Evan Harrington Part 89

'Yes. We are strong in our own element, Louisa. Don't be tempted out of it.'

Sublime, the Countess rose:

'Element! am I to be confined to one? What but spiritual solaces could a.s.sist me to live, after the degradations I have had heaped on me? I renounce the world. I turn my sight to realms where caste is unknown. I feel no shame there of being a tailor's daughter. You see, I can bring my tongue to name the thing in its actuality. Once, that member would have blistered. Confess to me that, in spite of your children, you are tempted to howl at the idea of Lymport--'

The Countess paused, and like a lady about to fire off a gun, appeared to tighten her nerves, crying out rapidly:

'Shop! Shears! Geese! Cabbage! Snip! Nine to a man!'

Even as the silence after explosions of cannon, that which reigned in the room was deep and dreadful.

'See,' the Countess continued, 'you are horrified you shudder. I name all our t.i.tles, and if I wish to be red in my cheeks, I must rouge. It is, in verity, as if my senseless clay were pelted, as we heard of Evan at his first Lymport boys' school. You remember when he told us the story? He lisped a trifle then. "I'm the thon of a thnip." Oh! it was h.e.l.l-fire to us, then; but now, what do I feel? Why, I avowed it to Herbert Duffian openly, and he said, that the misfortune of dear Papa's birth did not the less enable him to proclaim himself in conduct a n.o.bleman's offspring--'

'Which he never was.' Harriet broke the rhapsody in a monotonous low tone: the Countess was not compelled to hear:

'--and that a large outfitter--one of the very largest, was in reality a merchant, whose daughters have often wedded n.o.bles of the land, and become ancestresses! Now, Harriet, do you see what a truly religious mind can do for us in the way of comfort? Oh! I bow in grat.i.tude to Herbert Duffian. I will not rest till I have led him back to our fold, recovered from his error. He was our own preacher and pastor. He quitted us from conviction. He shall return to us from conviction.'

The Countess quoted texts, which I respect, and will not repeat. She descanted further on spiritualism, and on the balm that it was to tailors and their offspring; to all outcasts from Society.

Overpowered by her, Harriet thus summed up her opinions: 'You were always self-willed, Louisa.'

'Say, full of sacrifice, if you would be just,' added the Countess; 'and the victim of basest ingrat.i.tude.'

'Well, you are in a dangerous path, Louisa.'

Harriet had the last word, which usually the Countess was not disposed to accord; but now she knew herself strengthened to do so, and was content to smile pityingly on her sister.

Full upon them in this frame of mind, arrived Caroline's great news from Beckley.

It was then that the Countess's conduct proved a memorable refutation of cynical philosophy: she rejoiced in the good fortune of him who had offended her! Though he was not crushed and annihilated (as he deserved to be) by the wrong he had done, the great-hearted woman pardoned him!

Her first remark was: 'Let him thank me for it or not, I will lose no moment in hastening to load him with my congratulations.'

Pleasantly she joked Andrew, and defended him from Harriet now.

'So we are not all bankrupts, you see, dear brother-in-law.'

Andrew had become so demoralized by his own plot, that in every turn of events he scented a similar piece of human ingenuity. Harriet was angry with his disbelief, or say, the grudging credit he gave to the glorious news. Notwithstanding her calmness, the thoughts of Lymport had sickened her soul, and it was only for the sake of her children, and from a sense of the dishonesty of spending a farthing of the money belonging, as she conceived, to the creditors, that she had consented to go.

'I see your motive, Mr. Cogglesby,' she observed. 'Your measures are disconcerted. I will remain here till my brother gives me shelter.'

'Oh, that'll do, my love; that's all I want,' said Andrew, sincerely.

'Both of you, fools!' the Countess interjected. 'Know you Evan so little? He will receive us anywhere: his arms are open to his kindred: but to his heart the road is through humiliation, and it is to his heart we seek admittance.'

'What do you mean?' Harriet inquired.

'Just this,' the Countess answered in bold English and her eyes were lively, her figure elastic: 'We must all of us go down to the old shop and shake his hand there--every man Jack of us!--I'm only quoting the sailors, Harriet--and that's the way to win him.'

She snapped her fingers, laughing. Harriet stared at her, and so did Andrew, though for a different reason. She seemed to be transformed.

Seeing him inclined to gape, she ran up to him, caught up his chin between her ten fingers, and kissed him on both cheeks, saying:

'You needn't come, if you're too proud, you know, little man!'

And to Harriet's look of disgust, the cause for which she divined with her native rapidity, she said: 'What does it matter? They will talk, but they can't look down on us now. Why, this is my doing!'

She came tripping to her tall sister, to ask plaintively 'Mayn't I be glad?' and bobbed a curtsey.

Harriet desired Andrew to leave them. Flushed and indignant she then faced the Countess.

'So unnecessary!' she began. 'What can excuse your indiscretion, Louisa?'

The Countess smiled to hear her talking to her younger sister once more.

She shrugged.

'Oh, if you will keep up the fiction, do. Andrew knows--he isn't an idiot--and to him we can make light of it now. What does anybody's birth matter, who's well off!'

It was impossible for Harriet to take that view. The shop, if not the thing, might still have been concealed from her husband, she thought.

'It mattered to me when I was well off,' she said, sternly.

'Yes; and to me when I was; but we've had a fall and a lesson since that, my dear. Half the aristocracy of England spring from shops!--Shall I measure you?'

Harriet never felt such a desire to inflict a slap upon mortal cheek.

She marched away from her in a tiff. On the other hand, Andrew was half fascinated by the Countess's sudden re-a.s.sumption of girlhood, and returned--silly fellow! to have another look at her. She had ceased, on reflection, to be altogether so vivacious: her stronger second nature had somewhat resumed its empire: still she was fresh, and could at times be roguishly affectionate and she patted him, and petted him, and made much of him; slightly railed at him for his uxoriousness and domestic subjection, and proffered him her fingers to try the taste of. The truth must be told: Mr. Duflian not being handy, she in her renewed earthly happiness wanted to see her charms in a woman's natural mirror: namely, the face of man: if of man on his knees, all the better and though a little man is not much of a man, and a sister's husband is, or should be, hardly one at all, still some sort of a reflector he must be. Two or three jests adapted to Andrew's palate achieved his momentary captivation.

He said: 'Gad, I never kissed you in my life, Louy.'

And she, with a flavour of delicate Irish brogue, 'Why don't ye catch opportunity by the tail, then?'

Perfect innocence, I a.s.sure you, on both sides.

But mark how stupidity betrays. Andrew failed to understand her, and act on the hint immediately. Had he done so, the affair would have been over without a witness. As it happened, delay permitted Harriet to a.s.sist at the ceremony.

'It wasn't your mouth, Louy,' said Andrew.

'Oh, my mouth!--that I keep for, my chosen,' was answered.

'Gad, you make a fellow almost wish--' Andrew's fingers worked over his poll, and then the spectre of righteous wrath flashed on him--naughty little man that he was! He knew himself naughty, for it was the only time since his marriage that he had ever been sorry to see his wife.

This is a comedy, and I must not preach lessons of life here: but I am obliged to remark that the husband must be proof, the sister-in-law perfect, where arrangements exist that keep them under one roof. She may be so like his wife! Or, from the knowledge she has of his circ.u.mstances, she may talk to him almost as his wife. He may forget that she is not his wife! And then again, the small beginnings, which are in reality the mighty barriers, are so easily slid over. But what is the use of telling this to a pure generation? My constant error is in supposing that I write for the wicked people who begat us.

Note, however, the difference between the woman and the man! Shame confessed Andrew's naughtiness; he sn.i.g.g.e.red pitiably: whereas the Countess jumped up, and pointing at him, asked her sister what she thought of that. Her next sentence, coolly delivered, related to some millinery matter. If this was not innocence, what is?

Nevertheless, I must here state that the scene related, innocent as it was, and, as one would naturally imagine, of puny consequence, if any, did no less a thing than, subsequently, to precipitate the Protestant Countess de Saldar into the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church. A little bit of play!

It seems barely just. But if, as I have heard, a lady has trod on a pebble and broken her nose, tremendous results like these warn us to be careful how we walk. As for play, it was never intended that we should play with flesh and blood.

And, oh, be charitable, matrons of Britain! See here, Andrew Cogglesby, who loved his wife as his very soul, and who almost disliked her sister; in ten minutes the latter had set his head spinning! The whole of the day he went about the house meditating frantically on the possibility of his Harriet demanding a divorce.