THE DAUGHTERS OF THE SHEARS
Three daughters and a son were left to the world by Mr. Melchisedec.
Love, well endowed, had already claimed to provide for the daughters:
first in the shape of a lean Marine subaltern, whose days of
obscuration had now passed, and who had come to be a major of that
corps: secondly, presenting his addresses as a brewer of distinction:
thirdly, and for a climax, as a Portuguese Count: no other than the
Senor Silva Diaz, Conde de Saldar: and this match did seem a far more
resplendent one than that of the two elder sisters with Major Strike
and Mr. Andrew Cogglesby. But the rays of neither fell visibly on
Lymport. These escaped Eurydices never reappeared, after being once
fairly caught away from the gloomy realms of Dis, otherwise Trade. All
three persons of singular beauty, a certain refinement, some Port, and
some Presence, hereditarily combined, they feared the clutch of that
fell king, and performed the widest possible circles around him. Not
one of them ever approached the house of her parents. They were dutiful
and loving children, and wrote frequently; but of course they had to
consider their new position, and their husbands, and their husbands’
families, and the world, and what it would say, if to it the dreaded
rumour should penetrate! Lymport gossips, as numerous as in other
parts, declared that the foreign nobleman would rave in an
extraordinary manner, and do things after the outlandish fashion of his
country: for from him, there was no doubt, the shop had been most
successfully veiled, and he knew not of Pluto’s close relationship to
his lovely spouse.
The marriages had happened in this way. Balls are given in country
towns, where the graces of tradesmen’s daughters may be witnessed and
admired at leisure by other than tradesmen: by occasional country
gentlemen of the neighbourhood, with light minds: and also by small
officers: subalterns wishing to do tender execution upon man’s fair
enemy, and to find a distraction for their legs. The classes of our
social fabric have, here and there, slight connecting links, and
provincial public balls are one of these. They are dangerous, for Cupid
is no respecter of class-prejudice; and if you are the son of a retired
tea-merchant, or of a village doctor, or of a half-pay captain, or of
anything superior, and visit one of them, you are as likely to receive
his shot as any shopboy. Even masquerading lords at such places, have
been known to be slain outright; and although Society allows to its
highest and dearest to save the honour of their families, and heal
their anguish, by indecorous compromise, you, if you are a trifle below
that mark, must not expect it. You must absolutely give yourself for
what you hope to get. Dreadful as it sounds to philosophic ears, you
must marry. This, having danced with Caroline Harrington, the gallant
Lieutenant Strike determined to do. Nor, when he became aware of her
father’s occupation, did he shrink from his resolve. After a month’s
hard courtship, he married her straight out of her father’s house. That
he may have all the credit due to him, it must be admitted that he did
not once compare, or possibly permit himself to reflect on, the
dissimilarity in their respective ranks, and the step he had taken
downward, till they were man and wife: and then not in any great
degree, before Fortune had given him his majority; an advance the good
soldier frankly told his wife he did not owe to her. If we may be
permitted to suppose the colonel of a regiment on friendly terms with
one of his corporals, we have an estimate of the domestic life of Major
and Mrs. Strike. Among the garrison males, his comrades, he passed for
a disgustingly jealous brute.
The ladies, in their pretty language, signalized him as a “finick.”
Now, having achieved so capital a marriage, Caroline, worthy creature,
was anxious that her sisters should not be less happy, and would have
them to visit her, in spite of her husband’s protests.
“There can be no danger,” she said, for she was in fresh quarters, far
from the nest of contagion. The lieutenant himself ungrudgingly
declared that, looking on the ladies, no one for an instant could
suspect; and he saw many young fellows ready to be as great fools as he
had been: another voluntary confession he made to his wife; for the
candour of which she thanked him, and pointed out that it seemed to run
in the family; inasmuch as Mr. Andrew Cogglesby, his rich relative, had
seen and had proposed for Harriet. The lieutenant flatly said he would
never allow it. In fact he had hitherto concealed the non-presentable
portion of his folly very satisfactorily from all save the mess-room,
and Mr. Andrew’s passion was a severe dilemma to him. It need scarcely
be told that his wife, fortified by the fervid brewer, defeated him
utterly. What was more, she induced him to be an accomplice in
deception. For though the lieutenant protested that he washed his hands
of it, and that it was a fraud and a snare, he certainly did not avow
the condition of his wife’s parents to Mr. Andrew, but alluded to them
in passing as “the country people.” He supposed “the country people”
must be asked, he said. The brewer offered to go down to them. But the
lieutenant drew an unpleasant picture of the country people, and his
wife became so grave at the proposal, that Mr. Andrew said he wanted to
marry the lady and not the “country people,” and if she would have him,
there he was. There he was, behaving with a particular and sagacious
kindness to the raw lieutenant since Harriet’s arrival. If the
lieutenant sent her away, Mr. Andrew would infallibly pursue her, and
light on a discovery. Twice cursed by Love, twice the victim of
tailordom, our excellent Marine gave away Harriet Harrington in
marriage to Mr. Andrew Cogglesby.
Thus Joy clapped hands a second time, and Horror deepened its shadows.
From higher ground it was natural that the remaining sister should take
a bolder flight. Of the loves of the fair Louisa Harrington and the
foreign Count, and how she first encountered him in the brewer’s
saloons, and how she, being a humorous person, laughed at his “loaf”
for her, and wore the colours that pleased him, and kindled and soothed
his jealousy, little is known beyond the fact that she espoused the
Count, under the auspices of the affluent brewer, and engaged that her
children should be brought up in the faith of the Catholic Church:
which Lymport gossips called, paying the Devil for her pride.
The three sisters, gloriously rescued by their own charms, had now to
think of their one young brother. How to make him a gentleman! That was
their problem.
Preserve him from tailordom—from all contact with trade—they must;
otherwise they would be perpetually linked to the horrid thing they
hoped to outlive and bury. A cousin of Mr. Melchisedec’s had risen to
be an Admiral and a knight for valiant action in the old war, when men
could rise. Him they besought to take charge of the youth, and make a
distinguished seaman of him. He courteously declined. They then
attacked the married Marine—Navy or Army being quite indifferent to
them as long as they could win for their brother the badge of one
Service, “When he is a gentleman at once!” they said, like those who
see the end of their labours. Strike basely pretended to second them.
It would have been delightful to him, of course, to have the tailor’s
son messing at the same table, and claiming him when he pleased with a
familiar “Ah, brother!” and prating of their relationship everywhere.
Strike had been a fool: in revenge for it he laid out for himself a
masterly career of consequent wisdom. The brewer—uxorious Andrew
Cogglesby—might and would have bought the commission. Strike laughed at
the idea of giving money for what could be got for nothing. He told
them to wait.
In the meantime Evan, a lad of seventeen, spent the hours not devoted
to his positive profession—that of gentleman—in the offices of the
brewery, toying with big books and balances, which he despised with the
combined zeal of the sucking soldier and emancipated tailor.
Two years passed in attendance on the astute brother-in-law, to whom
Fortune now beckoned to come to her and gather his laurels from the
pig-tails. About the same time the Countess sailed over from Lisbon on
a visit to her sister Harriet (in reality, it was whispered in the
Cogglesby saloons, on a diplomatic mission from the Court of Lisbon;
but that could not be made ostensible). The Countess narrowly examined
Evan, whose steady advance in his profession both her sisters praised.
“Yes,” said the Countess, in a languid alien accent. “He has something
of his father’s carriage—something. Something of his delivery—his
readiness.”
It was a remarkable thing that these ladies thought no man on earth
like their father, and always cited him as the example of a perfect
gentleman, and yet they buried him with one mind, and each mounted
guard over his sepulchre, to secure his ghost from an airing.
“He can walk, my dears, certainly, and talk—a little. Tête-à-tête, I do
not say. I should think there he would be—a stick! All you English are.
But what sort of a bow has he got, I ask you? How does he enter a room?
And, then his smile! his laugh! He laughs like a horse—absolutely!
There’s no music in his smile. Oh! you should see a Portuguese nobleman
smile. Oh! Dios! honeyed, my dears! But Evan has it not. None of you
English have. You go so.”
The Countess pressed a thumb and finger to the sides of her mouth, and
set her sisters laughing.
“I assure you, no better! not a bit! I faint in your society. I ask
myself—Where am I? Among what boors have I fallen? But Evan is no worse
than the rest of you; I acknowledge that. If he knew how to dress his
shoulders properly, and to direct his eyes—Oh! the eyes! you should see
how a Portuguese nobleman can use his eyes! Soul! my dears, soul! Can
any of you look the unutterable without being absurd! You look so.”
And the Countess hung her jaw under heavily vacuous orbits, something
as a sheep might yawn.
“But I acknowledge that Evan is no worse than the rest of you,” she
repeated. “If he understood at all the management of his eyes and
mouth! But that’s what he cannot possibly learn in England—not
possibly! As for your poor husband, Harriet! one really has to remember
his excellent qualities to forgive him, poor man! And that stiff
bandbox of a man of yours, Caroline!” addressing the wife of the
Marine, “he looks as if he were all angles and sections, and were taken
to pieces every night and put together in the morning. He may be a good
soldier—good anything you will—but, Dios! to be married to that! He is
not civilized. None of you English are. You have no place in the
drawing-room. You are like so many intrusive oxen—absolutely! One of
your men trod on my toe the other night, and what do you think the
creature did? Jerks back, then the half of him forward—I thought he was
going to break in two—then grins, and grunts, ‘Oh! ’m sure, beg pardon,
’m sure!’ I don’t know whether he didn’t say, MA’AM!”
The Countess lifted her hands, and fell away in laughing horror. When
her humour, or her feelings generally, were a little excited, she spoke
her vernacular as her sisters did, but immediately subsided into the
deliberate delicately-syllabled drawl.
“Now that happened to me once at one of our great Balls,” she pursued.
“I had on one side of me the Duchesse Eugenia de Formosa de
Fontandigua; on the other sat the Countess de Pel, a widow. And we were
talking of the ices that evening. Eugenia, you must know, my dears, was
in love with the Count Belmaraña. I was her sole confidante. The
Countess de Pel—a horrible creature! Oh! she was the Duchess’s
determined enemy—would have stabbed her for Belmaraña, one of the most
beautiful men! Adored by every woman! So we talked ices, Eugenic and
myself, quite comfortably, and that horrible De Pel had no idea in
life! Eugenia had just said, ‘This ice sickens me! I do not taste the
flavour of the vanille.’ I answered, ‘It is here! It must—it cannot but
be here! You love the flavour of the vanille?’ With her exquisite
smile, I see her now saying, ‘Too well! it is necessary to me! I live
on it!’—when up he came. In his eagerness, his foot just effleured my
robe. Oh! I never shall forget! In an instant he was down on one knee
it was so momentary that none saw it but we three, and done with
ineffable grace. ‘Pardon!’ he said, in his sweet Portuguese; ‘Pardon!’
looking up—the handsomest man I ever beheld; and when I think of that
odious wretch the other night, with his ‘Oh! ’m sure, beg pardon, ’m
sure! ’pon my honour!’ I could have kicked him—I could, indeed!”
Here the Countess laughed out, but relapsed into:
“Alas! that Belmaraña should have betrayed that beautiful trusting
creature to De Pel. Such scandal! a duel!—the Duke was wounded. For a
whole year Eugenia did not dare to appear at Court, but had to remain
immured in her country-house, where she heard that Belmaraña had
married De Pel! It was for her money, of course. Rich as Croesus, and
as wicked as the black man below! as dear papa used to say. By the way,
weren’t we talking of Evan? Ah,—yes!”
And so forth. The Countess was immensely admired, and though her
sisters said that she was “foreignized” overmuch, they clung to her
desperately. She seemed so entirely to have eclipsed tailordom, or
“Demogorgon,” as the Countess was pleased to call it. Who could suppose
this grand-mannered lady, with her coroneted anecdotes and delicious
breeding, the daughter of that thing? It was not possible to suppose
it. It seemed to defy the fact itself.
They congratulated her on her complete escape from Demogorgon. The
Countess smiled on them with a lovely sorrow.
“Safe from the whisper, my dears; the ceaseless dread? If you knew what
I have to endure! I sometimes envy you. ’Pon my honour, I sometimes
wish I had married a fishmonger! Silva, indeed, is a most excellent
husband. Polished! such polish as you know not of in England. He has a
way—a wriggle with his shoulders in company—I cannot describe it to
you; so slight! so elegant! and he is all that a woman could desire.
But who could be safe in any part of the earth, my dears, while papa
will go about so, and behave so extraordinarily? I was at dinner at
your English embassy a month ago, and there was Admiral Combleman, then
on the station off Lisbon, Sir Jackson Racial’s friend, who was the
Admiral at Lymport formerly. I knew him at once, and thought, oh! what
shall I do! My heart was like a lump of lead. I would have given worlds
that we might one of us have smothered the other! I had to sit beside
him—it always happens! Thank heaven! he did not identify me. And then
he told an anecdote of Papa. It was the dreadful old ‘Bath’ story. I
thought I should have died. I could not but fancy the Admiral
suspected. Was it not natural? And what do you think I had the audacity
to do? I asked him coolly, whether the Mr. Harrington he mentioned was
not the son of Sir Abraham Harrington, of Torquay,—the gentleman who
lost his yacht in the Lisbon waters last year? I brought it on myself.
“Gentleman, ma’am,—MA’AM!” says the horrid old creature, laughing,
“gentleman! he’s a —— I cannot speak it: I choke!” And then he began
praising Papa. Dios! what I suffered. But, you know, I can keep my
countenance, if I perish. I am a Harrington as much as any of us!”
And the Countess looked superb in the pride with which she said she was
what she would have given her hand not to be. But few feelings are
single on this globe, and junction of sentiments need not imply unity
in our yeasty compositions.
“After it was over—my supplice,” continued the Countess, “I was
questioned by all the ladies—I mean our ladies—not your English. They
wanted to know how I could be so civil to that intolerable man. I
gained a deal of credit, my dears. I laid it all on—Diplomacy.” The
Countess laughed bitterly. “Diplomacy bears the burden of it all. I
pretended that Combleman could be useful to Silva! Oh! what hypocrites
we all are!”
The ladies listening could not gainsay this favourite claim of
universal brotherhood among the select who wear masks instead of faces.
With regard to Evan, the Countess had far outstripped her sisters in
her views. A gentleman she had discovered must have one of two things—a
title or money. He might have all the breeding in the world; he might
be as good as an angel; but without a title or money he was under
eclipse almost total. On a gentleman the sun must shine. Now, Evan had
no title, no money. The clouds were thick above the youth. To gain a
title he would have to scale aged mountains. There was one break in his
firmament through which the radiant luminary might be assisted to cast
its beams on him still young. That divine portal was matrimony. If he
could but make a rich marriage he would blaze transfigured; all would
be well! And why should not Evan marry an heiress, as well as another?
“I know a young creature who would exactly suit him,” said the
Countess. “She is related to the embassy, and is in Lisbon now. A
charming child—just sixteen! Dios! how the men rave about her! and she
isn’t a beauty,—there’s the wonder; and she is a little too gauche—too
English in her habits and ways of thinking; likes to be admired, of
course, but doesn’t know yet how to set about getting it. She rather
scandalizes our ladies, but when you know her!—She will have, they say,
a hundred thousand pounds in her own right! Rose Jocelyn, the daughter
of Sir Franks, and that eccentric Lady Jocelyn. She is with her uncle,
Melville, the celebrated diplomate though, to tell you the truth, we
turn him round our fingers, and spin him as the boys used to do the
cockchafers. I cannot forget our old Fallowfield school-life, you see,
my dears. Well, Rose Jocelyn would just suit Evan. She is just of an
age to receive an impression. And I would take care she did. Instance
me a case where I have failed?
“Or there is the Portuguese widow, the Rostral. She’s thirty,
certainly; but she possesses millions! Estates all over the kingdom,
and the sweetest creature. But, no. Evan would be out of the way there,
certainly. But—our women are very nice: they have the dearest, sweetest
ways: but I would rather Evan did not marry one of them. And then
there’s the religion!”
This was a sore of the Countess’s own, and she dropped a tear in coming
across it.
“No, my dears, it shall be Rose Jocelyn!” she concluded: “I will take
Evan over with me, and see that he has opportunities. It shall be Rose,
and then I can call her mine; for in verity I love the child.”
It is not my part to dispute the Countess’s love for Miss Jocelyn; and
I have only to add that Evan, unaware of the soft training he was to
undergo, and the brilliant chance in store for him, offered no
impediment to the proposition that he should journey to Portugal with
his sister (whose subtlest flattery was to tell him that she should not
be ashamed to own him there); and ultimately, furnished with cash for
the trip by the remonstrating brewer, went.
So these Parcae, daughters of the shears, arranged and settled the
young man’s fate. His task was to learn the management of his mouth,
how to dress his shoulders properly, and to direct his eyes—rare
qualities in man or woman, I assure you; the management of the mouth
being especially admirable, and correspondingly difficult. These
achieved, he was to place his battery in position, and win the heart
and hand of an heiress.
Our comedy opens with his return from Portugal, in company with Miss
Rose, the heiress; the Honourable Melville Jocelyn, the diplomate; and
the Count and Countess de Saldar, refugees out of that explosive little
kingdom.