University of Virginia Library

18. CHAPTER XVIII.
WHAT MR. JIM HANKS WAS PREPARED TO SWEAR TO.

At the moment when Harley rëentered Huntsdon, with the paper
which he was only to read when alone, Evelyn Bland walked out
of the front door at Blandfield, and strolling across the sward,
reached a seat beneath one of the great oaks, from which she had
a fine view of the tranquil landscape—the low grounds stretching
away in delicate green, and divided by fences covered with the
Virginia creeper; the woods brown with the touch of autumn; and
the distant current of the James, tinted with the last rays of the
setting sun, and dotted here and there with snowy sails, borne
slowly by the light winds toward the sea.

The young lady rested one arm on the rude back of the rustic
seat, put aside some stray curls from her forehead, and the eyes,
peeping out from beneath her chip hat, grew dreamy—absent. She
was certainly thinking of something besides the landscape. Of what
was she thinking? Of what does a young girl think in the calm
hours of an autumn evening, under a great oak just touched by the
dying sunset, when the twilight comes with wooing fingers to caress
her forehead?

In the month that had just passed away, Evelyn Bland's whole
life seemed to have changed—she was no longer the same person.
She had been gay, satirical, imperious; a little beauty, spoiled by
everybody, and resolute to domineer over every one who approached
her. In her eyes no spectacle had been so comic as the
love-sick youths who brought their adoration to her little rosetted
feet; and she had found in all things something to excite her laughter,
to arouse her keen sense of the ludicrous, or to furnish food for
her daring spirit of satire. Now, the former Evelyn Bland seemed
to have quite disappeared. She had grown gentle, quiet, humble
almost. She no longer tripped, flitted, pirouetted—she glided.
Something had made the girl a woman in a single month; and the
woman sighed or smiled pensively were the girl had laughed or
flashed forth her imperious satire.

A face and a voice had effected all this—the face and the voice of
Justin Harley, whom the young lady had begun by laughing at and
ended by—loving. That conversation with her father, in which
Judge Bland had spoken of Harley as a woman-hater, had made

Evelyn resolve, if she ever met him, to direct upon him the heaviest
fires of her satirical artillery; and their first meeting had taken
place in the midst of the sullen waves of the Blackwater! She had
thus commenced her acquaintance with Harley under circumstances
which, breaking down all the rules of etiquette, and paralyzing
conventionality, gave her no advantage in the encounter. She had
not dawned upon him as a young queen of the drawing-room, in
lace, and pearls, and powder, gravely curtseying, and bending her
proud little head, as the “woman-hater” was presented, formally,
to her ladyship. He had seen her, first, a simple girl in a drenched
riding-habit, with dishevelled hair, and eyes filled with terror—a
girl who had quite lost sight of ceremony, and clung around a man's
neck in the midst of a torrent, with no hope of life except from the
man's strong arm. The man had proceeded to save her life: had
pinioned in his rude grasp the delicate hands, which she was
accustomed to having kissed by sighing lovers—when, as a great
favor, she permitted that attention—and enclosed her waist in his
hard muscle, had asked no thanks, nor seemed to care for them.

And what follows followed. The girl rode home thinking of the
man who had caught her in his arms with that rude clutch, and
dragged her back into life. She fell asleep thinking of him—saw
him, and felt his arm around her again in her dreams; his face
went with her—came back to her—grew upon her sight; and the
moment arrived at last when the utterance of his name made her
cheek flush a little, and brought a sudden warmth to her heart.
One day a gentleman of the neighborhood said that Mr. Justin
Harley impressed him as cold, and stiff, and even a little dull.
Evelyn's eyes flashed—it required the full force of her long silken
lashes to hide the flash! “Cold! stiff! dull!”—this man with the
charm of strength, of repose—of melancholy! Who was so noble
and stately? Who had eyes so calm, so clear, so unshrinking in
their honest gaze? Who walked with so firm a tread, raised his
head with such natural grace, or was more simple, unassuming,
high-bred in every movement of his person? And to call Justin
Harley “dull!”—“dull!”

It was the old, old story, you see, reader. We children of the
pen go on telling it in the pages of our romances, year after year,
and there is nothing to change—it is the same, the very same old
story of all the years! Evelyn had surrounded the image of the
man who had saved her life with ideal attractions—thought of him—
dreamed of him—grew a woman in a month—and calmly discarding
St. Leger and another who chose this unfortunate moment for
his suit thought of no one but of the person who did not seem to
think at all of her—Justin Harley.

“A penny for your thoughts, Miss Evelyn!”

Evelyn started and looked round. There was the smiling and
rather insignificant face of a feeble youth of the neighborhood,
who had proceeded, two months before, to the audacious length
of addressing Evelyn.

“A penny for your thoughts!” repeated the feeble youth.

“I was thinking of nothing—that would interest you, sir,” was
the annoyed reply. It was frightful to have the feeble youth
banish Harley from her mind!

“Well, I have been thinking of the mysterious Mr. Harley.
Haven't you been—lately?”

Weak youths have inspirations. This one was cunning—he had
looked, and listened, and suspected, as weak people will.

“Your question is an intrusion,” said Evelyn, with some hauteur;
but the youth did not mind hauteur.

“Oh! very well!” he said. “I didn't mean any offence. The
fact is—ahem!—well, to tell you the truth, Miss Evelyn, people
have been talking so much about this Mr. Justin Harley, that I
thought of him.”

“Well, sir.”

“Now don't look such daggers!” said the young man, in a tone
of remonstrance. “Can I help people talking of Harley?”

“No one has asked you to help it, sir.”

“I declare you are provoked. Mr. Justin Harley seems to be a
friend of yours, and the fact is, I wanted to ask you if there is any
truth in this report about him?”

“What report, sir?” said Evelyn, ceremoniously. She would
have liked not to have asked the question, but her curiosity was
too strong to admit of that dignified proceeding.

“Well, the report is, that your friend, Mr. Harley,”—there was a
satirical emphasis on the words italicised,—is married!”

“Married!” exclaimed Evelyn.

“Yes.”

“It is not true.”

“You know, then, something about our friend, since you speak
so strongly. Have you never heard this report?”

Evelyn was silent: her mind was in a maze. She had more
than once heard Miss Clementina say, in her satirical tones, that
she would not wonder if Mr. Harley had a wife somewhere; he
was melancholy from some cause, and an unfortunate marriage
would explain everything; but then Miss Clementina was a lady
so exceedingly fruitful in suppositions of all descriptions, and had
so vivid an imagination in suggesting explanations upon all occasions,
that Evelyn had paid no attention whatever to these desultory

conjectures. Now, however, the rumor of Harley's marriage, and
probable possession of a wife somewhere, had spread. It was
retailed by the feeble youth: he was not sufficiently intellectual to
invent it; then he must have heard it.

“Who told you that Mr. Harley was married, sir?” she said, with
a little fading of the color in her cheek.

“That's not my secret, Miss Evelyn.”

“Aunt Clementina?”

“No; she did not tell me.”

Evelyn's color faded more and more. She looked at the youth.
Was he telling a falsehood?

“Very well, sir,” she went on, with a sudden pang, as though
some one had put a cord around her heart and was gradually tightening
it: “very well, sir; as you do not wish to tell me who gave
you your information, you may consent to inform me what it precisely
is?”

“Oh yes,” said the feeble youth, who was as cunning as he was
weak, “I can tell you that! The report is—mind you, the report,
for I don't vouch for it, Miss Evelyn.”

There he stopped.

“Of course, sir! I understand,” she said, burning with impatience
and yet shrinking from the rest.

“Well, the report is that Justin Harley was married when he was
a young man, to a girl somewhere—not in this neighborhood—and
that she is still living.”

Evelyn did not make any reply. The color had quite faded out
of her cheeks.

“People say she is now here—to claim her rights.”

“Here!”

“A strolling-player woman.”

The feeble youth then proceeded to say, without noticing, or appearing
to notice, the pale cheeks of Evelyn, that “Jim Hanks”
was at a play in a tobacco-house on Squire Thompson's plantation,
some weeks before, where there was a woman acting with some
strolling players, and Justin Harley had lost his way, and came to
the door. And then, when the woman saw him, she fainted, and
Harley, whom Jim Hanks knew well, looked as if he would faint
too. He, Jim Hanks, had then heard the woman say, behind the
curtain.

“Justin Harley!—I thought he was dead! Then I need not follow
this wretched life any longer! I will have my rights!”

“What do you think of that, now, Miss Evelyn?”

“I think it is a base falsehood!” said the young lady, in a low
voice, and growing as pale as death.

“Well maybe it is. Jim Hanks is a busybody, and may be lying;
but he tells a very straight story, and swears he heard the woman
utter the words.”

Evelyn rose. Her heart was bursting under the cord: she gasped
almost.

“Well, sir—it is nothing to me!—it is a falsehood! I know that!
I must go in now, sir.”

They came to the house.

“Good evening, sir!”

She walked past him without looking at him, and went up to her
chamber, closing the door behind her.

The feeble youth looked after her, and grinned maliciously.

“I'd have made that up to see her look so,” he muttered. “She
treats me as if I was the dirt under her feet. Well—it's a centre-shot
this time. She's struck! Struck—the stuck-up my lady!
And the best of it is, the whole thing is true. Jim Hanks can
swear to the words!”