Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/420

 5, 1860.] With a vehement kick, Mr. Raikes despatched his ancient head-gear to the other end of the room. saying that he must have some wine, and would, and very disdainful was his look at Evan, when the latter attempted to reason him into economy. He ordered the wine; drank a glass, which coloured a new mood in him; and, affecting a practical manner, said:

“I confess I have been a little hurt with you, Harrington. You left me stranded on the desert isle. I thought myself abandoned. I thought I should never see anything but the lengthening of an endless bill on my landlady’s face—my sole planet. I was resigned till I heard my friend ‘to-lootl ’‘to-lootle’ [sic] this morning. He kindled recollection. I drank a pint of ale bang off to drown him, and still do feel the wretch’s dying kicks. But, hem! this is a tidy port, and that was a freshish sort of girl that you were riding with when we parted last! She laughs like the true metal. I suppose you know it’s the identical damsel I met the day before, and owe it to for the downs—I’ve a compliment ready made for her. Well, you can stick up to her now.”

“Will you speak seriously, Jack?” said Evan. “What is your idea of this letter?”

“I have,” returned Mr. Raikes, beginning to warm to his wine, “typified my ideas eloquently enough, Harrington, if you weren’t the prosiest old mortal that ever hood-winked Fortune. I tell you you may marry the girl: I kick out the crown of my hat. I can do no more.”

“You really think it written in good faith?”

“Look here.” Mr. Raikes put on a calmness. “You got up the other night, and said you were a tailor—a devotee of the cabbage and the goose. Why the notion didn’t strike me, is extraordinary—I ought to have known my man. However, the old gentleman who gave the supper—he’s evidently one of your beastly rich old ruffianly republicans—spent part of his time in America, I dare say. Put two and two together.”

“You’re too deep for me, Jack,” said Evan.

“Oh, you can afford to pun,” Jack pursued, painfully repressing his wrath at Evan’s dulness and luck.

But as Harrington desired plain prose, Mr. Raikes tamed his imagination to deliver it. He pointed distinctly at the old gentleman who gave the supper as the writer of the letter. Evan, in return, confided to him his history and present position, and Mr. Raikes, without cooling to his fortunate friend, became a trifle patronising.

“You said your father—I think I remember at old Cudford’s—was a cavalry officer, a bold dragoon?”

“I did,” replied Evan. “I told a lie.”

Mr. Raikes whistled. “That’s very wrong, you know, Harrington.”

“Yes. I’m more ashamed of the lie than of the fact. Oblige me by not reverting to the subject. To tell you the truth,” added Evan with frank bitterness, “I don’t like the name.”

Quoth Jack: “Truly it has a tang. I should have to drink at somebody else’s expense to get up the courage to call myself a sn— a shears-man, say.”

Evan had to bear with the sting of similar observations till he begged Jack to tell him the condition of his father, and the limit of the distance between them.

“Pardon me, pardon me,” said Jack. “I forget myself.”

Even firmly repeated his request for the information.

“He is an officer, Harrington.”

“In what regiment?”

“Government employ, friend Harrington.”

“Of course. Where?”

“In the Customs—high up.”

Mr. Raikes stooped from the announcement to plunge at Evan’s hand and shake it warmly, assuring him that he did not measure the difference between them; adding, with a significant nod, “We rank from our mother;” as if the Customs scarcely satisfied the Raikes-brood.

Then they talked over the singular letter uninterruptedly, and Evan, wanting money for the girl up-stairs, for Jack’s bill at the Green Dragon, and for his own immediate requirements, and with the bee buzzing of Rose in his ears: “She does not love you—she despises you,” consented ultimately to sign his name to it, and despatch Jack forthwith to Messrs. Grist, a prospect that brought wild outcries of “Alarums and Excursions!—hautboys!” from the dramatic reminiscences of Mr. John Raikes.

“You’ll find it’s an imposition,” said Evan, for having here signed the death-warrant of his love, he passionately hoped it might be moonshine.

“No more an imposition than it’s 50 of Virgil,” quoth the rejected usher.

“It must be a plot,” said Evan.

“It’s the best joke that will be made in my time,” said Mr. Raikes, rubbing his hands.

“And now listen to your luck,” said Evan, “I wish mine were like it!” and Jack heard of Lady Jocelyn’s offer. He heard also that the young lady he was to instruct was an heiress, and immediately inspected his garments, and showed the sacred necessity there was for him to refit in London, under the hands of scientific tailors. Evan then wrote him out an introduction to Mr. Goren, counted out the contents of his purse (which Jack had reduced in his study of the pastoral game of skittles, he confessed), and calculated in a niggardly way, how far it would go to supply Jack’s wants; sighing, as he did it, to think of Jack installed at Beckley Court, while Jack, comparing his luck with Evan’s, had discovered it to be dismally inferior.

“Oh, confound those bellows you keep blowing!” he exclaimed. “I wish to be decently polite, Harrington, but you annoy me. Excuse me, pray, but the most unexampled case of a lucky beggar that ever was known—and to hear him panting and ready to whimper—it’s outrageous. You’ve only to put up your name, and there you are—an independent gentleman! By Jingo! this isn’t such a dull world. John Raikes! thou livest in times. I feel warm in the sun of your prosperity, Harrington. Now listen to me. Propound thou no inquiries anywhere about the old fellow who gave the supper. Humour his whim—he won’t have it. All Fallowfield is paid to keep