colloquy of the young people. They were all assembled in a circle when the vessel came to her moorings. The diplomatist glutted with news, and thirsting for confirmations; the Count dumb, courteous, and quick-eyed; the honourable lady complacent in the consciousness of boxes well packed; the Countess breathing mellifluous long-drawn adieux that should provoke invitations. Evan and Rose regarded each other.
The boat to convey them on shore was being lowered, and they were preparing to move forward. Just then the vessel was boarded by a stranger.
“Dio!” exclaimed the Countess. “Is that one of the creatures of your Customs? I did imagine we were safe from them.”
The diplomatist laughingly requested her to save herself anxiety on that score while under his wing. But she had drawn attention to the intruder, who was seen addressing one of the midshipmen. He was a man in a long brown coat and loose white neckcloth, spectacles on nose, which he wore considerably below the bridge and peered over, as if their main use were to sight his eye; a beaver hat, with broadish brim, on his head. A man of no station, it was evident to the ladies at once, and they would have taken no further notice of him had he not been seen stepping towards them in the rear of the young midshipman.
The latter came to Evan, and said: “A fellow of the name of Goren wants you. Says there’s something the matter at home.” Evan advanced, and bowed stiffly.
Mr. Goren held out his hand. “You don’t remember me, young man? I cut out your first suit for you when you were breeched, though! Yes—ah! Your poor father wouldn’t put his hand to it. Goren!”
Embarrassed, and not quite alive to the chapter of facts this name should have opened to him, Evan bowed again.
“Goren!” continued the possessor of the name. He had a cracked voice that, when he spoke a word of two syllables, commenced with a lugubrious crow, and ended in what one might have taken for a curious question.
“It is a bad business brings me, young man. I’m not the best messenger for such tidings. It’s a black suit, young man! It’s your father!”
The diplomatist and his lady gradually edged back; but Rose remained beside the Countess, who breathed quick, and seemed to have lost her self-command.
Thinking he was apprehended, Mr. Goren said: “I’m going down to-night to take care of the shop. He’s to be buried in his own uniform. You had better come with me by the night-coach, if you would see the last of him, young man.”
Breaking an odd pause that had fallen, the Countess cried aloud, suddenly:
“In his uniform!”
Mr. Goren felt his arm seized and his legs hurrying him some paces into isolation. “Thanks! thanks!” was murmured in his ear. “Not a word more. Evan cannot bear it. Oh! you are good to have come, and we are grateful. My father! my father!”
She had to tighten her hand and wrist against her bosom to keep herself up. She had to reckon in a glance how much Rose had heard, or divined. She had to mark whether the Count had understood a syllable. She had to whisper to Evan to hasten away with the horrible man. She had to enliven his stunned senses, and calm her own. And with mournful images of her father in her brain, the female Spartan had to turn to Rose, and speculate on the girl’s reflective brows, while she said, as over a distant relative, sadly, but without distraction: “A death in the family!” and preserved herself from weeping her heart out, that none might guess the thing who did not positively know it.
Evan touched the hand of Rose without meeting her eyes. He was soon cast off in Mr. Goren’s boat. Then the Countess murmured final adieux; twilight under her lids, but yet a smile, stately, affectionate, almost genial. Rose, her sweet Rose, she must kiss. She could have slapped Rose for appearing so reserved and cold. She hugged Rose, as to hug oblivion of the last few minutes into her. The girl lent her cheek, and bore the embrace, looking on her with a kind of wonder.
Only when alone with the Count, in the brewer’s carriage awaiting her on shore, did the lady give a natural course to her grief; well knowing that her Silva would attribute it to the darkness of their common exile. She wept: but in the excess of her misery, two words of strangely opposite signification, pronounced by Mr. Goren; two words that were at once poison and antidote, sang in her brain; two words that painted her dead father from head to foot, his nature and his fortune: these were the Shop, and the Uniform.
Oh! what would she have given to have seen and bestowed on her beloved father one last kiss! Oh! how she hoped that her inspired echo of Uniform, on board the Iocasta, had drowned the memory, eclipsed the meaning, of that fatal utterance of Shop!
ABOUT COTTON.
More cotton is bought and sold at Liverpool than at any other place in the world. The locality where cotton brokers “most do congregate,” is the area enclosed by the Liverpool Exchange-buildings, on the east side of which they may be seen gathered together every forenoon. Although “the flags” is their particular meeting-place, however, they are not in the habit of behaving after the manner of the sharebrokers hard by, of whom it is related, that having subjected the curious or unwary invader of their domain to the extremities of contumely and ill-usage, they finally deposit him outside the sacred precincts, presenting an appearance strongly contrasting with that which he bore previously to his ill-advised entry. It would probably strike a stranger on his first visit to “the flags,” that there was no such appearance of hurry or bustle as his previous notions of the magnitude of the cotton-trade would have led him to expect; and he would perhaps be tempted to suppose from finding those whom he should meet there perfectly willing
