Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/309

 296 like a dog receiving a stroke while his attention is taken by a bone.

“If the choice were offered me, I think I would rather have known his father,” said the smiling fellow, yawning, and rocking on his chair.

“You would, possibly, have been exceedingly intimate—with his right foot,” said Jack.

The other merely remarked: “Oh! that is the language of the son of a gentleman.”

Jack’s evident pugnacity behind his insolence, astonished Evan, as the youth was not famed for bravery at school; but this is what dignity and ale do for us in the world.

The tumult of irony, abuse, and retort, went on despite the efforts of Drummond and the chairman. It was strange; for at farmer Broadmead’s end of the table, friendship had grown maudlin: two were seen in a drowsy embrace, with crossed pipes; and others were vowing deep amity, and offering to fight the man that might desire it.

“Are ye a friend? or are ye a foe?” was heard repeatedly, and consequences to the career of the respondent, on his choice of affirmatives to either of these two interrogations, emphatically detailed. It was likewise asked, in reference to the row at the gentlemen’s end; “Why doan’ they stand up and have’t out?”

“They talks, they speechifies—why doan’ they fight for’t, and then be friendly?”

“Where’s the yarmony, Mr. Chair, I axes—so please ye?” sang out farmer Broadmead.

“Ay, ay! Silence!” the chairman called.

Mr. Raikes begged permission to pronounce his excuses, but lapsed into a lamentation for the squandering of property bequeathed to him by his respected uncle, and for which—as far as he was intelligible—he persisted in calling the three offensive young cricketers opposite to account.

Before he could desist, Harmony, no longer coy, burst on the assembly from three different sources. “A Man who is given to Liquor,” soared aloft with “The Maid of sweet Seventeen,” who participated in the adventures of “Young Molly and the Kicking Cow;” while the guests selected the chorus of the song that first demanded it.

Evan probably thought that Harmony was herself only when she came single, or he was wearied of his fellows, and wished to gaze a moment on the skies whose arms were over and around his young beloved. He went to the window and threw it up, and feasted his sight on the moon standing on the downs. He could have wept at the bitter ignominy that severed him from Rose. And again he gathered his pride as a cloak, and defied the world, and gloried in the sacrifice that degraded him. The beauty of the night touched him, and mixed these feelings with a strange mournfulness. He quite forgot the bellow and clatter behind. The beauty of the night, and heaven knows what treacherous hope in the depths of his soul, coloured existence very warmly.

He was roused from his reverie by an altercation unmistakeably fierce.

Mr. Raikes had been touched on a tender point. In reply to a bantering remark of his, Laxley had hummed a list of Claret and Rhenish: “Liebfraumilch—Johannisberg—Asmannshauser—Steinberg—Chateau Margaux—La Rose—Lafitte,” over and again, amid the chuckles of his comrades, and Mr. Raikes, unfortunately at a loss for a biting retort, was reduced to that plain confession of a lack of wit: he offered combat.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Laxley, “I never soil my hands with a blackguard, and a fellow who tries to make fun of Scripture, in my opinion is one. A blackguard—do you hear? But, if you’ll give me satisfactory proofs that you really are what I have some difficulty in believing—the son of a gentleman—I’ll meet you when and where you please, sir.”

“Fight him, anyhow,” said Harry. “I’ll take him myself after we finish the match to-morrow.”

Laxley rejoined that Mr. Raikes must be left to him.

“Then I’ll take the other,” said Harry. “Where is he?”

Evan walked round to his place.

“I am here,” he answered, “and at your service.”

“Will you fight?” cried Harry.

There was a disdainful smile on Evan’s mouth, as he replied: “I must first enlighten you. I have no pretentions to blue blood, or yellow. If, sir, you will deign to challenge a man who is not the son of a gentleman, and consider the expression of his thorough contempt for your conduct sufficient to enable you to overlook that fact, you may dispose of me. My friend here has, it seems, reason to be proud of his connections. That you may not subsequently bring the charge against me of having led you to ‘soil your hands’—as your friend there terms it—I, with all the willingness in the world to chastise you or him for your impertinence, must—as I conceive I am bound to do—first give you a fair chance of escape, by telling you that my father was a tailor, and that I also am a tailor.”

The countenance of Mr. Raikes at the conclusion of this speech was a painful picture. He knocked the table passionately, exclaiming:

“Who’d have thought it?”

Indeed, Evan could not have mentioned it, but for the ale. It was the ale in him expelling truth; and certainly, to look at him, none would have thought it.

“That will do,” said Laxley, lacking the magnanimity to despise the advantage given him, “you have chosen the very best means of saving your skins.”

“We’ll come to you when our supply of clothes runs short,” added Harry. “A snip!”

“Pardon me,” said Evan, with his eyes slightly widening, “but if you come to me, I shall no longer give you a choice of behaviour. I wish you good-night, gentlemen. I shall be in this house, and am to be found here, till ten o’clock to-morrow morning. Sir,” he addressed the chairman, “I must apologise to you for this interruption to your kindness, for which I thank you, very sincerely. It’s ‘good-night,’ now, sir,” pursued, bowing, and holding out his hand, with a smile.

The chairman grasped it: “You’re a hot-headed young fool, sir: you’re an ill-tempered