Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/259

246 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