Evan Harrington. Complete. George Meredith
edifice; and his mother, upright and rigid, continuing, ‘You can live on anything, and they will wait, and call your father a rogue,’ he started, grievously bitten by one of the serpents of earth.
‘Good heaven, mother! what are you saying?’
‘That they will call your father a rogue, and will have a right to,’ said the relentless woman.
‘Not while I live!’ Evan exclaimed.
‘You may stop one mouth with your fist, but you won’t stop a dozen, Van.’
Evan jumped up and walked the room.
‘What am I to do?’ he cried. ‘I will pay everything. I will bind myself to pay every farthing. What more can I possibly do?’
‘Make the money,’ said Mrs. Mel’s deep voice.
Evan faced her: ‘My dear mother, you are very unjust and inconsiderate. I have been working and doing my best. I promise—what do the debts amount to?’
‘Something like L5000 in all, Van.’
‘Very well.’ Youth is not alarmed by the sound of big sums. ‘Very well—I will pay it.’
Evan looked as proud as if he had just clapped down the full amount on the table.
‘Out of the History of Portugal, half written, and the prospect of a Government appointment?’
Mrs. Mel raised her eyelids to him.
‘In time-in time, mother!’
‘Mention your proposal to the creditors when you meet them this day week,’ she said.
Neither of them spoke for several minutes. Then Evan came close to her, saying:
‘What is it you want of me, mother?’
‘I want nothing, Van—I can support myself.’
‘But what would you have me do, mother?’
‘Be honest; do your duty, and don’t be a fool about it.’
‘I will try,’ he rejoined. ‘You tell me to make the money. Where and how can I make it? I am perfectly willing to work.’
‘In this house,’ said Mrs. Mel; and, as this was pretty clear speaking, she stood up to lend her figure to it.
‘Here?’ faltered Evan. ‘What! be a –’
‘Tailor!’ The word did not sting her tongue.
‘I? Oh, that’s quite impossible!’ said Evan. And visions of leprosy, and Rose shrinking her skirts from contact with him, shadowed out and away in his mind.
‘Understand your choice!’ Mrs. Mel imperiously spoke. ‘What are brains given you for? To be played the fool with by idiots and women? You have L5000 to pay to save your father from being called a rogue. You can only make the money in one way, which is open to you. This business might produce a thousand pounds a-year and more. In seven or eight years you may clear your father’s name, and live better all the time than many of your bankrupt gentlemen. You have told the creditors you will pay them. Do you think they’re gaping fools, to be satisfied by a History of Portugal? If you refuse to take the business at once, they will sell me up, and quite right too. Understand your choice. There’s Mr. Goren has promised to have you in London a couple of months, and teach you what he can. He is a kind friend. Would any of your gentlemen acquaintance do the like for you? Understand your choice. You will be a beggar—the son of a rogue—or an honest man who has cleared his father’s name!’
During this strenuously uttered allocution, Mrs. Mel, though her chest heaved but faintly against her crossed hands, showed by the dilatation of her eyes, and the light in them, that she felt her words. There is that in the aspect of a fine frame breathing hard facts, which, to a youth who has been tumbled headlong from his card-castles and airy fabrics, is masterful, and like the pressure of a Fate. Evan drooped his head.
‘Now,’ said Mrs. Mel, ‘you shall have some supper.’
Evan told her he could not eat.
‘I insist upon your eating,’ said Mrs. Mel; ‘empty stomachs are foul counsellors.’
‘Mother! do you want to drive me mad?’ cried Evan.
She looked at him to see whether the string she held him by would bear the slight additional strain: decided not to press a small point.
‘Then go to bed and sleep on it,’ she said—sure of him—and gave her cheek for his kiss, for she never performed the operation, but kept her mouth, as she remarked, for food and speech, and not for slobbering mummeries.
Evan returned to his solitary room. He sat on the bed and tried to think, oppressed by horrible sensations of self-contempt, that caused whatever he touched to sicken him.
There were the Douglas and the Percy on the wall. It was a happy and a glorious time, was it not, when men lent each other blows that killed outright; when to be brave and cherish noble feelings brought honour; when strength of arm and steadiness of heart won fortune; when the fair stars of earth—sweet women—wakened and warmed the love of squires of low degree. This legacy of the dead man’s hand! Evan would have paid it with his blood; but to be in bondage all his days to it; through it to lose all that was dear to him; to wear the length of a loathed existence!—we should pardon a young man’s wretchedness at the prospect, for it was in a time before our joyful era of universal equality. Yet he never cast a shade of blame upon his father.
The hours moved on, and he found himself staring at his small candle, which struggled more and more faintly with the morning light, like his own flickering ambition against the facts of life.
CHAPTER VIII. INTRODUCES AN ECCENTRIC
At the Aurora—one of those rare antiquated taverns, smelling of comfortable time and solid English fare, that had sprung up in the great coffee days, when taverns were clubs, and had since subsisted on the attachment of steady bachelor Templars there had been dismay, and even sorrow, for a month. The most constant patron of the establishment—an old gentleman who had dined there for seven-and-twenty years, four days in the week, off dishes dedicated to the particular days, and had grown grey with the landlady, the cook, and the head-waiter—this old gentleman had abruptly withheld his presence. Though his name, his residence, his occupation, were things only to be speculated on at the Aurora, he was very well known there, and as men are best to be known: that is to say, by their habits. Some affection for him also was felt. The landlady looked on him as a part of the house. The cook and the waiter were accustomed to receive acceptable compliments from him monthly. His precise words, his regular ancient jokes, his pint of Madeira and after-pint of Port, his antique bow to the landlady, passing out and in, his method of spreading his table-napkin on his lap and looking up at the ceiling ere he fell to, and how he talked to himself during the repast, and indulged in short chuckles, and the one look of perfect felicity that played over his features when he had taken his first sip of Port—these were matters it pained them at the Aurora to have to remember.
For three weeks the resolution not to regard him as of the past was general. The Aurora was the old gentleman’s home. Men do not play truant from home at sixty years of age. He must, therefore, be seriously indisposed. The kind heart of the landlady fretted to think he might have no soul to nurse and care for him; but she kept his corner near the fire-place vacant, and took care that his pint of Madeira was there. The belief was gaining ground that he had gone, and that nothing but his ghost would ever sit there again. Still the melancholy ceremony continued: for the landlady was not without a secret hope, that in spite of his reserve and the mystery surrounding him, he would have sent her a last word. The cook and head-waiter, interrogated as to their dealings with the old gentleman, testified solemnly to the fact of their having performed their duty by him. They would not go against their interests so much as to forget one of his ways, they said-taking oath, as it were, by their lower nature, in order to be credited: an instinct men have of one another. The landlady could not contradict them, for the old gentleman had made no complaint; but then she called to memory that fifteen years back, in such and such a year, Wednesday’s, dish had been, by shameful oversight, furnished him for Tuesday’s,