Evan Harrington Part 71

She was deep in the business of arrangeing a portion of her attire.

'Go-go; please,' she responded.

Lingering, he said: 'If I go, it will be straight to Lady Jocelyn.'

She stamped angrily.

'Only go!' and then she found him gone, and she stooped lower to the gla.s.s, to mark if the recent agitation were observable under her eyes.

There, looking at herself, her heart dropped heavily in her bosom.

She ran to the door and hurried swiftly after Evan, pulling him back speechlessly.

'Where are you going, Evan?'

'To Lady Jocelyn.'

The unhappy victim of her devotion stood panting.

'If you go, I--I take poison!' It was for him now to be struck; but he was suffering too strong an anguish to be susceptible to mock tragedy.

The Countess paused to study him. She began to fear her brother. 'I will!' she reiterated wildly, without moving him at all. And the quiet inflexibility of his face forbade the ultimate hope which lies in giving men a dose of hysterics when they are obstinate. She tried by taunts and angry vituperations to make him look fierce, if but an instant, to precipitate her into an exhibition she was so well prepared for.

'Evan! what! after all my love, my confidence in you--I need not have told you--to expose us! Brother? would you? Oh!'

'I will not let this last another hour,' said Evan, firmly, at the same time seeking to caress her. She spurned his fruitless affection, feeling, nevertheless, how cruel was her fate; for, with any other save a brother, she had arts at her disposal to melt the manliest resolutions. The gla.s.s showed her that her face was pathetically pale; the tones of her voice were rich and harrowing. What did they avail with a brother? 'Promise me,' she cried eagerly, 'promise me to stop here--on this spot-till I return.'

The promise was extracted. The Countess went to fetch Caroline. Evan did not count the minutes. One thought was mounting in his brain-the scorn of Rose. He felt that he had lost her. Lost her when he had just won her! He felt it, without realizing it. The first blows of an immense grief are dull, and strike the heart through wool, as it were. The belief of the young in their sorrow has to be flogged into them, on the good old educational principle. Could he do less than this he was about to do? Rose had wedded her n.o.ble nature to him, and it was as much her spirit as his own that urged him thus to forfeit her, to be worthy of her by a.s.suming unworthiness.

There he sat neither conning over his determination nor the cause for it, revolving Rose's words about Laxley, and nothing else. The words were so sweet and so bitter; every now and then the heavy smiting on his heart set it quivering and leaping, as the whip starts a jaded horse.

Meantime the Countess was partic.i.p.ating in a witty conversation in the drawing-room with Sir John and the Duke, Miss Current, and others; and it was not till after she had displayed many graces, and, as one or two ladies presumed to consider, marked effrontery, that she rose and drew Caroline away with her. Returning to her dressing-room, she found that Evan had faithfully kept his engagement; he was on the exact spot where she had left him.

Caroline came to him swiftly, and put her hand to his forehead that she might the better peruse his features, saying, in her mellow caressing voice: 'What is this, dear Van, that you will do? Why do you look so wretched?'

'Has not Louisa told you?'

'She has told me something, dear, but I don't know what it is. That you are going to expose us? What further exposure do we need? I'm sure, Van, my pride--what I had--is gone. I have none left!'

Evan kissed her brows warmly. An explanation, full of the Countess's pa.s.sionate outcries of justification, necessity, and innocence in higher than fleshly eyes, was given, and then the three were silent.

'But, Van,' Caroline commenced, deprecatingly, 'my darling! of what use--now! Whether right or wrong, why should you, why should you, when the thing is done, dear?--think!'

'And you, too, would let another suffer under an unjust accusation?'

said Evan.

'But, dearest, it is surely your duty to think of your family first.

Have we not been afflicted enough? Why should you lay us under this fresh burden?'

'Because it 's better to bear all now than a life of remorse,' answered Evan.

'But this Mr. Laxley--I cannot pity him; he has behaved so insolently to you throughout! Let him suffer.'

'Lady Jocelyn,' said Evan, 'has been unintentionally unjust to him, and after her kindness--apart from the right or wrong--I will not--I can't allow her to continue so.'

'After her kindness!' echoed the Countess, who had been fuming at Caroline's weak expostulations. 'Kindness! Have I not done ten times for these Jocelyns what they have done for us? O mio Deus! why, I have bestowed on them the members.h.i.+p for Fallow field: I have saved her from being a convicted liar this very day. Worse! for what would have been talked of the morals of the house, supposing the scandal. Oh! indeed I was tempted to bring that horrid mad Captain into the house face to face with his flighty doll of a wife, as I, perhaps, should have done, acting by the dictates of my conscience. I lied for Lady Jocelyn, and handed the man to a lawyer, who withdrew him. And this they owe to me!

Kindness? They have given us bed and board, as the people say. I have repaid them for that.'

'Pray be silent, Louisa,' said Evan, getting up hastily, for the sick sensation Rose had experienced came over him. His sister's plots, her untruth, her coa.r.s.eness, clung to him and seemed part of his blood.

He now had a personal desire to cut himself loose from the wretched entanglement revealed to him, whatever it cost.

'Are you really, truly going?' Caroline exclaimed, for he was near the door.

'At a quarter to twelve at night!' sneered the Countess, still imagining that he, like herself, must be partly acting.

'But, Van, is it--dearest, think! is it manly for a brother to go and tell of his sister? And how would it look?'

Evan smiled. 'Is it that that makes you unhappy? Louisa's name will not be mentioned--be sure of that.'

Caroline was stooping forward to him. Her figure straightened: 'Good Heaven, Evan! you are not going to take it on yourself? Rose!--she will hate you.'

'G.o.d help me!' he cried internally.

'Oh, Evan, darling! consider, reflect!' She fell on her knees, catching his hand. 'It is worse for us that you should suffer, dearest! Think of the dreadful meanness and baseness of what you will have to acknowledge.'

'Yes!' sighed the youth, and his eyes, in his extreme pain, turned to the Countess reproachfully.

'Think, dear,' Caroline hurried on, 'he gains nothing for whom you do this--you lose all. It is not your deed. You will have to speak an untruth. Your ideas are wrong--wrong, I know they are. You will have to lie. But if you are silent, the little, little blame that may attach to us will pa.s.s away, and we shall be happy in seeing our brother happy.'

'You are talking to Evan as if he had religion,' said the Countess, with steady sedateness. And at that moment, from the sublimity of his pagan virtue, the young man groaned for some pure certain light to guide him: the question whether he was about to do right made him weak. He took Caroline's head between his two hands, and kissed her mouth. The act brought Rose to his senses insufferably, and she--his G.o.ddess of truth and his sole guiding light-spurred him afresh.

'My family's dishonour is mine, Caroline. Say nothing more--don't think of me. I go to Lady Jocelyn tonight. To-morrow we leave, and there's the end. Louisa, if you have any new schemes for my welfare, I beg you to renounce them.'

'Grat.i.tude I never expected from a Dawley!' the Countess retorted.

'Oh, Louisa! he is going!' cried Caroline; 'kneel to him with me: stop him: Rose loves him, and he is going to make her hate him.'

'You can't talk reason to one who's mad,' said the Countess, more like the Dawley she sprang from than it would have pleased her to know.

'My darling! My own Evan! it will kill me,' Caroline exclaimed, and pa.s.sionately imploring him, she looked so hopelessly beautiful, that Evan was agitated, and caressed her, while he said, softly: 'Where our honour is not involved I would submit to your smallest wish.'

'It involves my life--my destiny!' murmured Caroline.

Could he have known the double meaning in her words, and what a saving this sacrifice of his was to accomplish, he would not have turned to do it feeling abandoned of heaven and earth.

The Countess stood rigidly as he went forth. Caroline was on her knees, sobbing.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV. A PAGAN SACRIFICE