‘A desperate state of things, isn’t it, Juley? I think I shall go for a soldier—common, you know.’
Instead of shrieking out against such a debasement of his worth and gentility, as was to be expected, Juliana said:
‘That’s what Mr. Harrington thought of doing.’
‘He! If he’d had the pluck he would.’
‘His duty forbade it, and he did not.’
‘Duty! a confounded tailor! What fools we were to have him at Beckley!’
‘Has the Countess been unkind to you Harry?’
‘I haven’t seen her to-day, and don’t want to. It’s my little dear old Juley I came for.’
‘Dear Harry!’ she thanked him with eyes and hands. ‘Come often, won’t you?’
‘Why, ain’t you coming back to us, Juley?’
‘Not yet. They are very kind to me here. How is Rose?’
‘Oh, quite jolly. She and Ferdinand are thick again. Balls every night. She dances like the deuce. They want me to go; but I ain’t the sort of figure for those places, and besides, I shan’t dance till I can lead you out.’
A spur of laughter at Harry’s generous nod brought on Juliana’s cough. Harry watched her little body shaken and her reddened eyes. Some real emotion—perhaps the fear which healthy young people experience at the sight of deadly disease—made Harry touch her arm with the softness of a child’s touch.
‘Don’t be alarmed, Harry,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing—only Winter. I’m determined to get well.’
‘That’s right,’ quoth he, recovering. ‘I know you’ve got pluck, or you wouldn’t have stood that operation.’
‘Let me see: when was that?’ she asked slyly.
Harry coloured, for it related to a time when he had not behaved prettily to her.
‘There, Juley, that ‘s all forgotten. I was a fool-a scoundrel, if you like. I ‘m sorry for it now.’
‘Do you want money, Harry?’
‘Oh, money!’
‘Have you repaid Mr. Harrington yet?’
‘There—no, I haven’t. Bother it! that fellow’s name’s always on your tongue. I’ll tell you what, Juley—but it’s no use. He’s a low, vulgar adventurer.’
‘Dear Harry,’ said Juliana, softly; ‘don’t bring your aunts with you when you come to see me.’
‘Well, then I’ll tell you, Juley. It’s enough that he’s a beastly tailor.’
‘Quite enough,’ she responded; ‘and he is neither a fool nor a scoundrel.’
Harry’s memory for his own speech was not quick. When Juliana’s calm glance at him called it up, he jumped from his chair, crying: ‘Upon my honour, I’ll tell you what, Juley! If I had money to pay him to-morrow, I’d insult him on the spot.’
Juliana meditated, and said: ‘Then all your friends must wish you to continue poor.’
This girl had once been on her knees to him. She had looked up to him with admiring love, and he had given her a crumb or so occasionally, thinking her something of a fool, and more of a pest; but now he could not say a word to her without being baffled in an elderly-sisterly tone exasperating him so far that he positively wished to marry her, and coming to the point, offered himself with downright sincerity, and was rejected. Harry left in a passion. Juliana confided the secret to Caroline, who suggested interested motives, which Juliana would not hear of.
‘Ah,’ said the Countess, when Caroline mentioned the case to her, ‘of course the poor thing cherishes her first offer. She would believe a curate to be disinterested! But mind that Evan has due warning when she is to meet him. Mind that he is dressed becomingly.’
Caroline asked why.
‘Because, my dear, she is enamoured of his person. These little unhealthy creatures are always attracted by the person. She thinks it to be Evan’s qualities. I know better: it is his person. Beckley Court may be lost by a shabby coat!’
The Countess had recovered from certain spiritual languors into which she had fallen after her retreat. Ultimate victory hung still in the balance. Oh! if Evan would only marry this little sufferer, who was so sure to die within a year! or, if she lived (for marriage has often been as a resurrection to some poor female invalids), there was Beckley Court, a splendid basis for future achievements. Reflecting in this fashion, the Countess pardoned her brother. Glowing hopes hung fresh lamps in her charitable breast. She stepped across the threshold of Tailordom, won Mr. Goren’s heart by her condescension, and worked Evan into a sorrowful mood concerning the invalid. Was not Juliana his only active friend? In return, he said things which only required a little colouring to be very acceptable to her.
The game waxed exciting again. The enemy (the Jocelyn party) was alert, but powerless. The three sisters were almost wrought to perform a sacrifice far exceeding Evan’s. They nearly decided to summon him to the house: but the matter being broached at table one evening, Major Strike objected to it so angrily that they abandoned it, with the satisfactory conclusion that if they did wrong it was the Major’s fault.
Meantime Juliana had much on her conscience. She knew Evan to be innocent, and she allowed Rose to think him guilty. Could she bring her heart to join them? That was not in her power: but desiring to be lulled by a compromise, she devoted herself to make his relatives receive him; and on days of bitter winds she would drive out to meet him, answering all expostulations with—‘I should not go if he were here.’
The game waxed hot. It became a question whether Evan should be admitted to the house in spite of the Major. Juliana now made an extraordinary move. Having the Count with her in the carriage one day, she stopped in front of Mr. Goren’s shop, and Evan had to come out. The Count returned home extremely mystified. Once more the unhappy Countess was obliged to draw bills on the fabulous; and as she had recommenced the system, which was not without its fascinations to her, Juliana, who had touched the spring, had the full benefit of it. The Countess had deceived her before—what of that? She spoke things sweet to hear. Who could be false that gave her heart food on which it lived?
One night Juliana returned from her drive alarmingly ill. She was watched through the night by Caroline and the Countess alternately. In the morning the sisters met.
‘She has consented to let us send for a doctor,’ said Caroline.
‘Her chief desire seems to be a lawyer,’ said the Countess.
‘Yes, but the doctor must be sent for first.’
‘Yes, indeed! But it behoves us to previse that the doctor does not kill her before the lawyer comes.’
Caroline looked at Louisa, and said: ‘Are you ignorant?’
‘No—what?’ cried the Countess eagerly.
‘Evan has written to tell Lady Jocelyn the state of her health, and—’
‘And that naturally has aggravated her malady!’ The Countess cramped her long fingers. ‘The child heard it from him yesterday! Oh, I could swear at that brother!’
She dropped into a chair and sat rigid and square-jawed, a sculpture of unutterable rage.
In the afternoon Lady Jocelyn arrived. The doctor was there—the lawyer had gone. Without a word of protest Juliana accompanied her ladyship to Beckley Court. Here was a blow!
But Andrew was preparing one more mighty still. What if the Cogglesby Brewery proved a basis most unsound? Where must they fall then? Alas! on that point whence they sprang. If not to Perdition—Tailordom!
CHAPTER XLI. REVEALS AN ABOMINABLE PLOT OF THE BROTHERS COGGLESBY
A lively April day, with strong gusts from the Southwest, and long sweeping clouds, saluted the morning coach from London to Lymport. Thither Tailordom triumphant was bearing its victim at a rattling pace, to settle him, and seal him for ever out of the ranks of gentlemen: Society, meantime, howling exclusion to him in the background: ‘Out of our halls, degraded youth: The smiles of turbaned matrons: the sighs of delicate maids; genial wit, educated talk, refined scandal, vice in harness, dinners sentineled by stately plush: these, the flavour of life, are not for you, though you stole a taste of them, wretched impostor! Pay for it with years of remorse!’
The coach went rushing against the glorious high wind. It stirred his blood, freshened his cheeks, gave a bright tone of zest to his eyes, as he cast them on the young green country. Not banished from the breath of heaven, or from self-respect, or from the appetite for the rewards that are to follow duties done! Not banished from the help that is always reached to us when we have fairly taken the right road: and that for him is the road to Lymport. Let the kingdom of Gilt Gingerbread howl as it will! We are no longer children, but men: men who have bitten hard at experience, and know the value of a tooth: who have had our hearts bruised, and cover them with armour: who live not to feed, but look to food that we may live! What matters it that yonder high-spiced kingdom should excommunicate such as we are? We have rubbed off the gilt, and have assumed the command of our stomachs. We are men from this day!
Now, you would have thought Evan’s companions, right and left of him, were the wretches under sentence, to judge from appearances. In 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. 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 Raikes. ‘Try and keep it up.’
‘Well, I hope you’re acting too,’ said Evan.
Raikes 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!’ Raikes 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.
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 Raikes called out:
‘The towers of Fallow field; 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 Raikes, 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 on a man’s person could produce such changes in him?’
‘You are a donkey to wear it,’ said Evan.
‘I pledged my word as a gentleman, and thought it small, for the money!’ said Raikes. ‘This is the first coach I ever travelled on, without making the old whip burst with laughing. I’m not 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 at 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 Raikes. ‘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 doesn’t go against any one of his whimsies, or there’s consequences: but the house is open to you, sir. I don’t wish to hide him.’
Andrew accepted this intelligent evasion of Tom Cogglesby’s orders as sufficient, and immediately proceeded upstairs. 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 threatening to talk business through the key-hole, the door was unlocked, and Old Tom appeared.
‘So! now you’re dogging me into the country. Be off; make an appointment. Saturday’s my holiday. You know that.’
Andrew pushed through the doorway, and, by way of an emphatic reply and a silencing one, delivered a punch slap into Old Tom’s belt.
‘Confound you, Nan!’ said Old Tom, grimacing, but friendly, as if his sympathies had been irresistibly assailed.
‘It ‘s done, Tom! I’ve done it. Won my bet, now,’ Andrew exclaimed. ‘The women-poor creatures! What a state they’re in. I pity ‘em.’
Old Tom pursed his lips, and eyed his brother incredulously, but with curious eagerness.
‘Oh, Lord! what a face I’ve had to wear!’ Andrew continued, and while he sank into a chair and rubbed his handkerchief over his crisp hair, Old Tom let loose a convinced and exulting, ‘ha! ha!’
‘Yes, you may laugh. I’ve had all the bother,’ said Andrew.
‘Serve ye right—marrying such cattle,’ Old Tom snapped at him.
‘They believe we’re bankrupt—owe fifty thousand clear, Tom!’
‘Ha! ha!’
‘Brewery stock and household furniture to be sold by general auction, Friday week.’
‘Ha! ha!’
‘Not a place for any of us to poke our heads into. I talked about “pitiless storms” to my poor Harry—no shelter to be had unless we go down to Lymport, and stop with their brother in shop!’
Old Tom did enjoy this. He took a great gulp of air for a tremendous burst of laughter, and when this was expended and reflection came, his features screwed, as if the acidest of flavours had ravished his palate.
‘Bravo, Nan! Didn’t think you were man enough. Ha! ha! Nan—I say—eh? how did ye get on behind the curtains?’
The tale, to guess by Andrew’s face, appeared to be too strongly infused with pathos for revelation.
‘Will they go, Nan, eh? d’ ye think they ‘ll go?’
‘Where else can they go, Tom? They must go there, or on the parish, you know.’
‘They’ll all troop down to the young tailor—eh?’
‘They can’t sleep in the parks, Tom.’
‘No. They can’t get into Buckingham Palace, neither—‘cept as housemaids. ‘Gad, they’re howling like cats, I’d swear—nuisance to the neighbourhood—ha! ha!’
Old Tom’s cruel laughter made Andrew feel for the unhappy ladies. He stuck his forehead, and leaned forward, saying: ‘I don’t know—‘pon my honour, I don’t know—can’t think we’ve—quite done right to punish ‘em so.’
This acted like cold water on Old Tom’s delight. He pitched it back in the shape of a doubt of what Andrew had told him. Whereupon Andrew defied him to face three miserable women on the verge of hysterics; and Old Tom, beginning to chuckle again, rejoined that it would bring them to their senses, and emancipate him.
‘You may laugh, Mr. Tom,’ said Andrew; ‘but if poor Harry should find me out, deuce a bit more home for me.’
Old Tom looked at him keenly, and rapped the table. ‘Swear you did it, Nan.’
‘You promise you’ll keep the secret,’ said Andrew.
‘Never make promises.’
‘Then there’s a pretty life for me! I did it for that poor dear boy. You were only up to one of your jokes—I see that. Confound you, Old Tom, you’ve been making a fool of me.’
The flattering charge was not rejected by Old Tom, who now had his brother to laugh at as well. Andrew affected to be indignant and desperate.
‘If you’d had a heart, Tom, you’d have saved the poor fellow without any bother at all. What do you think? When I told him of our smash—ha! ha! it isn’t such a bad joke-well, I went to him, hanging my head, and he offered to arrange our affairs—that is—’
‘Damned meddlesome young dog!’ cried Old Tom, quite in a rage.
‘There—you’re up in a twinkling,’ said Andrew. ‘Don’t you see he believed it, you stupid Old Tom? Lord! to hear him say how sorry he was, and to see how glad he looked at the chance of serving us!’
‘Serving us!’ Tom sneered.
‘Ha!’ went Andrew. ‘Yes. There. You’re a deuced deal prouder than fifty peers. You’re an upside-down old despot!’
No sharper retort rising to Old Tom’s lips, he permitted his brother’s abuse of him to pass, declaring that bandying words was not his business, he not being a Parliament man.
‘How about the Major, Nan? He coming down, too?’
‘Major!’ cried Andrew. ‘Lucky if he keeps his commission. Coming down? No. He’s off to the Continent.’
‘Find plenty of scamps there to keep him company,’ added Tom. ‘So he’s broke—eh? ha! ha!’
‘Tom,’ said Andrew, seriously, ‘I’ll tell you all about it, if you ‘ll swear not to split on me, because it would really upset poor Harry so. She ‘d think me such a beastly hypocrite, I couldn’t face her afterwards.’
‘Lose what pluck you have—eh?’ Tom jerked out his hand, and bade his brother continue.
Compelled to trust in him without a promise, Andrew said: ‘Well, then, after we’d arranged it, I went back to Harry, and begged her to have poor Van at the house told her what I hoped you’d do for him about getting him into the Brewery. She’s very kind, Tom, ‘pon my honour she is. She was willing, only—’
‘Only—eh?’
‘Well, she was so afraid it’d hurt her sisters to see him there.’
Old Tom saw he was in for excellent fun, and wouldn’t spoil it for the world.
‘Yes, Nan?’
‘So I went to Caroline. She was easy enough; and she went to the Countess.’
‘Well, and she—?’
‘She was willing, too, till Lady Jocelyn came and took Miss Bonner home to Beckley, and because Evan had written to my lady to fetch her, the Countess—she was angry. That was all. Because of that, you know. But yet she agreed. But when Miss Bonner had gone, it turned out that the Major was the obstacle. They were all willing enough to have Evan there, but the Major refused. I didn’t hear him. I wasn’t going to ask him. I mayn’t be a match for three women, but man to man, eh, Tom? You’d back me there? So Harry said the Major ‘d make Caroline miserable, if his wishes were disrespected. By George, I wish I’d know, then. Don’t you think it odd, Tom, now? There’s a Duke of Belfield the fellow had hooked into his Company; and—through Evan I heard—the Duke had his name struck off. After that, the Major swore at the Duke once or twice, and said Caroline wasn’t to go out with him. Suddenly, he insists that she shall go. Days the poor thing kept crying! One day, he makes her go. She hasn’t the spirit of my Harry or the Countess. By good luck, Van, who was hunting ferns for some friends of his, met them on Sunday in Richmond Park, and Van took her away from the Duke. But, Tom, think of Van seeing a fellow watching her wherever she went, and hearing the Duke’s coachman tell that fellow he had orders to drive his master and a lady hard on to the sea that night. I don’t believe it—it wasn’t Caroline! But what do you think of our finding out that beast of a spy to be in the Major’s pay? We did. Van put a constable on his track; we found him out, and he confessed it. A fact, Tom! That decided me. If it was only to get rid of a brute, I determined I ‘d do it, and I did. Strike came to me to get my name for a bill that night. ‘Gad, he looked blanker than his bill when he heard of us two bankrupt. I showed him one or two documents I’d got ready. Says he: “Never mind; it’ll only be a couple of hundred more in the schedule.” Stop, Tom! he’s got some of our blood. I don’t think he meant it. He is hard pushed. Well, I gave him a twentier, and he was off the next night. You ‘ll soon see all about the Company in the papers.’
At the conclusion of Andrew’s recital, Old Tom thrummed and looked on the floor under a heavy frown. His mouth worked dubiously, and, from moment to moment, he plucked at his waistcoat and pulled it down, throwing back his head and glaring.
‘I ‘ve knocked that fellow over once,’ he said. ‘Wish he hadn’t got up again.’
Andrew nodded.
‘One good thing, Nan. He never boasted of our connection. Much obliged to him.’
‘Yes,’ said Andrew, who was gladly watching Old Tom’s change of mood with a quiescent aspect.
‘Um!—must keep it quiet from his poor old mother.’
Andrew again affirmatived his senior’s remarks. That his treatment of Old Tom was sound, he presently had proof of. The latter stood up, and after sniffing in an injured way for about a minute, launched out his right leg, and vociferated that he would like to have it in his power to kick all the villains out of the world: a modest demand Andrew at once chimed in with; adding that, were such a faculty extended to him, he would not object to lose the leg that could benefit mankind so infinitely, and consented to its following them. Then, Old Tom, who was of a practical turn, meditated, swung his foot, and gave one grim kick at the imaginary bundle of villains, discharged them headlong straight into space. Andrew, naturally imitative, and seeing that he had now to kick them flying, attempted to excel Old Tom in the vigour of his delivery. No wonder that the efforts of both were heating: they were engaged in the task of ridding the globe of the larger half of its inhabitants. Tom perceived Andrew’s useless emulation, and with a sound translated by ‘yack,’ sent his leg out a long way. Not to be outdone, Andrew immediately, with a still louder ‘yack,’ committed himself to an effort so violent that the alternative between his leg coming off, or his being taken off his leg, was propounded by nature, and decided by the laws of gravity in a trice. Joyful grunts were emitted by Old Tom at the sight of Andrew prostrate, rubbing his pate. But Mrs. Sockley, to whom the noise of Andrew’s fall had suggested awful fears of a fratricidal conflict upstairs, hurried forthwith to announce to them that the sovereign remedy for human ills, the promoter of concord, the healer of feuds, the central point of man’s destiny in the flesh—Dinner, was awaiting them.
To the dinner they marched.
Of this great festival be it simply told that the supply was copious and of good quality—much too good and copious for a bankrupt host: that Evan and Mr. John Raikes were formally introduced to Old Tom before the repast commenced, and welcomed some three minutes after he had decided the flavour of his first glass; that Mr. Raikes in due time preferred his petition for release from a dreadful engagement, and furnished vast amusement to the company under Old Tom’s hand, until, by chance, he quoted a scrap of Latin, at which the brothers Cogglesby, who would have faced peers and princes without being disconcerted, or performing mental genuflexions, shut their mouths and looked injured, unhappy, and in the presence of a superior: Mr. Raikes not being the man to spare them. Moreover, a surprise was afforded to Evan. Andrew stated to Old Tom that the hospitality of Main Street, Lymport,—was open to him. Strange to say, Old Tom accepted it on the spot, observing, ‘You’re master of the house—can do what you like, if you ‘re man enough,’ and adding that he thanked him, and would come in a day or two. The case of Mr. Raikes was still left uncertain, for as the bottle circulated, he exhibited such a faculty for apt, but to the brothers, totally incomprehensible quotation, that they fled from him without leaving him time to remember what special calamity was on his mind, or whether this earth was other than an abode conceived in great jollity for his life-long entertainment.