Evan Harrington, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> Evan Harrington, Complete

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She put up her mouth for another kiss, out of breath.

'True?' looked Evan's eyes.

'True!' she said, smiling, and feasting on his bewilderment.

After the bubbling in his brain had a little subsided, Evan breathed as a
man on whom fresh air is blown. Were not these tidings of release? His
ridiculous pride must nevertheless inquire whether Caroline had been
begging this for him.

'No, dear--indeed!' Caroline asserted with more than natural vehemence.
'It's something that you yourself have done that has pleased him. I don't
know what. Only he says, he believes you are a man to be trusted with the
keys of anything--and so you are. You are to call on him to-morrow. Will
you?'

While Evan was replying, her face became white. She had heard the Major's
voice in the shop. His military step advanced, and Caroline, exclaiming,
'Don't let me see him!' bustled to a door. Evan nodded, and she slipped
through. The next moment he was facing the stiff marine.

'Well, young man,' the Major commenced, and, seating himself, added, 'be
seated. I want to talk to you seriously, sir. You didn't think fit to
wait till I had done with the Directors today. You're devilishly out in
your discipline, whatever you are at two and two. I suppose there's no
fear of being intruded on here? None of your acquaintances likely to be
introducing themselves to me?'

'There is not one that I would introduce to you,' said Evan.

The Major nodded a brief recognition of the compliment, and then,
throwing his back against the chair, fired out: 'Come, sir, is this your
doing?'

In military phrase, Evan now changed front. His first thought had been
that the Major had come for his wife. He perceived that he himself was
the special object of his visitation.

'I must ask you what you allude to,' he answered.

'You are not at your office, but you will speak to me as if there was
some distinction between us,' said the Major. 'My having married your
sister does not reduce me to the ranks, I hope.'

The Major drummed his knuckles on the table, after this impressive
delivery.

'Hem!' he resumed. 'Now, sir, understand, before you speak a word, that I
can see through any number of infernal lies. I see that you're prepared
for prevarication. By George! it shall come out of you, if I get it by
main force. The Duke compelled me to give you that appointment in my
Company. Now, sir, did you, or did you not, go to him and deliberately
state to him that you believed the affairs of the Company to be in a bad
condition--infamously handled, likely to involve his honour as a
gentleman? I ask you, sir, did you do this, or did you not do it?'

Evan waited till the sharp rattle of the Major's close had quieted.

'If I am to answer the wording of your statement, I may say that I did
not.'

'Very good; very good; that will do. Are you aware that the Duke has sent
in his resignation as a Director of our Company?'

'I hear of it first from you.'

'Confound your familiarity!' cried the irritable officer, rising. 'Am I
always to be told that I married your sister? Address me, sir, as becomes
your duty.'

Evan heard the words 'beggarly tailor' mumbled 'out of the gutters,' and
'cursed connection.' He stood in the attitude of attention, while the
Major continued:

'Now, young man, listen to these facts. You came to me this day last
week, and complained that you did not comprehend some of our transactions
and affairs. I explained them to your damned stupidity. You went away.
Three days after that, you had an interview with the Duke. Stop, sir!
What the devil do you mean by daring to speak while I am speaking? You
saw the Duke, I say. Now, what took place at that interview?'

The Major tried to tower over Evan powerfully, as he put this query. They
were of a common height, and to do so, he had to rise on his toes, so
that the effect was but momentary.

'I think I am not bound to reply,' said Evan.

'Very well, sir; that will do.' The Major's fingers were evidently
itching for an absent rattan. 'Confess it or not, you are dismissed from
your post. Do you hear? You are kicked in the street. A beggarly tailor
you were born, and a beggarly tailor you will die.'

'I must beg you to stop, now,' said Evan. 'I told you that I was not
bound to reply: but I will. If you will sit down, Major Strike, you shall
hear what you wish to know.'

This being presently complied with, though not before a glare of the
Major's eyes had shown his doubt whether it might not be construed into
insolence, Evan pursued:

'I came to you and informed you that I could not reconcile the
cash-accounts of the Company, and that certain of the later proceedings
appeared to me to jeopardize its prosperity. Your explanations did not
satisfy me. I admit that you enjoined me to be silent. But the Duke, as a
Director, had as strong a right to claim me as his servant, and when he
questioned me as to the position of the Company, I told him what I
thought, just as I had told you.'

'You told him we were jobbers and swindlers, sir!'

'The Duke inquired of me whether I would, under the circumstances, while
proceedings were going on which I did not approve of, take the
responsibility of allowing my name to remain--'

'Ha! ha! ha!' the Major burst out. This was too good a joke. The name of
a miserable young tailor!' Go on, sir, go on!' He swallowed his laughter
like oil on his rage.

'I have said sufficient.'

Jumping up, the Major swore by the Lord, that he had said sufficient.

'Now, look you here, young man.' He squared his finger before Evan,
eyeing him under a hard frown, 'You have been playing your game again, as
you did down at that place in Hampshire. I heard of it--deserved to be
shot, by heaven! You think you have got hold of the Duke, and you throw
me over. You imagine, I dare say, that I will allow my wife to be talked
about to further your interests--you self-seeking young dog! As long as
he lent the Company his name, I permitted a great many things. Do you
think me a blind idiot, sir? But now she must learn to be satisfied with
people who 've got no titles, or carriages, and who can't give hundred
guinea compliments. You're all of a piece-a set of . . .'

The Major paused, for half a word was on his mouth which had drawn
lightning to Evan's eyes.

Not to be baffled, he added: 'But look you, sir. I may be ruined. I dare
say the Company will go to the dogs--every ass will follow a Duke. But,
mark, this goes on no more. I will be no woman's tally. Mind, sir, I take
excellent care that you don't traffic in your sister!'

The Major delivered this culminating remark with a well-timed deflection
of his forefinger, and slightly turned aside when he had done.

You might have seen Evan's figure rocking, as he stood with his eyes
steadily levelled on his sister's husband.

The Major, who, whatever he was, was physically no coward, did not fail
to interpret the look, and challenge it.

Evan walked to the door, opened it, and said, between his teeth, 'You
must go at once.'

'Eh, sir, eh? what's this?' exclaimed the warrior but the door was open,
Mr. Goren was in the shop; the scandal of an assault in such a house, and
the consequent possibility of his matrimonial alliance becoming bruited
in the newspapers, held his arm after it had given an involuntary jerk.
He marched through with becoming dignity, and marched out into the
street; and if necks unelastic and heads erect may be taken as the sign
of a proud soul and of nobility of mind, my artist has the Major for his
model.

Evan displayed no such a presence. He returned to the little parlour,
shut and locked the door to the shop, and forgetting that one was near,
sat down, covered his eyes, and gave way to a fit of tearless sobbing.
With one foot in the room Caroline hung watching him. A pain that she had
never known wrung her nerves. His whole manhood seemed to be shaken, as
if by regular pulsations of intensest misery. She stood in awe of the
sight till her limbs failed her, and then staggering to him she fell on
her knees, clasping his, passionately kissing them.

CHAPTER XL.

IN WHICH THE COUNTESS STILL SCENTS GAME

Mr. Raikes and his friend Frank Remand, surnamed Franko, to suit the
requirements of metre, in which they habitually conversed, were walking
arm-in-arm along the drive in Society's Park on a fine frosty Sunday
afternoon of midwinter. The quips and jokes of Franko were lively, and he
looked into the carriages passing, as if he knew that a cheerful
countenance is not without charms for their inmates. Raikes' face, on the
contrary, was barren and bleak. Being of that nature that when a pun was
made he must perforce outstrip it, he fell into Franko's humour from time
to time, but albeit aware that what he uttered was good, and by
comparison transcendent, he refused to enjoy it. Nor when Franko started
from his arm to declaim a passage, did he do other than make limp efforts
to unite himself to Franko again. A further sign of immense depression in
him was that instead of the creative, it was the critical faculty he
exercised, and rather than reply to Franko in his form of speech, he
scanned occasional lines and objected to particular phrases. He had
clearly exchanged the sanguine for the bilious temperament, and was fast
stranding on the rocky shores of prose. Franko bore this very well, for
he, like Raikes in happier days, claimed all the glances of lovely woman
as his own, and on his right there flowed a stream of Beauties. At last
he was compelled to observe: 'This change is sudden: wherefore so
downcast? With tigrine claw thou mangiest my speech, thy cheeks are like
December's pippin, and thy tongue most sour!'

'Then of it make a farce!' said Raikes, for the making of farces was
Franko's profession. 'Wherefore so downcast! What a line! There! let's
walk on. Let us the left foot forward stout advance. I care not for the
herd.'

''Tis love!' cried Franko.

'Ay, an' it be!' Jack gloomily returned.

'For ever cruel is the sweet Saldar?'

Raikes winced at this name.

'A truce to banter, Franko!' he said sternly: but the subject was opened,
and the wound.

'Love!' he pursued, mildly groaning. 'Suppose you adored a fascinating
woman, and she knew--positively knew--your manly weakness, and you saw
her smiling upon everybody, and she told you to be happy, and egad, when
you came to reflect, you found that after three months' suit you were
nothing better than her errand-boy? A thing to boast of, is it not,
quotha?'

'Love's yellow-fever, jealousy, methinks,' Franko commenced in reply; but
Raikes spat at the emphasized word.

'Jealousy!--who's jealous of clergymen and that crew? Not I, by Pluto! I
carried five messages to one fellow with a coat-tail straight to his
heels, last week. She thought I should drive my curricle--I couldn't
afford an omnibus! I had to run. When I returned to her I was dirty. She
made remarks!'

'Thy sufferings are severe--but such is woman!' said Franko. 'Gad, it's a
good idea, though.' He took out a note-book and pencilled down a point or
two. Raikes watched the process sardonically.

'My tragedy is, then, thy farce!' he exclaimed. 'Well, be it so! I
believe I shall come to song-writing again myself shortly-beneath the
shield of Catnach I'll a nation's ballads frame. I've spent my income in
four months, and now I 'm living on my curricle. I underlet it. It 's
like trade--it 's as bad as poor old Harrington, by Jove! But that isn't
the worst, Franko!' Jack dropped his voice: 'I believe I'm furiously
loved by a poor country wench.'

'Morals!' was Franko's most encouraging reproof.

'Oh, I don't think I've even kissed her,' rejoined Raikes, who doubted
because his imagination was vivid. 'It 's my intellect that dazzles her.
I 've got letters--she calls me clever. By Jove! since I gave up driving
I've had thoughts of rushing down to her and making her mine in spite of
home, family, fortune, friends, name, position--everything! I have,
indeed.'

Franko looked naturally astonished at this amount of self-sacrifice. 'The
Countess?' he shrewdly suggested.

'I'd rather be my Polly's prince,
Than yon great lady's errand-boy!'

Raikes burst into song.

He stretched out his hand, as if to discard all the great ladies who were
passing. By the strangest misfortune ever known, the direction taken by
his fingers was toward a carriage wherein, beautifully smiling opposite
an elaborately reverend gentleman of middle age, the Countess de Saldar
was sitting. This great lady is not to be blamed for deeming that her
errand-boy was pointing her out vulgarly on a public promenade. Ineffable
disdain curled off her sweet olive visage. She turned her head.

'I 'll go down to that girl to-night,' said Raikes, with compressed
passion. And then he hurried Franko along to the bridge, where, behold,
the Countess alighted with the gentleman, and walked beside him into the
gardens.

'Follow her,' said Raikes, in agitation. 'Do you see her? by yon
long-tailed raven's side? Follow her, Franko! See if he kisses her
hand-anything! and meet me here in half an hour. I'll have evidence!'

Franko did not altogether like the office, but Raikes' dinners, singular
luck, and superiority in the encounter of puns, gave him the upper hand
with his friend, and so Franko went.

Turning away from the last glimpse of his Countess, Raikes crossed the
bridge, and had not strolled far beneath the bare branches of one of the
long green walks, when he perceived a gentleman with two ladies leaning
on him.

'Now, there,' moralized this youth; 'now, what do you say to that? Do you
call that fair? He can't be happy, and it's not in nature for them to be
satisfied. And yet, if I went up and attempted to please them all by
taking one away, the probabilities are that he would knock me down. Such
is life! We won't be made comfortable!'

Nevertheless, he passed them with indifference, for it was merely the
principle he objected to; and, indeed, he was so wrapped in his own
conceptions, that his name had to be called behind him twice before he
recognized Evan Harrington, Mrs. Strike, and Miss Bonner. The arrangement
he had previously thought good, was then spontaneously adopted. Mrs.
Strike reposed her fair hand upon his arm, and Juliana, with a timid
glance of pleasure, walked ahead in Evan's charge. Close neighbourhood
between the couples was not kept. The genius of Mr. Raikes was wasted in
manoeuvres to lead his beautiful companion into places where he could be
seen with her, and envied. It was, perhaps, more flattering that she
should betray a marked disposition to prefer solitude in his society. But
this idea illumined him only near the moment of parting. Then he saw it;
then he groaned in soul, and besought Evan to have one more promenade,
saying, with characteristic cleverness in the masking of his real
thoughts: 'It gives us an appetite, you know.'

In Evan's face and Juliana's there was not much sign that any protraction
of their walk together would aid this beneficent process of nature. He
took her hand gently, and when he quitted it, it dropped.

'The Rose, the Rose of Beckley Court!' Raikes sang aloud. 'Why, this is a
day of meetings. Behold John Thomas in the rear-a tower of plush and
powder! Shall I rush-shall I pluck her from the aged stem?'

On the gravel-walk above them Rose passed with her aristocratic
grandmother, muffled in furs. She marched deliberately, looking coldly
before her. Evan's face was white, and Juliana, whose eyes were fixed on
him, shuddered.

'I'm chilled,' she murmured to Caroline. 'Let us go.' Caroline eyed Evan
with a meaning sadness.

'We will hurry to our carriage,' she said.

They were seen to make a little circuit so as not to approach Rose; after
whom, thoughtless of his cruelty, Evan bent his steps slowly, halting
when she reached her carriage. He believed--rather, he knew that she had
seen him. There was a consciousness in the composed outlines of her face
as she passed: the indifference was too perfect. Let her hate him if she
pleased. It recompensed him that the air she wore should make her
appearance more womanly; and that black dress and crape-bonnet, in some
way, touched him to mournful thoughts of her that helped a partial
forgetfulness of wounded self.

Rose had driven off. He was looking at the same spot, where Caroline's
hand waved from her carriage. Juliana was not seen. Caroline requested
her to nod to him once, but she would not. She leaned back hiding her
eyes, and moving a petulant shoulder at Caroline's hand.

'Has he offended you, my child?'

Juliana answered harshly:

'No-no.'

The wheels rolled on, and Caroline tried other subjects, knowing possibly
that they would lead Juliana back to this of her own accord.

'You saw how she treated him?' the latter presently said, without moving
her hand from before her eyes.

'Yes, dear. He forgives her, and will forget it.'

'Oh!' she clenched her long thin hand, 'I pray that I may not die before
I have made her repent it. She shall!'

Juliana looked glitteringly in Caroline's face, and then fell a-weeping,
and suffered herself to be folded and caressed. The storm was long
subsiding.

'Dearest! you are better now?' said Caroline.

She whispered: 'Yes.'

'My brother has only to know you, dear--'

'Hush! That's past.' Juliana stopped her; and, on a deep breath that
threatened to break to sobs, she added in a sweeter voice than was common
to her, 'Ah, why--why did you tell him about the Beckley property?'

Caroline vainly strove to deny that she had told him. Juliana's head
shook mournfully at her; and now Caroline knew what Juliana meant when
she begged so earnestly that Evan should be kept ignorant of her change
of fortune.

Some days after this the cold struck Juliana's chest, and she sickened.
The three sisters held a sitting to consider what it was best to do with
her. Caroline proposed to take her to Beckley without delay. Harriet was
of opinion that the least they could do was to write to her relatives and
make them instantly aware of her condition.

But the Countess said 'No,' to both. Her argument was, that Juliana being
independent, they were by no means bound to 'bundle' her, in her state,
back to a place where she had been so shamefully maltreated: that here
she would live, while there she would certainly die: that absence of
excitement was her medicine, and that here she had it. Mrs. Andrew,
feeling herself responsible as the young lady's hostess, did not
acquiesce in the Countess's views till she had consulted Juliana; and
then apologies for giving trouble were breathed on the one hand;
sympathy, condolences, and professions of esteem, on the other. Juliana
said, she was but slightly ill, would soon recover. Entreated not to
leave them before she was thoroughly re-established, and to consent to be
looked on as one of the family, she sighed, and said it was the utmost
she could hope. Of course the ladies took this compliment to themselves,
but Evan began to wax in importance. The Countess thought it nearly time
to acknowledge him, and supported the idea by a citation of the doctrine,
that to forgive is Christian. It happened, however, that Harriet, who had
less art and more will than her sisters, was inflexible. She, living in a
society but a few steps above Tailordom, however magnificent in
expenditure and resources, abhorred it solemnly. From motives of
prudence, as well as personal disgust, she continued firm in declining to
receive her brother. She would not relent when the Countess pointed out a
dim, a dazzling prospect, growing out of Evan's proximity to the heiress
of Beckley Court; she was not to be moved when Caroline suggested that
the specific for the frail invalid was Evan's presence. As to this,
Juliana was sufficiently open, though, as she conceived, her art was
extreme.

'Do you know why I stay to vex and trouble you?' she asked Caroline.
'Well, then, it is that I may see your brother united to you all: and
then I shall go, happy.'

The pretext served also to make him the subject of many conversations.
Twice a week a bunch of the best flowers that could be got were sorted
and arranged by her, and sent namelessly to brighten Evan's chamber.

'I may do such a thing as this, you know, without incurring blame,' she
said.

The sight of a love so humble in its strength and affluence, sent
Caroline to Evan on a fruitless errand. What availed it, that accused of
giving lead to his pride in refusing the heiress, Evan should declare
that he did not love her? He did not, Caroline admitted as possible, but
he might. He might learn to love her, and therefore he was wrong in
wounding her heart. She related flattering anecdotes. She drew tearful
pictures of Juliana's love for him: and noticing how he seemed to prize
his bouquet of flowers, said:

'Do you love them for themselves, or the hand that sent them?'

Evan blushed, for it had been a struggle for him to receive them, as he
thought, from Rose in secret. The flowers lost their value; the song that
had arisen out of them, 'Thou livest in my memory,' ceased. But they came
still. How many degrees from love gratitude may be, I have not reckoned.
I rather fear it lies on the opposite shore. From a youth to a girl, it
may yet be very tender; the more so, because their ages commonly exclude
such a sentiment, and nature seems willing to make a transition stage of
it. Evan wrote to Juliana. Incidentally he expressed a wish to see her.
Juliana was under doctor's interdict: but she was not to be prevented
from going when Evan wished her to go. They met in the park, as before,
and he talked to her five minutes through the carriage window.

'Was it worth the risk, my poor child?' said Caroline, pityingly.

Juliana cried: 'Oh! I would give anything to live!'

A man might have thought that she made no direct answer.

'Don't you think I am patient? Don't you think I am very patient?'she
asked Caroline, winningly, on their way home.

Caroline could scarcely forbear from smiling at the feverish anxiety she
showed for a reply that should confirm her words and hopes.

'So we must all be!'she said, tend that common-place remark caused
Juliana to exclaim: 'Prisoners have lived in a dungeon, on bread and
water, for years!'

Whereat Caroline kissed her so tenderly that Juliana tried to look
surprised, and failing, her thin lips quivered; she breathed a soft
'hush,' and fell on Caroline's bosom.

She was transparent enough in one thing; but the flame which burned
within her did not light her through.

Others, on other matters, were quite as transparent to her.

Caroline never knew that she had as much as told her the moral suicide
Evan had committed at Beckley; so cunningly had she been probed at
intervals with little casual questions; random interjections, that one
who loved him could not fail to meet; petty doubts requiring
elucidations. And the Countess, kind as her sentiments had grown toward
the afflicted creature, was compelled to proclaim her densely stupid in
material affairs. For the Countess had an itch of the simplest feminine
curiosity to know whether the dear child had any notion of accomplishing
a certain holy duty of the perishable on this earth, who might possess
worldly goods; and no hints--not even plain speaking, would do. Juliana
did not understand her at all.

The Countess exhibited a mourning-ring on her finger, Mrs. Bonner's
bequest to her.

'How fervent is my gratitude to my excellent departed friend for this! A
legacy, however trifling, embalms our dear lost ones in the memory!'

It was of no avail. Juliana continued densely stupid. Was she not worse?
The Countess could not, 'in decency,' as she observed, reveal to her who
had prompted Mrs. Bonner so to bequeath the Beckley estates as to 'ensure
sweet Juliana's future'; but ought not Juliana to divine it?--Juliana at
least had hints sufficient.

Cold Spring winds were now blowing. Juliana had resided no less than two
months with the Cogglesbys. She was entreated still to remain, and she
did. From Lady Jocelyn she heard not a word of remonstrance; but from
Miss Carrington and Mrs. Shorne she received admonishing letters.
Finally, Mr. Harry Jocelyn presented himself. In London, and without any
of that needful subsistence which a young gentleman feels the want of in
London more than elsewhere, Harry began to have thoughts of his own,
without any instigation from his aunts, about devoting himself to
business. So he sent his card up to his cousin, and was graciously met in
the drawing-room by the Countess, who ruffled him and smoothed him, and
would possibly have distracted his soul from business had his
circumstances been less straitened. Juliana was declared to be too unwell
to see him that day. He called a second time, and enjoyed a similar
greeting. His third visit procured him an audience alone with Juliana,
when, at once, despite the warnings of his aunts, the frank fellow
plunged, 'medias res'. Mrs. Bonner had left him totally dependent on his
parents and his chances.

'A desperate state of things, isn't it, Juley? I think I shall go for a
soldier--common, you know.'

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