Andrew had to shrink in his brewer’s skin.

By some fatality all who were doomed to sit and listen to the Countess de
Saldar, were sure to be behindhand in an appointment.

When the young man arrived at the coach-office, he was politely informed that the vehicle, in which a seat had been secured for him, was in close alliance with time and tide, and being under the same rigid laws, could not possibly have waited for him, albeit it had stretched a point to the extent of a pair of minutes, at the urgent solicitation of a passenger.

‘A gentleman who speaks so, sir,’ said a volunteer mimic of the office, crowing and questioning from his throat in Goren’s manner.  ’Yok! yok!  That was how he spoke, sir.’

Evan reddened, for it brought the scene on board the Jocasta vividly to his mind.  The heavier business obliterated it.  He took counsel with the clerks of the office, and eventually the volunteer mimic conducted him to certain livery stables, where Evan, like one accustomed to command, ordered a chariot to pursue the coach, received a touch of the hat for a lordly fee, and was soon rolling out of London.

CHAPTER VI

MY GENTLEMAN ON THE ROAD

The postillion had every reason to believe that he carried a real gentleman behind him; in other words, a purse long and liberal.  He judged by all the points he knew of:  a firm voice, a brief commanding style, an apparent indifference to expense, and the inexplicable minor characteristics, such as polished boots, and a striking wristband, and so forth, which will show a creature accustomed to step over the heads of men.  He had, therefore, no particular anxiety to part company, and jogged easily on the white highway, beneath a moon that walked high and small over marble clouds.

Evan reclined in the chariot, revolving his sensations.  In another mood he would have called, them thoughts, perhaps, and marvelled at their immensity.  The theme was Love and Death.  One might have supposed, from his occasional mutterings at the pace regulated by the postillion, that he was burning with anxiety to catch the flying coach.  He had forgotten it:  forgotten that he was giving chase to anything.  A pair of wondering feminine eyes pursued him, and made him fret for the miles to throw a thicker veil between him and them.  The serious level brows of Rose haunted the poor youth; and reflecting whither he was tending, and to what sight, he had shadowy touches of the holiness there is in death, from which came a conflict between the imaged phantoms of his father and of Rose, and he sided against his love with some bitterness.  His sisters, weeping for their father and holding aloof from his ashes, Evan swept from his mind.  He called up the man his father was:  the kindliness, the readiness, the gallant gaiety of the great Mel.  Youths are fascinated by the barbarian virtues; and to Evan, under present influences, his father was a pattern of manhood.  He asked himself:  Was it infamous to earn one’s bread? and answered it very strongly in his father’s favour.  The great Mel’s creditors were not by to show him another feature of the case.