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This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
EVAN HARRINGTON
By George Meredith
CONTENTS:
BOOK 1.
I. ABOVE BUTTONS
II. THE HERITAGE OR THE SOY
III. THE DAUGHTERS OR THE SHEARS
IV. ON BOARD THE JOCASTA
V. THE FAMILY AND THE FUNERAL
VI. MY GENTLEMAN ON THE ROAD
VII. MOTHER AND SON
BOOK 2.
VIII. INTRODUCES AN ECCENTRIC
IX. THE COUNTESS IN LOW SOCIETY
X. MY GENTLEMAN ON THE ROAD AGAIN
XI. DOINGS AT AN INN
XII. IN WHICH ALE IS SHOWN TO HAVE ONE QUALITY OF WINE
XIII. THE MATCH OF FALLOWFIELD AGAINST BECKLEY
BOOK 3.
XIV. THE COUNTESS DESCRIBES THE FIELD OF ACTION
XV. A CAPTURE
XVI. LEADS TO A SMALL SKIRMISH BETWEEN ROSE AND EVAN
XVII. IN WHICH EVAN WRITES HIMSELF TAILOR
XVIII. IN WHICH EVAN CALLS HIMSELF GENTLEMAN
BOOK 4.
XIX. SECOND DESPATCH OF THE COUNTESS
XX. BREAK-NECK LEAP
XXI. TRIBULATIONS AND TACTICS OF THE COUNTESS
XXII. IN WHICH THE DAUGHTERS OF THE GREAT MEL HAVE TO
DIGEST HIM AT DINNER
XXIII. TREATS OF A HANDKERCHIEF
XXIV. THE COUNTESS MAKES HERSELF FELT
XXV. IN WHICH THE STREAM FLOWS MUDDY AND CLEAR
BOOK 5.
XXVI. MRS. MEL MAKES A BED FOR HERSELF AND FAMILY
XXVII. EXHIBITS ROSE'S GENERALSHIP; EVAN'S PERFORMANCE ON THE SECOND
FIDDLE; AND THE WRETCHEDNESS OF THE COUNTESS
XXVIII. TOM COGGLESBY'S PROPOSITION
XXIX. PRELUDE TO AN ENGAGEMENT
XXX. THE BATTLE OF THE BULL-DOGS. PART I.
XXXI. THE BATTLE OF THE BULL-DOGS. PART II.
BOOK 6.
XXXII. IN WHICH EVAN'S LIGHT BEGINS TO TWINKLE AGAIN
XXXIII. THE HERO TAKES HIS RANK IN THE ORCHESTRA
XXXIV. A PAGAN SACRIFICE
XXXV. ROSE WOUNDED
XXXVI. BEFORE BREAKFAST
XXXVII. THE RETREAT FROM BECKLEY
XXXVIII. IN WHICH WE HAVE TO SEE IN THE DARK
BOOK 7.
XXXIX. IN THE DOMAIN OF TAILORDOM
XL. IN WHICH THE COUNTESS STILL SCENTS GAME
XLI. REVEALS AN ABOMINABLE PLOT OF THE BROTHERS COGGLESBY
XLII. JULIANA
XLIII. ROSE
XLIV. CONTAINS A WARNING TO ALL CONSPIRATORS
XLV. IN WHICH THE SHOP BECOMES THE CENTRE OF ATTRACTION
XLVI. A LOVER'S PARTING
XLVII. A YEAR LATER THE COUNTESS DE SALDAR DE SANCORVO TO HER
SISTER CAROLINE
BOOK 1.
I. ABOVE BUTTONS
II. THE HERITAGE OR THE SOY
III. THE DAUGHTERS OR THE SHEARS
IV. ON BOARD THE JOCASTA
V. THE FAMILY AND THE FUNERAL
VI. MY GENTLEMAN ON THE ROAD
VII. MOTHER AND SON
CHAPTER I
ABOVE BUTTONS
Long after the hours when tradesmen are in the habit of commencing
business, the shutters of a certain shop in the town of Lymport-on-the-
Sea remained significantly closed, and it became known that death had
taken Mr. Melchisedec Harrington, and struck one off the list of living
tailors. The demise of a respectable member of this class does not
ordinarily create a profound sensation. He dies, and his equals debate
who is to be his successor: while the rest of them who have come in
contact with him, very probably hear nothing of his great launch and
final adieu till the winding up of cash-accounts; on which occasions we
may augur that he is not often blessed by one or other of the two great
parties who subdivide this universe. In the case of Mr. Melchisedec it
was otherwise. This had been a grand man, despite his calling, and in
the teeth of opprobrious epithets against his craft. To be both
generally blamed, and generally liked, evinces a peculiar construction of
mortal. Mr. Melchisedec, whom people in private called the great Mel,
had been at once the sad dog of Lymport, and the pride of the town. He
was a tailor, and he kept horses; he was a tailor, and he had gallant
adventures; he was a tailor, and he shook hands with his customers.
Finally, he was a tradesman, and he never was known to have sent in a
bill. Such a personage comes but once in a generation, and, when he
goes, men miss the man as well as their money.
That he was dead, there could be no doubt. Kilne, the publican opposite,
had seen Sally, one of the domestic servants, come out of the house in
the early morning and rush up the street to the doctor's, tossing her
hands; and she, not disinclined to dilute her grief, had, on her return,
related that her master was then at his last gasp, and had refused, in so
many words, to swallow the doctor.
'"I won't swallow the doctor!" he says, "I won't swallow the doctor!"'
Sally moaned. '"I never touched him," he says, "and I never will."'
Kilne angrily declared, that in his opinion, a man who rejected medicine
in extremity, ought to have it forced down his throat: and considering
that the invalid was pretty deeply in Kilne's debt, it naturally assumed
the form of a dishonest act on his part; but Sally scornfully dared any
one to lay hand on her master, even for his own good. 'For,' said she,
'he's got his eyes awake, though he do lie so helpless. He marks ye!'
'Ah! ah!' Kilne sniffed the air. Sally then rushed back to her duties.
'Now, there 's a man!' Kilne stuck his hands in his pockets and began
his meditation: which, however, was cut short by the approach of his
neighbour Barnes, the butcher, to whom he confided what he had heard,
and who ejaculated professionally, 'Obstinate as a pig!' As they stood
together they beheld Sally, a figure of telegraph, at one of the windows,
implying that all was just over.
'Amen!' said Barnes, as to a matter-of-fact affair.
Some minutes after, the two were joined by Grossby, the confectioner, who
listened to the news, and observed:
'Just like him! I'd have sworn he'd never take doctor's stuff'; and,
nodding at Kilne, 'liked his medicine best, eh?'
'Had a-hem!--good lot of it,' muttered Kilne, with a suddenly serious
brow.
'How does he stand on your books?' asked Barnes.
Kilne shouldered round, crying: 'Who the deuce is to know?'
'I don't,' Grossby sighed. 'In he comes with his "Good morning, Grossby,
fine day for the hunt, Grossby," and a ten-pound note. "Have the
kindness to put that down in my favour, Grossby." And just as I am going
to say, "Look here,--this won't do," he has me by the collar, and there's
one of the regiments going to give a supper party, which he's to order;
or the Admiral's wife wants the receipt for that pie; or in comes my
wife, and there's no talking of business then, though she may have been
bothering about his account all the night beforehand. Something or
other! and so we run on.'
'What I want to know,' said Barnes, the butcher, 'is where he got his
tenners from?'
Kilne shook a sagacious head: 'No knowing!'
'I suppose we shall get something out of the fire?' Barnes suggested.
'That depends!' answered the emphatic Kilne.
'But, you know, if the widow carries on the business,' said Grossby,
'there's no reason why we shouldn't get it all, eh?'
'There ain't two that can make clothes for nothing, and make a profit out
of it,' said Kilne.
'That young chap in Portugal,' added Barnes, 'he won't take to tailoring
when he comes home. D' ye think he will?'
Kilne muttered: 'Can't say !' and Grossby, a kindly creature in his way,
albeit a creditor, reverting to the first subject of their discourse,
ejaculated, 'But what a one he was!--eh?'
'Fine!--to look on,' Kilne assented.
'Well, he was like a Marquis,' said Barnes.
Here the three regarded each other, and laughed, though not loudly. They
instantly checked that unseemliness, and Kilne, as one who rises from the
depths of a calculation with the sum in his head, spoke quite in a
different voice:
'Well, what do you say, gentlemen? shall we adjourn? No use standing
here.'
By the invitation to adjourn, it was well understood by the committee
Kilne addressed, that they were invited to pass his threshold, and
partake of a morning draught. Barnes, the butcher, had no objection
whatever, and if Grossby, a man of milder make, entertained any, the
occasion and common interests to be discussed, advised him to waive them.
In single file these mourners entered the publican's house, where Kilne,
after summoning them from behind the bar, on the important question, what
it should be? and receiving, first, perfect acquiescence in his views as
to what it should be, and then feeble suggestions of the drink best
befitting that early hour and the speaker's particular constitution,
poured out a toothful to each, and one to himself.
'Here's to him, poor fellow!' said Kilne; and was deliberately echoed
twice.
'Now, it wasn't that,' Kilne pursued, pointing to the bottle in the midst
of a smacking of lips, 'that wasn't what got him into difficulties. It
was expensive luckshries. It was being above his condition. Horses!
What's a tradesman got to do with horses? Unless he's retired! Then
he's a gentleman, and can do as he likes. It's no use trying to be a
gentleman if you can't pay for it. It always ends bad. Why, there was
he, consorting with gentlefolks--gay as a lark! Who has to pay for it?'
Kilne's fellow-victims maintained a rather doleful tributary silence.
'I'm not saying anything against him now,' the publican further observed.
'It 's too late. And there! I'm sorry he's gone, for one. He was as
kind a hearted a man as ever breathed. And there! perhaps it was just
as much my fault; I couldn't say "No" to him,--dash me, if I could!'
Lymport was a prosperous town, and in prosperity the much-despised
British tradesman is not a harsh, he is really a well-disposed, easy
soul, and requires but management, manner, occasional instalments--just
to freshen the account--and a surety that he who debits is on the spot,
to be a right royal king of credit. Only the account must never drivel.
'Stare aut crescere' appears to be his feeling on that point, and the
departed Mr. Melchisedec undoubtedly understood him there; for the
running on of the account looked deplorable and extraordinary now that
Mr. Melchisedec was no longer in a position to run on with it, and it was
precisely his doing so which had prevented it from being brought to a
summary close long before. Both Barnes, the butcher; and Grossby, the
confectioner, confessed that they, too, found it hard ever to say 'No'
to him, and, speaking broadly, never could.
'Except once,'said Barnes, 'when he wanted me to let him have a ox to
roast whole out on the common, for the Battle of Waterloo. I stood out
against him on that. "No, no," says I, "I'll joint him for ye, Mr.
Harrington. You shall have him in joints, and eat him at home";-ha! ha!'
'Just like him!' said Grossby, with true enjoyment of the princely
disposition that had dictated the patriotic order.
'Oh!--there!' Kilne emphasized, pushing out his arm across the bar, as
much as to say, that in anything of such a kind, the great Mel never had
a rival.
'That "Marquis" affair changed him a bit,' said Barnes.
'Perhaps it did, for a time,' said Kilne. 'What's in the grain, you
know. He couldn't change. He would be a gentleman, and nothing 'd stop
him.'
'And I shouldn't wonder but what that young chap out in Portugal 'll want
to be one, too; though he didn't bid fair to be so fine a man as his
father.'
'More of a scholar,' remarked Kilne. 'That I call his worst fault--
shilly-shallying about that young chap. I mean his.' Kilne stretched a
finger toward the dead man's house. 'First, the young chap's to be sent
into the Navy; then it's the Army; then he's to be a judge, and sit on
criminals; then he goes out to his sister in Portugal; and now there's
nothing but a tailor open to him, as I see, if we're to get our money.'
'Ah! and he hasn't got too much spirit to work to pay his father's
debts,' added Barnes. 'There's a business there to make any man's
fortune-properly directed, I say. But, I suppose, like father like son,
he'll becoming the Marquis, too. He went to a gentleman's school, and
he's had foreign training. I don't know what to think about it. His
sisters over there--they were fine women.'
'Oh! a fine family, every one of 'em! and married well!' exclaimed the
publican.
'I never had the exact rights of that "Marquis" affair,' said Grossby;
and, remembering that he had previously laughed knowingly when it was
alluded to, pursued: 'Of course I heard of it at the time, but how did he
behave when he was blown upon?'
Barnes undertook to explain; but Kilne, who relished the narrative quite
as well, and was readier, said: 'Look here! I 'll tell you. I had it
from his own mouth one night when he wasn't--not quite himself. He was
coming down King William Street, where he stabled his horse, you know,
and I met him. He'd been dining out-somewhere out over Fallow field, I
think it was; and he sings out to me, "Ah! Kilne, my good fellow!" and
I, wishing to be equal with him, says, "A fine night, my lord!" and he
draws himself up--he smelt of good company--says he, "Kilne! I'm not a
lord, as you know, and you have no excuse for mistaking me for one, sir!"
So I pretended I had mistaken him, and then he tucked his arm under mine,
and said, "You're no worse than your betters, Kilne. They took me for
one at Squire Uplift's to-night, but a man who wishes to pass off for
more than he is, Kilne, and impose upon people," he says, "he's
contemptible, Kilne! contemptible!" So that, you know, set me thinking
about "Bath" and the "Marquis," and I couldn't help smiling to myself,
and just let slip a question whether he had enlightened them a bit.
"Kilne," said he, "you're an honest man, and a neighbour, and I'll tell
you what happened. The Squire," he says, "likes my company, and I like
his table. Now the Squire 'd never do a dirty action, but the Squire's
nephew, Mr. George Uplift, he can't forget that I earn my money, and once
or twice I have had to correct him." And I'll wager Mel did it, too!
Well, he goes on: "There was Admiral Sir Jackson Racial and his lady, at
dinner, Squire Falco of Bursted, Lady Barrington, Admiral Combleman"--our
admiral, that was; 'Mr. This and That', I forget their names--and other
ladies and gentlemen whose acquaintance I was not honoured with." You
know his way of talking. "And there was a goose on the table," he says;
and, looking stern at me, "Don't laugh yet!" says he, like thunder.
Well, he goes on: "Mr. George caught my eye across the table, and said,
so as not to be heard by his uncle, 'If that bird was rampant, you would
see your own arms, Marquis.'" And Mel replied, quietly for him to hear,
"And as that bird is couchant, Mr. George, you had better look to your
sauce." Couchant means squatting, you know. That's heraldry! Well,
that wasn't bad sparring of Mel's. But, bless you! he was never taken
aback, and the gentlefolks was glad enough to get him to sit down amongst
'em. So, says Mr. George, "I know you're a fire-eater, Marquis," and his
dander was up, for he began marquising Mel, and doing the mock polite at
such a rate, that, by-and-by, one of the ladies who didn't know Mel
called him "my lord" and "his lordship." "And," says Mel, "I merely
bowed to her, and took no notice." So that passed off: and there sits
Mel telling his anecdotes, as grand as a king. And, by and-by, young Mr.
George, who hadn't forgiven Mel, and had been pulling at the bottle
pretty well, he sings out, "It 's Michaelmas! the death of the goose!
and I should like to drink the Marquis's health!" and he drank it
solemn. But, as far as I can make out, the women part of the company was
a little in the dark. So Mel waited till there was a sort of a pause,
and then speaks rather loud to the Admiral, "By the way, Sir Jackson, may
I ask you, has the title of Marquis anything to do with tailoring?" Now
Mel was a great favourite with the Admiral, and with his lady, too, they
say--and the Admiral played into his hands, you see, and, says he, "I 'm
not aware that it has, Mr. Harrington." And he begged for to know why he
asked the question--called him, "Mister," you understand. So Mel said,
and I can see him now, right out from his chest he spoke, with his head
up "When I was a younger man, I had the good taste to be fond of good
society, and the bad taste to wish to appear different from what I was in
it": that's Mel speaking; everybody was listening; so he goes on: "I was
in the habit of going to Bath in the season, and consorting with the
gentlemen I met there on terms of equality; and for some reason that I am
quite guiltless of," says Mel, "the hotel people gave out that I was a
Marquis in disguise; and, upon my honour, ladies and gentlemen--I was
young then, and a fool--I could not help imagining I looked the thing.
At all events, I took upon myself to act the part, and with some success,
and considerable gratification; for, in my opinion," says Mel, "no real
Marquis ever enjoyed his title so much as I did. One day I was in my
shop--No. 193, Main Street, Lymport--and a gentleman came in to order his
outfit. I received his directions, when suddenly he started back, stared
at me, and exclaimed:
'My dear Marquis! I trust you will pardon me for having addressed you
with so much familiarity.' I recognized in him one of my Bath
acquaintances. That circumstance, ladies and gentlemen, has been a
lesson to me. Since that time I have never allowed a false impression
with regard to my position to exist. "I desire," says Mel, smiling, "to
have my exact measure taken everywhere; and if the Michaelmas bird is to
be associated with me, I am sure I have no objection; all I can say is,
that I cannot justify it by letters patent of nobility." That's how Mel
put it. Do you think they thought worse of him? I warrant you he came
out of it in flying colours. Gentlefolks like straight-forwardness in
their inferiors--that's what they do. Ah!' said Kilne, meditatively,
'I see him now, walking across the street in the moonlight, after he 'd
told me that. A fine figure of a man! and there ain't many Marquises to
match him.'
To this Barnes and Grossby, not insensible to the merits of the recital
they had just given ear to, agreed. And with a common voice of praise in
the mouths of his creditors, the dead man's requiem was sounded.