Page:ONCE A WEEK JUL TO DEC 1860.pdf/290

282 There! let’s walk on. Let us the left foot forward stout advance. I care not for the herd.”

’Tis love!” cried Franco.

“Ay, an’ it be!” Jack gloomily returned.

“For ever cruel is the sweet Saldar?”

Jack winced at this name.

“A truce to banter, Franco!” he said sternly: but the subject was opened, and the wound.

“Love!” he pursued, mildly groaning. “Suppose you adored a fascinating woman, and she knew—positively knew—your manly weakness, and you saw her smiling upon everybody, and she told you to be happy, and egad, when you came to reflect, you found that after three months’ suit, you were nothing better than her errand-boy? A thing to boast of, is it not, quotha?”

“Love’s yellow-fever, jealousy, methinks,” Franco commenced in reply; but Jack spat at the emphasised word.

“Jealousy!—who’s jealous of clergymen and that crew? Not I, by Pluto! I carried five messages to one fellow with a coat-tail straight to his heels, last week. She thought I should drive my curricle—I couldn’t afford an omnibus! I had to run. When I returned to her I was dirty. She made remarks!”

“Thy sufferings are severe—but such is woman!” said Franco. ’Gad, it’s a good idea, though.” He took out a note-book and pencilled a point or two. Jack watched the process sardonically.

“My tragedy is, then, thy farce!” he exclaimed. “Well, be it so! I believe I shall come to song-writing again myself shortly—beneath the shield of Catnach I’ll a nation’s ballad’sballads [sic] frame! I’ve spent my income—or, as you grossly call it—my tincome, ha! ha! in four months, and now I’m living on my curricle. I underlet it. It’s like trade—it’s as bad as poor old Harrington, by Jove! But that isn’t the worst, Franco!” Jack dropped his voice: “I believe I’m furiously loved by a poor country wench.”

“Morals!” was Franco’s most encouraging reproof.

“Oh, I don’t think I’ve even kissed her,” rejoined Jack, who doubted because his imagination was vivid. “It’s my intellect that dazzles her. I’ve got letters—she calls me clever. By jingo! since I gave up driving I’ve had thoughts of rushing down to her and making her mine in spite of home, family, fortune, friends, name, position—everything! I have, indeed.”

Franco looked naturally astonished at this amount of self-sacrifice. “The Countess?” he shrewdly suggested.

Jack burst into song.

He stretched out his hand, as if to discard all the great ladies who were passing. By the strangest misfortune ever known, the direction taken by his fingers was towards a carriage wherein, beautifully smiling opposite an elaborately reverend gentleman of middle age, the Countess de Saldar was sitting. This great lady is not to be blamed for deeming that her errand-boy was pointing her out vulgarly on a public promenade. Ineffable disdain curled off her sweet olive visage. She turned her head.

“I’ll go down to that girl to-night,” said Jack, with compressed passion. And then he hurried Franco along to the bridge, where, behold, the Countess alighted with the gentleman, and walked beside him into the gardens.

“Follow her,” said Jack, in agitation. “Do you see her? by yon long-tailed raven’s side? Follow her, Franco! See if he kisses her hand—anything! and meet me here in half an hour. I’ll have evidence!”

Franco did not altogether like the office, but Jack’s dinners, singular luck, and superiority in the encounter of puns, gave him the upper hand with his friend, and so Franco went.

Turning away from the last glimpse of his Countess, Jack crossed the bridge, and had not strolled far beneath the bare branches of one of the long green walks, when he perceived a gentleman with two ladies leaning on him.

“Now, there,” moralised Jack; “now, what do you say to that? Do you call that fair? He can’t be happy, and it’s not in nature for them to be satisfied. And yet, if I went up and attempted to please them all by taking one away, the probabilities are that he would knock me down. Such is life! We won’t be made comfortable!”

Nevertheless, he passed them with indifference, for it was merely the principle he objected to; and, indeed, he was so wrapped in his own conceptions, that his name had to be called behind him twice before he recognised Evan Harrington, Mrs. Strike, and Miss Bonner. The arrangement he had previously thought good, was then spontaneously adopted. Mrs. Strike reposed her fair hand upon Jack’s arm, and Juliana, with a timid glance of pleasure, walked ahead in Evan’s charge. Close neighbourhood between the couples was not kept. The genius of Mr. John Raikes was wasted in manœuvres to lead his beautiful companion into places where he could be seen with her, and envied. It was, perhaps, more flattering that she should betray a marked disposition to prefer solitude in his society. But this idea illumined him only towards the moment of parting. Then he saw it; then he groaned in soul, and besought Evan to have one more promenade, saying, with characteristic cleverness in the masking of his real thoughts: “It gives us an appetite, you know.”

In Evan’s face and Juliana’s there was not much sign that any protraction of their walk together would aid this beneficent process of nature. He took her hand gently, and when he quitted it, it dropped.

“The Rose, the Rose of Beckley Court!” Jack sang aloud. “Why, this is a day of meetings. Behold John Thomas in the rear—a tower of plush and powder! Shall I rush—shall I pluck her from the aged stem?”

On the gravel-walk above them Rose passed with her aristocratic grandmother, muffled in furs. She marched deliberately, looking coldly before her. Evan’s face was white, and Juliana, whose eyes were fixed on him, shuddered.

“I’m chilled,” she murmured to Caroline. “Let us go.”