he to be kept ignorant of your good fortune? The spitting of blood
is bad. You must winter in a warm climate. I do think that London is far
better for you in the late Autumn than Hampshire. May I ask my sister
Harriet to invite you to reside with her for some weeks? Nothing, I know,
would give her greater pleasure.'

Juliana answers this--

'If you love me--I sometimes hope that you do--but the feeling of being
loved is so strange to me that I can only believe it at times--but,
Caroline--there, I have mustered up courage to call you by your Christian
name at last--Oh, dear Caroline! if you do love me, do not tell Mr.
Harrington. I go on my knees to you to beg you not to tell him a word. I
have no reasons indeed not any; but I implore you again never even to
hint that I am anything but the person he knew at Beckley.

'Rose has gone to Elburne House, where Ferdinand, her friend, is to meet
her. She rides and sings the same, and keeps all her colour.

'She may not, as you imagine, have much sensibility. Perhaps not enough.
I am afraid that Rose is turning into a very worldly woman!

'As to what you kindly say about inviting me to London, I should like it,
and I am my own mistress. Do you know, I think I am older than your
brother! I am twenty-three. Pray, when you write, tell me if he is older
than that. But should I not be a dreadful burden to you? Sometimes I have
to keep to my chamber whole days and days. When that happens now, I think
of you entirely. See how I open my heart to you. You say that you do to
me. I wish I could really think it.'

A postscript begs Caroline 'not to forget about the ages.'

In this fashion the two ladies open their hearts, and contrive to read
one another perfectly in their mutual hypocrisies.

Some letters bearing the signatures of Mr. John Raikes, and Miss Polly
Wheedle, likewise pass. Polly inquires for detailed accounts of the
health and doings of Mr. Harrington. Jack replies with full particulars
of her own proceedings, and mild corrections of her grammar. It is to be
noted that Polly grows much humbler to him on paper, which being
instantly perceived by the mercurial one, his caressing condescension to
her is very beautiful. She is taunted with Mr. Nicholas Frim, and
answers, after the lapse of a week, that the aforesaid can be nothing to
her, as he 'went in a passion to church last Sunday and got married.' It
appears that they had quarrelled, 'because I danced with you that night.'
To this Mr. Raikes rejoins in a style that would be signified by 'ahem!'
in language, and an arrangement of the shirt collar before the
looking-glass, in action.

CHAPTER XXXIX

IN THE DOMAIN OF TAILORDOM

There was peace in Mr. Goren's shop. Badgered Ministers, bankrupt
merchants, diplomatists with a headache--any of our modern grandees under
difficulties, might have envied that peace over which Mr. Goren presided:
and he was an enviable man. He loved his craft, he believed that he had
not succeeded the millions of antecedent tailors in vain; and, excepting
that trifling coquetry with shirt-fronts, viz., the red crosses, which a
shrewd rival had very soon eclipsed by representing nymphs triangularly
posed, he devoted himself to his business from morning to night; as rigid
in demanding respect from those beneath him, as he was profuse in
lavishing it on his patrons. His public boast was, that he owed no man a
farthing; his secret comfort, that he possessed two thousand pounds in
the Funds. But Mr. Goren did not stop here. Behind these external
characteristics he nursed a passion. Evan was astonished and pleased to
find in him an enthusiastic fern-collector. Not that Mr. Harrington
shared the passion, but the sight of these brown roots spread out,
ticketed, on the stained paper, after supper, when the shutters were up
and the house defended from the hostile outer world; the old man poring
over them, and naming this and that spot where, during his solitary
Saturday afternoon and Sunday excursions, he had lighted on the rare
samples exhibited this contrast of the quiet evening with the sordid day
humanized Mr. Goren to him. He began to see a spirit in the rigid
tradesman not so utterly dissimilar to his own, and he fancied that he,
too, had a taste for ferns. Round Beckley how they abounded!

He told Mr. Goren so, and Mr. Goren said:

'Some day we'll jog down there together, as the saying goes.'

Mr. Goren spoke of it as an ordinary event, likely to happen in the days
to come: not as an incident the mere mention of which, as being probable,
stopped the breath and made the pulses leap.

For now Evan's education taught him to feel that he was at his lowest
degree. Never now could Rose stoop to him. He carried the shop on his
back. She saw the brand of it on his forehead. Well! and what was Rose to
him, beyond a blissful memory, a star that he had once touched? Self-love
kept him strong by day, but in the darkness of night came his misery;
wakening from tender dreams, he would find his heart sinking under a
horrible pressure, and then the fair fresh face of Rose swam over him;
the hours of Beckley were revived; with intolerable anguish he saw that
she was blameless--that he alone was to blame. Yet worse was it when his
closed eyelids refused to conjure up the sorrowful lovely nightmare, and
he lay like one in a trance, entombed-wretched Pagan! feeling all that
had been blindly; when the Past lay beside him like a corpse that he had
slain.

These nightly torments helped him to brave what the morning brought.
Insensibly also, as Time hardened his sufferings, Evan asked himself what
the shame of his position consisted in. He grew stiff-necked. His Pagan
virtues stood up one by one to support him. Andrew, courageously evading
the interdict that forbade him to visit Evan, would meet him by
appointment at City taverns, and flatly offered him a place in the
Brewery. Evan declined it, on the pretext that, having received Old Tom's
money for the year, he must at least work out that term according to the
conditions. Andrew fumed and sneered at Tailordom. Evan said that there
was peace in Mr. Goren's shop. His sharp senses discerned in Andrew's
sneer a certain sincerity, and he revolted against it. Mr John Raikes,
too, burlesqued Society so well, that he had the satisfaction of laughing
at his enemy occasionally. The latter gentleman was still a pensioner,
flying about town with the Countess de Saldar, in deadly fear lest that
fascinating lady should discover the seat of his fortune; happy,
notwithstanding. In the mirror of Evan's little world, he beheld the
great one from which he was banished.

Now the dusk of a winter's afternoon was closing over London, when a
carriage drew up in front of Mr. Goren's shop, out of which, to Mr.
Goren's chagrin, a lady stepped, with her veil down. The lady entered,
and said that she wished to speak to Mr. Harrington. Mr. Goren made way
for her to his pupil; and was amazed to see her fall into his arms, and
hardly gratified to hear her say: 'Pardon me, darling, for coming to you
in this place.'

Evan asked permission to occupy the parlour.

'My place,' said Mr. Goren, with humble severity, over his spectacles,
'is very poor. Such as it is, it is at the lady's service.'

Alone with her, Evan was about to ease his own feelings by remarking to
the effect that Mr. Goren was human like the rest of us, but Caroline
cried, with unwonted vivacity:

'Yes, yes, I know; but I thought only of you. I have such news for you!
You will and must pardon my coming--that's my first thought, sensitive
darling that you are!' She kissed him fondly. 'Juliana Bonner is in town,
staying with us!'

'Is that your news?' asked Evan, pressing her against his breast.

'No, dear love--but still! You have no idea what her fortune--Mrs. Bonner
has died and left her--but I mustn't tell you. Oh, my darling! how she
admires you! She--she could recompense you; if you would! We will put
that by, for the present. Dear! the Duke has begged you, through me, to
accept--I think it 's to be a sort of bailiff to his estates--I don't
know rightly. It's a very honourable post, that gentlemen take: and the
income you are to have, Evan, will be near a thousand a year. Now, what
do I deserve for my news?'

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