Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 2/Evan Harrington - Part 6
EVAN HARRINGTON; or, HE WOULD BE A GENTLEMAN.
BY GEORGE MEREDITH.
CHAPTER IX.THE COUNTESS IN LOW SOCIETY.
By dint of stratagems worthy of a Court intrigue, the Countess de Saldar contrived to traverse the streets of Lymport, and enter the house where she was born, unsuspected and unseen, undercover of a profusion of lace and veil and mantilla, which only her heroic resolve to keep her beauties hidden from the profane townspeople, could have rendered endurable beneath the fervid summer sun.
Dress in a foreign style she must, as without it she lost that sense of superiority, which was the only comfort to her in her tribulations. The period of her arrival was ten days subsequent to the burial of her father. She had come in the coach, like any common mortal, and the coachman, upon her request, had put her down at the Governor’s house, and the guard had knocked at the door, and the servant had informed her that General Hucklebridge was not the governor of Lymport, nor did Admiral Combleman then reside in the town, which tidings, the coach being then out of sight, it did not disconcert the Countess to hear; and she reached her mother, having, at least, cut off communication with the object of conveyance—cast salt on her many traces, as it were.
The Countess kissed her mother, kissed Mrs. Fiske, and asked sharply for Evan. Mrs. Fiske let her know that Evan was in the house.
“Where?” inquired the Countess. “I have news of the utmost importance for him. I must see him.”
“Where is he, aunt?” said Mrs. Fiske. “In the shop, I think; I wonder he did not see you passing, Louisa.”
The Countess went bolt down into a chair.
“Go to him, Jane.” said Mrs. Mel. “Tell him Louisa is here, and don’t return.”
Mrs. Fiske departed, and the Countess smiled.
“Thank you, Mamma! you know I never could bear that odious, vulgar little woman. Oh, the heat! You talk of Portugal! And, oh! poor dear Papa! what I have suffered!”
Flapping her laces for air, and wiping her eyes for sorrow, the Countess poured a flood of sympathy into her mother’s ears, and then said:
“But you have made a great mistake, Mamma, in allowing Evan to put his foot into that place. He—beloved of an heiress! Why, if an enemy should hear of it, it would ruin him—positively blast him—for ever. And that she loves him I have proof positive. Yes; with all her frankness, the little thing cannot conceal that from me now. She loves him! And I desire you to guess, Mamma, whether rivals will not abound? And what enemy so much to be dreaded as a rival? And what revelation so awful as that he has stood in a—in a—boutique.”
Mrs. Mel maintained her usual attitude for listening. It had occurred to her that it might do no good to tell the grand lady, her daughter, of Evan’s resolution, so she simply said, “It is discipline for him,” and left her to speak a private word with the youth.
Timidly the Countess inspected the furniture of the apartment, taking chills at the dingy articles she saw, in the midst of her heat. That she should have sprung from this! The thought was painful; still she could forgive Providence so much. But should it ever be known she had sprung from this! Alas! she felt she never could pardon such a dire betrayal. She had come in good spirits, but the mention of Evan’s back-sliding had troubled her extremely, and though she did not say to herself, What was the benefit resulting from her father’s dying, if Evan would he so base-minded? she thought the thing indefinitely, and was forming the words on her mouth, One Harrington in a shop is equal to all! when Evan appeared, alone.
“Why, goodness gracious! where’s your moustache?” cried the Countess.
“Gone the way of hair!” said Evan, coldly stooping to her forehead.
“Such a distinction!” the Countess continued, reproachfully. “Why, mon Dieu! one could hardly tell you, as you look now, from the very commonest tradesman—if you were not rather handsome and something of a figure. It’s a disguise, Evan—do you know that?”
“And I’ve parted with it—that’s all,” said Evan. “No more disguises for me!”
The Countess immediately took his arm, and walked with him to a window. His face was certainly changed. Murmuring that the air of Lymport was bad for him, and that he must leave it instantly, she bade him sit and attend to what she was about to say.
“While you have been here, degenerating, Evan, day by day—as you always do out of my sight—degenerating! no less a word!—I have been slaving in your interests. Yes; I have forced the Jocelyns socially to acknowledge us. I have not slept; I have eaten bare morsels. Do abstinence and vigils clear the wits? I know not; but indeed they have enabled me to do more in a week than would suffice for a lifetime. Hark to me. I have discovered Rose’s secret. Si! It is so! Rose loves you. You blush; you blush like a girl. She loves yon, and you have let yourself be seen in a shop! Contrast me the two things. Oh! in verity, dreadful as it is, one could almost laugh. But the moment I lose sight of you, my instructions vanish as quickly as that hair on your superior lip, which took such time to perfect. Alas! you must grow it again immediately. Use any perfumer’s contrivance. Rowland! I have great faith in Rowland. Without him, I believe, there would have been many bald women committing suicide! You remember the bottle I gave to the Count de Villa Flor? ‘Countess,’ he said to me, ‘you have saved this egg-shell from a crack, by helping to cover it’—for so he called his head—the top, you know, was beginning to shine like an egg. And I do fear me he would have done it. Ah! you do not conceive what the dread of baldness is! To a woman, death—death is preferable to baldness! Baldness is death! And a wig—a wig! Oh, horror! total extinction is better than to rise again in a wig! But you are young, and play with hair. But I was saying, I went to see the Jocelyns. I was introduced to Sir Franks and his lady and the wealthy grandmother. And I have an invitation for you, Evan!—you unnmannered boy, that do not bow! A gentle incline forward of the shoulders, and the eyes fixed softly, your upper lids drooping triflingly, as if you thanked with gentle sincerity, but were indifferent. Well, well, if you will not! An invitation for you to spend part of the autumn at Beckley Court, the ancestral domain, when there will be company—the nobles of the land! Consider that. You say it was bold in me to face them after that horrible man committed us on board the vessel? A Harrington is anything but a coward. I did go—and because I am devoted to your interests. That very morning, I saw announced in the paper, just beneath poor Andrew’s hand, as he held it up at the breakfast-table, reading it, I saw among the Abraham Harrington, of Torquay, Baronet, of quinsy! Twice that good man has come to my rescue! Oh! I welcomed him as a piece of Providence! I turned and said ‘I see they have put poor Papa in the paper.’ Harriet wan staggered. I took the paper from Andrew, and pointed it to her. She has no readiness. She has had no foreign training. She could not comprehend, and Andrew stood on tiptoe, and peeped. He has a bad cough, and coughed himself black in the face. I attribute it to excessive bad manners and his cold feelings. He left the room. I reproached Harriet. But, oh! the singularity of the excellent fortune of such an event at such a time! It showed that our Harrington luck had not forsaken us. I hurried to the Jocelyns instantly. Of course, it cleared away any suspicions aroused in them by that horrible man on board the vessel. And the tears I wept for Sir Abraham, Evan, in verity they were tears of deep and sincere gratitude! What is your mouth knitting the corners at? Are you laughing?”
Evan hastily composed his visage to the melancholy that was no counterfeit in him just then.
“Yes,” continued the Countess, easily reassured, “I shall ever feel a debt to Sir Abraham Harrington, of Torquay. I dare say we are related to him. At least, he has done us more service than many a rich and titled relative. No one supposes he would acknowledge poor Papa. I can forgive him that! Evan!” the Countess pointed out her finger with mournful and impressive majesty, “as we look down on that monkey, people of rank and consideration in society look on what poor dear Papa was.”
This was partly true, for Jacko sat on a chair, in his favourite attitude, copied accurately from the workmen of the establishment at at their labour with needle and thread. Growing cognisant of the infamy of his posture, the Countess begged Evan to drive him out of her sight, and took a sniff at her smelling-bottle.
She went on: “Now, dear Van, you would hear of your sweet Rose?”
“Not a word!” Evan hastily answered.
“Why, what does this indicate? Whims! Then, you do love?”
“I tell you, Louisa, I don’t want to hear a word of any of them,” said Evan, with an angry gleam in his eyes. “They are nothing to me, nor I to them. I—my walk in life is not theirs.”
“Faint heart! faint heart!” the Countess lifted a proverbial forefinger.
“Thank Heaven, I shall have the consolation of not going about, and bowing and smirking like an impostor!” Evan exclaimed.
There was a wider intelligence in the Countess’s arrested gaze than she chose to fashion into speech.
“I knew,” she said, “I knew how the air of this horrible Lymport would act on you. But while I live, Evan, you shall not sink in the sludge. You, with all the pains I have lavished on you! and with your presence!—for you have a presence—so rare among young men in this England! You, who have been to a Court, and interchanged bows with duchesses, and I know not what besides—nay, I do not accuse you; but if you had not been a mere boy, and an English boy—poor Eugenia herself confessed to me that you had a look—a tender cleaving of the underlids—that made her catch her hand to her heart sometimes: it reminded her so acutely of false Belmaraña. Could you have had a greater compliment than that? You shall not stop here another day!”
“True,” said Evan, “for I’m going to London to-night.”
“Not to London,” the Countess returned, with a conquering glance, “but to Beckley Court—and with me.”
“To London, Louisa, with Mr. Goren.”
Again the Countess eyed him largely; but took, as it were, a side-path from her broad thought, saying: “Yes, fortunes are made in London, if you would they should be rapid.”
She meditated. At that moment Dandy knocked at the door, and called outside: “Please, master, Mr. Goren says there’s a gentleman in the shop—wants to see you.”
“Very well,” replied Evan, moving. He was swung violently round.
The Countess had clutched him by the arm. A fearful expression was on her face.
“Whither do you go?” she said.
“To the shop, Louisa.”
Too late to arrest the villanous word, she pulled at him. “Are you quite insane? Consent to be seen by a gentleman there? What has come to you? You must be lunatic! Are we all to be utterly ruined—disgraced?”
“Is my mother to starve?” said Evan.
“Absurd rejoinder! No! You should have sold everything here before this. She can live with Harriet—she—once out of this horrible element—she would not show it. But, Evan, you are getting away from me: you are not going?—speak!”
“I am going,” said Evan.
The Countess clung to him, exclaiming: “Never, while I have the power to detain you!” but as he was firm and strong, she had recourse to her woman’s aids, and burst into a storm of sobs on his shoulder—a scene of which Mrs. Mel was, for some seconds, a composed spectator.
“What’s the matter now?” said Mrs. Mel.
Evan impatiently explained the case. Mrs. Mel desired her daughter to avoid being ridiculous, and making two fools in her family; and at the same time that she told Evan there was no occasion for him to go, contrived, with a look, to make the advice a command. He, in that state of mind when one takes bitter delight in doing an abhorred duty, was hardly willing to be submissive; but the despair of the Countess reduced him, and for her sake he consented to forego the sacrifice of his pride which was now his sad, sole pleasure. Feeling him linger, the Countess relaxed her grasp. Hers were tears that dried as soon as they had served their end; and, to give him the full benefit of his conduct, she said: “I knew Evan would be persuaded by me.”
Evan pitifully pressed her hand, and sighed.
“Tea is on the table down-stairs,” said Mrs. Mel. “I have cooked something for you, Louisa. Do you sleep here to-night!”
“Can I tell you, Mamma!” murmured the Countess. “I am dependent on our Evan.”
“Oh! well, we will eat first,” said Mrs. Mel, and they went to the table below, the Countess begging her mother to drop titles in designating her to the servants, which caused Mrs. Mel to say:
“There is but one. I do the cooking,” and the Countess, ever disposed to flatter, and be suave, even when stung by a fact or a phrase, added:
“And a beautiful cook you used to be, dear Mamma!”
At the table, awaiting them, sat Mrs. Wishaw, Mrs. Fiske, and Mr. Goren, who soon found themselves enveloped in the Countess’s graciousness. Mr. Goren would talk of trade, and compare Lymport business with London, and the Countess, loftily interested in his remarks, drew him out to disgust her brother. Mrs. Wishaw, in whom the Countess at once discovered a frivolous pretentious woman of the moneyed trading class, she treated as one who was alive to society, and surveyed matters from a station in the world, leading her think that she tolerated Mr. Goren, as a lady-Christian of the highest rank should tolerate the insects that toil for us. Mrs. Fiske was not so tractable, for Mrs. Fiske was hostile and armed. Mrs. Fiske adored the great Mel, and she had never loved Louisa. Hence, she scorned Louisa on account of her late behaviour towards her dead parent. The Countess saw through her, and laboured to be friendly with her, while she rendered her disagreeable in the eyes of Mrs. Wishaw, and let Mrs. Wishaw perceive that sympathy was possible between them;—manœuvring a trifle too delicate, perhaps, for the people present, but sufficient to blind its keen-witted author to the something that was being concealed from herself, of which something, nevertheless, her senses apprehensively warned her; and they might have spoken to her wits, but that mortals cannot, unaided, guess, or will not, unless struck in the face by the fact, credit, what is to their minds the last horror.
“I came down in the coach, quite accidental, with this gentleman,” said Mrs. Wishaw, fanning a cheek and nodding at Mr. Goren. “I’m an old flame of dear Mel’s. I knew him when he was an apprentice in London. Now, wasn’t it odd? Your mother—I suppose I must call you ‘my lady?’”
The Countess breathed a tender “spare me,” with a smile that added, “among friends!”
Mrs. Wishaw resumed: “Your mother was an old flame of this gentleman’s, I found out. So there were two old flames, and I couldn’t help thinking! But I was so glad to have seen dear Mel once more.”
“Ah!” sighed the Countess.
“He was always a martial-looking man, and laid out, he was quite imposing. I declare, I cried so, as it reminded me of when I couldn’t have him, for he had nothing but his legs and arms—and I married Wishaw. But it’s a comfort to think I have been of some service to dear, dear Mel! for Wishaw’s a man of accounts and payments, and I knew Mel had cloth from him, and,” the lady suggested bills delayed, with two or three nods, “you know! and I’ll do my best for his son.”
“You are kind,” said the Countess, smiling internally at the vulgar creature’s misconception of Evan’s requirements.
“Did he ever talk much about Mary Fence?” asked Mrs. Wishaw. “Polly Fence, he used to say, ‘Sweet Polly Fence!’”
“Oh! I think so. Frequently,” observed the Countess.
Mrs. Fiske primmed her mouth. She had never heard the great Mel allude to the name of Fence.
The Goren-croak was heard:
“Painters have painted out ‘Melchisedec’ this afternoon. Yes,—ah! In and out—as the saying goes.”
Here was an opportunity to mortify the Countess.
Mrs. Fiske placidly remarked: “Have we the other put up in its stead? It’s shorter.”
A twinge of weakness had made Evan request that the name of Evan Harrington should not decorate the shop-front till he had turned his back on it, for a time. Mrs. Mel crushed her venomous niece.
“What have you to do with such things? Shine in your own affairs first, Ann, before you meddle with others.”
Relieved at hearing that ‘Melchisedec’ was painted out, and unsuspicious of the announcement that should replace it, the Countess asked Mrs. Wishaw if she thought Evan like her dear Papa.
“So like,” returned the lady, “that I would not be alone with him yet, for worlds. I should expect him to be making love to me: for, you know, my dear—I must be familiar—Mel never could be alone with you, without!—It was his nature. I speak of him before marriage. But, if I can trust myself with him, I shall take charge of Mr. Evan, and show him some London society.”
“That is indeed kind,” said the Countess, glad of a thick veil for the utterance of her contempt. “Evan, though—I fear—will be rather engaged. His friends, the Jocelyns of Beckley Court, will—I fear—hardly dispense with him: and Lady Splenders—you know her? the Marchioness of Splenders? No?—by repute, at least: a most beautiful and most fascinating woman; report of him alone has induced her to say that Evan must and shall form a part of her autumnal gathering at Splenders Castle. And how he is to get out of it, I cannot tell. But I am sure his multitudinous engagements will not prevent his paying due court to Mistress Wishaw.”
As the Countess intended, Mistress Wishaw’s vanity was reproved, and her ambition excited: a pretty double-stroke, only possible to dexterous players.
The lady rejoined that she hoped so, she was sure; and forthwith (because she suddenly seemed to possess him more than his son), launched upon Mel’s incomparable personal attractions. This caused the Countess to enlarge upon Evan’s vast personal prospects. They talked across each other a little, till the Countess remembered her breeding, allowed Mrs. Wishaw to run to an end in hollow exclamations, and put a finish to the undeclared controversy, by a traverse of speech, as if she were taking up the most important subject of their late colloquy. “But Evan is not in his own hands—he is in the hands of a lovely young woman, I must tell you. He belongs to her, and not to us. You have heard of Rose Jocelyn, the celebrated heiress?”
“Engaged?” Mrs. Wishaw whispered aloud.
The Countess, an adept in the lie implied—practised by her, that she might not subject herself to future punishment (in which she was so devout a believer, that she condemned whole hosts to it), deeply smiled.
“Really!” said Mrs. Wishaw, and was about to inquired why Evan, with these brilliant expectations, could think of trade and tailoring, when the young man, whose forehead had been growing black, jumped up, and quitted them; thus breaking the harmony of the table; and as the Countess had said enough, she turned the conversation to the always welcome theme of low society. She broached death and corpses; and became extremely interesting, and very sympathetic: the only difference between the ghostly anecdotes she related, and those of the other ladies, being that her ghosts were all of them titled, and walked mostly under the burden of a coronet. For instance, there was the Portuguese Marquis de Col. He had married a Spanish wife, whose end was mysterious. Undressing, on the night of the anniversary of her death, and on the point of getting into bed, he beheld the dead woman lying on her back before him. All night long he had to sleep with this freezing phantom! Regularly, every fresh anniversary, he had to endure the same penance, no matter where he might be, or in what strange bed. On one occasion, when he took the live for the dead, a curious thing occurred, which the Countess scrupled less to relate than would men to hint at. Ghosts were the one childish enjoyment Mrs. Mel allowed herself, and she listened to her daughter intently, ready to cap any narrative; but Mrs. Fiske stopped the flood.
“You have improved on Peter Smithers, Louisa,” she said.
The Countess turned to her mildly.
“You are certainly thinking of Peter Smithers,” Mrs. Fiske continued, bracing her shoulders. “Surely, you remember poor Peter, Louisa? An old flame of your own! He was going to kill himself, but married a Devonshire woman, and they had disagreeables, and she died, and he was undressing, and saw her there in the bed, and wouldn’t get into it, and had the mattrass, and the curtains, and the counterpanes, and everything burnt. He told us it himself. You must remember it, Louisa?”
The Countess remembered nothing of the sort. No doubt could exist of its having been the Portuguese Marquis de Col, because he had confided to her the whole affair, and indeed come to her, as his habit was, to ask her what he could possibly do, under the circumstances. If Mrs. Fiske’s friend, who married the Devonshire person, had seen the same thing, the coincidence was yet more extraordinary than the case. Mrs. Fiske said, it assuredly was, and glanced at her aunt, who, as the Countess now rose, declaring she must speak to Evan, chid Mrs. Fiske and wished her and Peter Smithers at the bottom of the sea.
“No, no, Mama,” said the Countess, laughing, “that would hardly be proper,” and before Mrs. Fiske could reply, escaped to complain to Evan of the vulgarity of those women.
She was not prepared for the burst of wrath with which Evan met her.
“Louisa,” said he, taking her wrist sternly, “you have done a thing I can’t forgive. I find it hard to bear disgrace myself: I will not consent to bring it upon others. Why did you dare to couple Miss Jocelyn’s name with mine?”
The Countess gave him out her arm’s length. “Speak on, Van,” she said, admiring him with a bright gaze.
“Answer me, Louisa; and don’t take me for a fool any more,” he pursued. “You have coupled Miss Jocelyn’s name with mine, in company, and I insist now upon your giving me your promise to abstain from doing it anywhere, before anybody.”
“If she saw you at this instant, Van,” returned the incorrigible Countess, “would she desire it, think you? Oh! I must make you angry before her, I see that! You have your father’s frown. You surpass him, for your delivery is more correct, and equally fluent. And if a woman is momentarily melted by softness in a man, she is for ever subdued by boldness and bravery of mien.”
Evan dropped her hand. “Miss Jocelyn has done me the honour to call me her friend. That was in other days.” His lip quivered. “I shall not see Miss Jocelyn again. Yes; I would lay down my life for her; but that’s idle talk. No such chance will ever come to me. But I can save her from being spoken of in alliance with me, and what I am, and I tell you, Louisa, I will not have it.” Saying which, and while he looked harshly at her, wounded pride bled through his eyes.
She was touched. “Sit down, dear; I must explain to you, and make you happy against your will,” she said, in another voice, and an English accent. “The mischief is done, Van. If you do not want Rose Jocelyn to love you, you must undo it in your own way. I am not easily deceived. On the morning I went to her house in town, she took me aside, and spoke to me. Not a confession in words. The blood in her cheeks, when I mentioned you, did that for her. Everything about you she must know—how you bore your grief, and all. And not in her usual free manner, but timidly, as if she feared a surprise, or feared to be wakened to the secret in her bosom she half suspects. ‘Tell him!’ she said, ‘I hope he will not forget me.’”
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 fiercely 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.