Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 2/Evan Harrington - Part 3
EVAN HARRINGTON; or, HE WOULD BE A GENTLEMAN.
BY GEORGE MEREDITH.
(See p. 178.)
CHAPTER V.THE FAMILY AND THE FUNERAL.
It was the evening of the second day since the arrival of the black letter in London from Lymport, and the wife of the brewer and the wife of the Major sat dropping tears into one another’s laps, in expectation of their sister the Countess. Mr. Andrew Cogglesby had not yet returned from his office. The gallant Major had gone forth to dine with General Sir George Freebooter, the head of the Marines of his time. It would have been difficult for the Major, he informed his wife, to send in an excuse to the General for non-attendance, without entering into particulars; and that he should tell the General he could not dine with him, because of the sudden decease of a tailor, was, as he let his wife understand, and requested her to perceive, quite out of the question. So he dressed himself carefully, and though peremptory with his wife concerning his linen, and requiring natural services from her in the button department, and a casual expression of contentment as to his ultimate make-up, he left her that day without any final injunctions to occupy her mind, and she was at liberty to weep if she pleased, a privilege she did not enjoy undisturbed when he was present; for the warrior hated that weakness, and did not care to hide his contempt for it.
Of the three sisters, the wife of the Major was, oddly enough, the one who was least inveterately solicitous of concealing the fact of her parentage. Reticence, of course, she had to study with the rest: the Major was a walking book of reticence and the observances: he professed, also, in company with herself alone, to have had much trouble in drilling her to mark and properly preserve them. She had no desire to speak of her birthplace. But, for some reason or other, she did not share her hero’s rather petulant anxiety to keep the curtain nailed down on that part of her life which preceded her entry into the ranks of the Royal Marines. Some might have thought that those fair large blue eyes of hers wandered now and then in pleasant unambitious walks behind the curtain, and toyed with little flowers of palest memory. Utterly tasteless, totally wanting in discernment, not to say gratitude, the Major could not presume her to be; and yet his wits perceived that her answers and the conduct she shaped in accordance with his repeated protests and long-reaching apprehensions of what he called danger, betrayed acquiescent obedience more than the connubial sympathy due to him. Danger on the field the Major knew not of: he did not scruple to name the word in relation to his wife. For, as he told her, should he, some day, as in the chapter of accidents might occur, sally into the street a Knight Companion of the Bath, and become known to men as Sir Maxwell Strike, it would be decidedly disagreeable for him to be blown upon by a wind from Lymport. Moreover, she was the mother of a son. The Major pointed out to her the duty she owed her offspring. Certainly the protecting ægis of his rank and title would be over the lad, but she might depend upon it any indiscretion of hers would damage him in his future career, the Major assured her. Young Maxwell must be considered.
For all this, the mother and wife, when the black letter found them in the morning at breakfast, had burst into a fit of grief, and faltered that she wept for a father. Mrs. Andrew, to whom the letter was addressed, had simply held the letter to her in a trembling hand. The Major compared their behaviour, with marked encomiums of Mrs. Andrew. Now this lady and her husband were in obverse relative positions. The brewer had no will but his Harriet’s. His esteem for her combined the constitutional feelings of an insiguificantly-built little man for a majestic woman, and those of a worthy soul for the wife of his bosom. Possessing, or possessed by her, the good brewer was perfectly happy. She, it might be thought, under these circumstances, would not have minded much his hearing what he might hear. It happened, however, that she was as jealous of the winds of Lymport as the Major himself; as vigilant in debarring them from access to the brewery as the Countess could have been. We are not now dissecting poor dear human nature: suffice it, therefore, from a mere glance at the surface, to say that, just as moneyed men are careful of their coin, women who have all the advantages in a conjunction, are miserly in keeping them, and shudder to think that one thing remains hidden, which the world they move in might put down pityingly in favour of their spouse, even though to the little man ’twere naught. She assumed that a revelation would diminish her moral stature; and certainly it would not increase that of her husband. So no good could come of it. Besides, Andrew knew, his whole conduct was a tacit admission, that she had condescended in giving him her hand. The features of their union might not be changed altogether by a revelation, but it would be a shock to her. These ladies had from childhood conceived and nursed a horror of the shop.
Consequently, Harriet tenderly rebuked Caroline for her outcry at the breakfast-table; and Caroline, the elder sister, who had not since marriage grown in so free an air, excused herself humbly, and the two were weeping when the Countess joined them and related what she had just undergone.
Hearing of Caroline’s misdemeanour, however, Louisa’s eyes rolled aloft in a paroxysm of tribulation. It was nothing to Caroline; it was comparatively nothing to Harriet; but the Count knew not Louisa had a father: believed that her parents had long ago been wiped out. And the Count was by nature inquisitive: and if he once cherished a suspicion he was restless; he was pointed in his inquiries: he was pertinacious in following out a clue: there never would be peace with him! And then Louisa cried aloud for her father, her beloved father! Harriet wept silently. Caroline alone expressed regret that she had not set her eyes on him from the day she became a wife.
“How could we, dear?” the Countess pathetically asked, under drowning lids.
“Papa did not wish it,” sobbed Mrs. Andrew.
“I never shall forgive myself!” said the wife of the Major, drying her cheeks. Perhaps it was not herself whom she felt she never could forgive.
Ah! the man their father was! Incomparable Melchisedec! he might well be called. So generous! so lordly! When the rain of tears would subside for a moment, one would relate an anecdote, or childish reminiscence of him, and provoke a more violent outburst.
“Never, among the nobles of any land, never have I seen one like him!” exclaimed the Countess, and immediately requested Harriet to tell her how it would be possible to stop Andrew’s tongue in Silva’s presence.
“At present, you know, my dear, they may talk as much as they like—they can’t understand one another a bit.”
Mrs. Cogglesby comforted her by the assurance that Andrew had received an intimation of her wish for silence everywhere and towards everybody; and that he might be reckoned upon to respect it, without demanding a reason for the restriction. In other days Caroline and Louisa had a little looked down on Harriet’s alliance with a dumpy man—a brewer—and had always sweet Christian compassion for him if his name were mentioned. They seemed now, by their silence, to have a happier estimate of Andrew’s qualities.
While the three sisters sat mingling their sorrows and alarms, their young brother was making his way to the house. As he knocked at the door, he heard his name pronounced behind him, and had no difficulty in recognising the worthy brewer.
“What, Van, my boy! how are you? Quite a foreigner! By jingo, what a hat!”
Mr. Andrew bounced back two or three steps to regard the dusky sombrero.
“How do you do, sir?” said Evan.
“Sir to you! Mr. Andrew briskly replied. “Don’t they teach you to give your fist in Portugal, eh? I’ll ‘sir’ you. Wait till I’m Sir Andrew, and then ‘sir’ away. ’Gad! the women’ll be going it then. Sir Malt and Hops, and no mistake! I say, Van, how did you get on with the boys in that hat? Aha! it’s a plucky thing to wear that hat in London! And here’s a cloak! You do speak English still, Van, eh? Quite jolly, eh, my boy?”
Mr. Andrew rubbed his hands to express that state in himself. Suddenly he stopped, blinked queerly at Evan, grew pensive, and said, “Bless my soul! I forgot.”
The door opened, Mr. Andrew took Evan’s arm, murmured a “hush!” and trod gently along the passage to his library.
“We’re safe here,” he said. “There—there’s something the matter up-stairs. The women are upset about something. Harriet—” Mr. Andrew hesitated, and branched off: “You’ve heard we’ve got a new baby?”
Evan congratulated him; but another inquiry was in Mr. Andrew’s aspect, and Evan’s calm, sad manner answered it.
“Yes,”—Mr. Andrew shook his head dolefully—“a splendid little chap! a rare little chap! a—we can’t help these things, Van! They will happen. Sit down, my boy.”
Mr. Andrew again interrogated Evan with his eyes.
“My father is dead,” said Evan.
“Yes!” Mr. Andrew nodded, and glanced quickly at the ceiling, as if to make sure that none listened overhead. “My parliamentary duties will soon be over for the season,” he added, aloud; pursuing, in an under breath: “Going down to-night, Van?”
“He is to be buried to-morrow,” said Evan.
“Then, of course, you go. Yes: quite right. Love your father and mother! always love your father and mother! Old Tom and I never knew ours. Tom’s quite well—same as ever. I’ll,” he rang the bell, “have my chop in here with you. You must try and eat a bit, Van. Here we are, and there we go. Old Tom’s wandering for one of his weeks. You’ll see him some day, Van. He ain’t like me. No dinner to-day, I suppose, Charles?”
This was addressed to the footman. He announced: “Dinner to-day at half-past six, as usual, sir,” bowed, and retired.
Mr. Andrew pored on the floor, and rubbed his hair back on his head. “An odd world!” was his remark.
Evan lifted up his face to sigh: “I’m almost sick of it!”
“Damn appearances!” cried Mr. Andrew, jumping on his legs.
The action cooled him.
“I’m sorry I swore,” he said. “Bad habit! The Major’s here—you know that?” and he assumed the Major’s voice, and strutted in imitation of the stalwart marine. “Major—a—Strike! of the Royal Marines! returned from China! covered with glory!—a hero, Van! We can’t expect him to be much of a mourner, Van. And we shan’t have him to dine with us to-day—that’s something.” He sunk his voice: “I hope the widow’ll bear it.”
“I hope to God my mother is well!” Evan groaned.
“That’ll do,” said Mr. Andrew. “Don’t say any more.”
As he spoke, he clapped Evan kindly on the back.
A message was brought from the ladies, requiring Evan to wait on them. He returned after some minutes.
“How do you think Harriet’s looking?” asked Mr. Andrew. And, not waiting for an answer, whispered, “Are they going down to the funeral, my boy?”
Evan’s brow was dark, as he replied: “They are not decided.”
“Won’t Harriet go?”
“She is not going—she thinks not.”
“And the Countess—Louisa’s up-stairs, eh?—will she go?”
“She cannot leave the Count—she thinks not.”
“Won’t Caroline go? Caroline can go. She—he—I mean—Caroline can go?”
“The Major objects. She wishes to.”
Mr. Andrew struck out his arm, and uttered, “the Major!”—a compromise for a loud anathema. But the compromise was vain, for he sinned again in an explosion against appearances.
“I’m a brewer, Van. Do you think I’m ashamed of it? Not while I brew good beer, my boy!—not while I brew good beer! They don’t think worse of me in the House for it. It isn’t ungentlemanly to brew good beer, Van. But what’s the use of talking?”
Mr. Andrew sat down, and murmured, “Poor girl! poor girl!”
The allusion was to his wife; for presently he said: “I can’t see why Harriet can’t go. What’s to prevent her?”
Evan gazed at him steadily. Death’s levelling influence was in Evan’s mind. He was ready to say why, and fully.
Mr. Andrew arrested him with a sharp “Never mind! Harriet does as she likes. I’m accustomed to—hem!—what she does is best, after all. She doesn’t interfere with my business, nor I with hers. Man and wife.”
Pausing a moment or so, Mr. Andrew intimated that they had better be dressing for dinner. With his hand on the door, which he kept closed, he said, in a business-like way, “You know, Van, as for me, I should be very willing—only too happy—to go down and pay all the respect I could.” He became confused, and shot his head from side to side, looking anywhere but at Evan. “Happy now and to-morrow, to do anything in my power, if Harriet—follow the funeral—one of the family—anything I could do: but—a—we’d better be dressing for dinner.” And out the enigmatic little man went.
Evan partly divined him then. But at dinner his behaviour was perplexing. He was too cheerful. He pledged the Count. He would have the Portuguese for this and that, and make Anglican efforts to repeat it, and laugh at his failures. He would not see that there was a father dead. At a table of actors, Mr. Andrew overdid his part, and was the worst. His wife could not help thinking him a heartless little man.
The poor show had its term. The ladies fled to the boudoir sacred to grief. Evan was whispered that he was to join them when he might, without seeming mysterious to the Count. Before he reached them, they had talked tearfully over the clothes he should wear at Lymport, agreeing that his present foreign apparel, being black, would be suitable, and would serve almost as disguise, to the inhabitants at large; and as Evan had no English wear, and there was no time to procure any for him, that was well. They arranged exactly how long he should stay at Lymport, whom he should visit, the manner he should adopt towards the different inhabitants. By all means he was to avoid the approach of the gentry. For hours Evan, in a trance, half stupefied, had to listen to the Countess’s directions how he was to comport himself in Lymport.
“Show that you have descended among them, dear Van, but are not of them. You have come to pay the last mortal duties, which they will respect, if they are not brutes, and attempt no familiarities. Allow none: gently, but firmly. Imitate Silva. You remember, at Doña Risbonda’s ball? When he met the Comte de Dartigues, and knew he was to be in disgrace with his Court on the morrow? Oh! the exquisite shade of difference in Silva’s behaviour towards the Comte. So finely, delicately perceptible to the Comte, and not a soul saw it but that wretched Frenchman! He came to me ‘Madame,’ he said, ‘is a question permitted?’ I replied, ‘As many as you please, M. le Comte, but no answers promised.’ He said: ‘May I ask if the Courier has yet come in?’ ‘Nay, M. le Comte,’ I replied, ‘this is diplomacy. Inquire of me, or better, give me an opinion on the new glacé silk from Paris.’ ‘Madame,’ said he, bowing, ‘I hope Paris may send me aught so good, or that I shall grace half so well.’ I smiled, ‘You shall not be single in your hopes, M. le Comte. The gift would be base that you did not embellish.’ He lifted his hands, French-fashion: ‘Madame, it is that I have received the gift.’ ‘Indeed! M. le Comte.’ ‘Even now from the Count de Saldar, your husband.’ I looked most innocently, ‘From my husband, M. le Comte?’ ‘From him, Madame. A portrait. An Ambassador without his coat! The portrait was a finished performance.’ I said: ‘And may one beg the permission to inspect it?’ ‘Mais,’ said he, laughing; ‘were it you alone, it would be a privilege to me.’ I had to check him. ‘Believe me, M. le Comte, that when I look upon it, my praise of the artist will be extinguished by my pity for the subject.’ He should have stopped there; but you cannot have the last word with a Frenchman—not even a woman. Fortunately the Queen just then made her entry into the saloon, and his mot on the charity of our sex was lost. We bowed mutually, and were separated.” (The Countess employed her handkerchief.) “Yes, dear Van! that is how you should behave. Imply things. With dearest mamma, of course, you are the dutiful son. Alas! you must stand for son and daughters. Mamma has so much sense! She will understand how sadly we are placed. But in a week I will come to her for a day, and bring you back.”
So much his sister Louisa. His sister Harriet offered him her house for a home in London, thence to project his new career. His sister Caroline sought a word with him in private, but only to weep bitterly in his arms, and utter a faint moan of regret at marriages in general. He loved this beautiful creature the best of his three sisters (partly, it may be, because he despised her superior officer), and tried with a few smothered words to induce her to accompany him: but she only shook her fair locks and moaned afresh. Mr. Andrew, in the farewell squeeze of the hand at the street-door, asked him if he wanted anything. Evan knew his brother-in-law meant money. He negatived the requirement of anything whatever, with an air of careless decision, though he was aware that his purse barely contained more than would take him the distance, but the instincts of this amateur gentleman were very fine and sensitive on questions of money. His family had never known him beg for a farthing, or admit his necessity for a shilling: nor could he be made to accept money unless it was thrust into his pocket. Somehow, his sisters had forgotten this peculiarity of his. Harriet only remembered it when too late.
“But I dare say Andrew has supplied him,” she said.
Andrew being interrogated, informed her what had passed between them. “And you think a Harrington would confess he wanted money!” was her scornful exclamation. “Evan would walk—he would die rather. It was treating him like a mendicant.”
Andrew had to shrink in his brewer’s skin.
By some fatality all who were doomed to sit and listen to the Countess de Saldar, were sure to be behindhand in an appointment.
When the young man arrived at the coach-office, he was politely informed that the vehicle, in which a seat had been secured for him, was in close alliance with time and tide, and being under the same rigid laws, could not possibly have waited for him, albeit it had stretched a point to the extent of a pair of minutes, at the urgent solicitation of a passenger.
“A gentleman who speaks so, sir,” said a volunteer mimic of the office, crowing and questioning from his throat in Goren’s manner. “Yok! yok! That was how he spoke, sir.”
Evan reddened, for it brought the scene on board the Iocasta vividly to his mind. The heavier business obliterated it. He took counsel with the clerks of the office, and eventually the volunteer mimic conducted him to certain livery stables, where Evan, like one accustomed to command, ordered a chariot to pursue the coach, received a touch of the hat for a lordly fee, and was soon rolling out of London.
CHAPTER VI.MY GENTLEMAN ON THE ROAD.
The postillion had every reason to believe that he carried a real gentleman behind him; in other words, a purse long and liberal. He judged by all the points he knew of: a firm voice, a brief commanding style, an apparent indifference to expense, and the inexplicable minor characteristics, such as polished boots, and a striking wristband, and so forth, which show a creature accustomed to step over the heads of men. He has, therefore, no particular anxiety to part company, and jogged easily on the white highway, beneath a moon that walked high and small over marble cloud.
Evan reclined in the chariot, revolving his sensations. In another mood he would have called them thoughts, perhaps, and marvelled at their immensity. The theme was Love and Death. One might have supposed, from his occasional mutterings at the pace regulated by the postillion, that he was burning with anxiety to catch the flying coach. He had forgotten it: forgotten that he was giving chase to anything. A pair of wondering feminine eyes pursued him, and made him fret for the miles to throw a thicker veil between him and them. The serious level brows of Rose haunted the poor youth; and reflecting whither he was tending, and to what sight, he had shadowy touches of the holiness there is in death; from which came a conflict between the imaged phantoms of his father and of Rose, and he sided against his love with some bitterness. His sisters, weeping for their father and holding aloof from his ashes, Evan swept from his mind. He called up the man his father was: the kindliness, the readiness, the gallant gaiety of the great Mel. Youths are fascinated by the barbarian virtues; and to Evan, under present influences, his father was a pattern of manhood. He asked himself: Was it infamous to earn one’s bread? and answered it very strongly in his father’s favour. The great Mel’s creditors were not by to show him another feature of the case.
Hitherto, in passive obedience to the indoctrination of the Countess, Evan had looked on tailors as the proscribed race of modern society. He had pitied his father as a man superior to his fate; but, despite the fitfully honest promptings with Rose (tempting to him because of the wondrous chivalry they argued, and at bottom false probably as the hypocrisy they affected to combat), he had been by no means sorry that the world saw not the spot on himself. Other sensations beset him now. Since such a man was banned by the world, which was to be despised?
The clear result of Evan’s solitary musing was to cast a sort of halo over Tailordom. Death stood over the pale dead man, his father, and dared the world to sneer at him. By a singular caprice of fancy, Evan had no sooner grasped this image, than it was suggested that he might as well inspect his purse, and see how much money he was master of.
Are you impatient with this young man? He has little character for the moment. Most youths are like Pope’s women; they have no character at all. And indeed a character that does not wait for circumstances to shape it, is of small worth in the race that must be run. To be set too early, is to take the work out of the hands of the Sculptor who fashions men. Happily a youth is always at school, and if he was shut up and without mark two or three hours ago, he will have something to show you now: as I have seen blooming sea-flowers and other graduated organisms, when left undisturbed to their own action. Where the Fates have designed that he shall present his figure in a story, this is sure to happen.
To the postillion Evan was indebted for one of his first lessons.
About an hour after midnight, pastoral stillness and the moon begat in the postillion desire for a pipe. Daylight prohibits the dream of it to mounted postillions. At night the question is more human, and allows appeal. The moon smiles assentingly, and smokers know that she really lends herself to the enjoyment of tobacco. The postillion could remember gentlemen who did not object: who had even given him cigars. Turning round to see if haply the present inmate of the chariot might be smoking, he observed a head extended from the window.
“How far are we?” was inquired.
The postillion numbered the milestones passed.
“Do you see anything of the coach?”
“Can’t say as I do, sir.”
He was commanded to stop. Evan jumped out. “I don’t think I’ll take you any farther,” he said.
The postillion laughed to scorn the notion of his caring how far he went. With a pipe in his mouth, he insinuatingly remarked, he could jog on all night, and throw sleep to the dogs. Fresh horses at Hillford; fresh at Fallowfield; and the gentleman himself would reach Lymport fresh in the morning.
“No, no; I won’t take you any farther,” Evan repeated.
“But what do it matter, sir?” urged the postillion.
“I’d rather go on as I am. I—a—made no arrangement to take you the whole way.”
“Oh!” cried the postillion, “don’t you go troublin’ yourself about that, sir. Master knows it’s touch-and-go about catchin’ the coach. I’m all right.”
So infatuated was the fellow in the belief that he was dealing with a perfect gentleman,—an easy pocket.
Now you would not suppose that one who presumes he has sufficient, would find a difficulty in asking how much he has to pay. With an effort, indifferently masked, Evan blurted: “By the way, tell me—how much—what is the charge for the distance we’ve come?”
There are gentlemen-screws: there are conscientious gentlemen. They calculate, and remonstrating or not, they pay. The postillion would rather have had to do with the gentleman royal, who is above base computation; but he knew the humanity in the class he served, and with his conception of Evan, only partially dimmed, he remarked:
“Oh-h-h! that won’t hurt you, sir. Jump along in,—settle that by-and-by.”
But when my gentleman stood fast, and renewed the demand to know the exact charge for the distance already traversed, the postillion dismounted, glanced him over, and speculated with his fingers tipping up his hat. Meantime Evan drew out his purse—a long one, certainly, but limp. Out of this drowned-looking wretch the last spark of life was taken by the sum the postillion ventured to name; and if paying your utmost farthing without examination of the charge, and cheerfully stepping out to walk fifty miles, penniless, constituted a postillion’s gentleman, Evan would have passed the test. The sight of poverty, however, provokes familiar feelings in poor men, if you have not had occasion to show them you possess particular qualities. The postillion’s eye was more on the purse than on the sum it surrendered.
“There,” said Evan, “I shall walk. Good night.” And he flung his cloak to step forward.
“Stop a bit, sir!” arrested him.
The postillion rallied up sideways, with an assumption of genial respect. “I didn’t calc’late myself in that there amount.”
Were these words, think you, of a character to strike a young man hard on the breast, send the blood to his head, and set up in his heart a derisive chorus? My gentleman could pay his money, ad keep his footing gallantly; but to be asked for a penny beyond what he possessed; to be seen beggared, and to be claimed a debtor—alack! Pride was the one developed faculty of Evan’s nature. The Fates who mould us, always work from the main-spring. I will not say that the postillion stripped off the mask for him at that instant completely; but he gave him the first true glimpse of his condition. From the vague sense of being an impostor, Evan awoke to the clear fact that he was likewise a fool.
It was impossible for him to deny the man’s claim, and he would not have done it, if he could. Acceding tacitly, he squeezed the ends of his purse in his pocket, and with a “Let me see,” tried his waistcoat. Not too impetuously; for he was careful of betraying the horrid emptiness till he was certain that the Powers who wait on gentlemen had utterly forsaken him. They had not. He discovered a small coin, under ordinary circumstances not contemptible; but he did not stay to reflect, and was guilty of the error of offering it to the postillion.
The latter peered at it in the centre of his palm; gazed queerly in the gentleman’s face, and then lifting the spit of silver for the disdain of his mistress, the moon, he drew a long breath of regret at the original mistake he had committed, and said:
“That’s what you’re goin’ to give me for my night’s work?”
The Powers who wait on gentlemen had only helped the pretending youth to try him. A rejection of the demand would have been infinitely wiser and better than this paltry compromise. The postillion would have fought it: he would not have despised his fare.
How much it cost the poor pretender to reply, “It’s the last farthing I have, my man,” the postillion could not know.
“A scabby sixpence?” The postillion continued his question.
“You heard what I said,” Evan remarked.
The postillion drew another deep breath, and holding out the coin at arm’s length: “Well, sir!” he observed, as one whom mental conflict had brought to the philosophy of the case, “now was we to change places, I couldn’t ’a done it! I couldn’t ’a done it!” he reiterated, pausing emphatically.
“Take it, sir!” he magnanimously resumed; “take it! You rides when you can, and you walks when you must. Lord forbid I should rob such a gentleman as you!”
One who feels a death, is for the hour lifted above the satire of postillions. A good genius prompted Evan to avoid the silly squabble that might have ensued and made him ridiculous. He took the money, quietly saying, “Thank you.”
Not to lose his vantage, the postillion, though a little staggered by the move, rejoined: “Don’t mention it.”
Evan then said: “Good night, my man. I won’t wish, for your sake, that we changed places. You would have to walk fifty miles to be in time for your father’s funeral. Good night.”
“You are it—to look at!” was the postillion’s comment, seeing my gentleman depart with great strides. He did not speak offensively; rather, it seemed, to appease his conscience for the original mistake he had committed, for subsequently came, “My oath on it, I don’t get took in again by a squash hat in a hurry!”
Unaware of the ban he had, by a sixpenny stamp, put upon an unoffending class, Evan went a-head, hearing the wheels of the chariot still dragging the road in his rear. The postillion was in a dissatisfied state of mind. He had asked and received more than his due. But in the matter of his sweet self, he had been choused, as he termed it. And my gentleman had baffled him, he could not quite tell how; but he had been got the better of; his sarcasms had not stuck, and returned to rankle in the bosom of their author. As a Jew, therefore, may eye an erewhile bondsman who has paid the bill, but stands out against excess of interest on legal grounds, the postillion regarded Evan, of whom he was now abreast, eager for a controversy.
“Fine night,” said the postillion, to begin, and was answered by a short assent. “Lateish for a poor man to be out—don’t you think, sir, eh?”
"I ought to think so,” said Evan, mastering the shrewd unpleasantness he felt in the colloquy forced on him.
“Oh, you! you’re a gentleman!” the postillion ejaculates.
“You see I have no money.”
“Feel it, too, sir.”
“I am sorry you should be the victim.”
“Victim!” the postillion seized on an objectionable word. “I ain’t no victim, unless you was up to a joke with me, sir, just now. Was that the game?”
Evan informed him that he never played jokes with money, or on men.
“’Cause it looks like it, sir, to go to offer a poor chap sixpence.” The postillion laughed hollow from the end of his lungs. “Sixpence for a night’s work! It is a joke, if you don’t mean it for one. Why, do you know, sir, I could go—there, I don’t care where it is!—I could go before any magistrate livin’, and he’d make ye pay. It’s a charge, as custom is, and he’d make ye pay. Or p’rhaps you’re a goin’ on my generosity, and ’ll say, he gev’ back that sixpence! Well! I shouldn’t ’a thought a gentleman ’d make that his defence before a magistrate. But there, my man! if it makes ye happy, keep it. But you take my advice, sir. When you hires a chariot, see you’ve got the shiners. And don’t you go never again offerin’ a sixpence to a poor man for a night’s work. They don’t like it. It hurts their feelin’s. Don’t you forget that, sir. Lay that up in your mind.”
Now the postillion having thus relieved himself, jeeringly asked permission to smoke a pipe. To which Evan said, “Pray smoke, if it pleases you.” And the postillion, hardly mollified, added, “The baccy ’s paid for,” and smoked.
As will sometimes happen, the feelings of the man who had spoken out and behaved doubtfully, grew gentle and Christian, whereas those of the man whose bearing under the trial had been irreproachable were much the reverse. The postillion smoked—he was a lord on his horse; he beheld my gentleman trudging in the dust. Awhile he enjoyed the contrast, dividing his attention between the footfarer and the moon. To have had the last word is always a great thing; and to have given my gentleman a lecture, because he shunned a dispute, also counts. And then there was the poor young fellow trudging to his father’s funeral! The postillion chose to remember that now. In reality, he allowed, he had not very much to complain of, and my gentleman’s courteous avoidance of provocation (the apparent fact that he, the postillion, had humbled him and got the better of him, equally, it may be), acted on his fine English spirit. I should not like to leave out the tobacco in this good change that was wrought in him. However, he presently astonished Evan by pulling up his horses, and crying that he was on his way to Hillford to bait, and saw no reason why he should not take a lift that part of the road, at all events. Evan thanked him briefly, but declined, and paced on with his head bent.
“It won’t cost you nothing—not a sixpence!” the postillion sang out, pursuing him. “Come, sir! be a man! I ain’t a hintin’ at anything—jump in.”
Evan again declined, and looked out for a side path to escape the fellow, whose bounty was worse to him than his abuse, and whose mention of the sixpence was unlucky.
“Dash it!” cried the postillion, “you’re going down to a funeral—I think you said your father’s, sir—you may as well try and get there respectable—as far as I go. It’s one to me whether you’re in or out; the horses won’t feel it, and I do wish you’d take a lift, and welcome. It’s because you’re too much of a gentleman to be beholden to a poor man, I suppose!”
Evan’s young pride may have had a little of that base mixture in it, and certainly he would have preferred that the invitation had not been made to him; but he was capable of appreciating what the rejection of a piece of friendliness involved, and as he saw that the man was sincere, he did violence to himself, and said: “Very well; then I’ll jump in.”
The postillion was off his horse in a twinkling, and trotted his bandy legs to undo the door, as to a gentleman who paid. This act of service Evan valued.
“Suppose I were to ask you to take that six-pence now?” he said, turning round, with one foot on the step.
“Well, sir,” the postillion sent his hat aside to answer. “I don’t want it—I’d rather not have it; but there! I’d take it—dash the sixpence! and we’ll cry quits.”
Evan, surprised and pleased with him, dropped the bit of money in his hand, saying: “It will fill a pipe for you. While you’re smoking it, think of me as in your debt. You’re the only man I ever owed a penny to.”
The postillion put it in a side pocket apart, and observed: “A sixpence kindly meant is worth any crown-piece that’s grudged—that it is! In you jump, sir. It’s a jolly night!”
Thus may one, not a conscious sage, play the right tune on this human nature of ours: by forbearance, put it in the wrong; and then, by not refusing the burden of an obligation, confer something better. The instrument is simpler than we are taught to fancy. But it was doubtless owing to a strong emotion in his soul, as well as to the stuff he was made of, that the youth behaved as he did. We are now and then above our own actions: seldom on a level with them. Evan, I dare say, was long in learning to draw any gratification from the fact that he had achieved without money the unparalleled conquest of a man. Perhaps he never knew what immediate influence on his fortune this episode effected.
At Hillford they went their different ways. The postillion wished him good speed, and Evan shook his hand. He did so rather abruptly, for the postillion was fumbling at his pocket, and evidently rounding about a proposal in his mind.
My gentleman has now the road to himself. Money is the clothing of a gentleman: he may wear it well or ill. Some, you will mark, carry great quantities of it gracefully: some, with a stinted supply, present a decent appearance: very few, I imagine, will bear inspection, who are absolutely stripped of it. All, save the shameless, are toiling to escape that trial. My gentleman, treading the white highway across the solitary heaths, that swell far and wide to the moon, is, by the postillion, who has seen him, pronounced no sham. Nor do I think the opinion of any man worthless, who has had the postillion’s authority for speaking. But it is, I am told, a finer test to embellish much gentleman-apparel, than to walk with dignity totally unadorned. This simply tries the soundness of our faculties; that tempts them in erratic directions. It is the difference between active and passive excellence.
As there is hardly any situation, however, so interesting to reflect upon as that of a man without a penny in his pocket, and a gizzard full of pride, we will leave Mr. Evan Harrington to what fresh adventures may befall him, walking towards the funeral plumes of the firs, under the soft midsummer flush, westward, where his father lies.