Evan Harrington, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> Evan Harrington, Complete

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The mourners then set to work to relieve their hats of the appendages of
crape. An undertaker's man took possession of the long black cloaks. The
gloves were generally pocketed.

'That's my second black pair this year,' said Joyce.

'They'll last a time to come. I don't need to buy gloves while neighbours
pop off.'

'Undertakers' gloves seem to me as if they're made for mutton fists,'
remarked Welbeck; upon which Kilne nudged Barnes, the butcher, with a
sharp 'Aha!' and Barnes observed:

'Oh! I never wear 'em--they does for my boys on Sundays. I smoke a pipe
at home.'

The Fallow field farmer held his length of crape aloft and inquired:
'What shall do with this?'

'Oh, you keep it,' said one or two.

Coxwell rubbed his chin. 'Don't like to rob the widder.'

'What's left goes to the undertaker?' asked Grossby.

'To be sure,' said Barnes; and Kilne added: 'It's a job': Lawyer Perkins
ejaculating confidently, 'Perquisites of office, gentlemen; perquisites
of office!' which settled the dispute and appeased every conscience.

A survey of the table ensued. The mourners felt hunger, or else thirst;
but had not, it appeared, amalgamated the two appetites as yet. Thirst
was the predominant declaration; and Grossby, after an examination of the
decanters, unctuously deduced the fact, which he announced, that port and
sherry were present.

'Try the port,' said Kilne.

'Good?' Barnes inquired.

A very intelligent 'I ought to know,' with a reserve of regret at the
extension of his intimacy with the particular vintage under that roof,
was winked by Kilne.

Lawyer Perkins touched the arm of a mourner about to be experimental on
Kilne's port--

'I think we had better wait till young Mr. Harrington takes the table,
don't you see?'

'Yes,-ah!' croaked Goren. 'The head of the family, as the saying goes!'

'I suppose we shan't go into business to-day?' Joyce carelessly observed.

Lawyer Perkins answered:

'No. You can't expect it. Mr. Harrington has led me to anticipate that he
will appoint a day. Don't you see?'

'Oh! I see,' returned Joyce. 'I ain't in such a hurry. What's he doing?'

Doubleday, whose propensities were waggish, suggested 'shaving,' but half
ashamed of it, since the joke missed, fell to as if he were soaping his
face, and had some trouble to contract his jaw.

The delay in Evan's attendance on the guests of the house was caused by
the fact that Mrs. Mel had lain in wait for him descending, to warn him
that he must treat them with no supercilious civility, and to tell him
partly the reason why. On hearing the potential relations in which they
stood toward the estate of his father, Evan hastily and with the
assurance of a son of fortune, said they should be paid.

'That's what they would like to hear,' said Mrs. Mel. 'You may just
mention it when they're going to leave. Say you will fix a day to meet
them.'

'Every farthing!' pursued Evan, on whom the tidings were beginning to
operate. 'What! debts? my poor father!'

'And a thumping sum, Van. You will open your eyes wider.'

'But it shall be paid, mother,--it shall be paid. Debts? I hate them. I'd
slave night and day to pay them.'

Mrs. Mel spoke in a more positive tense: 'And so will I, Van. Now, go.'

It mattered little to her what sort of effect on his demeanour her
revelation produced, so long as the resolve she sought to bring him to
was nailed in his mind; and she was a woman to knock and knock again,
till it was firmly fixed there. With a strong purpose, and no plans,
there were few who could resist what, in her circle, she willed; not even
a youth who would gaily have marched to the scaffold rather than stand
behind a counter. A purpose wedded to plans may easily suffer shipwreck;
but an unfettered purpose that moulds circumstances as they arise,
masters us, and is terrible. Character melts to it, like metal in the
steady furnace. The projector of plots is but a miserable gambler and
votary of chances. Of a far higher quality is the will that can subdue
itself to wait, and lay no petty traps for opportunity. Poets may fable
of such a will, that it makes the very heavens conform to it; or, I may
add, what is almost equal thereto, one who would be a gentleman, to
consent to be a tailor. The only person who ever held in his course
against Mrs. Mel, was Mel,--her husband; but, with him, she was under the
physical fascination of her youth, and it never left her. In her heart
she barely blamed him. What he did, she took among other inevitable
matters.

The door closed upon Evan, and waiting at the foot, of the stairs a
minute to hear how he was received, Mrs. Mel went to the kitchen and
called the name of Dandy, which brought out an ill-built, low-browed,
small man, in a baggy suit of black, who hopped up to her with a surly
salute. Dandy was a bird Mrs. Mel had herself brought down, and she had
for him something of a sportsman's regard for his victim. Dandy was the
cleaner of boots and runner of errands in the household of Melchisedec,
having originally entered it on a dark night by the cellar. Mrs. Mel, on
that occasion, was sleeping in her dressing-gown, to be ready to give the
gallant night-hawk, her husband, the service he might require on his
return to the nest. Hearing a suspicious noise below, she rose, and
deliberately loaded a pair of horse-pistols, weapons Mel had worn in his
holsters in the heroic days gone; and with these she stepped downstairs
straight to the cellar, carrying a lantern at her girdle. She could not
only load, but present and fire. Dandy was foremost in stating that she
called him forth steadily, three times, before the pistol was discharged.
He admitted that he was frightened, and incapable of speech, at the
apparition of the tall, terrific woman. After the third time of asking he
had the ball lodged in his leg and fell. Mrs. Mel was in the habit of
bearing heavier weights than Dandy. She made no ado about lugging him to
a chamber, where, with her own hands (for this woman had some slight
knowledge of surgery, and was great in herbs and drugs) she dressed his
wound, and put him to bed; crying contempt (ever present in Dandy's
memory) at such a poor creature undertaking the work of housebreaker.
Taught that he really was a poor creature for the work, Dandy, his
nursing over, begged to be allowed to stop and wait on Mrs. Mel; and she
who had, like many strong natures, a share of pity for the objects she
despised, did not cast him out. A jerk in his gait, owing to the bit of
lead Mrs. Mel had dropped into him, and a little, perhaps, to her
self-satisfied essay in surgical science on his person, earned him the
name he went by.

When her neighbours remonstrated with her for housing a reprobate, Mrs.
Mel would say: 'Dandy is well-fed and well-physicked: there's no harm in
Dandy'; by which she may have meant that the food won his gratitude, and
the physic reduced his humours. She had observed human nature. At any
rate, Dandy was her creature; and the great Mel himself rallied her about
her squire.

'When were you drunk last?' was Mrs. Mel's address to Dandy, as he stood
waiting for orders.

He replied to it in an altogether injured way:

'There, now; you've been and called me away from my dinner to ask me
that. Why, when I had the last chance, to be sure.'

'And you were at dinner in your new black suit?'

'Well,' growled Dandy, 'I borrowed Sally's apron. Seems I can't please
ye.'

Mrs. Mel neither enjoined nor cared for outward forms of respect, where
she was sure of complete subserviency. If Dandy went beyond the limits,
she gave him an extra dose. Up to the limits he might talk as he pleased,
in accordance with Mrs. Mel's maxim, that it was a necessary relief to
all talking creatures.

'Now, take off your apron,' she said, 'and wash your hands, dirty pig,
and go and wait at table in there'; she pointed to the parlour-door:
'Come straight to me when everybody has left.'

'Well, there I am with the bottles again,' returned Dandy. 'It 's your
fault this time, mind! I'll come as straight as I can.'

Dandy turned away to perform her bidding, and Mrs. Mel ascended to the
drawing-room to sit with Mrs. Wishaw, who was, as she told all who chose
to hear, an old flame of Mel's, and was besides, what Mrs. Mel thought
more of, the wife of Mel's principal creditor, a wholesale dealer in
cloth, resident in London.

The conviviality of the mourners did not disturb the house. Still, men
who are not accustomed to see the colour of wine every day, will sit and
enjoy it, even upon solemn occasions, and the longer they sit the more
they forget the matter that has brought them together. Pleading their
wives and shops, however, they released Evan from his miserable office
late in the afternoon.

His mother came down to him,--and saying, 'I see how you did the
journey--you walked it,' told him to follow her.

'Yes, mother,' Evan yawned, 'I walked part of the way. I met a fellow in
a gig about ten miles out of Fallow field, and he gave me a lift to
Flatsham. I just reached Lymport in time, thank Heaven! I wouldn't have
missed that! By the way, I've satisfied these men.'

'Oh!' said Mrs. Mel.

'They wanted--one or two of them--what a penance it is to have to sit
among those people an hour!--they wanted to ask me about the business,
but I silenced them. I told them to meet me here this day week.'

Mrs. Mel again said 'Oh!' and, pushing into one of the upper rooms,
'Here's your bedroom, Van, just as you left it.'

'Ah, so it is,' muttered Evan, eyeing a print. 'The Douglas and the
Percy: "he took the dead man by the hand." What an age it seems since I
last saw that. There's Sir Hugh Montgomery on horseback--he hasn't moved.
Don't you remember my father calling it the Battle of Tit-for-Tat?
Gallant Percy! I know he wished he had lived in those days of knights and
battles.'

'It does not much signify whom one has to make clothes for,' observed
Mrs. Mel. Her son happily did not mark her.

'I think we neither of us were made for the days of pence and pounds,' he
continued. 'Now, mother, sit down, and talk to me about him. Did he
mention me? Did he give me his blessing? I hope he did not suffer. I'd
have given anything to press his hand,' and looking wistfully at the
Percy lifting the hand of Douglas dead, Evan's eyes filled with big
tears.

'He suffered very little,' returned Mrs. Mel, 'and his last words were
about you.'

'What were they?' Evan burst out.

'I will tell you another time. Now undress, and go to bed. When I talk to
you, Van, I want a cool head to listen. You do nothing but yawn
yard-measures.'

The mouth of the weary youth instinctively snapped short the abhorred
emblem.

'Here, I will help you, Van.'

In spite of his remonstrances and petitions for talk, she took off his
coat and waistcoat, contemptuously criticizing the cloth of foreign
tailors and their absurd cut.

'Have you heard from Louisa?' asked Evan.

'Yes, yes--about your sisters by-and-by. Now, be good, and go to bed.'

She still treated him like a boy, whom she was going to force to the
resolution of a man.

Dandy's sleeping-room was on the same floor as Evan's. Thither, when she
had quitted her son, she directed her steps. She had heard Dandy tumble
up-stairs the moment his duties were over, and knew what to expect when
the bottles had been in his way; for drink made Dandy savage, and a
terror to himself. It was her command to him that, when he happened to
come across liquor, he should immediately seek his bedroom and bolt the
door, and Dandy had got the habit of obeying her. On this occasion he was
vindictive against her, seeing that she had delivered him over to his
enemy with malice prepense. A good deal of knocking, and summoning of
Dandy by name, was required before she was admitted, and the sight of her
did not delight him, as he testified.

'I 'm drunk!' he bawled. 'Will that do for ye?'

Mrs. Mel stood with her two hands crossed above her apron-string, noting
his sullen lurking eye with the calm of a tamer of beasts.

'You go out of the room; I'm drunk!' Dandy repeated, and pitched forward
on the bed-post, in the middle of an oath.

She understood that it was pure kindness on Dandy's part to bid her go
and be out of his reach; and therefore, on his becoming so abusive as to
be menacing, she, without a shade of anger, and in the most unruffled
manner, administered to him the remedy she had reserved, in the shape of
a smart box on the ear, which sent him flat to the floor. He rose, after
two or three efforts, quite subdued.

'Now, Dandy, sit on the edge of the bed.'

Dandy sat on the extreme edge, and Mrs. Mel pursued:

'Now, Dandy, tell me what your master said at the table.'

'Talked at 'em like a lord, he did,' said Dandy, stupidly consoling the
boxed ear.

'What were his words?'

Dandy's peculiarity was, that he never remembered anything save when
drunk, and Mrs. Mel's dose had rather sobered him. By degrees, scratching
at his head haltingly, he gave the context.

"'Gentlemen, I hear for the first time, you've claims against my poor
father. Nobody shall ever say he died, and any man was the worse for it.
I'll meet you next week, and I'll bind myself by law. Here's Lawyer
Perkins. No; Mr. Perkins. I'll pay off every penny. Gentlemen, look upon
me as your debtor, and not my father."'

Delivering this with tolerable steadiness, Dandy asked, 'Will that do?'

'That will do,' said Mrs. Mel. 'I'll send you up some tea presently. Lie
down, Dandy.'

The house was dark and silent when Evan, refreshed by his rest, descended
to seek his mother. She was sitting alone in the parlour. With a
tenderness which Mrs. Mel permitted rather than encouraged, Evan put his
arm round her neck, and kissed her many times. One of the symptoms of
heavy sorrow, a longing for the signs of love, made Evan fondle his
mother, and bend over her yearningly. Mrs. Mel said once: 'Dear Van; good
boy!' and quietly sat through his caresses.

'Sitting up for me, mother?' he whispered.

'Yes, Van; we may as well have our talk out.'

'Ah!' he took a chair close by her side, 'tell me my father's last
words.'

'He said he hoped you would never be a tailor.'

Evan's forehead wrinkled up. 'There's not much fear of that, then!'

His mother turned her face on him, and examined him with a rigorous
placidity; all her features seeming to bear down on him. Evan did not
like the look.

'You object to trade, Van?'

'Yes, decidedly, mother-hate it; but that's not what I want to talk to
you about. Didn't my father speak of me much?'

'He desired that you should wear his militia sword, if you got a
commission.'

'I have rather given up hope of the Army,' said Evan.

Mrs. Mel requested him to tell her what a colonel's full pay amounted to;
and again, the number of years it required, on a rough calculation, to
attain that grade. In reply to his statement she observed: 'A tailor
might realize twice the sum in a quarter of the time.'

'What if he does-double, or treble?' cried Evan, impetuously; and to
avoid the theme, and cast off the bad impression it produced on him, he
rubbed his hands, and said: 'I want to talk to you about my prospects,
mother.'

'What are they?' Mrs. Mel inquired.

The severity of her mien and sceptical coldness of her speech caused him
to inspect them suddenly, as if she had lent him her eyes. He put them
by, till the gold should recover its natural shine, saying: 'By the way,
mother, I 've written the half of a History of Portugal.'

'Have you?' said Mrs. Mel. 'For Louisa?'

'No, mother, of course not: to sell it. Albuquerque! what a splendid
fellow he was!'

Informing him that he knew she abominated foreign names, she said: 'And
your prospects are, writing Histories of Portugal?'

'No, mother. I was going to tell you, I expect a Government appointment.
Mr. Jocelyn likes my work--I think he likes me. You know, I was his
private secretary for ten months.'

'You write a good hand,' his mother interposed.

'And I'm certain I was born for diplomacy.'

'For an easy chair, and an ink-dish before you, and lacqueys behind.
What's to be your income, Van?'

Evan carelessly remarked that he must wait and see.

'A very proper thing to do,' said Mrs. Mel; for now that she had fixed
him to some explanation of his prospects, she could condescend in her
stiff way to banter.

Slightly touched by it, Evan pursued, half laughing, as men do who wish
to propitiate common sense on behalf of what seems tolerably absurd: 'It
's not the immediate income, you know, mother: one thinks of one's
future. In the diplomatic service, as Louisa says, you come to be known
to Ministers gradually, I mean. That is, they hear of you; and if you
show you have some capacity--Louisa wants me to throw it up in time, and
stand for Parliament. Andrew, she thinks, would be glad to help me to his
seat. Once in Parliament, and known to Ministers, you--your career is
open to you.'

In justice to Mr. Evan Harrington, it must be said, he built up this
extraordinary card-castle to dazzle his mother's mind: he had lost his
right grasp of her character for the moment, because of an undefined
suspicion of something she intended, and which sent him himself to take
refuge in those flimsy structures; while the very altitude he reached
beguiled his imagination, and made him hope to impress hers.

Mrs. Mel dealt it one fillip. 'And in the meantime how are you to live,
and pay the creditors?'

Though Evan answered cheerfully, 'Oh, they will wait, and I can live on
anything,' he was nevertheless floundering on the ground amid the ruins
of the superb edifice; and his mother, upright and rigid, continuing,
'You can live on anything, and they will wait, and call your father a
rogue,' he started, grievously bitten by one of the serpents of earth.

'Good heaven, mother! what are you saying?'

'That they will call your father a rogue, and will have a right to,' said
the relentless woman.

'Not while I live!' Evan exclaimed.

'You may stop one mouth with your fist, but you won't stop a dozen, Van.'

Evan jumped up and walked the room.

'What am I to do?' he cried. 'I will pay everything. I will bind myself
to pay every farthing. What more can I possibly do?'

'Make the money,' said Mrs. Mel's deep voice.

Evan faced her: 'My dear mother, you are very unjust and inconsiderate. I
have been working and doing my best. I promise--what do the debts amount
to?'

'Something like L5000 in all, Van.'

'Very well.' Youth is not alarmed by the sound of big sums. 'Very well--I
will pay it.'

Evan looked as proud as if he had just clapped down the full amount on
the table.

'Out of the History of Portugal, half written, and the prospect of a
Government appointment?'

Mrs. Mel raised her eyelids to him.

'In time-in time, mother!'

'Mention your proposal to the creditors when you meet them this day
week,' she said.

Neither of them spoke for several minutes. Then Evan came close to her,
saying:

'What is it you want of me, mother?'

'I want nothing, Van--I can support myself.'

'But what would you have me do, mother?'

'Be honest; do your duty, and don't be a fool about it.'

'I will try,' he rejoined. 'You tell me to make the money. Where and how
can I make it? I am perfectly willing to work.'

'In this house,' said Mrs. Mel; and, as this was pretty clear speaking,
she stood up to lend her figure to it.

'Here?' faltered Evan. 'What! be a ----'

'Tailor!' The word did not sting her tongue.

'I? Oh, that's quite impossible!' said Evan. And visions of leprosy, and
Rose shrinking her skirts from contact with him, shadowed out and away in
his mind.

'Understand your choice!' Mrs. Mel imperiously spoke. 'What are brains
given you for? To be played the fool with by idiots and women? You have
L5000 to pay to save your father from being called a rogue. You can only
make the money in one way, which is open to you. This business might
produce a thousand pounds a-year and more. In seven or eight years you
may clear your father's name, and live better all the time than many of
your bankrupt gentlemen. You have told the creditors you will pay them.
Do you think they're gaping fools, to be satisfied by a History of
Portugal? If you refuse to take the business at once, they will sell me
up, and quite right too. Understand your choice. There's Mr. Goren has
promised to have you in London a couple of months, and teach you what he
can. He is a kind friend. Would any of your gentlemen acquaintance do the
like for you? Understand your choice. You will be a beggar--the son of a
rogue--or an honest man who has cleared his father's name!'

During this strenuously uttered allocution, Mrs. Mel, though her chest
heaved but faintly against her crossed hands, showed by the dilatation of
her eyes, and the light in them, that she felt her words. There is that
in the aspect of a fine frame breathing hard facts, which, to a youth who
has been tumbled headlong from his card-castles and airy fabrics, is
masterful, and like the pressure of a Fate. Evan drooped his head.

'Now,' said Mrs. Mel, 'you shall have some supper.'

Evan told her he could not eat.

'I insist upon your eating,' said Mrs. Mel; 'empty stomachs are foul
counsellors.'

'Mother! do you want to drive me mad?' cried Evan.

She looked at him to see whether the string she held him by would bear
the slight additional strain: decided not to press a small point.

'Then go to bed and sleep on it,' she said--sure of him--and gave her
cheek for his kiss, for she never performed the operation, but kept her
mouth, as she remarked, for food and speech, and not for slobbering
mummeries.

Evan returned to his solitary room. He sat on the bed and tried to think,
oppressed by horrible sensations of self-contempt, that caused whatever
he touched to sicken him.

There were the Douglas and the Percy on the wall. It was a happy and a
glorious time, was it not, when men lent each other blows that killed
outright; when to be brave and cherish noble feelings brought honour;
when strength of arm and steadiness of heart won fortune; when the fair
stars of earth--sweet women--wakened and warmed the love of squires of
low degree. This legacy of the dead man's hand! Evan would have paid it
with his blood; but to be in bondage all his days to it; through it to
lose all that was dear to him; to wear the length of a loathed
existence!--we should pardon a young man's wretchedness at the prospect,
for it was in a time before our joyful era of universal equality. Yet he
never cast a shade of blame upon his father.

The hours moved on, and he found himself staring at his small candle,
which struggled more and more faintly with the morning light, like his
own flickering ambition against the facts of life.

CHAPTER VIII

INTRODUCES AN ECCENTRIC

At the Aurora--one of those rare antiquated taverns, smelling of
comfortable time and solid English fare, that had sprung up in the great
coffee days, when taverns were clubs, and had since subsisted on the
attachment of steady bachelor Templars there had been dismay, and even
sorrow, for a month. The most constant patron of the establishment--an
old gentleman who had dined there for seven-and-twenty years, four days
in the week, off dishes dedicated to the particular days, and had grown
grey with the landlady, the cook, and the head-waiter--this old gentleman
had abruptly withheld his presence. Though his name, his residence, his
occupation, were things only to be speculated on at the Aurora, he was
very well known there, and as men are best to be known: that is to say,
by their habits. Some affection for him also was felt. The landlady
looked on him as a part of the house. The cook and the waiter were
accustomed to receive acceptable compliments from him monthly. His
precise words, his regular ancient jokes, his pint of Madeira and
after-pint of Port, his antique bow to the landlady, passing out and in,
his method of spreading his table-napkin on his lap and looking up at the
ceiling ere he fell to, and how he talked to himself during the repast,
and indulged in short chuckles, and the one look of perfect felicity that
played over his features when he had taken his first sip of Port--these
were matters it pained them at the Aurora to have to remember.

For three weeks the resolution not to regard him as of the past was
general. The Aurora was the old gentleman's home. Men do not play truant
from home at sixty years of age. He must, therefore, be seriously
indisposed. The kind heart of the landlady fretted to think he might have
no soul to nurse and care for him; but she kept his corner near the
fire-place vacant, and took care that his pint of Madeira was there. The
belief was gaining ground that he had gone, and that nothing but his
ghost would ever sit there again. Still the melancholy ceremony
continued: for the landlady was not without a secret hope, that in spite
of his reserve and the mystery surrounding him, he would have sent her a
last word. The cook and head-waiter, interrogated as to their dealings
with the old gentleman, testified solemnly to the fact of their having
performed their duty by him. They would not go against their interests so
much as to forget one of his ways, they said-taking oath, as it were, by
their lower nature, in order to be credited: an instinct men have of one
another. The landlady could not contradict them, for the old gentleman
had made no complaint; but then she called to memory that fifteen years
back, in such and such a year, Wednesday's, dish had been, by shameful
oversight, furnished him for Tuesday's, and he had eaten it quietly, but
refused his Port; which pathetic event had caused alarm and inquiry, when
the error was discovered, and apologized for, the old gentleman merely
saying, 'Don't let it happen again.' Next day he drank his Port, as
usual, and the wheels of the Aurora went smoothly. The landlady was thus
justified in averring that something had been done by somebody, albeit
unable to point to anything specific. Women, who are almost as deeply
bound to habit as old gentlemen, possess more of its spiritual element,
and are warned by dreams, omens, creepings of the flesh, unwonted chills,
suicide of china, and other shadowing signs, when a break is to be
anticipated, or, has occurred. The landlady of the Aurora tavern was
visited by none of these, and with that beautiful trust which habit
gives, and which boastful love or vainer earthly qualities would fail in
effecting, she ordered that the pint of Madeira should stand from six
o'clock in the evening till seven--a small monument of confidence in him
who was at one instant the 'poor old dear'; at another, the 'naughty old
gad-about'; further, the 'faithless old-good-for-nothing'; and again, the
'blessed pet' of the landlady's parlour, alternately and indiscriminately
apostrophized by herself, her sister, and daughter.

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