Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/153

140 admiral and a knight for valiant action in the old war, when men could rise. Him they besought to take charge of the youth and make a distinguished seaman of him. He courteously declined. They then attacked the married Marine—navy or army being quite indifferent to them, as long as they could win for their brother the badge of one service, “When he is a gentleman at once!” they said, like those who see the end of their labours. Strike basely pretended to second them. It would have been delightful to him, of course, to have the tailor’s son messing at the same table, and claiming him when he pleased with a familiar “Ah, brother!” and prating of their relationship everywhere. Strike had been a fool: in revenge for it, he laid out for himself a masterly career of consequent wisdom. The brewer—uxorious Andrew Cogglesby—might and would have bought the commission. Strike laughed at the idea of giving money for what could be got for nothing. He told them to wait.

In the meantime Evan, a lad of seventeen, spent the hours not devoted to his positive profession—that of gentleman—in the offices of the brewery, toying with big books and balances, which he despised with the combined zeal of the sucking soldier and emancipated tailor.

Two years passed in attendance on the astute brother-in-law, to whom now Fortune beckoned to come to her and gather his laurels from the pig-tails. About the same time the Countess sailed over from Lisbon on a visit to her sister Harriet (in reality, it was whispered in the Cogglesby saloons, on a diplomatic mission from the Court of Lisbon; but that could not be made ostensible). The Countess narrowly examined Evan, whose steady advance in his profession both her sisters praised.

“Yes,” said the Countess, in a languid alien accent. “He has something of his father’s carriage—something. Something of his delivery—his readiness.”

It was a remarkable thing that these ladies thought no man on earth like their father, and always cited him as the example of a perfect gentleman, and yet they buried him with one mind, and each mounted guard over his sepulchre, to secure his ghost from an airing.

“He can walk, my dears, certainly, and talk—a little. Tête-à-tête, I do not say. I should think there he would be—a stick! All you English are. But what sort of a bow has he got, I ask you? How does he enter a room? And, then, his smile! his laugh! He laughs like a horse—absolutely! There’s no music in his smile. Oh! you should see a Portuguese nobleman smile. Oh! Dio! honeyed, my dears! But Evan has it not. None of you English have. You go so.”

The Countess pressed a thumb and a finger to the sides of her mouth, and set her sisters laughing.

“I assure you, no better! not a bit! I faint in your society. I ask myself—Where am I? Among what boors have I fallen? But Evan is no worse than the rest of you; I acknowledge that. If he knew how to dress his shoulders properly, and to direct his eyes—Oh! the eyes! you should see how a Portuguese nobleman can use his eyes! Soul! my dears! soul! Can any of you look the unutterable without being absurd? You look so.”

And the Countess hung her jaw under heavily vacuous orbits, something as a sheep might yawn.

“But I acknowledge that Evan is no worse than the rest of you,” she repeated. “If he understood at all the management of his eyes and mouth! But that’s what be cannot possibly learn in England—not possibly! As for your poor husband, Harriet! one really has to remember his excellent qualities to forgive him, poor man! And that stiff bandbox of a man of yours, Caroline!” addressing the wife of the Marine, “he looks as if he were all angles and sections, and were taken to pieces every night and put together in the morning. He may be a good soldier—good anything you will—but, Dio! to be married to that! He is not civilised. None of you English are. You have no place in the drawing-room. You are like so many intrusive oxen—absolutely! One of your men trod on my toe the other night, and what do you think the creature did? Jerks back, then the half of him forward—I thought he was going to break in two—then grins, and grunts, ‘Oh! ’m sure, beg pardon, ’m sure!’ I don’t know whether he didn’t say, !"

The Countess lifted her hands, and fell away in laughing horror. When her humour, or her feelings generally, were a little excited, she spoke her vernacular as her sisters did, but immediately subsided into the deliberate delicately-syllabled drawl.

“Now that happened to me once at one of our great balls,” she pursued. “I had on one side of me the Duchess Eugenia de Formosa de Fontandigua; on the other sat the Countess de Pel, a widow. And we were talking of the ices that evening. Eugenia, you must know, my dears, was in love with the Count Belmaraña. I was her sole confidante. The Countess de Pel—a horrible creature! Oh! she was the Duchess’s determined enemy—would have stabbed her for Belmaraña, one of the most beautiful men. Adored by every woman! So we talked ices, Eugenia and myself, quite comfortably, and that horrible De Pel had no idea in life! Eugenia had just said, ‘This ice sickens me! I do not taste the flavour of the vanille.’ I answered, ‘It is here! It must—it cannot but be here! You love the flavour of the vanille?’ With her exquisite smile, I see her now saying, ‘Too well! it is necessary to me! I live on it!’ when up he came. In his eagerness, his foot just effleuréd my robe. Oh! I never shall forget! In an instant he was down on one knee: it was so momentary that none saw it but we three, and done with ineffable grace. ‘Pardon!’ he said, in his sweet Portuguese; ‘Pardon!’ looking up—the handsomest man I ever beheld; and when I think of that odious wretch the other night, with his ‘Oh! ’m sure, beg pardon, ’m sure!’—’pon my honour!’honour! [sic] I could have kicked him—I could indeed!”

Here the Countess laughed out, but relapsed into:

“Alas! that Belmaraña should have betrayed that beautiful trusting creature to De Pel. Such scandal!—a duel!—the Duke was wounded. For