The Hand of Ethelberta Read Online

The incident which has occurred affords me every excuse for withdrawing my promise, since it was given under misapprehensions on a point that materially affects my happiness.

‘E. PETHERWIN.’

‘Ho-ho-ho—Miss Hoity-toity!’ said Lord Mountclere, trotting up and down.  But, remembering it was her June against his November, this did not last long, and he frantically replied:—

‘MY DARLING,—I cannot release you—I must do anything to keep my treasure.  Will you not see me for a few minutes, and let bygones go to the winds?’

Was ever a thrush so safe in a cherry net before!

The messenger came back with the information that Mrs. Petherwin had taken a walk to the Close, her companion alone remaining at the hotel.  There being nothing else left for the viscount to do, he put on his hat, and went out on foot in the same direction.  He had not walked far when he saw Ethelberta moving slowly along the High Street before him.

Ethelberta was at this hour wandering without any fixed intention beyond that of consuming time.  She was very wretched, and very indifferent: the former when thinking of her past, the latter when thinking of the days to come.  While she walked thus unconscious of the streets, and their groups of other wayfarers, she saw Christopher emerge from a door not many paces in advance, and close it behind him: he stood for a moment on the step before descending into the road.

She could not, even had she wished it, easily check her progress without rendering the chance of his perceiving her still more certain.  But she did not wish any such thing, and it made little difference, for he had already seen her in taking his survey round, and came down from the door to her side.  It was impossible for anything formal to pass between them now.

‘You are not at the concert, Mr. Julian?’ she said.  ‘I am glad to have a better opportunity of speaking to you, and of asking for your sister.  Unfortunately there is not time for us to call upon her to-day.’

‘Thank you, but it makes no difference,’ said Julian, with somewhat sad reserve.  ‘I will tell her I have met you; she is away from home just at present.’  And finding that Ethelberta did not rejoin immediately he observed, ‘The chief organist, old Dr. Breeve, has taken my place at the concert, as it was arranged he should do after the opening part.  I am now going to the Cathedral for the afternoon service.  You are going there too?’

‘I thought of looking at the interior for a moment.’

So they went on side by side, saying little; for it was a situation in which scarcely any appropriate thing could be spoken.  Ethelberta was the less reluctant to walk in his company because of the provocation to skittishness that Lord Mountclere had given, a provocation which she still resented.  But she was far from wishing to increase his jealousy; and yet this was what she was doing, Lord Mountclere being a perturbed witness from behind of all that was passing now.

They turned the corner of the short street of connection which led under an archway to the Cathedral Close, the old peer dogging them still.  Christopher seemed to warm up a little, and repeated the invitation.  ‘You will come with your sister to see us before you leave?’ he said.  ‘We have tea at six.’

‘We shall have left Melchester before that time.  I am now only waiting for the train.’

‘You two have not come all the way from Knollsea alone?’

‘Part of the way,’ said Ethelberta evasively.

‘And going back alone?’

‘No.  Only for the last five miles.  At least that was the arrangement—I am not quite sure if it holds good.’

‘You don’t wish me to see you safely in the train?’

‘It is not necessary: thank you very much.  We are well used to getting about the world alone, and from Melchester to Knollsea is no serious journey, late or early. . . .  Yet I think I ought, in honesty, to tell you that we are not entirely by ourselves in Melchester to-day.’

‘I remember I saw your friend—relative—in the room at the Town-hall.  It did not occur to my mind for the moment that he was any other than a stranger standing there.’

‘He is not a relative,’ she said, with perplexity.  ‘I hardly know, Christopher, how to explain to you my position here to-day, because of some difficulties that have arisen since we have been in the town, which may alter it entirely.  On that account I will be less frank with you than I should like to be, considering how long we have known each other.  It would be wrong, however, if I were not to tell you that there has been a possibility of my marriage with him.’

‘The elderly gentleman?’

‘Yes.  And I came here in his company, intending to return with him.  But you shall know all soon.  Picotee shall write to Faith.’

‘I always think the Cathedral looks better from this point than from the point usually chosen by artists,’ he said, with nervous quickness, directing her glance upwards to the silent structure, now misty and unrelieved by either high light or deep shade.  ‘We get the grouping of the chapels and choir-aisles more clearly shown—and the whole culminates to a more perfect pyramid from this spot—do you think so?’

‘Yes.  I do.’

A little further, and Christopher stopped to enter, when Ethelberta bade him farewell.  ‘I thought at one time that our futures might have been different from what they are apparently becoming,’ he said then, regarding her as a stall-reader regards the brilliant book he cannot afford to buy.  ‘But one gets weary of repining about that.  I wish Picotee and yourself could see us oftener; I am as confirmed a bachelor now as Faith is an old maid.  I wonder if—should the event you contemplate occur—you and he will ever visit us, or we shall ever visit you!’

Christopher was evidently imagining the elderly gentleman to be some retired farmer, or professional man already so intermixed with the metamorphic classes of society as not to be surprised or inconvenienced by her beginnings; one who wished to secure Ethelberta as an ornament to his parlour fire in a quiet spirit, and in no intoxicated mood regardless of issues.  She could scarcely reply to his supposition; and the parting was what might have been predicted from a conversation so carefully controlled.

Ethelberta, as she had intended, now went on further, and entering the nave began to inspect the sallow monuments which lined the grizzled pile.  She did not perceive amid the shadows an old gentleman who had crept into the mouldy place as stealthily as a worm into a skull, and was keeping himself carefully beyond her observation.  She continued to regard feature after feature till the choristers had filed in from the south side, and peals broke forth from the organ on the black oaken mass at the junction of nave and choir, shaking every cobweb in the dusky vaults, and Ethelberta’s heart no less.  She knew the fingers that were pressing out those rolling sounds, and knowing them, became absorbed in tracing their progress.  To go towards the organ-loft was an act of unconsciousness, and she did not pause till she stood almost beneath it.

Ethelberta was awakened from vague imaginings by the close approach of the old gentleman alluded to, who spoke with a great deal of agitation.

‘I have been trying to meet with you,’ said Lord Mountclere.  ‘Come, let us be friends again!—Ethelberta, I MUST not lose you!  You cannot mean that the engagement shall be broken off?’  He was far too desirous to possess her at any price now to run a second risk of exasperating her, and forbore to make any allusion to the recent pantomime between herself and Christopher that he had beheld, though it might reasonably have filled him with dread and petulance.

‘I do not mean anything beyond this,’ said she, ‘that I entirely withdraw from it on the faintest sign that you have not abandoned such miserable jealous proceedings as those you adopted to-day.’

‘I have quite abandoned them.  Will you come a little further this way, and walk in the aisle?  You do still agree to be mine?’

‘If it gives you any pleasure, I do.’

‘Yes, yes.  I implore that the marriage may be soon—very soon.’  The viscount spoke hastily, for the notes of the organ which were plunging into their ears ever and anon from the hands of his young rival seemed inconveniently and solemnly in the way of his suit.

‘Well, Lord Mountclere?’

‘Say in a few days?—it is the only thing that will satisfy me.’

‘I am absolutely indifferent as to the day.  If it pleases you to have it early I am willing.’

‘Dare I ask that it may be this week?’ said the delighted old man.

‘I could not say that.’

‘But you can name the earliest day?’

‘I cannot now.  We had better be going from here, I think.’

The Cathedral was filling with shadows, and cold breathings came round the piers, for it was November, when night very soon succeeds noon in spots where noon is sobered to the pallor of eve.  But the service was not yet over, and before quite leaving the building Ethelberta cast one other glance towards the organ and thought of him behind it.  At this moment her attention was arrested by the form of her sister Picotee, who came in at the north door, closed the lobby-wicket softly, and went lightly forward to the choir.  When within a few yards of it she paused by a pillar, and lingered there looking up at the organ as Ethelberta had done.  No sound was coming from the ponderous mass of tubes just then; but in a short space a whole crowd of tones spread from the instrument to accompany the words of a response.  Picotee started at the burst of music as if taken in a dishonest action, and moved on in a manner intended to efface the lover’s loiter of the preceding moments from her own consciousness no less than from other people’s eyes.

‘Do you see that?’ said Ethelberta.  ‘That little figure is my dearest sister.  Could you but ensure a marriage between her and him she listens to, I would do anything you wish!’

‘That is indeed a gracious promise,’ said Lord Mountclere.  ‘And would you agree to what I asked just now?’

‘Yes.’

‘When?’  A gleeful spark accompanied this.

‘As you requested.’

‘This week?  The day after to-morrow?’

‘If you will.  But remember what lies on your side of the contract.  I fancy I have given you a task beyond your powers.’

‘Well, darling, we are at one at last,’ said Lord Mountclere, rubbing his hand against his side.  ‘And if my task is heavy and I cannot guarantee the result, I can make it very probable.  Marry me on Friday—the day after to-morrow—and I will do all that money and influence can effect to bring about their union.’

‘You solemnly promise?  You will never cease to give me all the aid in your power until the thing is done?’

‘I do solemnly promise—on the conditions named.’

‘Very good.  You will have ensured my fulfilment of my promise before I can ensure yours; but I take your word.’

‘You will marry me on Friday!  Give me your hand upon it.’

She gave him her hand.

‘Is it a covenant?’ he asked.

‘It is,’ said she.

Lord Mountclere warmed from surface to centre as if he had drunk of hippocras, and, after holding her hand for some moments, raised it gently to his lips.

‘Two days and you are mine,’ he said.

‘That I believe I never shall be.’

‘Never shall be?  Why, darling?’

‘I don’t know.  Some catastrophe will prevent it.  I shall be dead perhaps.’

‘You distress me.  Ah,—you meant me—you meant that I should be dead, because you think I am old!  But that is a mistake—I am not very old!’

‘I thought only of myself—nothing of you.’

‘Yes, I know.  Dearest, it is dismal and chilling here—let us go.’

Ethelberta mechanically moved with him, and felt there was no retreating now.  In the meantime the young ladykin whom the solemn vowing concerned had lingered round the choir screen, as if fearing to enter, yet loth to go away.  The service terminated, the heavy books were closed, doors were opened, and the feet of the few persons who had attended evensong began pattering down the paved alleys.  Not wishing Picotee to know that the object of her secret excursion had been discovered, Ethelberta now stepped out of the west doorway with the viscount before Picotee had emerged from the other; and they walked along the path together until she overtook them.

‘I fear it becomes necessary for me to stay in Melchester to-night,’ said Lord Mountclere.  ‘I have a few matters to attend to here, as the result of our arrangements.  But I will first accompany you as far as Anglebury, and see you safely into a carriage there that shall take you home.  To-morrow I will drive to Knollsea, when we will make the final preparations.’

Ethelberta would not have him go so far and back again, merely to attend upon her; hence they parted at the railway, with due and correct tenderness; and when the train had gone, Lord Mountclere returned into the town on the special business he had mentioned, for which there remained only the present evening and the following morning, if he were to call upon her in the afternoon of the next day—the day before the wedding—now so recklessly hastened on his part, and so coolly assented to on hers.

By the time that the two young people had started it was nearly dark.  Some portions of the railway stretched through little copses and plantations where, the leaf-shedding season being now at its height, red and golden patches of fallen foliage lay on either side of the rails; and as the travellers passed, all these death-stricken bodies boiled up in the whirlwind created by the velocity, and were sent flying right and left of them in myriads, a clean-fanned track being left behind.

Picotee was called from the observation of these phenomena by a remark from her sister: ‘Picotee, the marriage is to be very early indeed.  It is to be the day after to-morrow—if it can.  Nevertheless I don’t believe in the fact—I cannot.’

‘Did you arrange it so?  Nobody can make you marry so soon.’

‘I agreed to the day,’ murmured Ethelberta languidly.

‘How can it be?  The gay dresses and the preparations and the people—how can they be collected in the time, Berta?  And so much more of that will be required for a lord of the land than for a common man.  O, I can’t think it possible for a sister of mine to marry a lord!’

‘And yet it has been possible any time this last month or two, strange as it seems to you. . . .  It is to be not only a plain and simple wedding, without any lofty appliances, but a secret one—as secret as if I were some under-age heiress to an Indian fortune, and he a young man of nothing a year.’

‘Has Lord Mountclere said it must be so private?  I suppose it is on account of his family.’

‘No.  I say so; and it is on account of my family.  Father might object to the wedding, I imagine, from what he once said, or he might be much disturbed about it; so I think it better that he and the rest should know nothing till all is over.  You must dress again as my sister to-morrow, dear.  Lord Mountclere is going to pay us an early visit to conclude necessary arrangements.’

‘O, the life as a lady at Enckworth Court!  The flowers, the woods, the rooms, the pictures, the plate, and the jewels!  Horses and carriages rattling and prancing, seneschals and pages, footmen hopping up and hopping down.  It will be glory then!’

‘We might hire our father as one of my retainers, to increase it,’ said Ethelberta drily.

Picotee’s countenance fell.  ‘How shall we manage all about that?  ’Tis terrible, really!’

‘The marriage granted, those things will right themselves by time and weight of circumstances.  You take a wrong view in thinking of glories of that sort.  My only hope is that my life will be quite private and simple, as will best become my inferiority and Lord Mountclere’s staidness.  Such a splendid library as there is at Enckworth, Picotee—quartos, folios, history, verse, Elzevirs, Caxtons—all that has been done in literature from Moses down to Scott—with such companions I can do without all other sorts of happiness.’

‘And you will not go to town from Easter to Lammastide, as other noble ladies do?’ asked the younger girl, rather disappointed at this aspect of a viscountess’s life.

‘I don’t know.’

‘But you will give dinners, and travel, and go to see his friends, and have them to see you?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Will you not be, then, as any other peeress; and shall not I be as any other peeress’s sister?’

‘That, too, I do not know.  All is mystery.  Nor do I even know that the marriage will take place.  I feel that it may not; and perhaps so much the better, since the man is a stranger to me.  I know nothing whatever of his nature, and he knows nothing of mine.’

40. MELCHESTER (continued)

The commotion wrought in Julian’s mind by the abrupt incursion of Ethelberta into his quiet sphere was thorough and protracted.  The witchery of her presence he had grown strong enough to withstand in part; but her composed announcement that she had intended to marry another, and, as far as he could understand, was intending it still, added a new chill to the old shade of disappointment which custom was day by day enabling him to endure.  During the whole interval in which he had produced those diapason blasts, heard with such inharmonious feelings by the three auditors outside the screen, his thoughts had wandered wider than his notes in conjectures on the character and position of the gentleman seen in Ethelberta’s company.  Owing to his assumption that Lord Mountclere was but a stranger who had accidentally come in at the side door, Christopher had barely cast a glance upon him, and the wide difference between the years of the viscount and those of his betrothed was not so particularly observed as to raise that point to an item in his objections now.  Lord Mountclere was dressed with all the cunning that could be drawn from the metropolis by money and reiterated dissatisfaction; he prided himself on his upright carriage; his stick was so thin that the most malevolent could not insinuate that it was of any possible use in walking; his teeth had put on all the vigour and freshness of a second spring.  Hence his look was the slowest of possible clocks in respect of his age, and his manner was equally as much in the rear of his appearance.

Christopher was now over five-and-twenty.  He was getting so well accustomed to the spectacle of a world passing him by and splashing him with its wheels that he wondered why he had ever minded it.  His habit of dreaming instead of doing had led him up to a curious discovery.  It is no new thing for a man to fathom profundities by indulging humours: the active, the rapid, the people of splendid momentum, have been surprised to behold what results attend the lives of those whose usual plan for discharging their active labours has been to postpone them indefinitely.  Certainly, the immediate result in the present case was, to all but himself, small and invisible; but it was of the nature of highest things.  What he had learnt was that a woman who has once made a permanent impression upon a man cannot altogether deny him her image by denying him her company, and that by sedulously cultivating the acquaintance of this Creature of Contemplation she becomes to him almost a living soul.  Hence a sublimated Ethelberta accompanied him everywhere—one who never teased him, eluded him, or disappointed him: when he smiled she smiled, when he was sad she sorrowed.  He may be said to have become the literal duplicate of that whimsical unknown rhapsodist who wrote of his own similar situation—

‘By absence this good means I gain,
   That I can catch her,
   Where none can watch her,
In some close corner of my brain:
   There I embrace and kiss her;
   And so I both enjoy and miss her.’

This frame of mind naturally induced an amazing abstraction in the organist, never very vigilant at the best of times.  He would stand and look fixedly at a frog in a shady pool, and never once think of batrachians, or pause by a green bank to split some tall blade of grass into filaments without removing it from its stalk, passing on ignorant that he had made a cat-o’-nine-tails of a graceful slip of vegetation.  He would hear the cathedral clock strike one, and go the next minute to see what time it was.  ‘I never seed such a man as Mr. Julian is,’ said the head blower.  ‘He’ll meet me anywhere out-of-doors, and never wink or nod.  You’d hardly expect it.  I don’t find fault, but you’d hardly expect it, seeing how I play the same instrument as he do himself, and have done it for so many years longer than he.  How I have indulged that man, too!  If ’tis Pedals for two martel hours of practice I never complain; and he has plenty of vagaries.  When ’tis hot summer weather there’s nothing will do for him but Choir, Great, and Swell altogether, till yer face is in a vapour; and on a frosty winter night he’ll keep me there while he tweedles upon the Twelfth and Sixteenth till my arms be scrammed for want of motion.  And never speak a word out-of-doors.’  Somebody suggested that perhaps Christopher did not notice his coadjutor’s presence in the street; and time proved to the organ-blower that the remark was just.

Whenever Christopher caught himself at these vacuous tricks he would be struck with admiration of Ethelberta’s wisdom, foresight, and self-command in refusing to wed such an incapable man: he felt that he ought to be thankful that a bright memory of her was not also denied to him, and resolved to be content with it as a possession, since it was as much of her as he could decently maintain.

Wrapped thus in a humorous sadness he passed the afternoon under notice, and in the evening went home to Faith, who still lived with him, and showed no sign of ever being likely to do otherwise.  Their present place and mode of life suited her well.  She revived at Melchester like an exotic sent home again.  The leafy Close, the climbing buttresses, the pondering ecclesiastics, the great doors, the singular keys, the whispered talk, echoes of lonely footsteps, the sunset shadow of the tall steeple, reaching further into the town than the good bishop’s teaching, and the general complexion of a spot where morning had the stillness of evening and spring some of the tones of autumn, formed a proper background to a person constituted as Faith, who, like Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon’s chicken, possessed in miniature all the antiquity of her progenitors.

After tea Christopher went into the streets, as was frequently his custom, less to see how the world crept on there than to walk up and down for nothing at all.  It had been market-day, and remnants of the rural population that had visited the town still lingered at corners, their toes hanging over the edge of the pavement, and their eyes wandering about the street.

The angle which formed the turning-point of Christopher’s promenade was occupied by a jeweller’s shop, of a standing which completely outshone every other shop in that or any trade throughout the town.  Indeed, it was a staple subject of discussion in Melchester how a shop of such pretensions could find patronage sufficient to support its existence in a place which, though well populated, was not fashionable.  It had not long been established there, and was the enterprise of an incoming man whose whole course of procedure seemed to be dictated by an intention to astonish the native citizens very considerably before he had done.  Nearly everything was glass in the frontage of this fairy mart, and its contents glittered like the hammochrysos stone.  The panes being of plate-glass, and the shop having two fronts, a diagonal view could be had through it from one to the other of the streets to which it formed a corner.

This evening, as on all evenings, a flood of radiance spread from the window-lamps into the thick autumn air, so that from a distance that corner appeared as the glistening nucleus of all the light in the town.  Towards it idle men and women unconsciously bent their steps, and closed in upon the panes like night-birds upon the lantern of a lighthouse.

When Christopher reached the spot there stood close to the pavement a plain close carriage, apparently waiting for some person who was purchasing inside.  Christopher would hardly have noticed this had he not also perceived, pressed against the glass of the shop window, an unusual number of local noses belonging to overgrown working lads, tosspots, an idiot, the ham-smoker’s assistant with his sleeves rolled up, a scot-and-lot freeholder, three or four seamstresses, the young woman who brought home the washing, and so on.  The interest of these gazers in some proceedings within, which by reason of the gaslight were as public as if carried on in the open air, was very great.

‘Yes, that’s what he’s a buying o’—haw, haw!’ said one of the young men, as the shopman removed from the window a gorgeous blue velvet tray of wedding-rings, and laid it on the counter.

‘’Tis what you may come to yerself, sooner or later, God have mercy upon ye; and as such no scoffing matter,’ said an older man.  ‘Faith, I’d as lief cry as laugh to see a man in that corner.’

‘He’s a gent getting up in years too.  He must hev been through it a few times afore, seemingly, to sit down and buy the tools so cool as that.’

‘Well, no.  See what the shyest will do at such times.  You bain’t yerself then; no man living is hisself then.’

‘True,’ said the ham-smoker’s man.  ‘’Tis a thought to look at that a chap will take all this trouble to get a woman into his house, and a twelvemonth after would as soon hear it thunder as hear her sing!’

The policeman standing near was a humane man, through having a young family he could hardly keep, and he hesitated about telling them to move on.  Christopher had before this time perceived that the articles were laid down before an old gentleman who was seated in the shop, and that the gentleman was none other than he who had been with Ethelberta in the concert-room.  The discovery was so startling that, constitutionally indisposed as he was to stand and watch, he became as glued to the spot as the other idlers.  Finding himself now for the first time directly confronting the preliminaries of Ethelberta’s marriage to a stranger, he was left with far less equanimity than he could have supposed possible to the situation.

‘So near the time!’ he said, and looked hard at Lord Mountclere.

Christopher had now a far better opportunity than before for observing Ethelberta’s betrothed.  Apart from any bias of jealousy, disappointment, or mortification, he was led to judge that this was not quite the man to make Ethelberta happy.  He had fancied her companion to be a man under fifty; he was now visibly sixty or more.  And it was not the sort of sexagenarianism beside which a young woman’s happiness can sometimes contrive to keep itself alive in a quiet sleepy way.  Suddenly it occurred to him that this was the man whom he had helped in the carriage accident on the way to Knollsea.  He looked again.

By no means undignified, the face presented that combination of slyness and jocundity which we are accustomed to imagine of the canonical jolly-dogs in mediaeval tales.  The gamesome Curate of Meudon might have supplied some parts of the countenance; cunning Friar Tuck the remainder.  Nothing but the viscount’s constant habit of going to church every Sunday morning when at his country residence kept unholiness out of his features, for though he lived theologically enough on the Sabbath, as it became a man in his position to do, he was strikingly mundane all the rest of the week, always preferring the devil to God in his oaths.  And nothing but antecedent good-humour prevented the short fits of crossness incident to his passing infirmities from becoming established.  His look was exceptionally jovial now, and the corners of his mouth twitched as the telegraph-needles of a hundred little erotic messages from his heart to his brain.  Anybody could see that he was a merry man still, who loved good company, warming drinks, nymph-like shapes, and pretty words, in spite of the disagreeable suggestions he received from the pupils of his eyes, and the joints of his lively limbs, that imps of mischief were busy sapping and mining in those regions, with the view of tumbling him into a certain cool cellar under the church aisle.

In general, if a lover can find any ground at all for serenity in the tide of an elderly rival’s success, he finds it in the fact itself of that ancientness.  The other side seems less a rival than a makeshift.  But Christopher no longer felt this, and the significant signs before his eyes of the imminence of Ethelberta’s union with this old hero filled him with restless dread.  True, the gentleman, as he appeared illuminated by the jeweller’s gas-jets, seemed more likely to injure Ethelberta by indulgence than by severity, while her beauty lasted; but there was a nameless something in him less tolerable than this.

The purchaser having completed his dealings with the goldsmith, was conducted to the door by the master of the shop, and into the carriage, which was at once driven off up the street.

Christopher now much desired to know the name of the man whom a nice chain of circumstantial evidence taught him to regard as the happy winner where scores had lost.  He was grieved that Ethelberta’s confessed reserve should have extended so far as to limit her to mere indefinite hints of marriage when they were talking almost on the brink of the wedding-day.  That the ceremony was to be a private one—which it probably would be because of the disparity of ages—did not in his opinion justify her secrecy.  He had shown himself capable of a transmutation as valuable as it is rare in men, the change from pestering lover to staunch friend, and this was all he had got for it.  But even an old lover sunk to an indifferentist might have been tempted to spend an unoccupied half-hour in discovering particulars now, and Christopher had not lapsed nearly so far as to absolute unconcern.

That evening, however, nothing came in his way to enlighten him.  But the next day, when skirting the Close on his ordinary duties, he saw the same carriage standing at a distance, and paused to behold the same old gentleman come from a well-known office and re-enter the vehicle—Lord Mountclere, in fact, in earnest pursuit of the business of yesternight, having just pocketed a document in which romance, rashness, law, and gospel are so happily made to work together that it may safely be regarded as the neatest compromise which has ever been invented since Adam sinned.

This time Julian perceived that the brougham was one belonging to the White Hart Hotel, which Lord Mountclere was using partly from the necessities of these hasty proceedings, and also because, by so doing, he escaped the notice that might have been bestowed upon his own equipage, or men-servants, the Mountclere hammer-cloths being known in Melchester.  Christopher now walked towards the hotel, leisurely, yet with anxiety.  He inquired of a porter what people were staying there that day, and was informed that they had only one person in the house, Lord Mountclere, whom sudden and unexpected business had detained in Melchester since the previous day.

Christopher lingered to hear no more.  He retraced the street much more quickly than he had come; and he only said, ‘Lord Mountclere—it must never be!’

As soon as he entered the house, Faith perceived that he was greatly agitated.  He at once told her of his discovery, and she exclaimed, ‘What a brilliant match!’

‘O Faith,’ said Christopher, ‘you don’t know!  You are far from knowing.  It is as gloomy as midnight.  Good God, can it be possible?’

Faith blinked in alarm, without speaking.

‘Did you never hear anything of Lord Mountclere when we lived at Sandbourne?’

‘I knew the name—no more.’

‘No, no—of course you did not.  Well, though I never saw his face, to my knowledge, till a short time ago, I know enough to say that, if earnest representations can prevent it, this marriage shall not be.  Father knew him, or about him, very well; and he once told me—what I cannot tell you.  Fancy, I have seen him three times—yesterday, last night, and this morning—besides helping him on the road some weeks ago, and never once considered that he might be Lord Mountclere.  He is here almost in disguise, one may say; neither man nor horse is with him; and his object accounts for his privacy.  I see how it is—she is doing this to benefit her brothers and sisters, if possible; but she ought to know that if she is miserable they will never be happy.  That’s the nature of women—they take the form for the essence, and that’s what she is doing now.  I should think her guardian angel must have quitted her when she agreed to a marriage which may tear her heart out like a claw.’

‘You are too warm about it, Kit—it cannot be so bad as that.  It is not the thing, but the sensitiveness to the thing, which is the true measure of its pain.  Perhaps what seems so bad to you falls lightly on her mind.  A campaigner in a heavy rain is not more uncomfortable than we are in a slight draught; and Ethelberta, fortified by her sapphires and gold cups and wax candles, will not mind facts which look like spectres to us outside.  A title will turn troubles into romances, and she will shine as an interesting viscountess in spite of them.’

The discussion with Faith was not continued, Christopher stopping the argument by saying that he had a good mind to go off at once to Knollsea, and show her her danger.  But till the next morning Ethelberta was certainly safe; no marriage was possible anywhere before then.  He passed the afternoon in a state of great indecision, constantly reiterating, ‘I will go!’

41. WORKSHOPS—AN INN—THE STREET

On an extensive plot of ground, lying somewhere between the Thames and the Kensington squares, stood the premises of Messrs. Nockett and Perch, builders and contractors.  The yard with its workshops formed part of one of those frontier lines between mangy business and garnished domesticity that occur in what are called improving neighbourhoods.  We are accustomed to regard increase as the chief feature in a great city’s progress, its well-known signs greeting our eyes on every outskirt.  Slush-ponds may be seen turning into basement-kitchens; a broad causeway of shattered earthenware smothers plots of budding gooseberry-bushes and vegetable trenches, foundations following so closely upon gardens that the householder may be expected to find cadaverous sprouts from overlooked potatoes rising through the chinks of his cellar floor.  But the other great process, that of internal transmutation, is not less curious than this encroachment of grey upon green.  Its first erections are often only the milk-teeth of a suburb, and as the district rises in dignity they are dislodged by those which are to endure.  Slightness becomes supplanted by comparative solidity, commonness by novelty, lowness and irregularity by symmetry and height.

An observer of the precinct which has been named as an instance in point might have stood under a lamp-post and heard simultaneously the peal of the visitor’s bell from the new terrace on the right hand, and the stroke of tools from the musty workshops on the left.  Waggons laden with deals came up on this side, and landaus came down on the other—the former to lumber heavily through the old-established contractors’ gates, the latter to sweep fashionably into the square.

About twelve o’clock on the day following Lord Mountclere’s exhibition of himself to Christopher in the jeweller’s shop at Melchester, and almost at the identical time when the viscount was seen to come from the office for marriage-licences in the same place, a carriage drove nearly up to the gates of Messrs. Nockett and Co.’s yard.  A gentleman stepped out and looked around.  He was a man whose years would have been pronounced as five-and-forty by the friendly, fifty by the candid, fifty-two or three by the grim.  He was as handsome a study in grey as could be seen in town, there being far more of the raven’s plumage than of the gull’s in the mixture as yet; and he had a glance of that practised sort which can measure people, weigh them, repress them, encourage them to sprout and blossom as a March sun encourages crocuses, ask them questions, give them answers—in short, a glance that could do as many things as an American cooking-stove or a multum-in-parvo pocket-knife.  But, as with most men of the world, this was mere mechanism: his actual emotions were kept so far within his person that they were rarely heard or seen near his features.

On reading the builders’ names over the gateway he entered the yard, and asked at the office if Solomon Chickerel was engaged on the premises.  The clerk was going to be very attentive, but finding the visitor had come only to speak to a workman, his tense attitude slackened a little, and he merely signified the foot of a Flemish ladder on the other side of the yard, saying, ‘You will find him, sir, up there in the joiner’s shop.’

When the man in the black coat reached the top he found himself at the end of a long apartment as large as a chapel and as low as a malt-room, across which ran parallel carpenters’ benches to the number of twenty or more, a gangway being left at the side for access throughout.  Behind every bench there stood a man or two, planing, fitting, or chiselling, as the case might be.  The visitor paused for a moment, as if waiting for some cessation of their violent motions and uproar till he could make his errand known.  He waited ten seconds, he waited twenty; but, beyond that a quick look had been thrown upon him by every pair of eyes, the muscular performances were in no way interrupted: every one seemed oblivious of his presence, and absolutely regardless of his wish.  In truth, the texture of that salmon-coloured skin could be seen to be aristocratic without a microscope, and the exceptious artizan has an offhand way when contrasts are made painfully strong by an idler of this kind coming, gloved and brushed, into the very den where he is sweating and muddling in his shirt-sleeves.

The gentleman from the carriage then proceeded down the workshop, wading up to his knees in a sea of shavings, and bruising his ankles against corners of board and sawn-off blocks, that lay hidden like reefs beneath.  At the ninth bench he made another venture.

‘Sol Chickerel?’ said the man addressed, as he touched his plane-iron upon the oilstone.  ‘He’s one of them just behind.’

‘Damn it all, can’t one of you show me?’ the visitor angrily observed, for he had been used to more attention than this.  ‘Here, point him out.’  He handed the man a shilling.

‘No trouble to do that,’ said the workman; and he turned and signified Sol by a nod without moving from his place.

The stranger entered Sol’s division, and, nailing him with his eye, said at once: ‘I want to speak a few words with you in private.  Is not a Mrs. Petherwin your sister?’

Sol started suspiciously.  ‘Has anything happened to her?’ he at length said hurriedly.

‘O no.  It is on a business matter that I have called.  You need not mind owning the relationship to me—the secret will be kept.  I am the brother of one whom you may have heard of from her—Lord Mountclere.’

‘I have not.  But if you will wait a minute, sir—’  He went to a little glazed box at the end of the shop, where the foreman was sitting, and, after speaking a few words to this person, Sol led Mountclere to the door, and down the ladder.

‘I suppose we cannot very well talk here, after all?’ said the gentleman, when they reached the yard, and found several men moving about therein.

‘Perhaps we had better go to some room—the nearest inn will answer the purpose, won’t it?’

‘Excellently.’

‘There’s the “Green Bushes” over the way.  They have a very nice private room upstairs.’

‘Yes, that will do.’  And passing out of the yard, the man with the glance entered the inn with Sol, where they were shown to the parlour as requested.

While the waiter was gone for some wine, which Mountclere ordered, the more ingenuous of the two resumed the conversation by saying, awkwardly: ‘Yes, Mrs. Petherwin is my sister, as you supposed, sir; but on her account I do not let it be known.’

‘Indeed,’ said Mountclere.  ‘Well, I came to see you in order to speak of a matter which I thought you might know more about than I do, for it has taken me quite by surprise.  My brother, Lord Mountclere, is, it seems, to be privately married to Mrs. Petherwin to-morrow.’

‘Is that really the fact?’ said Sol, becoming quite shaken.  ‘I had no thought that such a thing could be possible!’

‘It is imminent.’

‘Father has told me that she has lately got to know some nobleman; but I never supposed there could be any meaning in that.’

‘You were altogether wrong,’ said Mountclere, leaning back in his chair and looking at Sol steadily.  ‘Do you feel it to be a matter upon which you will congratulate her?’

‘A very different thing!’ said Sol vehemently.  ‘Though he is your brother, sir, I must say this, that I would rather she married the poorest man I know.’

‘Why?’

‘From what my father has told me of him, he is not—a more desirable brother-in-law to me than I shall be in all likelihood to him.  What business has a man of that character to marry Berta, I should like to ask?’

‘That’s what I say,’ returned Mountclere, revealing his satisfaction at Sol’s estimate of his noble brother: it showed that he had calculated well in coming here.  ‘My brother is getting old, and he has lived strangely: your sister is a highly respectable young lady.’

‘And he is not respectable, you mean?  I know he is not.  I worked near Enckworth once.’

‘I cannot say that,’ returned Mountclere.  Possibly a certain fraternal feeling repressed a direct assent: and yet this was the only representation which could be expected to prejudice the young man against the wedding, if he were such an one as the visitor supposed Sol to be—a man vulgar in sentiment and ambition, but pure in his anxiety for his sister’s happiness.  ‘At any rate, we are agreed in thinking that this would be an unfortunate marriage for both,’ added Mountclere.

‘About both I don’t know.  It may be a good thing for him.  When do you say it is to be, sir—to-morrow?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t know what to do!’ said Sol, walking up and down.  ‘If half what I have heard is true, I would lose a winter’s work to prevent her marrying him.  What does she want to go mixing in with people who despise her for?  Now look here, Mr. Mountclere, since you have been and called me out to talk this over, it is only fair that you should tell me the exact truth about your brother.  Is it a lie, or is it true, that he is not fit to be the husband of a decent woman?’

‘That is a curious inquiry,’ said Mountclere, whose manner and aspect, neutral as a winter landscape, had little in common with Sol’s warm and unrestrained bearing.  ‘There are reasons why I think your sister will not be happy with him.’

‘Then it is true what they say,’ said Sol, bringing down his fist upon the table.  ‘I know your meaning well enough.  What’s to be done?  If I could only see her this minute, she might be kept out of it.’

‘You think your presence would influence your sister—if you could see her before the wedding?’

‘I think it would.  But who’s to get at her?’

‘I am going, so you had better come on with me—unless it would be best for your father to come.’

‘Perhaps it might,’ said the bewildered Sol.  ‘But he will not be able to get away; and it’s no use for Dan to go.  If anybody goes I must!  If she has made up her mind nothing can be done by writing to her.’

‘I leave at once to see Lord Mountclere,’ the other continued.  ‘I feel that as my brother is evidently ignorant of the position of Mrs. Petherwin’s family and connections, it is only fair in me, as his nearest relative, to make them clear to him before it is too late.’

‘You mean that if he knew her friends were working-people he would not think of her as a wife?  ’Tis a reasonable thought.  But make your mind easy: she has told him.  I make a great mistake if she has for a moment thought of concealing that from him.’

‘She may not have deliberately done so.  But—and I say this with no ill-feeling—it is a matter known to few, and she may have taken no steps to undeceive him.  I hope to bring him to see the matter clearly.  Unfortunately the thing has been so secret and hurried that there is barely time.  I knew nothing until this morning—never dreamt of such a preposterous occurrence.’

‘Preposterous!  If it should come to pass, she would play her part as his lady as well as any other woman, and better.  I wish there was no more reason for fear on my side than there is on yours!  Things have come to a sore head when she is not considered lady enough for such as he.  But perhaps your meaning is, that if your brother were to have a son, you would lose your heir-presumptive title to the cor’net of Mountclere?  Well, ’twould be rather hard for ye, now I come to think o’t—upon my life, ’twould.’

‘The suggestion is as delicate as the --- atmosphere of this vile room.  But let your ignorance be your excuse, my man.  It is hardly worth while for us to quarrel when we both have the same object in view: do you think so?’

‘That’s true—that’s true.  When do you start, sir?’

‘We must leave almost at once,’ said Mountclere, looking at his watch.  ‘If we cannot catch the two o’clock train, there is no getting there to-night—and to-morrow we could not possibly arrive before one.’

‘I wish there was time for me to go and tidy myself a bit,’ said Sol, anxiously looking down at his working clothes.  ‘I suppose you would not like me to go with you like this?’

‘Confound the clothes!  If you cannot start in five minutes, we shall not be able to go at all.’

‘Very well, then—wait while I run across to the shop, then I am ready.  How do we get to the station?’

‘My carriage is at the corner waiting.  When you come out I will meet you at the gates.’

Sol then hurried downstairs, and a minute or two later Mr. Mountclere followed, looking like a man bent on policy at any price.  The carriage was brought round by the time that Sol reappeared from the yard.  He entered and sat down beside Mountclere, not without a sense that he was spoiling good upholstery; the coachman then allowed the lash of his whip to alight with the force of a small fly upon the horses, which set them up in an angry trot.  Sol rolled on beside his new acquaintance with the shamefaced look of a man going to prison in a van, for pedestrians occasionally gazed at him, full of what seemed to himself to be ironical surprise.

‘I am afraid I ought to have changed my clothes after all,’ he said, writhing under a perception of the contrast between them.  ‘Not knowing anything about this, I ain’t a bit prepared.  If I had got even my second-best hat, it wouldn’t be so bad.’

‘It makes no difference,’ said Mountclere inanimately.

‘Or I might have brought my portmantle, with some things.’

‘It really is not important.’

On reaching the station they found there were yet a few minutes to spare, which Sol made use of in writing a note to his father, to explain what had occurred.

42. THE DONCASTLES’ RESIDENCE, AND OUTSIDE THE SAME

Mrs. Doncastle’s dressing-bell had rung, but Menlove, the lady’s maid, having at the same time received a letter by the evening post, paused to read it before replying to the summons:—

‘ENCKWORTH COURT, Wednesday.

DARLING LOUISA,—I can assure you that I am no more likely than yourself to form another attachment, as you will perceive by what follows.  Before we left town I thought that to be able to see you occasionally was sufficient for happiness, but down in this lonely place the case is different.  In short, my dear, I ask you to consent to a union with me as soon as you possibly can.  Your prettiness has won my eyes and lips completely, sweet, and I lie awake at night to think of the golden curls you allowed to escape from their confinement on those nice times of private clothes, when we walked in the park and slipped the bonds of service, which you were never born to any more than I. . . .

‘Had not my own feelings been so strong, I should have told you at the first dash of my pen that what I expected is coming to pass at last—the old dog is going to be privately married to Mrs. P.  Yes, indeed, and the wedding is coming off to-morrow, secret as the grave.  All her friends will doubtless leave service on account of it.  What he does now makes little difference to me, of course, as I had already given warning, but I shall stick to him like a Briton in spite of it.  He has to-day made me a present, and a further five pounds for yourself, expecting you to hold your tongue on every matter connected with Mrs. P.’s friends, and to say nothing to any of them about this marriage until it is over.  His lordship impressed this upon me very strong, and familiar as a brother, and of course we obey his instructions to the letter; for I need hardly say that unless he keeps his promise to help me in setting up the shop, our nuptials cannot be consumed.  His help depends upon our obedience, as you are aware. . . .’

This, and much more, was from her very last lover, Lord Mountclere’s valet, who had been taken in hand directly she had convinced herself of Joey’s hopeless youthfulness.  The missive sent Mrs. Menlove’s spirits soaring like spring larks; she flew upstairs in answer to the bell with a joyful, triumphant look, which the illuminated figure of Mrs. Doncastle in her dressing-room could not quite repress.  One could almost forgive Menlove her arts when so modest a result brought such vast content.

Mrs.