IN THE DOMAIN OF TAILORDOM
There was peace in Mr. Goren’s shop. Badgered Ministers, bankrupt
merchants, diplomatists with a headache—any of our modern grandees
under difficulties, might have envied that peace over which Mr. Goren
presided: and he was an enviable man. He loved his craft, he believed
that he had not succeeded the millions of antecedent tailors in vain;
and, excepting that trifling coquetry with shirt-fronts, viz., the red
crosses, which a shrewd rival had very soon eclipsed by representing
nymphs triangularly posed, he devoted himself to his business from
morning to night; as rigid in demanding respect from those beneath him,
as he was profuse in lavishing it on his patrons. His public boast was,
that he owed no man a farthing; his secret comfort, that he possessed
two thousand pounds in the Funds. But Mr. Goren did not stop here.
Behind these external characteristics he nursed a passion. Evan was
astonished and pleased to find in him an enthusiastic fern-collector.
Not that Mr. Harrington shared the passion, but the sight of these
brown roots spread out, ticketed, on the stained paper, after supper,
when the shutters were up and the house defended from the hostile outer
world; the old man poring over them, and naming this and that spot
where, during his solitary Saturday afternoon and Sunday excursions, he
had lighted on the rare samples exhibited this contrast of the quiet
evening with the sordid day humanized Mr. Goren to him. He began to see
a spirit in the rigid tradesman not so utterly dissimilar to his own,
and he fancied that he, too, had a taste for ferns. Round Beckley how
they abounded!
He told Mr. Goren so, and Mr. Goren said:
“Some day we’ll jog down there together, as the saying goes.”
Mr. Goren spoke of it as an ordinary event, likely to happen in the
days to come: not as an incident the mere mention of which, as being
probable, stopped the breath and made the pulses leap.
For now Evan’s education taught him to feel that he was at his lowest
degree. Never now could Rose stoop to him. He carried the shop on his
back. She saw the brand of it on his forehead. Well! and what was Rose
to him, beyond a blissful memory, a star that he had once touched?
Self-love kept him strong by day, but in the darkness of night came his
misery; wakening from tender dreams, he would find his heart sinking
under a horrible pressure, and then the fair fresh face of Rose swam
over him; the hours of Beckley were revived; with intolerable anguish
he saw that she was blameless—that he alone was to blame. Yet worse was
it when his closed eyelids refused to conjure up the sorrowful lovely
nightmare, and he lay like one in a trance, entombed—wretched Pagan!
feeling all that had been blindly; when the Past lay beside him like a
corpse that he had slain.
These nightly torments helped him to brave what the morning brought.
Insensibly also, as Time hardened his sufferings, Evan asked himself
what the shame of his position consisted in. He grew stiff-necked. His
Pagan virtues stood up one by one to support him. Andrew, courageously
evading the interdict that forbade him to visit Evan, would meet him by
appointment at City taverns, and flatly offered him a place in the
Brewery. Evan declined it, on the pretext that, having received Old
Tom’s money for the year, he must at least work out that term according
to the conditions. Andrew fumed and sneered at Tailordom. Evan said
that there was peace in Mr. Goren’s shop. His sharp senses discerned in
Andrew’s sneer a certain sincerity, and he revolted against it. Mr John
Raikes, too, burlesqued Society so well, that he had the satisfaction
of laughing at his enemy occasionally. The latter gentleman was still a
pensioner, flying about town with the Countess de Saldar, in deadly
fear lest that fascinating lady should discover the seat of his
fortune; happy, notwithstanding. In the mirror of Evan’s little world,
he beheld the great one from which he was banished.
Now the dusk of a winter’s afternoon was closing over London, when a
carriage drew up in front of Mr. Goren’s shop, out of which, to Mr.
Goren’s chagrin, a lady stepped, with her veil down. The lady entered,
and said that she wished to speak to Mr. Harrington. Mr. Goren made way
for her to his pupil; and was amazed to see her fall into his arms, and
hardly gratified to hear her say: “Pardon me, darling, for coming to
you in this place.”
Evan asked permission to occupy the parlour.
“My place,” said Mr. Goren, with humble severity, over his spectacles,
“is very poor. Such as it is, it is at the lady’s service.”
Alone with her, Evan was about to ease his own feelings by remarking to
the effect that Mr. Goren was human like the rest of us, but Caroline
cried, with unwonted vivacity:
“Yes, yes, I know; but I thought only of you. I have such news for you!
You will and must pardon my coming—that’s my first thought, sensitive
darling that you are!” She kissed him fondly. “Juliana Bonner is in
town, staying with us!”
“Is that your news?” asked Evan, pressing her against his breast.
“No, dear love—but still! You have no idea what her fortune—Mrs. Bonner
has died and left her—but I mustn’t tell you. Oh, my darling! how she
admires you! She—she could recompense you; if you would! We will put
that by, for the present. Dear! the Duke has begged you, through me, to
accept—I think it’s to be a sort of bailiff to his estates—I don’t know
rightly. It’s a very honourable post, that gentlemen take: and the
income you are to have, Evan, will be near a thousand a year. Now, what
do I deserve for my news?”
She put up her mouth for another kiss, out of breath.
“True?” looked Evan’s eyes.
“True!” she said, smiling, and feasting on his bewilderment.
After the bubbling in his brain had a little subsided, Evan breathed as
a man on whom fresh air is blown. Were not these tidings of release?
His ridiculous pride must nevertheless inquire whether Caroline had
been begging this for him.
“No, dear—indeed!” Caroline asserted with more than natural vehemence.
“It’s something that you yourself have done that has pleased him. I
don’t know what. Only he says, he believes you are a man to be trusted
with the keys of anything—and so you are. You are to call on him
to-morrow. Will you?”
While Evan was replying, her face became white. She had heard the
Major’s voice in the shop. His military step advanced, and Caroline,
exclaiming, “Don’t let me see him!” bustled to a door. Evan nodded, and
she slipped through. The next moment he was facing the stiff marine.
“Well, young man,” the Major commenced, and, seating himself, added,
“be seated. I want to talk to you seriously, sir. You didn’t think fit
to wait till I had done with the Directors today. You’re devilishly out
in your discipline, whatever you are at two and two. I suppose there’s
no fear of being intruded on here? None of your acquaintances likely to
be introducing themselves to me?”
“There is not one that I would introduce to you,” said Evan.
The Major nodded a brief recognition of the compliment, and then,
throwing his back against the chair, fired out: “Come, sir, is this
your doing?”
In military phrase, Evan now changed front. His first thought had been
that the Major had come for his wife. He perceived that he himself was
the special object of his visitation.
“I must ask you what you allude to,” he answered.
“You are not at your office, but you will speak to me as if there was
some distinction between us,” said the Major. “My having married your
sister does not reduce me to the ranks, I hope.”
The Major drummed his knuckles on the table, after this impressive
delivery.
“Hem!” he resumed. “Now, sir, understand, before you speak a word, that
I can see through any number of infernal lies. I see that you’re
prepared for prevarication. By George! it shall come out of you, if I
get it by main force. The Duke compelled me to give you that
appointment in my Company. Now, sir, did you, or did you not, go to him
and deliberately state to him that you believed the affairs of the
Company to be in a bad condition—infamously handled, likely to involve
his honour as a gentleman? I ask you, sir, did you do this, or did you
not do it?”
Evan waited till the sharp rattle of the Major’s close had quieted.
“If I am to answer the wording of your statement, I may say that I did
not.”
“Very good; very good; that will do. Are you aware that the Duke has
sent in his resignation as a Director of our Company?”
“I hear of it first from you.”
“Confound your familiarity!” cried the irritable officer, rising. “Am I
always to be told that I married your sister? Address me, sir, as
becomes your duty.”
Evan heard the words “beggarly tailor” mumbled “out of the gutters,”
and “cursed connection.” He stood in the attitude of attention, while
the Major continued:
“Now, young man, listen to these facts. You came to me this day last
week, and complained that you did not comprehend some of our
transactions and affairs. I explained them to your damned stupidity.
You went away. Three days after that, you had an interview with the
Duke. Stop, sir! What the devil do you mean by daring to speak while I
am speaking? You saw the Duke, I say. Now, what took place at that
interview?”
The Major tried to tower over Evan powerfully, as he put this query.
They were of a common height, and to do so, he had to rise on his toes,
so that the effect was but momentary.
“I think I am not bound to reply,” said Evan.
“Very well, sir; that will do.” The Major’s fingers were evidently
itching for an absent rattan. “Confess it or not, you are dismissed
from your post. Do you hear? You are kicked in the street. A beggarly
tailor you were born, and a beggarly tailor you will die.”
“I must beg you to stop, now,” said Evan. “I told you that I was not
bound to reply: but I will. If you will sit down, Major Strike, you
shall hear what you wish to know.”
This being presently complied with, though not before a glare of the
Major’s eyes had shown his doubt whether it might not be construed into
insolence, Evan pursued:
“I came to you and informed you that I could not reconcile the
cash-accounts of the Company, and that certain of the later proceedings
appeared to me to jeopardize its prosperity. Your explanations did not
satisfy me. I admit that you enjoined me to be silent. But the Duke, as
a Director, had as strong a right to claim me as his servant, and when
he questioned me as to the position of the Company, I told him what I
thought, just as I had told you.”
“You told him we were jobbers and swindlers, sir!”
“The Duke inquired of me whether I would, under the circumstances,
while proceedings were going on which I did not approve of, take the
responsibility of allowing my name to remain—”
“Ha! ha! ha!” the Major burst out. This was too good a joke. The name
of a miserable young tailor!” Go on, sir, go on!” He swallowed his
laughter like oil on his rage.
“I have said sufficient.”
Jumping up, the Major swore by the Lord, that he had said sufficient.
“Now, look you here, young man.” He squared his finger before Evan,
eyeing him under a hard frown, “You have been playing your game again,
as you did down at that place in Hampshire. I heard of it—deserved to
be shot, by heaven! You think you have got hold of the Duke, and you
throw me over. You imagine, I dare say, that I will allow my wife to be
talked about to further your interests—you self-seeking young dog! As
long as he lent the Company his name, I permitted a great many things.
Do you think me a blind idiot, sir? But now she must learn to be
satisfied with people who’ve got no titles, or carriages, and who can’t
give hundred guinea compliments. You’re all of a piece—a set of....”
The Major paused, for half a word was on his mouth which had drawn
lightning to Evan’s eyes.
Not to be baffled, he added: “But look you, sir. I may be ruined. I
dare say the Company will go to the dogs—every ass will follow a Duke.
But, mark, this goes on no more. I will be no woman’s tally. Mind, sir,
I take excellent care that you don’t traffic in your sister!”
The Major delivered this culminating remark with a well-timed
deflection of his forefinger, and slightly turned aside when he had
done.
You might have seen Evan’s figure rocking, as he stood with his eyes
steadily levelled on his sister’s husband.
The Major, who, whatever he was, was physically no coward, did not fail
to interpret the look, and challenge it.
Evan walked to the door, opened it, and said, between his teeth, “You
must go at once.”
“Eh, sir, eh? what’s this?” exclaimed the warrior but the door was
open, Mr. Goren was in the shop; the scandal of an assault in such a
house, and the consequent possibility of his matrimonial alliance
becoming bruited in the newspapers, held his arm after it had given an
involuntary jerk. He marched through with becoming dignity, and marched
out into the street; and if necks unelastic and heads erect may be
taken as the sign of a proud soul and of nobility of mind, my artist
has the Major for his model.
Evan displayed no such a presence. He returned to the little parlour,
shut and locked the door to the shop, and forgetting that one was near,
sat down, covered his eyes, and gave way to a fit of tearless sobbing.
With one foot in the room Caroline hung watching him. A pain that she
had never known wrung her nerves. His whole manhood seemed to be
shaken, as if by regular pulsations of intensest misery. She stood in
awe of the sight till her limbs failed her, and then staggering to him
she fell on her knees, clasping his, passionately kissing them.