Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/154

. 11, 1860.] a whole year Eugenia did not dare to appear at court, but had to remain immured in her country-house, where she heard that Belmaraña had married De Pel! It was for her money, of course. Rich as Crœsus, and as wicked as the black man below! as dear papa used to say. By the way, weren’t we talking of Evan? Ah,—yes!”

And so forth. The Countess was immensely admired, and though her sisters said that she was “foreignised” over-much, they clung to her desperately. She seemed so entirely to have eclipsed tailordom, or “Demogorgon,” as the Countess pleased to call it. Who could suppose this grand-mannered lady, with her coroneted anecdotes and delicious breeding, the daughter of that thing? It was not possible to suppose it. It seemed to defy the fact itself.

They congratulated her on her complete escape from Demogorgon. The Countess smiled on them with a lovely sorrow.

“Safe from the whisper, my dears; the ceaseless dread? If you knew what I have to endure! I sometimes envy you. ’Pon my honour, I sometimes wish I had married a fishmonger! Silva, indeed, is a most excellent husband. Polished! such polish as you know not of in England. He has a way—a wriggle with his shoulders in company—I cannot describe it to you; so slight! so elegant! and he is all that a woman could desire. But who could be safe in any part of the earth, my dears, while papa will go about so, and behave so extraordinarily? I was at dinner at the embassy a month or two ago, and there was Admiral Combleman, then on the station off Lisbon, Sir Jackson Roseley’s friend, who was the admiral at Lymport formerly. I knew him at once, and thought, oh! what shall I do! My heart was like a lump of lead. I would have given worlds that we might have one of us smothered the other! I had to sit beside him—it always happens! Thank heaven! he did not identify me. And then he told an anecdote of papa. It was the dreadful old ‘Bath’ story. I thought I should have died. I could not but fancy the Admiral suspected. Was it not natural? And what do you think I had the audacity to do? I asked him coolly, whether the Mr. Harrington he mentioned was not the son of Sir Abraham Harrington, of Torquay,—the gentleman who lost his yacht in the Lisbon waters, last year? I brought it on myself. ‘Gentleman, ma’am,’—! says the horrid old creature, laughing,—‘gentleman! he’s a’ I cannot speak it: I choke! And then he began praising papa. Dio! what I suffered. But, you know, I can keep my countenance, if I perish. I am a Harrington as much as any of us!”

And the Countess looked superb in the pride with which she said she was what she would have given her hand not to be. But few feelings are single on this globe, and junction of sentiments need not imply unity in our yeasty compositions.

“After it was over—my supplice,” continued the Countess, “I was questioned by all the ladies—I mean our ladies—not your English. They wanted to know how I could be so civil to that intolerable man. I gained a deal of credit, my dears. I laid it all on—Diplomacy.” The Countess laughed bitterly. “Diplomacy bears the burden of it all. I pretended that Combleman could be useful to Silva. Oh! what hypocrites we all are!”

The ladies listening could not gainsay this favourite claim of universal brotherhood among the select who wear masks instead of faces.

With regard to Evan, the Countess had far outstripped her sisters in her views. A gentleman she had discovered must have one of two things—a title or money. He might have all the breeding in the world; he might be as good as an angel; but without a title or money he was under eclipse almost total. On a gentleman the sun must shine. Now, Evan had no title, no money. The clouds were thick above the youth. To gain a title he would have to scale aged mountains. There was one break in his firmament through which the radiant luminary might be assisted to cast its beams on him still young. That divine portal was matrimony. If he could but make a rich marriage he would blaze transfigured; all would be well! And why should not Evan marry an heiress, as well as another?

“I know a young creature who would exactly suit him,” said the Countess. “She is related to the embassy, and is in Lisbon now. A charming child—just sixteen! Dio! how the men rave about her! and she isn’t a beauty,—there’s the wonder; and she is a little too gauche—too English in her habits and ways of thinking; likes to be admired, of course, but doesn’t know yet how to set about getting it. She rather scandalises our ladies, but when you know her! She will have, they say, a hundred thousand pounds in her own right! Rose Jocelyn, the daughter of Sir Franks, and that eccentric Lady Jocelyn. She is with her uncle, Melville, the celebrated diplomate—though, to tell you the truth, we turn him round our fingers, and spin him as the boys used to do the cockchafers. I cannot forget our old Fallowfield school-life, you see, my dears. Well, Rose Jocelyn would just suit Evan. She is just of an age to receive an impression. And I would take care she did. Instance me a case where I have failed?

“Or there is the Portuguese widow, the Rostral. She’s thirty, certainly; but she possesses millions! Estates all over the kingdom, and the sweetest creature. But, no. Evan would be out of the way there, certainly. But—our women are very nice: they have the dearest, sweetest ways: but I would rather Evan did not marry one of them. And then there’s the religion!”

This was a sore of the Countess’s own, and she dropped a tear in coming across it.

“No, my dears, it shall be Rose Jocelyn!” she concluded: “I will take Evan over with me, and see that he has opportunities. It shall be Rose, and then I can call her mine; for in verity I love the child.”

It is not our part to dispute the Countess’s love for Miss Jocelyn; and we have only to add that Evan, unaware of the soft training he was to undergo, and the brilliant chance in store for him, offered no impediment to the proposition that he should journey to Portugal with his aunt (whose subtlest flattery was to tell him that she should