Evan Harrington, v2
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George Meredith >> Evan Harrington, v2
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The Countess was interrupted by a great sob; for the picture of frank
Rose Jocelyn changed, and soft, and, as it were, shadowed under a veil of
bashful regard for him, so filled the young man with sorrowful
tenderness, that he trembled, and was as a child.
Marking the impression she had produced on him, and having worn off that
which he had produced on her, the Countess resumed the art in her style
of speech, easier to her than nature.
'So the sweetest of Roses may be yours, dear Van; and you have her in a
gold setting, to wear on your heart. Are you not enviable? I will not--
no, I will not tell you she is perfect. I must fashion the sweet young
creature. Though I am very ready to admit that she is much improved by
this--shall I call it, desired consummation?'
Evan could listen no more. Such a struggle was rising in his breast: the
effort to quench what the Countess had so shrewdly kindled; passionate
desire to look on Rose but for one lightning flash: desire to look on
her, and muffled sense of shame twin-born with it: wild love and leaden
misery mixed: dead hopelessness and vivid hope. Up to the neck in
Purgatory, but his soul saturated with visions of Bliss! The fair orb of
Love was all that was wanted to complete his planetary state, and aloft
it sprang, showing many faint, fair tracts to him, and piling huge
darknesses.
As if in search of something, he suddenly went from the room.
'I have intoxicated the poor boy,' said the Countess, and consulted an
attitude by the evening light in a mirror. Approving the result, she
rang for her mother, and sat with her till dark; telling her she could
not and would not leave her dear Mama that night. At the supper-table
Evan did not appear, and Mr. Goren, after taking counsel of Mrs. Mel,
dispersed the news that Evan was off to London. On the road again, with
a purse just as ill-furnished, and in his breast the light that sometimes
leads gentlemen, as well as ladies, astray.
CHAPTER X
MY GENTLEMAN ON THE ROAD AGAIN
Near a milestone, under the moonlight, crouched the figure of a woman,
huddled with her head against her knees, and careless hair falling to the
summer's dust. Evan came upon this sight within a few miles of
Fallowfield. At first he was rather startled, for he had inherited
superstitious emotions from his mother, and the road was lone, the moon
full. He went up to her and spoke a gentle word, which provoked no
reply. He ventured to put his hand on her shoulder, continuing softly to
address her. She was flesh and blood. Evan stooped his head to catch a
whisper from her mouth, but nothing save a heavier fall of the breath she
took, as of one painfully waking, was heard.
A misery beyond our own is a wholesome picture for youth, and though we
may not for the moment compare the deep with the lower deep, we, if we
have a heart for outer sorrows, can forget ourselves in it. Evan had
just been accusing the heavens of conspiracy to disgrace him. Those
patient heavens had listened, as is their wont. They had viewed and had
not been disordered by his mental frenzies. It is certainly hard that
they do not come down to us, and condescend to tell us what they mean,
and be dumb-foundered by the perspicuity of our arguments the argument,
for instance, that they have not fashioned us for the science of the
shears, and do yet impel us to wield them. Nevertheless, they to whom
mortal life has ceased to be a long matter perceive that our appeals for
conviction are answered, now and then very closely upon the call. When
we have cast off the scales of hope and fancy, and surrender our claims
on mad chance, it is given us to see that some plan is working out: that
the heavens, icy as they are to the pangs of our blood, have been
throughout speaking to our souls; and, according to the strength there
existing, we learn to comprehend them. But their language is an element
of Time, whom primarily we have to know.
Evan Harrington was young. He wished not to clothe the generation. What
was to the remainder of the exiled sons of Adam simply the brand of
expulsion from Paradise, was to him hell. In his agony, anything less
than an angel, soft-voiced in his path, would not have satisfied the poor
boy, and here was this wretched outcast, and instead of being relieved,
he was to act the reliever!
Striving to rouse the desolate creature, he shook her slightly. She now
raised her head with a slow, gradual motion, like that of a wax-work,
showing a white young face, tearless,-dreadfully drawn at the lips.
After gazing at him, she turned her head mechanically to her shoulder, as
to ask him why he touched her. He withdrew his hand, saying:
'Why are you here? Pardon me; I want, if possible, to help you.'
A light sprang in her eyes. She jumped from the stone, and ran forward a
step or two, with a gasp:
'Oh, my God! I want to go and drown myself.'
Evan lingered behind her till he saw her body sway, and in a fit of
trembling she half fell on his outstretched arm. He led her to the
stone, not knowing what on earth to do with her. There was no sign of a
house near; they were quite solitary; to all his questions she gave an
unintelligible moan. He had not the heart to leave her, so, taking a
sharp seat on a heap of flints, thus possibly furnishing future
occupation for one of his craftsmen, he waited, and amused himself by
marking out diagrams with his stick in the thick dust.
His thoughts were far away, when he heard, faintly uttered:
'Why do you stop here?'
'To help you.'
'Please don't. Let me be. I can't be helped.'
'My good creature,' said Evan, 'it 's quite impossible that I should
leave you in this state. Tell me where you were going when your illness
seized you?'
'I was going,' she commenced vacantly, 'to the sea--the water,'
she added, with a shivering lip.
The foolish youth asked her if she could be cold on such a night.
'No, I'm not cold,' she replied, drawing closer over her lap the ends of
a shawl which would in that period have been thought rather gaudy for her
station.
'You were going to Lymport?'
'Yes,--Lymport's nearest, I think.'
'And why were you out travelling at this hour?'
She dropped her head, and began rocking to right and left.
While they talked the noise of waggon-wheels was heard approaching. Evan
went into the middle of the road, and beheld a covered waggon, and a
fellow whom he advanced to meet, plodding a little to the rear of the
horses. He proved kindly. He was a farmer's man, he said, and was at
that moment employed in removing the furniture of the farmer's son, who
had failed as a corn-chandler in Lymport, to Hillford, which he expected
to reach about morn. He answered Evan's request that he would afford the
young woman conveyance as far as Fallowfield:
'Tak' her in? That I will.
'She won't hurt the harses,' he pursued, pointing his whip at the
vehicle: 'there's my mate, Gearge Stoakes, he's in there, snorin' his
turn. Can't you hear 'n asnorin' thraugh the wheels? I can; I've been
laughin'! He do snore that loud-Gearge do!'
Proceeding to inform Evan how George Stokes had snored in that
characteristic manner from boyhood, ever since he and George had slept in
a hayloft together; and how he, kept wakeful and driven to distraction by
George Stokes' nose, had been occasionally compelled, in sheer self-
defence, madly to start up and hold that pertinacious alarum in tight
compression between thumb and forefinger; and how George Stokes, thus
severely handled, had burst his hold with a tremendous snort, as big as a
bull, and had invariably uttered the exclamation, 'Hulloa!--same to you,
my lad!' and rolled over to snore as fresh as ever;--all this with
singular rustic comparisons, racy of the soil, and in raw Hampshire
dialect, the waggoner came to a halt opposite the stone, and, while Evan
strode to assist the girl, addressed himself to the great task of
arousing the sturdy sleeper and quieting his trumpet, heard by all ears
now that the accompaniment of the wheels was at an end.
George, violently awakened, complained that it was before his time, to
which he was true; and was for going off again with exalted contentment,
though his heels had been tugged, and were dangling some length out of
the machine; but his comrade, with a determined blow of the lungs, gave
another valiant pull, and George Stokes was on his legs, marvelling at
the world and man. Evan had less difficulty with the girl. She rose to
meet him, put up her arms for him to clasp her waist, whispering sharply
in an inward breath: 'What are you going to do with me?' and indifferent
to his verbal response, trustingly yielded her limbs to his guidance. He
could see blood on her bitten underlip; as, with the help of the
waggoner, he lifted her on the mattress, backed by a portly bundle, which
the sagacity of Mr. Stokes had selected for his couch.
The waggoner cracked his whip, laughing at George Stokes, who yawned and
settled into a composed ploughswing, without asking questions; apparently
resolved to finish his nap on his legs.
'Warn't he like that Myzepper chap, I see at the circus, bound athert
gray mare!' chuckled the waggoner. 'So he 'd 'a gone on, had ye 'a let
'n. No wulves waddn't wake Gearge till he 'd slept it out. Then he 'd
say, "marnin'!" to 'm. Are ye 'wake now, Gearge?'
The admirable sleeper preferred to be a quiet butt, and the waggoner
leisurely exhausted the fun that was to be had out of him; returning to
it with a persistency that evinced more concentration than variety in his
mind. At last Evan said: 'Your pace is rather slow. They'll be shut up
in Fallowfield. I 'll go on ahead. You'll find me at one of the inns-
the Green Dragon.'
In return for this speech, the waggoner favoured him with a stare,
followed by the exclamation:
'Oh, no! dang that!'
'Why, what's the matter?' quoth Evan.
'You en't goin' to be off, for to leave me and Gearge in the lurch there,
with that ther' young woman, in that ther' pickle!' returned the
waggoner.
Evan made an appeal to his reason, but finding that impregnable, he
pulled out his scanty purse to guarantee his sincerity with an offer of
pledgemoney. The waggoner waved it aside. He wanted no money, he said.
'Look heer,' he went on; 'if you're for a start, I tells ye plain, I
chucks that ther' young woman int' the road.'
Evan bade him not to be a brute.
'Nark and crop!' the waggoner doggedly ejaculated.
Very much surprised that a fellow who appeared sound at heart, should
threaten to behave so basely, Evan asked an explanation: upon which the
waggoner demanded to know what he had eyes for: and as this query failed
to enlighten the youth, he let him understand that he was a man of family
experience, and that it was easy to tell at a glance that the complaint
the young woman laboured under was one common to the daughters of Eve.
He added that, should an emergency arise, he, though a family man, would
be useless: that he always vacated the premises while those incidental
scenes were being enacted at home; and that for him and George Stokes to
be left alone with the young woman, why they would be of no more service
to her than a couple of babies newborn themselves. He, for his part, he
assured Evan, should take to his heels, and relinquish waggon, and
horses, and all; while George probably would stand and gape; and the end
of it would be, they would all be had up for murder. He diverged from
the alarming prospect, by a renewal of the foregoing alternative to the
gentleman who had constituted himself the young woman's protector. If he
parted company with them, they would immediately part company with the
young woman, whose condition was evident.
'Why, couldn't you tall that?' said the waggoner, as Evan, tingling at
the ears, remained silent.
'I know nothing of such things,' he answered, hastily, like one hurt.
I have to repeat the statement, that he was a youth, and a modest one.
He felt unaccountably, unreasonably, but horridly, ashamed. The thought
of his actual position swamped the sickening disgust at tailordom.
Worse, then, might happen to us in this extraordinary world! There was
something more abhorrent than sitting with one's legs crossed, publicly
stitching, and scoffed at! He called vehemently to the waggoner to whip
the horses, and hurry ahead into Fallowfield; but that worthy, whatever
might be his dire alarms, had a regular pace, that was conscious of no
spur: the reply of 'All right!' satisfied him at least; and Evan's chaste
sighs for the appearance of an assistant petticoat round a turn of the
road, were offered up duly, to the measure of the waggoner's steps.
Suddenly the waggoner came to a halt, and said 'Blest if that Gearge
bain't a snorin' on his pins!'
Evan lingered by him with some curiosity, while the waggoner thumped his
thigh to, 'Yes he be! no he bain't!' several times, in eager hesitation.
'It's a fellow calling from the downs,' said Evan.
'Ay, so!' responded the waggoner. 'Dang'd if I didn't think 'twere that
Gearge of our'n. Hark awhile.'
At a repetition of the call, the waggoner stopped his team. After a few
minutes, a man appeared panting on the bank above them, down which he ran
precipitately, knocked against Evan, apologized with the little breath
that remained to him, and then held his hand as to entreat a hearing.
Evan thought him half-mad; the waggoner was about to imagine him the
victim of a midnight assault. He undeceived them by requesting, in
rather flowery terms, conveyance on the road and rest for his limbs. It
being explained to him that the waggon was already occupied, he comforted
himself aloud with the reflection that it was something to be on the road
again for one who had been belated, lost, and wandering over the downs
for the last six hours.
'Walcome to git in, when young woman gits out,' said the waggoner. 'I'll
gi' ye my sleep on t' Hillford.'
'Thanks, worthy friend,' returned the new comer. 'The state of the case
is this--I'm happy to take from humankind whatsoever I can get. If this
gentleman will accept of my company, and my legs hold out, all will yet
be well.'
Though he did not wear a petticoat, Evan was not sorry to have him. Next
to the interposition of the Gods, we pray for human fellowship when we
are in a mess. So he mumbled politely, dropped with him a little to the
rear, and they all stepped out to the crack of the waggoner's whip.
'Rather a slow pace,' said Evan, feeling bound to converse.
'Six hours on the downs makes it extremely suitable to me,' rejoined the
stranger,
'You lost your way?'
'I did, sir. Yes; one does not court those desolate regions wittingly.
I am for life and society. The embraces of Diana do not agree with my
constitution. If classics there be who differ from me, I beg them to
take six hours on the downs alone with the moon, and the last prospect of
bread and cheese, and a chaste bed, seemingly utterly extinguished. I am
cured of my romance. Of course, when I say bread and cheese, I speak
figuratively. Food is implied.'
Evan stole a glance at his companion.
'Besides,' the other continued, with an inflexion of grandeur, 'for a man
accustomed to his hunters, it is, you will confess, unpleasant--I speak'
hypothetically--to be reduced to his legs to that extent that it strikes
him shrewdly he will run them into stumps.'
The stranger laughed.
The fair lady of the night illumined his face, like one who recognized a
subject. Evan thought he knew the voice. A curious struggle therein
between native facetiousness and an attempt at dignity, appeared to Evan
not unfamiliar; and the egregious failure of ambition and triumph of the
instinct, helped him to join, the stranger in his mirth.
'Jack Raikes?' he said: 'surely?'
'The man!' it was answered to him. 'But you? and near our old school--
Viscount Harrington? These marvels occur, you see--we meet again by
night.'
Evan, with little gratification at the meeting, fell into their former
comradeship; tickled by a recollection of his old schoolfellow's India-
rubber mind.
Mr. Raikes stood about a head under him. He had extremely mobile
features; thick, flexible eyebrows; a loose, voluble mouth; a ridiculous
figure on a dandified foot. He represented to you one who was rehearsing
a part he wished to act before the world, and was not aware that he took
the world into his confidence.
How he had come there his elastic tongue explained in tropes and puns and
lines of dramatic verse. His patrimony spent, he at once believed
himself an actor, and he was hissed off the stage of a provincial
theatre.
'Ruined, the last ignominy endured, I fled from the gay vistas of the
Bench--for they live who would thither lead me! and determined, the day
before the yesterday--what think'st thou? why to go boldly, and offer
myself as Adlatus to blessed old Cudford! Yes! a little Latin is all
that remains to me, and I resolved, like the man I am, to turn, hic, hac,
hoc, into bread and cheese, and beer: Impute nought foreign to me, in the
matter of pride.'
'Usher in our old school--poor old Jack!' exclaimed Evan.
'Lieutenant in the Cudford Academy!' the latter rejoined. 'I walked the
distance from London. I had my interview with the respected principal.
He gave me of mutton nearest the bone, which, they say, is sweetest; and
on sweet things you should not regale in excess. Endymion watched the
sheep that bred that mutton! He gave me the thin beer of our boyhood,
that I might the more soberly state my mission. That beer, my friend,
was brewed by one who wished to form a study for pantomimic masks. He
listened with the gravity which is all his own to the recital of my
career; he pleasantly compared me to Phaethon, congratulated the river
Thames at my not setting it on fire in my rapid descent, and extended to
me the three fingers of affectionate farewell. "You an usher, a rearer
of youth, Mr. Raikes? Oh, no! Oh, no!" That was all I could get out of
him. 'Gad! he might have seen that I didn't joke with the mutton-bone.
If I winced at the beer it was imperceptible. Now a man who can do that
is what I call a man in earnest.'
'You've just come from Cudford?' said Evan.
'Short is the tale, though long the way, friend Harrington. From Bodley
is ten miles to Beckley. I walked them. From Beckley is fifteen miles
to Fallowfield. Them I was traversing, when, lo! near sweet eventide a
fair horsewoman riding with her groom at her horse's heels. "Lady," says
I, addressing her, as much out of the style of the needy as possible,
"will you condescend to direct me to Fallowfield?"--"Are you going to the
match?" says she. I answered boldly that I was. "Beckley's in," says
she, "and you'll be in time to see them out, if you cut across the downs
there." I lifted my hat--a desperate measure, for the brim won't bear
much--but honour to women though we perish. She bowed: I cut across the
downs. In fine, Harrington, old boy, I've been wandering among those
downs for the last seven or eight hours. I was on the point of turning
my back on the road for the twentieth time, I believe when I heard your
welcome vehicular music, and hailed you; and I ask you, isn't it luck for
a fellow who hasn't got a penny in his pocket, and is as hungry as five
hundred hunters, to drop on an old friend like this?'
Evan answered with the question:
'Where was it you said you met the young lady?'
'In the first place, O Amadis! I never said she was young. You're on
the scent, I see.'
Nursing the fresh image of his darling in his heart's recesses, Evan, as
they entered Fallowfield, laid the state of his purse before Jack, and
earned anew the epithet of Amadis, when it came to be told that the
occupant of the waggon was likewise one of its pensioners.
Sleep had long held its reign in Fallowfield. Nevertheless, Mr. Raikes,
though blind windows alone looked on him, and nought foreign was to be
imputed to him in the matter of pride, had become exceedingly solicitous
concerning his presentation to the inhabitants of that quiet little
country town; and while Evan and--the waggoner consulted the former with
regard to the chances of procuring beds and supper, the latter as to his
prospect of beer and a comfortable riddance of the feminine burden
weighing on them all--Mr. Raikes was engaged in persuading his hat to
assume something of the gentlemanly polish of its youth, and might have
been observed now and then furtively catching up a leg to be dusted. Ere
the wheels of the waggon stopped he had gained that ease of mind which
the knowledge that you have done all a man may do and circumstances
warrant, establishes. Capacities conscious of their limits may repose
even proudly when they reach them; and, if Mr. Raikes had not quite the
air of one come out of a bandbox, he at least proved to the discerning
intelligence that he knew what sort of manner befitted that happy
occasion, and was enabled by the pains he had taken to glance with a
challenge at the sign of the hostelry, under which they were now ranked,
and from which, though the hour was late, and Fallowfield a singularly
somnolent little town, there issued signs of life approaching to
festivity.
CHAPTER XI
DOINGS AT AN INN
What every traveller sighs to find, was palatably furnished by the Green
Dragon of Fallowfield--a famous inn, and a constellation for wandering
coachmen. There pleasant smiles seasoned plenty, and the bill was gilded
in a manner unknown to our days. Whoso drank of the ale of the Green
Dragon kept in his memory a place apart for it. The secret, that to give
a warm welcome is the breath of life to an inn, was one the Green Dragon
boasted, even then, not to share with many Red Lions, or Cocks of the
Morning, or Kings' Heads, or other fabulous monsters; and as if to show
that when you are in the right track you are sure to be seconded, there
was a friend of the Green Dragon, who, on a particular night of the year,
caused its renown to enlarge to the dimensions of a miracle. But that,
for the moment, is my secret.
Evan and Jack were met in the passage by a chambermaid. Before either of
them could speak, she had turned and fled, with the words:
'More coming!' which, with the addition of 'My goodness me!' were echoed
by the hostess in her recess. Hurried directions seemed to be
consequent, and then the hostess sallied out, and said, with a curtsey:
'Please to step in, gentlemen. This is the room, tonight.'
Evan lifted his hat; and bowing, requested to know whether they could
have a supper and beds.
'Beds, Sir!' cried the hostess. 'What am I to do for beds! Yes, beds
indeed you may have, but bed-rooms--if you ask for them, it really is
more than I can supply you with. I have given up my own. I sleep with
my maid Jane to-night.'
'Anything will do for us, madam,' replied Evan, renewing his foreign
courtesy. 'But there is a poor young woman outside.'
'Another!' The hostess instantly smiled down her inhospitable outcry.
'She,' said Evan, 'must have a room to herself. She is ill.'
'Must is must, sir,' returned the gracious hostess. 'But I really
haven't the means.'
'You have bed-rooms, madam?'
'Every one of them engaged, sir.'
'By ladies, madam?'
'Lord forbid, Sir!' she exclaimed with the honest energy of a woman who
knew her sex.
Evan bade Jack go and assist the waggoner to bring in the girl. Jack,
who had been all the time pulling at his wristbands, and settling his
coat-collar by the dim reflection of a window of the bar, departed,
after, on his own authority, assuring the hostess that fever was not the
young woman's malady, as she protested against admitting fever into her
house, seeing that she had to consider her guests.
'We're open to all the world to-night, except fever,' said the hostess.
'Yes,' she rejoined to Evan's order that the waggoner and his mate should
be supplied with ale, 'they shall have as much as they can drink,' which
is not a speech usual at inns, when one man gives an order for others,
but Evan passed it by, and politely begged to be shown in to one of the
gentlemen who had engaged bedrooms.
'Oh! if you can persuade any of them, sir, I'm sure I've nothing to say,'
observed the hostess. 'Pray, don't ask me to stand by and back it,
that's all.'
Had Evan been familiar with the Green Dragon, he would have noticed that
the landlady, its presiding genius, was stiffer than usual; the rosy
smile was more constrained, as if a great host had to be embraced, and
were trying it to the utmost stretch. There was, however, no asperity
about her, and when she had led him to the door he was to enter to prefer
his suit, and she had asked whether the young woman was quite common, and
he had replied that he had picked her up on the road, and that she was
certainly poor, the hostess said:
'I 'm sure you're a very good gentleman, sir, and if I could spare your
asking at all, I would.'
With that she went back to encounter Mr. Raikes and his charge, and prime
the waggoner and his mate.
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