“‘Gentlemen, I hear for the first time, you’ve claims against my poor father. Nobody shall ever say he died, and any man was the worse for it. I’ll meet you next week, and I’ll bind myself by law. Here’s Lawyer Perkins. No; Mr. Perkins. I’ll pay off every penny. Gentlemen, look upon me as your debtor, and not my father.’”
Delivering this with tolerable steadiness, Dandy asked, “Will that do?”
“That will do,” said Mrs. Mel. “I’ll send you up some tea presently. Lie down, Dandy.”
The house was dark and silent when Evan, refreshed by his rest, descended to seek his mother. She was sitting alone in the parlour. With a tenderness which Mrs. Mel permitted rather than encouraged, Evan put his arm round her neck, and kissed her many times. One of the symptoms of heavy sorrow, a longing for the signs of love, made Evan fondle his mother, and bend over her yearningly. Mrs. Mel said once: “Dear Van; good boy!” and quietly sat through his caresses.
“Sitting up for me, mother?” he whispered.
“Yes, Van; we may as well have our talk out.”
“Ah!” he took a chair close by her side, “tell me my father’s last words.”
“He said he hoped you would never be a tailor.”
Evan’s forehead wrinkled up. “There’s not much fear of that, then!”
His mother turned her face on him, and examined him with a rigorous placidity; all her features seeming to bear down on him. Evan did not like the look.
“You object to trade, Van?”
“Yes, decidedly, mother—hate it; but that’s not what I want to talk to you about. Didn’t my father speak of me much?”
“He desired that you should wear his Militia sword, if you got a commission.”
“I have rather given up the army,” said Evan.
Mrs. Mel requested him to tell her what a colonel’s full pay amounted to; and again, the number of years it required, on a rough calculation, to attain that grade. In reply to his statement, she observed: “A tailor might realise twice the sum in a quarter of the time.”
“What if he does—double, or treble?” cried Evan, impetuously; and to avoid the theme, and cast off the bad impression it produced on him, he rubbed his hands, and said: “I want to talk to you about my prospects, mother.”
“What are they?” Mrs. Mel inquired.
The severity of her mien and sceptical coldness of her speech, caused him to inspect them suddenly, as if she had lent him her eyes. He put them by, till the gold should recover its natural shine, saying: “By the way, mother, I’ve written the half of a History of Portugal.”
“Have you?” said Mrs. Mel. “For Louisa?”
“No, mother, of course not: to sell it. Albuquerque! what a splendid fellow he was!”
Informing him that he knew she abominated foreign names, she said: “And your prospects are, writing Histories of Portugal?”
“No, mother. I was going to tell you, I expect a Government appointment. Mr. Jocelyn likes my work—I think he likes me. You know, I was his private secretary for ten months.”
“You write a good hand,” his mother interposed.
“And I’m certain I was born for diplomacy.”
“For an easy chair, and an ink-dish before you, and lacqueys behind. What’s to be your income, Van?”
Evan carelessly remarked that he must wait and see.
“A very proper thing to do,” said Mrs. Mel; for now that she had fixed him to some explanation of his prospects, she could condescend, in her stiff way, to banter.
Slightly touched by it, Evan pursued, half-laughing, as men do who wish to propitiate common sense on behalf of what seems tolerably absurd: “It’s not the immediate income, you know, mother: one thinks of one’s future. In the diplomatic service, as Louisa says, you come to be known to Ministers—gradually, I mean. That is, they hear of you; and if you show you have some capacityLouisa wants me to throw it up in time, and stand for Parliament. Andrew, she thinks, would be glad to help me to his seat. Once in Parliament, and known to Ministers, you—your career is open to you.”
In justice to Mr. Evan Harrington, it must be said, he built up this extraordinary card-castle to dazzle his mother’s mind: he had lost his right grasp of her character for the moment, because of an undefined suspicion of something she intended, and which sent him himself to take refuge in those flimsy structures; while the very altitude he reached beguiled his imagination, and made him hope to impress hers.
Mrs. Mel dealt it one fillip. “And in the meantime how are you to live, and pay the creditors?”
Though Evan answered cheerfully, “Oh, they will wait, and I can live on anything,” he was nevertheless floundering on the ground amid the ruins of the superb edifice; and his mother, upright and rigid, continuing, “You can live on anything, and they will wait, and call your father a rogue,” he started, grievously bitten by one of the serpents of earth.
“Good Heaven, mother! what are you saying?”
“That they will call your father a rogue, and will have a right to,” said the relentless woman.
“Not while I live!” Evan exclaimed.
“You may stop one mouth with your fist, but you won’t stop a dozen, Van.”
Evan jumped up and walked the room.
“What am I to do?” he cried. “I will pay everything. I will bind myself to pay every farthing. What more can I possibly do?”
“Make the money,” said Mrs. Mel’s deep voice.
Evan faced her: “My dear mother, you are very unjust and inconsiderate. I have been working, and doing my best. I promisewhat do the debts amount to?”
“Something like 5000l. in all, Van.”
“Very well.” Youth is not alarmed by the sound of big sums. “Very well—I will pay it.”
