contrast with his look of insolent pleasure, Andrew, the moment an eye was on him, exhibited the cleverest impersonation of the dumps ever seen: while Mr. John Raikes was from head to foot nothing better than a moan made visible. Nevertheless, they both agreed to rally Evan, and bid him be of good cheer.
“Don’t be down, Van; don’t be down, my boy,” said Andrew, rubbing his hands gloomily.
“I? do I look it?” Evan answered, laughing.
“Capital acting!” exclaimed Jack. “Try and keep it up.”
“Well, I hope you’re acting, too,” said Evan.
Jack let his chest fall like a collapsing bellows.
At the end of five minutes, he remarked: “I’ve been sitting on it the whole morning! There’s violent inflammation, I’m persuaded. Another hour, and I jump slap from the summit of the coach!”
Evan turned to Andrew.
“Do you think he’ll be let off?”
“Mr. Raikes? Can’t say. You see, Van, it depends upon how Old Tom has taken his bad luck. Ahem! Perhaps he’ll be all the stricter; and as a man of honour, Mr. Raikes, you see, can’t very well”
“By Jove! I wish I wasn’t a man of honour!” Jack interposed heavily.
“You see, Van, Old Tom’s circumstances”—Andrew ducked, to smother a sort of laughter—“are now such that he’d be glad of the money to let him off, no doubt; but Mr. Raikes has spent it, I can’t lend it, and you haven’t got it, and there we all are. At the end of the year he’s free, and he—ha, ha! I’m not a bit the merrier for laughing, I can tell you.”
Catching another glimpse of Evan’s serious face, Andrew fell into louder laughter; checking it with doleful solemnity, as Evan said: “You know, Andrew, that if your brother will come to me with you for a time—I am in his debt doubly: I owe him both for the money, and a lesson; if he doesn’t mind coming, I shall be very happy to receive him.”
Andrew drew his hand tightly down his cheeks and chin, and nodded: “Thank you, Van, thank you, I’m sure. Never doubted your good heart, my boy. Very kind of you.”
“And you are certain to come?”
“’Hem! women in the case, you know, Van!”
“Well, if I may work for you and yours, Andrew, I shall thank my destiny, whatever it is.”
Andrew’s mouth twitched, and his eyelids began blinking fast. With a desperate effort, he avoided either crying or laughing, but at the expense of Evan’s ribs, into which he drove his elbow with a “pooh” and an apology, and then commenced a conversation with the coachman.
Up hill and down hill, and past little homesteads shining with yellow crocuses; across wide brown heaths, whose outlines raised in Evan’s mind the night of his funeral walk, and tossed up old feelings dead as the whirling dust. At last Jack called out:
“The towers of Fallowfield,—heigho!”
And Andrew said:
“Now, then, Van: if old Tom’s anywhere, he’s here. You get down at the Dragon, and don’t you talk to me, but let me go in. It’ll be just the hour he dines in the country. Isn’t it a shame of him to make me face every man of the creditors—eh?”
Evan gave Andrew’s hand an affectionate squeeze, at which Andrew had to gulp down something—reciprocal emotion, doubtless.
“Hark!” said Jack, as the horn of the guard was heard. “Once that sound used to set me caracoling before an abject multitude. I did wonders. All London looked on me! It had more effect on me than champagne. Now I hear it—the whole charm has vanished! I can’t see a single old castle. Would you have thought it possible that a small circular bit of tin could produce such total changes in a man?”
“I suppose,” said Evan, “it’s just as natural to you as the effect produced by a small circular tube of brass.”
“Ugh! here we are,” Jack returned, as they drew up under the sign of the hospitable Dragon. “This is the first coach I ever travelled with, without making the old whip burst with laughing. I ain’t myself. I’m haunted. I’m somebody else!”
The three passengers having descended, a controversy commenced between Evan and Andrew as to which should pay. Evan had his money out; Andrew dashed it behind him; Evan remonstrated.
“Well, you mustn’t pay for us two, Andrew. I would have let you do it once, but”
“Stuff!” cried Andrew. “I ain’t paying—it’s the creditors of the estate, my boy!”
Evan looked so ingenuously surprised and hurt at his lack of principle, that Andrew chucked a sixpence to a small boy, saying:
“If you don’t let me have my own way, Van, I’ll shy my purse after it. What do you mean, sir, by treating me like a beggar?”
“Our friend Harrington can’t humour us,” quoth Jack. “For myself, I candidly confess, I prefer being paid for;” and he leaned contentedly against one of the posts of the inn till the filthy dispute was arranged to the satisfaction of the ignobler mind. There Andrew left them, and went to Mrs. Sockley, who, recovered from her illness, smiled her usual placid welcome to a guest.
“You know me, ma’am?”
“Oh, yes! The London Mr. Cogglesby!”
“Now, ma’am, look here. I’ve come for my brother. Don’t be alarmed. No danger as yet. But, mind! if you attempt to conceal him from his lawful brother, I’ll summon here the myrmidons of the law.”
Mrs. Sockley showed a serious face.
“You know his habits, Mr. Cogglesby; and one daresn’t go against any one of his whimsies, or there’s consequences: but the house is open to you, sir. I dont wish to hide him.”
Andrew accepted this intelligent evasion of Tom Cogglesby’s orders as sufficient, and immediately proceeded up-stairs. A door shut on the first landing. Andrew went to this door, and knocked. No answer. He tried to open it, but found that he had been forestalled. After