Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/193

 180 ‘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.

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