EVAN HARRINGTON; or, HE WOULD BE A GENTLEMAN.
BY GEORGE MEREDITH.
CHAPTER I.ABOVE BUTTONS.
Long after the hours when even laggard tradesmen commence 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 any 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 anyone 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!”
“How does he look?” said Kilne.
