MOTHER AND SON
Rare as epic song is the man who is thorough in what he does. And
happily so; for in life he subjugates us, and he makes us bondsmen to
his ashes. It was in the order of things that the great Mel should be
borne to his final resting-place by a troop of creditors. You have seen
(since the occasion demands a pompous simile) clouds that all day cling
about the sun, and, in seeking to obscure him, are compelled to blaze
in his livery at fall of night they break from him illumined, hang
mournfully above him, and wear his natural glories long after he is
gone. Thus, then, these worthy fellows, faithful to him to the dust,
fulfilled Mel’s triumphant passage amongst them, and closed his career.
To regale them when they returned, Mrs. Mel, whose mind was not intent
on greatness, was occupied in spreading meat and wine. Mrs. Fiske
assisted her, as well as she could, seeing that one hand was entirely
engaged by her handkerchief. She had already stumbled, and dropped a
glass, which had brought on her sharp condemnation from her aunt, who
bade her sit down, or go upstairs to have her cry out, and then return
to be serviceable.
“Oh! I can’t help it!” sobbed Mrs. Fiske. “That he should be carried
away, and none of his children to see him the last time! I can
understand Louisa—and Harriet, too, perhaps? But why could not
Caroline? And that they should be too fine ladies to let their brother
come and bury his father. Oh! it does seem——”
Mrs. Fiske fell into a chair, and surrendered to grief.
“Where is the cold tongue?” said Mrs. Mel to Sally, the maid, in a
brief under-voice.
“Please mum, Jacko——!”
“He must be whipped. You are a careless slut.”
“Please, I can’t think of everybody and everything, and poor master——”
Sally plumped on a seat, and took sanctuary under her apron. Mrs. Mel
glanced at the pair, continuing her labour.
“Oh, aunt, aunt!” cried Mrs. Fiske, “why didn’t you put it off for
another day, to give Evan a chance?”
“Master’d have kept another two days, he would!” whimpered Sally.
“Oh, aunt! to think!” cried Mrs. Fiske.
“And his coffin not bearin’ of his spurs!” whimpered Sally.
Mrs. Mel interrupted them by commanding Sally to go to the
drawing-room, and ask a lady there, of the name of Mrs. Wishaw, whether
she would like to have some lunch sent up to her. Mrs. Fiske was
requested to put towels in Evan’s bedroom.
“Yes, aunt, if you’re not infatuated!” said Mrs. Fiske, as she prepared
to obey; while Sally, seeing that her public exhibition of sorrow and
sympathy could be indulged but an instant longer, unwound herself for a
violent paroxysm, blurting between stops:
“If he’d ony’ve gone to his last bed comfortable!... If he’d ony’ve
been that decent as not for to go to his last bed with his clothes on!
... If he’d ony’ve had a comfortable sheet!... It makes a woman feel
cold to think of him full dressed there, as if he was goin’ to be a
soldier on the Day o’ Judgement!”
To let people speak was a maxim of Mrs. Mel’s, and a wise one for any
form of society when emotions are very much on the surface. She
continued her arrangements quietly, and, having counted the number of
plates and glasses, and told off the guests on her fingers, she, sat
down to await them.
The first one who entered the room was her son.
“You have come,” said Mrs. Mel, flushing slightly, but otherwise
outwardly calm.
“You didn’t suppose I should stay away from you, mother?”
Evan kissed her cheek.
“I knew you would not.”
Mrs. Mel examined him with those eyes of hers that compassed objects in
a single glance. She drew her finger on each side of her upper lip, and
half smiled, saying:
“That won’t do here.”
“What?” asked Evan, and proceeded immediately to make inquiries about
her health, which she satisfied with a nod.
“You saw him lowered, Van?”
“Yes, mother.”
“Then go and wash yourself, for you are dirty, and then come and take
your place at the head of the table.”
“Must I sit here, mother?”
“Without a doubt—you must. You know your room. Quick!”
In this manner their first interview passed.
Mrs. Fiske rushed in to exclaim:
“So, you were right, aunt—he has come. I met him on the stairs. Oh! how
like dear uncle Mel he looks, in the militia, with that moustache. I
just remember him as a child; and, oh, what a gentleman he is!”
At the end of the sentence Mrs. Mel’s face suddenly darkened: she said,
in a deep voice:
“Don’t dare to talk that nonsense before him, Ann.”
Mrs. Fiske looked astonished.
“What have I done, aunt?”
“He shan’t be ruined by a parcel of fools,” said Mrs. Mel. “There, go!
Women have no place here.”
“How the wretches can force themselves to touch a morsel, after this
morning!” Mrs. Fiske exclaimed, glancing at the table.
“Men must eat,” said Mrs. Mel.
The mourners were heard gathering outside the door. Mrs. Fiske escaped
into the kitchen. Mrs. Mel admitted them into the parlour, bowing much
above the level of many of the heads that passed her.
Assembled were Messrs. Barnes, Kilne, and Grossby, whom we know; Mr.
Doubleday, the ironmonger; Mr. Joyce, the grocer; Mr. Perkins, commonly
called Lawyer Perkins; Mr. Welbeck, the pier-master of Lymport;
Bartholomew Fiske; Mr. Coxwell, a Fallowfield maltster, brewer, and
farmer; creditors of various dimensions, all of them. Mr. Goren coming
last, behind his spectacles.
“My son will be with you directly, to preside,” said Mrs. Mel. “Accept
my thanks for the respect you have shown my husband. I wish you good
morning.”
“Morning, ma’am,” answered several voices, and Mrs. Mel retired.
The mourners then set to work to relieve their hats of the appendages
of crape. An undertaker’s man took possession of the long black cloaks.
The gloves were generally pocketed.
“That’s my second black pair this year,” said Joyce.
“They’ll last a time to come. I don’t need to buy gloves while
neighbours pop off.”
“Undertakers’ gloves seem to me as if they’re made for mutton fists,”
remarked Welbeck; upon which Kilne nudged Barnes, the butcher, with a
sharp “Aha!” and Barnes observed:
“Oh! I never wear ’em—they does for my boys on Sundays. I smoke a pipe
at home.”
The Fallowfield farmer held his length of crape aloft and inquired:
“What shall do with this?”
“Oh, you keep it,” said one or two.
Coxwell rubbed his chin. “Don’t like to rob the widder.”
“What’s left goes to the undertaker?” asked Grossby.
“To be sure,” said Barnes; and Kilne added: “It’s a job”: Lawyer
Perkins ejaculating confidently, “Perquisites of office, gentlemen;
perquisites of office!” which settled the dispute and appeased every
conscience.
A survey of the table ensued. The mourners felt hunger, or else thirst;
but had not, it appeared, amalgamated the two appetites as yet. Thirst
was the predominant declaration; and Grossby, after an examination of
the decanters, unctuously deduced the fact, which he announced, that
port and sherry were present.
“Try the port,” said Kilne.
“Good?” Barnes inquired.
A very intelligent “I ought to know,” with a reserve of regret at the
extension of his intimacy with the particular vintage under that roof,
was winked by Kilne.
Lawyer Perkins touched the arm of a mourner about to be experimental on
Kilne’s port—
“I think we had better wait till young Mr. Harrington takes the table,
don’t you see?”
“Yes,-ah!” croaked Goren. “The head of the family, as the saying goes!”
“I suppose we shan’t go into business to-day?” Joyce carelessly
observed.
Lawyer Perkins answered:
“No. You can’t expect it. Mr. Harrington has led me to anticipate that
he will appoint a day. Don’t you see?”
“Oh! I see,” returned Joyce. “I ain’t in such a hurry. What’s he
doing?”
Doubleday, whose propensities were waggish, suggested “shaving,” but
half ashamed of it, since the joke missed, fell to as if he were
soaping his face, and had some trouble to contract his jaw.
The delay in Evan’s attendance on the guests of the house was caused by
the fact that Mrs. Mel had lain in wait for him descending, to warn him
that he must treat them with no supercilious civility, and to tell him
partly the reason why. On hearing the potential relations in which they
stood toward the estate of his father, Evan hastily and with the
assurance of a son of fortune, said they should be paid.
“That’s what they would like to hear,” said Mrs. Mel. “You may just
mention it when they’re going to leave. Say you will fix a day to meet
them.”
“Every farthing!” pursued Evan, on whom the tidings were beginning to
operate. “What! debts? my poor father!”
“And a thumping sum, Van. You will open your eyes wider.”
“But it shall be paid, mother,—it shall be paid. Debts? I hate them.
I’d slave night and day to pay them.”
Mrs. Mel spoke in a more positive tense: “And so will I, Van. Now, go.”
It mattered little to her what sort of effect on his demeanour her
revelation produced, so long as the resolve she sought to bring him to
was nailed in his mind; and she was a woman to knock and knock again,
till it was firmly fixed there. With a strong purpose, and no plans,
there were few who could resist what, in her circle, she willed; not
even a youth who would gaily have marched to the scaffold rather than
stand behind a counter. A purpose wedded to plans may easily suffer
shipwreck; but an unfettered purpose that moulds circumstances as they
arise, masters us, and is terrible. Character melts to it, like metal
in the steady furnace. The projector of plots is but a miserable
gambler and votary of chances. Of a far higher quality is the will that
can subdue itself to wait, and lay no petty traps for opportunity.
Poets may fable of such a will, that it makes the very heavens conform
to it; or, I may add, what is almost equal thereto, one who would be a
gentleman, to consent to be a tailor. The only person who ever held in
his course against Mrs. Mel, was Mel,—her husband; but, with him, she
was under the physical fascination of her youth, and it never left her.
In her heart she barely blamed him. What he did, she took among other
inevitable matters.
The door closed upon Evan, and waiting at the foot, of the stairs a
minute to hear how he was received, Mrs. Mel went to the kitchen and
called the name of Dandy, which brought out an ill-built, low-browed,
small man, in a baggy suit of black, who hopped up to her with a surly
salute. Dandy was a bird Mrs. Mel had herself brought down, and she had
for him something of a sportsman’s regard for his victim. Dandy was the
cleaner of boots and runner of errands in the household of Melchisedec,
having originally entered it on a dark night by the cellar. Mrs. Mel,
on that occasion, was sleeping in her dressing-gown, to be ready to
give the gallant night-hawk, her husband, the service he might require
on his return to the nest. Hearing a suspicious noise below, she rose,
and deliberately loaded a pair of horse-pistols, weapons Mel had worn
in his holsters in the heroic days gone; and with these she stepped
downstairs straight to the cellar, carrying a lantern at her girdle.
She could not only load, but present and fire. Dandy was foremost in
stating that she called him forth steadily, three times, before the
pistol was discharged. He admitted that he was frightened, and
incapable of speech, at the apparition of the tall, terrific woman.
After the third time of asking he had the ball lodged in his leg and
fell. Mrs. Mel was in the habit of bearing heavier weights than Dandy.
She made no ado about lugging him to a chamber, where, with her own
hands (for this woman had some slight knowledge of surgery, and was
great in herbs and drugs) she dressed his wound, and put him to bed;
crying contempt (ever present in Dandy’s memory) at such a poor
creature undertaking the work of housebreaker. Taught that he really
was a poor creature for the work, Dandy, his nursing over, begged to be
allowed to stop and wait on Mrs. Mel; and she who had, like many strong
natures, a share of pity for the objects she despised, did not cast him
out. A jerk in his gait, owing to the bit of lead Mrs. Mel had dropped
into him, and a little, perhaps, to her self-satisfied essay in
surgical science on his person, earned him the name he went by.
When her neighbours remonstrated with her for housing a reprobate, Mrs.
Mel would say: “Dandy is well-fed and well-physicked: there’s no harm
in Dandy”; by which she may have meant that the food won his gratitude,
and the physic reduced his humours. She had observed human nature. At
any rate, Dandy was her creature; and the great Mel himself rallied her
about her squire.
“When were you drunk last?” was Mrs. Mel’s address to Dandy, as he
stood waiting for orders.
He replied to it in an altogether injured way:
“There, now; you’ve been and called me away from my dinner to ask me
that. Why, when I had the last chance, to be sure.”
“And you were at dinner in your new black suit?”
“Well,” growled Dandy, “I borrowed Sally’s apron. Seems I can’t please
ye.”
Mrs. Mel neither enjoined nor cared for outward forms of respect, where
she was sure of complete subserviency. If Dandy went beyond the limits,
she gave him an extra dose. Up to the limits he might talk as he
pleased, in accordance with Mrs. Mel’s maxim, that it was a necessary
relief to all talking creatures.
“Now, take off your apron,” she said, “and wash your hands, dirty pig,
and go and wait at table in there”; she pointed to the parlour-door:
“Come straight to me when everybody has left.”
“Well, there I am with the bottles again,” returned Dandy. “It’s your
fault this time, mind! I’ll come as straight as I can.”
Dandy turned away to perform her bidding, and Mrs. Mel ascended to the
drawing-room to sit with Mrs. Wishaw, who was, as she told all who
chose to hear, an old flame of Mel’s, and was besides, what Mrs. Mel
thought more of, the wife of Mel’s principal creditor, a wholesale
dealer in cloth, resident in London.
The conviviality of the mourners did not disturb the house. Still, men
who are not accustomed to see the colour of wine every day, will sit
and enjoy it, even upon solemn occasions, and the longer they sit the
more they forget the matter that has brought them together. Pleading
their wives and shops, however, they released Evan from his miserable
office late in the afternoon.
His mother came down to him,—and saying, “I see how you did the
journey—you walked it,” told him to follow her.
“Yes, mother,” Evan yawned, “I walked part of the way. I met a fellow
in a gig about ten miles out of Fallowfield, and he gave me a lift to
Flatsham. I just reached Lymport in time, thank Heaven! I wouldn’t have
missed that! By the way, I’ve satisfied these men.”
“Oh!” said Mrs. Mel.
“They wanted—one or two of them—what a penance it is to have to sit
among those people an hour!—they wanted to ask me about the business,
but I silenced them. I told them to meet me here this day week.”
Mrs. Mel again said “Oh!” and, pushing into one of the upper rooms,
“Here’s your bedroom, Van, just as you left it.”
“Ah, so it is,” muttered Evan, eyeing a print. “The Douglas and the
Percy: ‘he took the dead man by the hand.’ What an age it seems since I
last saw that. There’s Sir Hugh Montgomery on horseback—he hasn’t
moved. Don’t you remember my father calling it the Battle of
Tit-for-Tat? Gallant Percy! I know he wished he had lived in those days
of knights and battles.”
“It does not much signify whom one has to make clothes for,” observed
Mrs. Mel. Her son happily did not mark her.
“I think we neither of us were made for the days of pence and pounds,”
he continued. “Now, mother, sit down, and talk to me about him. Did he
mention me? Did he give me his blessing? I hope he did not suffer. I’d
have given anything to press his hand,” and looking wistfully at the
Percy lifting the hand of Douglas dead, Evan’s eyes filled with big
tears.
“He suffered very little,” returned Mrs. Mel, “and his last words were
about you.”
“What were they?” Evan burst out.
“I will tell you another time. Now undress, and go to bed. When I talk
to you, Van, I want a cool head to listen. You do nothing but yawn
yard-measures.”
The mouth of the weary youth instinctively snapped short the abhorred
emblem.
“Here, I will help you, Van.”
In spite of his remonstrances and petitions for talk, she took off his
coat and waistcoat, contemptuously criticizing the cloth of foreign
tailors and their absurd cut.
“Have you heard from Louisa?” asked Evan.
“Yes, yes—about your sisters by-and-by. Now, be good, and go to bed.”
She still treated him like a boy, whom she was going to force to the
resolution of a man.
Dandy’s sleeping-room was on the same floor as Evan’s. Thither, when
she had quitted her son, she directed her steps. She had heard Dandy
tumble up-stairs the moment his duties were over, and knew what to
expect when the bottles had been in his way; for drink made Dandy
savage, and a terror to himself. It was her command to him that, when
he happened to come across liquor, he should immediately seek his
bedroom and bolt the door, and Dandy had got the habit of obeying her.
On this occasion he was vindictive against her, seeing that she had
delivered him over to his enemy with malice prepense. A good deal of
knocking, and summoning of Dandy by name, was required before she was
admitted, and the sight of her did not delight him, as he testified.
“I’m drunk!” he bawled. “Will that do for ye?”
Mrs. Mel stood with her two hands crossed above her apron-string,
noting his sullen lurking eye with the calm of a tamer of beasts.
“You go out of the room; I’m drunk!” Dandy repeated, and pitched
forward on the bed-post, in the middle of an oath.
She understood that it was pure kindness on Dandy’s part to bid her go
and be out of his reach; and therefore, on his becoming so abusive as
to be menacing, she, without a shade of anger, and in the most
unruffled manner, administered to him the remedy she had reserved, in
the shape of a smart box on the ear, which sent him flat to the floor.
He rose, after two or three efforts, quite subdued.
“Now, Dandy, sit on the edge of the bed.”
Dandy sat on the extreme edge, and Mrs. Mel pursued:
“Now, Dandy, tell me what your master said at the table.”
“Talked at ’em like a lord, he did,” said Dandy, stupidly consoling the
boxed ear.
“What were his words?”
Dandy’s peculiarity was, that he never remembered anything save when
drunk, and Mrs. Mel’s dose had rather sobered him. By degrees,
scratching at his head haltingly, he gave the context.
“‘Gentlemen, I hear for the first time, you’ve claims against my poor
father. Nobody shall ever say he died, and any man was the worse for
it. I’ll meet you next week, and I’ll bind myself by law. Here’s Lawyer
Perkins. No; Mr. Perkins. I’ll pay off every penny. Gentlemen, look
upon me as your debtor, and not my father.’”
Delivering this with tolerable steadiness, Dandy asked, “Will that do?”
“That will do,” said Mrs. Mel. “I’ll send you up some tea presently.
Lie down, Dandy.”
The house was dark and silent when Evan, refreshed by his rest,
descended to seek his mother. She was sitting alone in the parlour.
With a tenderness which Mrs. Mel permitted rather than encouraged, Evan
put his arm round her neck, and kissed her many times. One of the
symptoms of heavy sorrow, a longing for the signs of love, made Evan
fondle his mother, and bend over her yearningly. Mrs. Mel said once:
“Dear Van; good boy!” and quietly sat through his caresses.
“Sitting up for me, mother?” he whispered.
“Yes, Van; we may as well have our talk out.”
“Ah!” he took a chair close by her side, “tell me my father’s last
words.”
“He said he hoped you would never be a tailor.”
Evan’s forehead wrinkled up. “There’s not much fear of that, then!”
His mother turned her face on him, and examined him with a rigorous
placidity; all her features seeming to bear down on him. Evan did not
like the look.
“You object to trade, Van?”
“Yes, decidedly, mother—hate it; but that’s not what I want to talk to
you about. Didn’t my father speak of me much?”
“He desired that you should wear his militia sword, if you got a
commission.”
“I have rather given up hope of the Army,” said Evan.
Mrs. Mel requested him to tell her what a colonel’s full pay amounted
to; and again, the number of years it required, on a rough calculation,
to attain that grade. In reply to his statement she observed: “A tailor
might realize twice the sum in a quarter of the time.”
“What if he does—double, or treble?” cried Evan, impetuously; and to
avoid the theme, and cast off the bad impression it produced on him, he
rubbed his hands, and said: “I want to talk to you about my prospects,
mother.”
“What are they?” Mrs. Mel inquired.
The severity of her mien and sceptical coldness of her speech caused
him to inspect them suddenly, as if she had lent him her eyes. He put
them by, till the gold should recover its natural shine, saying: “By
the way, mother, I’ve written the half of a History of Portugal.”
“Have you?” said Mrs. Mel. “For Louisa?”
“No, mother, of course not: to sell it. Albuquerque! what a splendid
fellow he was!”
Informing him that he knew she abominated foreign names, she said: “And
your prospects are, writing Histories of Portugal?”
“No, mother. I was going to tell you, I expect a Government
appointment. Mr. Jocelyn likes my work—I think he likes me. You know, I
was his private secretary for ten months.”
“You write a good hand,” his mother interposed.
“And I’m certain I was born for diplomacy.”
“For an easy chair, and an ink-dish before you, and lacqueys behind.
What’s to be your income, Van?”
Evan carelessly remarked that he must wait and see.
“A very proper thing to do,” said Mrs. Mel; for now that she had fixed
him to some explanation of his prospects, she could condescend in her
stiff way to banter.
Slightly touched by it, Evan pursued, half laughing, as men do who wish
to propitiate common sense on behalf of what seems tolerably absurd:
“It’s not the immediate income, you know, mother: one thinks of one’s
future. In the diplomatic service, as Louisa says, you come to be known
to Ministers gradually, I mean. That is, they hear of you; and if you
show you have some capacity—Louisa wants me to throw it up in time, and
stand for Parliament. Andrew, she thinks, would be glad to help me to
his seat. Once in Parliament, and known to Ministers, you—your career
is open to you.”
In justice to Mr. Evan Harrington, it must be said, he built up this
extraordinary card-castle to dazzle his mother’s mind: he had lost his
right grasp of her character for the moment, because of an undefined
suspicion of something she intended, and which sent him himself to take
refuge in those flimsy structures; while the very altitude he reached
beguiled his imagination, and made him hope to impress hers.
Mrs. Mel dealt it one fillip. “And in the meantime how are you to live,
and pay the creditors?”
Though Evan answered cheerfully, “Oh, they will wait, and I can live on
anything,” he was nevertheless floundering on the ground amid the ruins
of the superb 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 £5000 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
£5000 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.