Everett

“ So well trained was the dog that nothing save an unfamiliar step or the sight of a stranger brought forth such demonstrations. Everett knew this, and walked into the garden, spoke softly to the animal, and, noting nothing unusual, ran up the back steps. The door opened under his touch, and he stepped in. The maids were in the chambers at the top of the house, and quietude reigned about him. The young master went into the drawing-room, stirred the grate fire, and sat down with a book. ”

“ Everett looked up abstractedly.
"Yes—I'm glad to-morrow sees the end of this trip—and yet," he drew himself together responsively, "it has been a wonderful experience. Whenever I get nearer to the people and begin to like them all the more after I know them, and find them liking me—I feel that I have accomplished so much more than merely winning their votes. That is what I love in this work—the winning of friends. And then, Colonel," he glanced almost affectionately at his surroundings, "being in a home like this always gives me such pleasant memories to carry away with me. ”

“ Everett was saying to his daughter.
"Yes, Mr. Nelson came down to the office to see me to-day. It seems he's been talking up the matter of a boy choir, and he wants Ned and Grant, here, to sing in it. He's going to have Howard, and he's heard that Charlie sings; then there are about a dozen little German fellows, and some men. I told him I'd no objection, and I'd ask the boys what they thought." ”

“ Do you remember that night when you took me home from a rehearsal and scarcely spoke a word to me?”
“It was the silence of admiration,” protested Everett, “very crude and boyish, but very sincere and not a little painful. Perhaps you suspected something of the sort? I remember you saw fit to be very grown-up and worldly.
“I believe I suspected a pose; the one that college boys usually affect with singers—'an earthen vessel in love with a star,' you know. But it rather surprised me in you, for you must have seen a good deal of your brother's pupils. ”

“ Very soon, he, the parson--whose name was Everett--and Elizabeth were drawn into conversation, and Marietta under Everett's good-humoured glance found himself observed as well as observer.
"You are trying to decipher us?" said Everett, at last, with a smile. "Well, we are not easy."
"Could you be a great nation if you were?"
"Perhaps not. England just now is a palimpsest--the new writing everywhere on top of the old. Yet it is the same parchment, and the old is there. Now you are writing on a fresh skin."
"But with the old ideas!" said Mariette, a flash in his dark eyes. ”

“ Then he placed the glass in the centre of the table.
"Youth is a good time to go back to," said the peak-faced little gentleman, with a smile. "Twenty years ago, it was the night of the Hunt Ball. You remember it?"
It was Everett who drank first. He drank it with his little twinkling eyes fixed hungrily on the proud handsome face of Mrs. Camelford; and then handed the glass to his wife. It was she perhaps who drank from it most eagerly. Her life with Everett, from the day when she had risen from a bed of sickness stripped of all her beauty, had been one bitter wrong. ”

“ Oh, sir, I got so awfully frightened—I nearly let the truth out."
"You nearly let the truth out—the truth? What do you mean?"
"Mr. Robert, is it possible that you do not know?"
"I only know what all the rest of the world knows—that Everett is guilty."
"I see, sir, that you still hold to that, and I am glad of it, but Mrs. Everett is the sort of woman to frighten a body. Her eyes seem to pierce right down to your very heart—they seem to read your secret. Mr. Awdrey, will you do what I ask you? Will you leave England for a bit? ”

“ Rose Mary adjusted a smothering fold of her dress and continued in her rejoicing over Everett's surrender to circumstance inevitable.
"And do you think you can dig some more in the fields? Don't happiness and hoe mean the same thing to most men?" she questioned with a laugh.
"Yes, hoe to the death and the devil take the last man at the end of the row, fortune to the first!" answered Everett with a return of his cynical look and tone. ”

“ Undoubtedly Everett possessed one of the greatest minds America has ever produced, but if he had rivaled Solomon in natural ability, he could not have entered Harvard College as a student at the age of thirteen had he not been an indefatigable worker, and will any man delude himself into the belief that he could have graduated from such a school at the age of only seventeen, and at the head of his class, had he not exercised tremendous energy. ”

“ Everett knelt beside her, saying, brokenly: “I stayed because I wanted to be with you, that's all. I have never cared about other women since I met you in New York when I was a lad. You are a part of my destiny, and I could not leave you if I would.”
She put her hands on his shoulders and shook her head. “No, no; don't tell me that. I have seen enough of tragedy, God knows. Don't show me any more just as the curtain is going down. No, no, it was only a boy's fancy, and your divine pity and my utter pitiableness have recalled it for a moment. One does not love the dying, dear friend. ”

“ He experienced real pleasure in putting on the new suit after dinner and going down to exhibit himself to the girls in the drawing-room. It was delightful to listen to their exclamations and their praise; to hear Lily declare, "Oh, you do look nice, Ted! Splendacious! Doesn't it suit him well, mammy?"
In that intoxicating moment, Everett felt he could hold his own in any drawing-room in the land; nor could he help inwardly agreeing on catching sight of himself in the chimney-glass that he did look remarkably well in spite of a hairless lip and smooth young cheeks. ”

“ On the night of Adriance Hilgarde's opening concert in Paris, Everett sat by the bed in the ranch-house in Wyoming, watching over the last battle that we have with the flesh before we are done with it and free of it for ever. At times it seemed that the serene soul of her must have left already and found some refuge from the storm, and only the tenacious animal life were left to do battle with death. She laboured under a delusion at once pitiful and merciful, thinking that she was in the Pullman on her way to New York, going back to her life and her work. ”

“ Everett was still standing before the picture, his hands behind him and his head inclined, when he heard the door open. A very tall woman advanced toward him, holding out her hand. As she started to speak, she coughed slightly; then, laughing, said, in a low, rich voice, a trifle husky: “You see I make the traditional Camille entrance—with the cough. How good of you to come, Mr. Hilgarde.”
Everett was acutely conscious that while addressing him she was not looking at him at all, and, as he assured her of his pleasure in coming, he was glad to have an opportunity to collect himself. ”

“ By the time Everett reached the mouth of the Congo, he had learned that in everything he must depend upon himself; that he would be accepted only as the kind of man that, at the moment, he showed himself to be. ”

“ The next morning the English trader across the street assured Everett there was no occasion for alarm. "He didn't die of any disease," he explained. "Somebody got at him from the balcony, while he was in his cot, and knifed him."
The English trader was a young man, a cockney, named Upsher. At home he had been a steward on the Channel steamers. Everett made him his most intimate friend. He had a black wife, who spent most of her day in a four-post bed, hung with lace curtains and blue ribbon, in which she resembled a baby hippopotamus wallowing in a bank of white sand. ”

“ Everett always ate very heartily on Sabbath mornings, but Nathaniel usually pushed his plate away.
As a rule he walked to church between his father and his mother, like a little child, although he was now a tall lad of sixteen, but to-day he was sent back for a psalm-book, forgotten in the hurry of their early start. When he set out again the rest of the village folk were all in the meeting-house. The sight of the deserted street, walled in by the forest, lying drowsily in the spring sunshine, was like balm to him. ”

“ Everett said, smiling, "if that was the word you hesitated about; no, I shall be no beggar. I have plans for my own future;—you shall know of them. Our marriage will, of course, be delayed. I must work, to win a home and position for my wife." He paused,—looked up bravely,—"It is no harder fate than falls to most men. And for Rosa,—true love, true woman as she is, she helps me, she encourages me in all I do and purpose."
Captain Gray shrugged his shoulders. "Two mad young people!" he thought to himself. "They never think of consequences, and it's of no use warning them, I suppose." ”

“ Everett was excited. For half an hour after the individual left who had communicated this unpleasant piece of news, the broker walked the floor of his office with compressed lips, a lowering brow, and most unhappy feelings. The two thousand dollars gain in no way balanced in his mind the three hundred lost. The pleasure created by the one had not penetrated deep enough to escape obliteration by the other. ”

“ And Everett—he's the one—kept the house shouting. He's the regular funny man. The play that week was very funny anyhow—one of those things the billboards call a "scream." It was just that. Everett was the play. He stormed and galloped through his scenes until everybody was helpless. People like him; it's his third summer here. Well, at the end, nobody went. A lot of lads in the gallery began calling for Everett. We're common here; and not many of the quality patronize stock. Soon he pushed out from behind the curtain and made one of those fool speeches which generally fall flat. ”

“ Everett must have a motive. Her judgment told her to accuse the man she loved; her heart demanded that she excuse him. For one instant her generous spirit balanced the squatter children's welfare and her own future. She [Pg 218] had promised to protect Fledra and Floyd, promised them and Horace. ”

“ And so, when she heard of Everett's resolve to pay his father's debts by parting with the property, her better and higher nature warmed to the young man; and though she protested against his Quixotism, and frowned, and talked of prudence, and so forth, her busy brain was, in fact, all the while setting itself to work for his benefit. She was, in a way, fond of the young man. No woman is quite insensible to that chivalrous deference which a Visionary like Everett always manifests to womanhood, collective and individual. ”

“ Everett must have the living Lafayette by his side. But here is an orator without an antagonist, with no measure to urge or oppose, whose simple theme upon a literary occasion is the public duty of the scholar. Yet he touches and stirs and inspires every listener; and as he quietly ends his discourse with a stanza of Lowell's that he has quoted a hundred times before, every hearer feels that it is a historic day, and that what he has seen and heard will be one of the traditions of Harvard and of Phi Beta Kappa. ”

“ Most of the men in that group of honor are now passed over to the majority, but their names are not dead in American history—great ghosts who walk still in the annals of their country, their flesh-and-blood faces were turned attentively that bright, still November afternoon towards the orator of the day, whose voice held the audience.
For two hours Everett spoke and the throng listened untired, fascinated by the dignity of his high-bred look and manner almost as much, perhaps, as by the speech which has taken a place in literature. ”

“ How should it be, when he insisted on being taken with his arm right up in the air, his favourite attitude in speaking, and stands up in that attitude in ordinary buttoned frock coat and trousers? Everett has not been a trustworthy public man to my mind, and is simply nothing unless it is an orator, and I can’t say I think it wise to put him up there on the palpable stump. But we have made so many mistakes in our public statues that I suppose it must run in the blood. The best houses in the town, really charming residences, line the two sides and top of the Common, and fine stores the bottom. ”

“ It was a moment of exquisite suffering. Should he go in? Should he pass on? Only those, (and nowadays such are rare) who have themselves gone through the agonies of shyness can appreciate the situation. As he reached the full glare of the house-light, Everett's indecision was visible in his face.
"Lady Charlton's, sir?" queried Jeames.
My poor Everett! His imbecility will scarcely be believed.
"Thanks—no—ah—er!" he stammered feebly; "I am looking for Mr. Browne's!" ”

“ Each succeeding evening Everett watched the two potential murderers with lessening interest. He even made a bet with Upsher, of a bottle of fruit salt, that the chief of police would be the one to die.
A few nights later a man, groaning beneath his balcony, disturbed his slumbers. He cursed the man, and turned his pillow to find the cooler side. But all through the night the groans, though fainter, broke into his dreams. At intervals some traditions of past conduct tugged at Everett's sleeve, and bade him rise and play the good Samaritan. ”

“ Something in Sargent Everett's peculiarly winning manner, in his fresh good humour and manliness, or perhaps a sympathy for his deformity, had awakened an interest in the old boatman. What it was he did not stop to consider, but he liked the boy, and now that his long journey was nearing its end, he felt a pang of regret that was new to him. Looking into the bright, hopeful face before him, he thought that, after all, youth was the only period of life worth living. ”