Evan Harrington, Complete

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At an hour like this, watching the round of light on the ceiling, with
its narrowing inner rings, a sufferer from whom pain has fled looks back
to the shores she is leaving, and would be well with them who walk there.
It is false to imagine that schemers and workers in the dark are
destitute of the saving gift of conscience. They have it, and it is
perhaps made livelier in them than with easy people; and therefore, they
are imperatively spurred to hoodwink it. Hence, their self-delusion is
deep and endures. They march to their object, and gaining or losing it,
the voice that calls to them is the voice of a blind creature, whom any
answer, provided that the answer is ready, will silence. And at an hour
like this, when finally they snatch their minute of sight on the
threshold of black night, their souls may compare with yonder shining
circle on the ceiling, which, as the light below gasps for air,
contracts, and extends but to mingle with the darkness. They would be
nobler, better, boundlessly good to all;--to those who have injured them
to those whom they have injured. Alas! for any definite deed the limit of
their circle is immoveable, and they must act within it. The trick they
have played themselves imprisons them. Beyond it, they cease to be.

Lying in this utter stillness, Juliana thought of Rose; of her beloved by
Evan. The fever that had left her blood, had left it stagnant, and her
thoughts were quite emotionless. She looked faintly on a far picture. She
saw Rose blooming with pleasures in Elburne House, sliding as a boat
borne by the river's tide to sea, away from her living joy. The breast of
Rose was lucid to her, and in that hour of insight she had clear
knowledge of her cousin's heart; how it scoffed at its base love, and
unwittingly betrayed the power on her still, by clinging to the world and
what it would give her to fill the void; how externally the lake was
untroubled, and a mirror to the passing day; and how within there pressed
a flood against an iron dam. Evan, too, she saw. The Countess was right
in her judgement of Juliana's love. Juliana looked very little to his
qualities. She loved him when she thought him guilty, which made her
conceive that her love was of a diviner cast than Rose was capable of.
Guilt did not spoil his beauty to her; his gentleness and glowing manhood
were unchanged; and when she knew him as he was, the revelation of his
high nature simply confirmed her impression of his physical perfections.
She had done him a wrong; at her death news would come to him, and it
might be that he would bless her name. Because she sighed no longer for
those dear lips and strong arms to close about her tremulous frame, it
seemed to her that she had quite surrendered him. Generous to Evan, she
would be just to Rose. Beneath her pillow she found pencil and paper, and
with difficulty, scarce seeing her letters in the brown light, she began
to trace lines of farewell to Rose. Her conscience dictated to her thus,
'Tell Rose that she was too ready to accept his guilt; and that in this
as in all things, she acted with the precipitation of her character. Tell
her that you always trusted, and that now you know him innocent. Give her
the proofs you have. Show that he did it to shield his intriguing sister.
Tell her that you write this only to make her just to him. End with a
prayer that Rose may be happy.'

Ere Juliana had finished one sentence, she resigned the pencil. Was it
not much, even at the gates of death, to be the instrument to send Rose
into his arms? The picture swayed before her, helping her weakness. She
found herself dreaming that he had kissed her once. Dorothy, she
remembered, had danced up to her one day, to relate what the maids of the
house said of the gentleman--(at whom, it is known, they look with the
licence of cats toward kings); and Dorothy's fresh careless mouth had
told how one observant maid, amorously minded, proclaimed of Evan, to a
companion of her sex, that, 'he was the only gentleman who gave you an
idea of how he would look when he was kissing you.' Juliana cherished
that vision likewise. Young ladies are not supposed to do so, if menial
maids are; but Juliana did cherish it, and it possessed her fancy. Bear
in your recollection that she was not a healthy person. Diseased little
heroines may be made attractive, and are now popular; but strip off the
cleverly woven robe which is fashioned to cover them, and you will find
them in certain matters bearing a resemblance to menial maids.

While the thoughts of his kiss lasted, she could do nothing; but lay with
her two hands out on the bed, and her eyelids closed. Then waking, she
took the pencil again. It would not move: her bloodless fingers fell from
it.

'If they do not meet, and he never marries, I may claim him in the next
world,' she mused.

But conscience continued uneasy. She turned her wrist and trailed a
letter from beneath the pillow. It was from Mrs. Shorne. Juliana knew the
contents. She raised it unopened as high as her faltering hands
permitted, and read like one whose shut eyes read syllables of fire on
the darkness.

'Rose has at last definitely engaged herself to Ferdinand, you will be
glad to hear, and we may now treat her as a woman.'

Having absorbed these words, Juliana's hand found strength to write, with
little difficulty, what she had to say to Rose. She conceived it to be
neither sublime nor generous: not even good; merely her peculiar duty.
When it was done, she gave a long, low sigh of relief.

Caroline whispered, 'Dearest child, are you awake?'

'Yes,' she answered.

'Sorrowful, dear?'

'Very quiet.'

Caroline reached her hand over to her, and felt the paper. 'What is
this?'

'My good-bye to Rose. I want it folded now.'

Caroline slipped from the couch to fulfil her wish. She enclosed the
pencilled scrap of paper, sealed it, and asked, 'Is that right?'

'Now unlock my desk,' Juliana uttered, feebly. 'Put it beside a letter
addressed to a law-gentleman. Post both the morning I am gone.'

Caroline promised to obey, and coming to Juliana to mark her looks,
observed a faint pleased smile dying away, and had her hand gently
squeezed. Juliana's conscience had preceded her contentedly to its last
sleep; and she, beneath that round of light on the ceiling, drew on her
counted breaths in peace till dawn.

CHAPTER XLIII

ROSE

Have you seen a young audacious spirit smitten to the earth? It is a
singular study; and, in the case of young women, a trap for inexperienced
men. Rose, who had commanded and managed every one surrounding her since
infancy, how humble had she now become!--how much more womanly in
appearance, and more child-like at heart! She was as wax in Lady
Elburne's hands. A hint of that veiled episode, the Beckley campaign,
made Rose pliant, as if she had woven for herself a rod of scorpions. The
high ground she had taken; the perfect trust in one; the scorn of any
judgement, save her own; these had vanished from her. Rose, the tameless
heroine who had once put her mother's philosophy in action, was the
easiest filly that turbaned matron ever yet drove into the straight road
of the world. It even surprised Lady Jocelyn to see how wonderfully she
had been broken in by her grandmother. Her ladyship wrote to Drummond to
tell him of it, and Drummond congratulated her, saying, however: 'Changes
of this sort don't come of conviction. Wait till you see her at home. I
think they have been sticking pins into the sore part.'

Drummond knew Rose well. In reality there was no change in her. She was
only a suppliant to be spared from ridicule: spared from the application
of the scourge she had woven for herself.

And, ah! to one who deigned to think warmly still of such a disgraced
silly creature, with what gratitude she turned! He might well suppose
love alone could pour that profusion of jewels at his feet.

Ferdinand, now Lord Laxley, understood the merits of his finger-nails
better than the nature of young women; but he is not to be blamed for
presuming that Rose had learnt to adore him. Else why did she like his
company so much? He was not mistaken in thinking she looked up to him.
She seemed to beg to be taken into his noble serenity. In truth she
sighed to feel as he did, above everybody!--she that had fallen so low!
Above everybody!--born above them, and therefore superior by grace
divine! To this Rose Jocelyn had come--she envied the mind of Ferdinand.

He, you may be sure, was quite prepared to accept her homage. Rose he had
always known to be just the girl for him; spirited, fresh, and with fine
teeth; and once tied to you safe to be staunch. They walked together,
rode together, danced together. Her soft humility touched him to
eloquence. Say she was a little hypocrite, if you like, when the blood
came to her cheeks under his eyes. Say she was a heartless minx for
allowing it to be bruited that she and Ferdinand were betrothed. I can
but tell you that her blushes were blushes of gratitude to one who could
devote his time to such a disgraced silly creature, and that she, in her
abject state, felt a secret pleasure in the protection Ferdinand's name
appeared to extend over her, and was hardly willing to lose it.

So far Lady Elburne's tact and discipline had been highly successful. One
morning, in May, Ferdinand, strolling with Rose down the garden made a
positive appeal to her common sense and friendly feeling; by which she
understood that he wanted her consent to his marriage with her.

Rose answered:

'Who would have me?'

Ferdinand spoke pretty well, and ultimately got possession of her hand.
She let him keep it, thinking him noble for forgetting that another had
pressed it before him.

Some minutes later the letters were delivered. One of them contained
Juliana's dark-winged missive.

'Poor, poor Juley!' said Rose, dropping her head, after reading all that
was on the crumpled leaf with an inflexible face. And then, talking on,
long low sighs lifted her bosom at intervals. She gazed from time to time
with a wistful conciliatory air on Ferdinand. Rushing to her chamber, the
first cry her soul framed was:

'He did not kiss me!'

The young have a superstitious sense of something incontestably true in
the final protestations of the dead. Evan guiltless! she could not quite
take the meaning this revelation involved. That which had been dead was
beginning to move within her; but blindly: and now it stirred and
troubled; now sank. Guiltless all she had thought him! Oh! she knew she
could not have been deceived. But why, why had he hidden his sacrifice
from her?

'It is better for us both, of course,' said Rose, speaking the world's
wisdom, parrot-like, and bursting into tears the next minute. Guiltless,
and gloriously guiltless! but nothing--nothing to her!

She tried to blame him. It would not do. She tried to think of that
grovelling loathsome position painted to her by Lady Elburne's graphic
hand. Evan dispersed the gloomy shades like sunshine. Then in a sort of
terror she rejoiced to think she was partially engaged to Ferdinand, and
found herself crying again with exultation, that he had not kissed her:
for a kiss on her mouth was to Rose a pledge and a bond.

The struggle searched her through: bared her weakness, probed her
strength; and she, seeing herself, suffered grievously in her self-love.
Am I such a coward, inconstant, cold? she asked. Confirmatory answers
coming, flung her back under the shield of Ferdinand if for a moment her
soul stood up armed and defiant, it was Evan's hand she took.

To whom do I belong? was another terrible question. In her ideas, if Evan
was not chargeable with that baseness which had sundered them he might
claim her yet, if he would. If he did, what then? Must she go to him?

Impossible: she was in chains. Besides, what a din of laughter there
would be to see her led away by him. Twisting her joined hands: weeping
for her cousin, as she thought, Rose passed hours of torment over
Juliana's legacy to her.

'Why did I doubt him?' she cried, jealous that any soul should have known
and trusted him better. Jealous and I am afraid that the kindling of that
one feature of love relighted the fire of her passion thus fervidly. To
be outstripped in generosity was hateful to her. Rose, naturally, could
not reflect that a young creature like herself, fighting against the
world, as we call it, has all her faculties at the utmost stretch, and is
often betrayed by failing nature when the will is still valiant.

And here she sat-in chains! 'Yes! I am fit only to be the wife of an idle
brainless man, with money and a title,' she said, in extreme
self-contempt. She caught a glimpse of her whole life in the horrid tomb
of his embrace, and questions whether she could yield her hand to
him--whether it was right in the eyes of heaven, rushed impetuously to
console her, and defied anything in the shape of satisfactory
affirmations. Nevertheless, the end of the struggle was, that she felt
that she was bound to Ferdinand.

'But this I will do,' said Rose, standing with heat-bright eyes and
deep-coloured cheeks before the glass. 'I will clear his character at
Beckley. I will help him. I will be his friend. I will wipe out the
injustice I did him.' And this bride-elect of a lord absolutely added
that she was unworthy to be the wife of a tailor!

'He! how unequalled he is! There is nothing he fears except shame. Oh!
how sad it will be for him to find no woman in his class to understand
him and be his helpmate!'

Over, this sad subject, of which we must presume her to be accurately
cognizant, Rose brooded heavily. By mid-day she gave her Grandmother
notice that she was going home to Juliana's funeral.

'Well, Rose, if you think it necessary to join the ceremony,' said Lady
Elburne. 'Beckley is bad quarters for you, as you have learnt. There was
never much love between you cousins.'

'No, and I don't pretend to it,' Rose answered. 'I am sorry poor Juley's
gone.'

'She's better gone for many reasons--she appears to have been a little
venomous toad,' said Lady Elburne; and Rose, thinking of a snakelike
death-bite working through her blood, rejoined: 'Yes, she isn't to be
pitied she 's better off than most people.'

So it was arranged that Rose should go. Ferdinand and her aunt, Mrs.
Shorne, accompanied her. Mrs. Shorne gave them their opportunities,
albeit they were all stowed together in a carriage, and Ferdinand seemed
willing to profit by them; but Rose's hand was dead, and she sat by her
future lord forming the vow on her lips that they should never be touched
by him.

Arrived at Beckley, she, to her great delight, found Caroline there,
waiting for the funeral. In a few minutes she got her alone, and after
kisses, looked penetratingly into her lovely eyes, shook her head, and
said: 'Why were you false to me?'

'False?' echoed Caroline.

'You knew him. You knew why he did that. Why did you not save me?'

Caroline fell upon her neck, asking pardon. She spared her the recital of
facts further than the broad avowal. Evan's present condition she plainly
stated: and Rose, when the bitter pangs had ceased, made oath to her soul
she would rescue him from it.

In addition to the task of clearing Evan's character, and rescuing him,
Rose now conceived that her engagement to Ferdinand must stand ice-bound
till Evan had given her back her troth. How could she obtain it from him?
How could she take anything from one so noble and so poor! Happily there
was no hurry; though before any bond was ratified, she decided
conscientiously that it must be done.

You see that like a lithe snake she turns on herself, and must be tracked
in and out. Not being a girl to solve the problem with tears, or outright
perfidy, she had to ease her heart to the great shock little by
little--sincere as far as she knew: as far as one who loves may be. The
day of the funeral came and went. The Jocelyns were of their mother's
opinion: that for many reasons Juliana was better out of the way. Mrs.
Bonner's bequest had been a severe blow to Sir Franks. However, all was
now well. The estate naturally lapsed to Lady Jocelyn. No one in the
house dreamed of a will, signed with Juliana's name, attested, under due
legal forms, being in existence. None of the members of the family
imagined that at Beckley Court they were then residing on somebody else's
ground.

Want of hospitable sentiments was not the cause that led to an intimation
from Sir Franks to his wife, that Mrs. Strike must not be pressed to
remain, and that Rose must not be permitted to have her own way in this.
Knowing very well that Mrs. Shorne spoke through her husband's mouth,
Lady Jocelyn still acquiesced, and Rose, who had pressed Caroline
publicly to stay, had to be silent when the latter renewed her faint
objections; so Caroline said she would leave on the morrow morning.

Juliana, with her fretfulness, her hand bounties, her petty egoisms, and
sudden far-leaping generosities, and all the contradictory impulses of
her malady, had now departed utterly. The joys of a landed proprietor
mounted into the head of Sir Franks. He was up early the next morning,
and he and Harry walked over a good bit of the ground before breakfast.
Sir Franks meditated making it entail, and favoured Harry with a lecture
on the duty of his shaping the course of his conduct at once after the
model of the landed gentry generally.

'And you may think yourself lucky to come into that catalogue--the son of
a younger son!' said Sir Franks, tapping Mr. Harry's shoulder. Harry also
began to enjoy the look and smell of land. At the breakfast, which,
though early, was well attended, Harry spoke of the adviseability of
felling timber here, planting there, and so forth, after the model his
father held up. Sir Franks nodded approval of his interest in the estate,
but reserved his opinion on matters of detail.

'All I beg of you is,' said Lady Jocelyn, 'that you won't let us have
turnips within the circuit of a mile'; which was obligingly promised.

The morning letters were delivered and opened with the customary
calmness.

'Letter from old George,' Harry sings out, and buzzes over a few lines.
'Halloa!--Hum!' He was going to make a communication, but catching sight
of Caroline, tossed the letter over to Ferdinand, who read it and tossed
it back with the comment of a careless face.

'Read it, Rosey?' says Harry, smiling bluntly.

Rather to his surprise, Rose took the letter. Study her eyes if you wish
to gauge the potency of one strong dose of ridicule on an ingenuous young
heart. She read that Mr. George Uplift had met 'our friend Mr. Snip'
riding, by moonlight, on the road to Beckley. That great orbed night of
their deep tender love flashed luminously through her frame, storming at
the base epithet by which her lover was mentioned, flooding grandly over
the ignominies cast on him by the world. She met the world, as it were,
in a death-grapple; she matched the living heroic youth she felt him to
be, with that dead wooden image of him which it thrust before her. Her
heart stood up singing like a craven who sees the tide of victory setting
toward him. But this passed beneath her eyelids. When her eyes were
lifted, Ferdinand could have discovered nothing in them to complain of,
had his suspicions been light to raise: nor could Mrs. Shorne perceive
that there was the opening for a shrewd bodkin-thrust. Rose had got a
mask at last: her colour, voice, expression, were perfectly at command.
She knew it to be a cowardice to wear any mask: but she had been burnt,
horribly burnt: how much so you may guess from the supple dissimulation
of such a bold clear-visaged girl. She conquered the sneers of the world
in her soul: but her sensitive skin was yet alive to the pangs of the
scorching it had been subjected to when weak, helpless, and betrayed by
Evan, she stood with no philosophic parent to cry fair play for her,
among the skilful torturers of Elburne House.

Sir Franks had risen and walked to the window.

'News?' said Lady Jocelyn, wheeling round in her chair.

The one eyebrow up of the easy-going baronet signified trouble of mind.
He finished his third perusal of a letter that appeared to be written in
a remarkably plain legal hand, and looking as men do when their
intelligences are just equal to the comprehension or expression of an
oath, handed the letter to his wife, and observed that he should be found
in the library. Nevertheless he waited first to mark its effect on Lady
Jocelyn. At one part of the document her forehead wrinkled slightly.

'Doesn't sound like a joke!' he said.

She answered:

'No.'

Sir Franks, apparently quite satisfied by her ready response, turned on
his heel and left the room quickly.

An hour afterward it was rumoured and confirmed that Juliana Bonner had
willed all the worldly property she held in her own right, comprising
Beckley Court, to Mr. Evan Harrington, of Lymport, tailor. An abstract of
the will was forwarded. The lawyer went on to say, that he had conformed
to the desire of the testatrix in communicating the existence of the
aforesaid will six days subsequent to her death, being the day after her
funeral.

There had been railing and jeering at the Countess de Saldar, the clever
outwitted exposed adventuress, at Elburne House and Beckley Court. What
did the crowing cleverer aristocrats think of her now?

On Rose the blow fell bitterly. Was Evan also a foul schemer? Was he of a
piece with his intriguing sister? His close kinship with the Countess had
led her to think baseness possible to him when it was confessed by his
own mouth once. She heard black names cast at him and the whole of the
great Mel's brood, and incapable of quite disbelieving them merited,
unable to challenge and rebut them, she dropped into her recent state of
self-contempt: into her lately-instilled doubt whether it really was in
Nature's power, unaided by family-portraits, coats-of-arms, ball-room
practice, and at least one small phial of Essence of Society, to make a
Gentleman.

CHAPTER XLIV

CONTAINS A WARNING TO ALL CONSPIRATORS

This, if you have done me the favour to read it aright, has been a
chronicle of desperate heroism on the part of almost all the principal
personages represented. But not the Countess de Saldar, scaling the
embattled fortress of Society; nor Rose, tossing its keys to her lover
from the shining turret-tops; nor Evan, keeping bright the lamp of
self-respect in his bosom against South wind and East; none excel friend
Andrew Cogglesby, who, having fallen into Old Tom's plot to humiliate his
wife and her sisters, simply for Evan's sake, and without any distinct
notion of the terror, confusion, and universal upset he was bringing on
his home, could yet, after a scared contemplation of the scene when he
returned from his expedition to Fallow field, continue to wear his rueful
mask; and persevere in treacherously outraging his lofty wife.

He did it to vindicate the ties of blood against accidents of position.
Was he justified? I am sufficiently wise to ask my own sex alone.

On the other side, be it said (since in our modern days every hero must
have his weak heel), that now he had gone this distance it was difficult
to recede. It would be no laughing matter to tell his solemn Harriet that
he had been playing her a little practical joke. His temptations to give
it up were incessant and most agitating; but if to advance seemed
terrific, there was, in stopping short, an awfulness so overwhelming that
Andrew abandoned himself to the current, his real dismay adding to his
acting powers.

The worst was, that the joke was no longer his: it was Old Tom's. He
discovered that he was in Old Tom's hands completely. Andrew had thought
that he would just frighten the women a bit, get them down to Lymport for
a week or so, and then announce that matters were not so bad with the
Brewery as he had feared; concluding the farce with a few domestic
fireworks. Conceive his dismay when he entered the house, to find there a
man in possession.

Andrew flew into such a rage that he committed an assault on the man. So
ungovernable was his passion, that for some minutes Harriet's measured
voice summoned him from over the banisters above, quite in vain. The
miserable Englishman refused to be taught that his house had ceased to be
his castle. It was something beyond a joke, this! The intruder, perfectly
docile, seeing that by accurate calculation every shake he got involved a
bottle of wine for him, and ultimate compensation probably to the amount
of a couple of sovereigns, allowed himself to be lugged up stairs, in
default of summary ejection on the point of Andrew's toe into the street.
There he was faced to the lady of the house, who apologized to him, and
requested her husband to state what had made him guilty of this indecent
behaviour. The man showed his papers. They were quite in order. 'At the
suit of Messrs. Grist.'

'My own lawyers!' cried Andrew, smacking his forehead; and Old Tom's
devilry flashed on him at once. He sank into a chair.

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