Evan kissed her cheek.
I knew you would not.
Mrs. Mel examined him with those eyes of hers that compassed objects in a single glance. She drew her finger on each side of her upper lip, and half smiled, saying:
That wont do here.
What? asked Evan, and proceeded immediately to make inquiries about her health, which she satisfied with a nod.
You saw him lowered, Van?
Yes, mother.
Then go and wash yourself, for you are dirty, and then come and take your place at the head of the table.
Must I sit here, mother?
Without a doubtyou must. You know your room. Quick!
In this manner their first interview passed.
Mrs. Fiske rushed in to exclaim:
So, you were right, aunthe has come. I met him on the stairs. Oh! how like dear uncle Mel he looks, in the militia, with that moustache. I just remember him as a child; and, oh, what a gentleman he is!
At the end of the sentence Mrs. Mels face suddenly darkened: she said, in a deep voice:
Dont dare to talk that nonsense before him, Ann.
Mrs. Fiske looked astonished.
What have I done, aunt?
He shant be ruined by a parcel of fools, said Mrs. Mel. There, go! Women have no place here.
How the wretches can force themselves to touch a morsel, after this morning! Mrs. Fiske exclaimed, glancing at the table.
Men must eat, said Mrs. Mel.
The mourners were heard gathering outside the door. Mrs. Fiske escaped into the kitchen. Mrs. Mel admitted them into the parlour, bowing much above the level of many of the heads that passed her.
Assembled were Messrs. Barnes, Kilne, and Grossby, whom we know; Mr. Doubleday, the ironmonger; Mr. Joyce, the grocer; Mr. Perkins, commonly called Lawyer Perkins; Mr. Welbeck, the pier-master of Lymport; Bartholomew Fiske; Mr. Coxwell, a Fallow field maltster, brewer, and farmer; creditors of various dimensions, all of them. Mr. Goren coming last, behind his spectacles.
My son will be with you directly, to preside, said Mrs. Mel. Accept my thanks for the respect you have shown my husband. I wish you good morning.
Morning, maam, answered several voices, and Mrs. Mel retired.
The mourners then set to work to relieve their hats of the appendages of crape. An undertakers man took possession of the long black cloaks. The gloves were generally pocketed.
Thats my second black pair this year, said Joyce.
Theyll last a time to come. I dont need to buy gloves while neighbours pop off.
Undertakers gloves seem to me as if theyre made for mutton fists, remarked Welbeck; upon which Kilne nudged Barnes, the butcher, with a sharp Aha! and Barnes observed:
Oh! I never wear emthey does for my boys on Sundays. I smoke a pipe at home.
The Fallow field farmer held his length of crape aloft and inquired: What shall do with this?
Oh, you keep it, said one or two.
Coxwell rubbed his chin. Dont like to rob the widder.
Whats left goes to the undertaker? asked Grossby.
To be sure, said Barnes; and Kilne added: Its a job: Lawyer Perkins ejaculating confidently, Perquisites of office, gentlemen; perquisites of office! which settled the dispute and appeased every conscience.
A survey of the table ensued. The mourners felt hunger, or else thirst; but had not, it appeared, amalgamated the two appetites as yet. Thirst was the predominant declaration; and Grossby, after an examination of the decanters, unctuously deduced the fact, which he announced, that port and sherry were present.
Try the port, said Kilne.
Good? Barnes inquired.
A very intelligent I ought to know, with a reserve of regret at the extension of his intimacy with the particular vintage under that roof, was winked by Kilne.
Lawyer Perkins touched the arm of a mourner about to be experimental on Kilnes port
I think we had better wait till young Mr. Harrington takes the table, dont you see?
Yes,-ah! croaked Goren. The head of the family, as the saying goes!
I suppose we shant go into business to-day? Joyce carelessly observed.
Lawyer Perkins answered:
No. You cant expect it. Mr. Harrington has led me to anticipate that he will appoint a day. Dont you see?
Oh! I see, returned Joyce. I aint in such a hurry. Whats he doing?
Doubleday, whose propensities were waggish, suggested shaving, but half ashamed of it, since the joke missed, fell to as if he were soaping his face, and had some trouble to contract his jaw.
The delay in Evans attendance on the guests of the house was caused by the fact that Mrs. Mel had lain in wait for him descending, to warn him that he must treat them with no supercilious civility, and to tell him partly the reason why. On hearing the potential relations in which they stood toward the estate of his father, Evan hastily and with the assurance of a son of fortune, said they should be paid.
Thats what they would like to hear, said Mrs. Mel. You may just mention it when theyre going to leave. Say you will fix a day to meet them.
Every farthing! pursued Evan, on whom the tidings were beginning to operate. What! debts? my poor father!
And a thumping sum, Van. You will open your eyes wider.
But it shall be paid, mother,it shall be paid. Debts? I hate them. Id slave night and day to pay them.
Mrs. Mel spoke in a more positive tense: And so will I, Van. Now, go.
It mattered little to her what sort of effect on his demeanour her revelation produced, so long as the resolve she sought to bring him to was nailed in his mind; and she was a woman to knock and knock again, till it was firmly fixed there. With a strong purpose, and no plans, there were few who could resist what, in her circle, she willed; not even a youth who would gaily have marched to the scaffold rather than stand behind a counter. A purpose wedded to plans may easily suffer shipwreck; but an unfettered purpose that moulds circumstances as they arise, masters us, and is terrible. Character melts to it, like metal in the steady furnace. The projector of plots is but a miserable gambler and votary of chances. Of a far higher quality is the will that can subdue itself to wait, and lay no petty traps for opportunity. Poets may fable of such a will, that it makes the very heavens conform to it; or, I may add, what is almost equal thereto, one who would be a gentleman, to consent to be a tailor. The only person who ever held in his course against Mrs. Mel, was Mel,her husband; but, with him, she was under the physical fascination of her youth, and it never left her. In her heart she barely blamed him. What he did, she took among other inevitable matters.
The door closed upon Evan, and waiting at the foot, of the stairs a minute to hear how he was received, Mrs. Mel went to the kitchen and called the name of Dandy, which brought out an ill-built, low-browed, small man, in a baggy suit of black, who hopped up to her with a surly salute. Dandy was a bird Mrs. Mel had herself brought down, and she had for him something of a sportsmans regard for his victim. Dandy was the cleaner of boots and runner of errands in the household of Melchisedec, having originally entered it on a dark night by the cellar. Mrs. Mel, on that occasion, was sleeping in her dressing-gown, to be ready to give the gallant night-hawk, her husband, the service he might require on his return to the nest. Hearing a suspicious noise below, she rose, and deliberately loaded a pair of horse-pistols, weapons Mel had worn in his holsters in the heroic days gone; and with these she stepped downstairs straight to the cellar, carrying a lantern at her girdle. She could not only load, but present and fire. Dandy was foremost in stating that she called him forth steadily, three times, before the pistol was discharged. He admitted that he was frightened, and incapable of speech, at the apparition of the tall, terrific woman. After the third time of asking he had the ball lodged in his leg and fell. Mrs. Mel was in the habit of bearing heavier weights than Dandy. She made no ado about lugging him to a chamber, where, with her own hands (for this woman had some slight knowledge of surgery, and was great in herbs and drugs) she dressed his wound, and put him to bed; crying contempt (ever present in Dandys memory) at such a poor creature undertaking the work of housebreaker. Taught that he really was a poor creature for the work, Dandy, his nursing over, begged to be allowed to stop and wait on Mrs. Mel; and she who had, like many strong natures, a share of pity for the objects she despised, did not cast him out. A jerk in his gait, owing to the bit of lead Mrs. Mel had dropped into him, and a little, perhaps, to her self-satisfied essay in surgical science on his person, earned him the name he went by.
When her neighbours remonstrated with her for housing a reprobate, Mrs. Mel would say: Dandy is well-fed and well-physicked: theres no harm in Dandy; by which she may have meant that the food won his gratitude, and the physic reduced his humours. She had observed human nature. At any rate, Dandy was her creature; and the great Mel himself rallied her about her squire.
When were you drunk last? was Mrs. Mels address to Dandy, as he stood waiting for orders.
He replied to it in an altogether injured way:
There, now; youve been and called me away from my dinner to ask me that. Why, when I had the last chance, to be sure.
And you were at dinner in your new black suit?
Well, growled Dandy, I borrowed Sallys apron. Seems I cant please ye.
Mrs. Mel neither enjoined nor cared for outward forms of respect, where she was sure of complete subserviency. If Dandy went beyond the limits, she gave him an extra dose. Up to the limits he might talk as he pleased, in accordance with Mrs. Mels maxim, that it was a necessary relief to all talking creatures.
Now, take off your apron, she said, and wash your hands, dirty pig, and go and wait at table in there; she pointed to the parlour-door: Come straight to me when everybody has left.
Well, there I am with the bottles again, returned Dandy. It s your fault this time, mind! Ill come as straight as I can.
Dandy turned away to perform her bidding, and Mrs. Mel ascended to the drawing-room to sit with Mrs. Wishaw, who was, as she told all who chose to hear, an old flame of Mels, and was besides, what Mrs. Mel thought more of, the wife of Mels principal creditor, a wholesale dealer in cloth, resident in London.
The conviviality of the mourners did not disturb the house. Still, men who are not accustomed to see the colour of wine every day, will sit and enjoy it, even upon solemn occasions, and the longer they sit the more they forget the matter that has brought them together. Pleading their wives and shops, however, they released Evan from his miserable office late in the afternoon.
His mother came down to him,and saying, I see how you did the journeyyou walked it, told him to follow her.
Yes, mother, Evan yawned, I walked part of the way. I met a fellow in a gig about ten miles out of Fallow field, and he gave me a lift to Flatsham. I just reached Lymport in time, thank Heaven! I wouldnt have missed that! By the way, Ive satisfied these men.
Oh! said Mrs. Mel.
They wantedone or two of themwhat a penance it is to have to sit among those people an hour!they wanted to ask me about the business, but I silenced them. I told them to meet me here this day week.
Mrs. Mel again said Oh! and, pushing into one of the upper rooms, Heres your bedroom, Van, just as you left it.
Ah, so it is, muttered Evan, eyeing a print. The Douglas and the Percy: he took the dead man by the hand. What an age it seems since I last saw that. Theres Sir Hugh Montgomery on horsebackhe hasnt moved. Dont you remember my father calling it the Battle of Tit-for-Tat? Gallant Percy! I know he wished he had lived in those days of knights and battles.
It does not much signify whom one has to make clothes for, observed Mrs. Mel. Her son happily did not mark her.
I think we neither of us were made for the days of pence and pounds, he continued. Now, mother, sit down, and talk to me about him. Did he mention me? Did he give me his blessing? I hope he did not suffer. Id have given anything to press his hand, and looking wistfully at the Percy lifting the hand of Douglas dead, Evans eyes filled with big tears.
He suffered very little, returned Mrs. Mel, and his last words were about you.
What were they? Evan burst out.
I will tell you another time. Now undress, and go to bed. When I talk to you, Van, I want a cool head to listen. You do nothing but yawn yard-measures.
The mouth of the weary youth instinctively snapped short the abhorred emblem.
Here, I will help you, Van.
In spite of his remonstrances and petitions for talk, she took off his coat and waistcoat, contemptuously criticizing the cloth of foreign tailors and their absurd cut.
Have you heard from Louisa? asked Evan.
Yes, yesabout your sisters by-and-by. Now, be good, and go to bed.
She still treated him like a boy, whom she was going to force to the resolution of a man.
Dandys sleeping-room was on the same floor as Evans. Thither, when she had quitted her son, she directed her steps. She had heard Dandy tumble up-stairs the moment his duties were over, and knew what to expect when the bottles had been in his way; for drink made Dandy savage, and a terror to himself. It was her command to him that, when he happened to come across liquor, he should immediately seek his bedroom and bolt the door, and Dandy had got the habit of obeying her. On this occasion he was vindictive against her, seeing that she had delivered him over to his enemy with malice prepense. A good deal of knocking, and summoning of Dandy by name, was required before she was admitted, and the sight of her did not delight him, as he testified.
I m drunk! he bawled. Will that do for ye?
Mrs. Mel stood with her two hands crossed above her apron-string, noting his sullen lurking eye with the calm of a tamer of beasts.
You go out of the room; Im drunk! Dandy repeated, and pitched forward on the bed-post, in the middle of an oath.
She understood that it was pure kindness on Dandys part to bid her go and be out of his reach; and therefore, on his becoming so abusive as to be menacing, she, without a shade of anger, and in the most unruffled manner, administered to him the remedy she had reserved, in the shape of a smart box on the ear, which sent him flat to the floor. He rose, after two or three efforts, quite subdued.
Now, Dandy, sit on the edge of the bed.
Dandy sat on the extreme edge, and Mrs. Mel pursued:
Now, Dandy, tell me what your master said at the table.
Talked at em like a lord, he did, said Dandy, stupidly consoling the boxed ear.
What were his words?
Dandys peculiarity was, that he never remembered anything save when drunk, and Mrs. Mels dose had rather sobered him. By degrees, scratching at his head haltingly, he gave the context.
Gentlemen, I hear for the first time, youve claims against my poor father. Nobody shall ever say he died, and any man was the worse for it. Ill meet you next week, and Ill bind myself by law. Heres Lawyer Perkins. No; Mr. Perkins. Ill 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. Ill 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 fathers last words.
He said he hoped you would never be a tailor.