Evan Harrington. Complete. George Meredith
delight.
‘Oh!’ she cried, clapping her hands, ‘there goes a dear old English gull! How I have wished to see him! I haven’t seen one for two years and seven months. When I ‘m at home, I ‘ll leave my window open all night, just to hear the rooks, when they wake in the morning. There goes another!’
She tossed up her nose again, exclaiming:
‘I ‘m sure I smell England nearer and nearer! I smell the fields, and the cows in them. I’d have given anything to be a dairy-maid for half an hour! I used to lie and pant in that stifling air among those stupid people, and wonder why anybody ever left England. Aren’t you glad to come back?’
This time the fair speaker lent her eyes to the question, and shut her lips; sweet, cold, chaste lips she had: a mouth that had not yet dreamed of kisses, and most honest eyes.
The young man felt that they were not to be satisfied by his own, and after seeking to fill them with a doleful look, which was immediately succeeded by one of superhuman indifference, he answered:
‘Yes! We shall soon have to part!’ and commenced tapping with his foot the cheerful martyr’s march.
Speech that has to be hauled from the depths usually betrays the effort. Listening an instant to catch the import of this cavernous gasp upon the brink of sound, the girl said:
‘Part? what do you mean?’
Apparently it required a yet vaster effort to pronounce an explanation. The doleful look, the superhuman indifference, were repeated in due order: sound, a little more distinct, uttered the words:
‘We cannot be as we have been, in England!’ and then the cheerful martyr took a few steps farther.
‘Why, you don’t mean to say you’re going to give me up, and not be friends with me, because we’ve come back to England?’ cried the girl in a rapid breath, eyeing him seriously.
Most conscientiously he did not mean it! but he replied with the quietest negative.
‘No?’ she mimicked him. ‘Why do you say “No” like that? Why are you so mysterious, Evan? Won’t you promise me to come and stop with us for weeks? Haven’t you said we would ride, and hunt, and fish together, and read books, and do all sorts of things?’
He replied with the quietest affirmative.
‘Yes? What does “Yes!” mean?’ She lifted her chest to shake out the dead-alive monosyllable, as he had done. ‘Why are you so singular this morning, Evan? Have I offended you? You are so touchy!’
The slur on his reputation for sensitiveness induced the young man to attempt being more explicit.
‘I mean,’ he said, hesitating; ‘why, we must part. We shall not see each other every day. Nothing more than that.’ And away went the cheerful martyr in sublimest mood.
‘Oh! and that makes you, sorry?’ A shade of archness was in her voice.
The girl waited as if to collect something in her mind, and was now a patronizing woman.
‘Why, you dear sentimental boy! You don’t suppose we could see each other every day for ever?’
It was perhaps the cruelest question that could have been addressed to the sentimental boy from her mouth. But he was a cheerful martyr!
‘You dear Don Doloroso!’ she resumed. ‘I declare if you are not just like those young Portugals this morning; and over there you were such a dear English fellow; and that’s why I liked you so much! Do change! Do, please, be lively, and yourself again. Or mind; I’ll call you Don Doloroso, and that shall be your name in England. See there!—that’s—that’s? what’s the name of that place? Hoy! Mr. Skerne!’ She hailed the boatswain, passing, ‘Do tell me the name of that place.’
Mr. Skerne righted about to satisfy her minutely, and then coming up to Evan, he touched his hat, and said:
‘I mayn’t have another opportunity—we shall be busy up there—of thankin’ you again, sir, for what you did for my poor drunken brother Bill, and you may take my word I won’t forget it, sir, if he does; and I suppose he’ll be drowning his memory just as he was near drowning himself.’
Evan muttered something, grimaced civilly, and turned away. The girl’s observant brows were moved to a faintly critical frown, and nodding intelligently to the boatswain’s remark, that the young gentleman did not seem quite himself, now that he was nearing home, she went up to Evan, and said:
‘I’m going to give you a lesson in manners, to be quits with you. Listen, sir. Why did you turn away so ungraciously from Mr. Skerne, while he was thanking you for having saved his brother’s life? Now there’s where you’re too English. Can’t you bear to be thanked?’
‘I don’t want to be thanked because I can swim,’ said Evan.
‘But it is not that. Oh, how you trifle!’ she cried. ‘There’s nothing vexes me so much as that way you have. Wouldn’t my eyes have sparkled if anybody had come up to me to thank me for such a thing? I would let them know how glad I was to have done such a thing! Doesn’t it make them happier, dear Evan?’
‘My dear Miss Jocelyn!’
‘What?’
The honest grey eyes fixed on him, narrowed their enlarged lids. She gazed before her on the deck, saying:
‘I’m sure I can’t understand you. I suppose it’s because I’m a girl, and I never shall till I’m a woman. Heigho!’
A youth who is engaged in the occupation of eating his heart, cannot shine to advantage, and is as much a burden to himself as he is an enigma to others. Evan felt this; but he could do nothing and say nothing; so he retired deeper into the folds of the Don, and remained picturesque and scarcely pleasant.
They were relieved by a summons to breakfast from below.
She brightened and laughed. ‘Now, what will you wager me, Evan, that the Countess doesn’t begin:
“Sweet child! how does she this morning? blooming?” when she kisses me?’
Her capital imitation of his sister’s manner constrained him to join in her laugh, and he said:
‘I’ll back against that, I get three fingers from your uncle, and “Morrow, young sir!”’
Down they ran together, laughing; and, sure enough, the identical words of the respective greetings were employed, which they had to enjoy with all the discretion they could muster.
Rose went round the table to her little cousin Alec, aged seven, kissed his reluctant cheek, and sat beside him, announcing a sea appetite and great capabilities, while Evan silently broke bread. The Count de Saldar, a diminutive tawny man, just a head and neck above the tablecloth, sat sipping chocolate and fingering dry toast, which he would now and then dip in jelly, and suck with placidity, in the intervals of a curt exchange of French with the wife of the Hon. Melville, a ringleted English lady, or of Portuguese with the Countess; who likewise sipped chocolate and fingered dry toast, and was mournfully melodious. The Hon. Melville, as became a tall islander, carved beef, and ate of it, like a ruler of men. Beautiful to see was the compassionate sympathy of the Countess’s face when Rose offered her plate for a portion of the world-subjugating viand, as who should say: ‘Sweet child! thou knowest not yet of sorrows, thou canst ballast thy stomach with beef!’ In any other than an heiress, she would probably have thought: ‘This is indeed a disgusting little animal, and most unfeminine conduct!’
Rose, unconscious of praise or blame, rivalled her uncle in enjoyment of the fare, and talked of her delight in seeing England again, and anything that belonged to her native land. Mrs. Melville perceived that it pained the refugee Countess, and gave her the glance intelligible; but the Countess never missed glances, or failed to interpret them. She said:
‘Let her. I love to hear the sweet child’s prattle.’
‘It was fortunate’ (she addressed the diplomatist) ‘that we touched at Southampton and procured fresh provision!’
‘Very lucky for US!’