The Hand of Ethelberta Read Online

Neigh, and him she certainly does not care for.  She only loves you.  If you only knew how true she is you wouldn’t be so suspicious about her, and I wish I had not come here—yes, I do!’

‘I cannot tell what to think of it.  Perhaps I don’t know much of this world after all, or what girls will do.  But you don’t excuse her to me, Picotee.’

Before this time Picotee had been simulating haste in getting a light; but in her dread of appearing visibly to Christopher’s eyes, and showing him the precise condition of her tear-stained face, she put it off moment after moment, and stirred the fire, in hope that the faint illumination thus produced would be sufficient to save her from the charge of stupid conduct as entertainer.

Fluttering about on the horns of this dilemma, she was greatly relieved when Christopher, who read her difficulty, and the general painfulness of the situation, said that since Ethelberta was really suffering from a headache he would not wish to disturb her till to-morrow, and went off downstairs and into the street without further ceremony.

Meanwhile other things had happened upstairs.  No sooner had Picotee left her sister’s room, than Ethelberta thought it would after all have been much better if she had gone down herself to speak to this admirably persistent lover.  Was she not drifting somewhat into the character of coquette, even if her ground of offence—a word of Christopher’s about somebody else’s mean parentage, which was spoken in utter forgetfulness of her own position, but had wounded her to the quick nevertheless—was to some extent a tenable one?  She knew what facilities in suffering Christopher always showed; how a touch to other people was a blow to him, a blow to them his deep wound, although he took such pains to look stolid and unconcerned under those inflictions, and tried to smile as if he had no feelings whatever.  It would be more generous to go down to him, and be kind.  She jumped up with that alertness which comes so spontaneously at those sweet bright times when desire and duty run hand in hand.

She hastily set her hair and dress in order—not such matchless order as she could have wished them to be in, but time was precious—and descended the stairs.  When on the point of pushing open the drawing-room door, which wanted about an inch of being closed, she was astounded to discover that the room was in total darkness, and still more to hear Picotee sobbing inside.  To retreat again was the only action she was capable of at that moment: the clash between this picture and the anticipated scene of Picotee and Christopher sitting in frigid propriety at opposite sides of a well-lighted room was too great.  She flitted upstairs again with the least possible rustle, and flung herself down on the couch as before, panting with excitement at the new knowledge that had come to her.

There was only one possible construction to be put upon this in Ethelberta’s rapid mind, and that approximated to the true one.  She had known for some time that Picotee once had a lover, or something akin to it, and that he had disappointed her in a way which had never been told.  No stranger, save in the capacity of the one beloved, could wound a woman sufficiently to make her weep, and it followed that Christopher was the man of Picotee’s choice.  As Ethelberta recalled the conversations, conclusion after conclusion came like pulsations in an aching head.  ‘O, how did it happen, and who is to blame?’ she exclaimed.  ‘I cannot doubt his faith, and I cannot doubt hers; and yet how can I keep doubting them both?’

It was characteristic of Ethelberta’s jealous motherly guard over her young sisters that, amid these contending inquiries, her foremost feeling was less one of hope for her own love than of championship for Picotee’s.

23. ETHELBERTA’S HOUSE (continued)

Picotee was heard on the stairs: Ethelberta covered her face.

‘Is he waiting?’ she said faintly, on finding that Picotee did not begin to speak.

‘No; he is gone,’ said Picotee.

‘Ah, why is that?’ came quickly from under the handkerchief.  ‘He has forgotten me—that’s what it is!’

‘O no, he has not!’ said Picotee, just as bitterly.

Ethelberta had far too much heroism to let much in this strain escape her, though her sister was prepared to go any lengths in the same.  ‘I suppose,’ continued Ethelberta, in the quiet way of one who had only a headache the matter with her, ‘that he remembered you after the meeting at Anglebury?’

‘Yes, he remembered me.’

‘Did you tell me you had seen him before that time?’

‘I had seen him at Sandbourne.  I don’t think I told you.’

‘At whose house did you meet him?’

‘At nobody’s.  I only saw him sometimes,’ replied Picotee, in great distress.

Ethelberta, though of all women most miserable, was brimming with compassion for the throbbing girl so nearly related to her, in whom she continually saw her own weak points without the counterpoise of her strong ones.  But it was necessary to repress herself awhile: the intended ways of her life were blocked and broken up by this jar of interests, and she wanted time to ponder new plans.  ‘Picotee, I would rather be alone now, if you don’t mind,’ she said.  ‘You need not leave me any light; it makes my eyes ache, I think.’

Picotee left the room.  But Ethelberta had not long been alone and in darkness when somebody gently opened the door, and entered without a candle.

‘Berta,’ said the soft voice of Picotee again, ‘may I come in?’

‘O yes,’ said Ethelberta.  ‘Has everything gone right with the house this evening?’

‘Yes; and Gwendoline went out just now to buy a few things, and she is going to call round upon father when he has got his dinner cleared away.’

‘I hope she will not stay and talk to the other servants.  Some day she will let drop something or other before father can stop her.’

‘O Berta!’ said Picotee, close beside her.  She was kneeling in front of the couch, and now flinging her arm across Ethelberta’s shoulder and shaking violently, she pressed her forehead against her sister’s temple, and breathed out upon her cheek:

‘I came in again to tell you something which I ought to have told you just now, and I have come to say it at once because I am afraid I shan’t be able to to-morrow.  Mr. Julian was the young man I spoke to you of a long time ago, and I should have told you all about him, but you said he was your young man too, and—and I didn’t know what to do then, because I thought it was wrong in me to love your young man; and Berta, he didn’t mean me to love him at all, but I did it myself, though I did not want to do it, either; it would come to me!  And I didn’t know he belonged to you when I began it, or I would not have let him meet me at all; no I wouldn’t!’

‘Meet you? You don’t mean to say he used to meet you?’ whispered Ethelberta.

‘Yes,’ said Picotee; ‘but he could not help it.  We used to meet on the road, and there was no other road unless I had gone ever so far round.  But it is worse than that, Berta!  That was why I couldn’t bide in Sandbourne, and—and ran away to you up here; it was not because I wanted to see you, Berta, but because I—I wanted—’

‘Yes, yes, I know,’ said Ethelberta hurriedly.

‘And then when I went downstairs he mistook me for you for a moment, and that caused—a confusion!’

‘O, well, it does not much matter,’ said Ethelberta, kissing Picotee soothingly.  ‘You ought not of course to have come to London in such a manner; but, since you have come, we will make the best of it.  Perhaps it may end happily for you and for him.  Who knows?’

‘Then don’t you want him, Berta?’

‘O no; not at all!’

‘What—and don’t you really want him, Berta?’ repeated Picotee, starting up.

‘I would much rather he paid his addresses to you.  He is not the sort of man I should wish to—think it best to marry, even if I were to marry, which I have no intention of doing at present.  He calls to see me because we are old friends, but his calls do not mean anything more than that he takes an interest in me.  It is not at all likely that I shall see him again! and I certainly never shall see him unless you are present.’

‘That will be very nice.’

‘Yes.  And you will be always distant towards him, and go to leave the room when he comes, when I will call you back; but suppose we continue this to-morrow?  I can tell you better then what to do.’

When Picotee had left her the second time, Ethelberta turned over upon her breast and shook in convulsive sobs which had little relationship with tears.  This abandonment ended as suddenly as it had begun—not lasting more than a minute and a half altogether—and she got up in an unconsidered and unusual impulse to seek relief from the stinging sarcasm of this event—the unhappy love of Picotee—by mentioning something of it to another member of the family, her eldest sister Gwendoline, who was a woman full of sympathy.

Ethelberta descended to the kitchen, it being now about ten o’clock.  The room was empty, Gwendoline not having yet returned, and Cornelia, being busy about her own affairs upstairs.  The French family had gone to the theatre, and the house on that account was very quiet to-night.  Ethelberta sat down in the dismal place without turning up the gas, and in a few minutes admitted Gwendoline.

The round-faced country cook floundered in, untying her bonnet as she came, laying it down on a chair, and talking at the same time.  ‘Such a place as this London is, to be sure!’ she exclaimed, turning on the gas till it whistled.  ‘I wish I was down in Wessex again.  Lord-a-mercy, Berta, I didn’t see it was you!  I thought it was Cornelia.  As I was saying, I thought that, after biding in this underground cellar all the week, making up messes for them French folk, and never pleasing ’em, and never shall, because I don’t understand that line, I thought I would go out and see father, you know.’

‘Is he very well?’ said Ethelberta.

‘Yes; and he is going to call round when he has time.  Well, as I was a-coming home-along I thought, “Please the Lord I’ll have some chippols for supper just for a plain trate,” and I went round to the late greengrocer’s for ’em; and do you know they sweared me down that they hadn’t got such things as chippols in the shop, and had never heard of ’em in their lives.  At last I said, “Why, how can you tell me such a brazen story?—here they be, heaps of ’em!”  It made me so vexed that I came away there and then, and wouldn’t have one—no, not at a gift.’

‘They call them young onions here,’ said Ethelberta quietly; ‘you must always remember that.  But, Gwendoline, I wanted—’

Ethelberta felt sick at heart, and stopped.  She had come down on the wings of an impulse to unfold her trouble about Picotee to her hard-headed and much older sister, less for advice than to get some heart-ease by interchange of words; but alas, she could proceed no further.  The wretched homeliness of Gwendoline’s mind seemed at this particular juncture to be absolutely intolerable, and Ethelberta was suddenly convinced that to involve Gwendoline in any such discussion would simply be increasing her own burden, and adding worse confusion to her sister’s already confused existence.

‘What were you going to say?’ said the honest and unsuspecting Gwendoline.

‘I will put it off until to-morrow,’ Ethelberta murmured gloomily; ‘I have a bad headache, and I am afraid I cannot stay with you after all.’

As she ascended the stairs, Ethelberta ached with an added pain not much less than the primary one which had brought her down.  It was that old sense of disloyalty to her class and kin by feeling as she felt now which caused the pain, and there was no escaping it.  Gwendoline would have gone to the ends of the earth for her: she could not confide a thought to Gwendoline!

‘If she only knew of that unworthy feeling of mine, how she would grieve,’ said Ethelberta miserably.

She next went up to the servants’ bedrooms, and to where Cornelia slept.  On Ethelberta’s entrance Cornelia looked up from a perfect wonder of a bonnet, which she held in her hands.  At sight of Ethelberta the look of keen interest in her work changed to one of gaiety.

‘I am so glad—I was just coming down,’ Cornelia said in a whisper; whenever they spoke as relations in this house it was in whispers.  ‘Now, how do you think this bonnet will do?  May I come down, and see how I look in your big glass?’  She clapped the bonnet upon her head.  ‘Won’t it do beautiful for Sunday afternoon?’

‘It looks very attractive, as far as I can see by this light,’ said Ethelberta.  ‘But is it not rather too brilliant in colour—blue and red together, like that?  Remember, as I often tell you, people in town never wear such bright contrasts as they do in the country.’

‘O Berta!’ said Cornelia, in a deprecating tone; ‘don’t object.  If there’s one thing I do glory in it is a nice flare-up about my head o’ Sundays—of course if the family’s not in mourning, I mean.’  But, seeing that Ethelberta did not smile, she turned the subject, and added docilely: ‘Did you come up for me to do anything?  I will put off finishing my bonnet if I am wanted.’

‘I was going to talk to you about family matters, and Picotee,’ said Ethelberta.  ‘But, as you are busy, and I have a headache, I will put it off till to-morrow.’

Cornelia seemed decidedly relieved, for family matters were far from attractive at the best of times; and Ethelberta went down to the next floor, and entered her mother’s room.

After a short conversation Mrs. Chickerel said, ‘You say you want to ask me something?’

‘Yes: but nothing of importance, mother.  I was thinking about Picotee, and what would be the best thing to do—’

‘Ah, well you may, Berta.  I am so uneasy about this life you have led us into, and full of fear that your plans may break down; if they do, whatever will become of us?  I know you are doing your best; but I cannot help thinking that the coming to London and living with you was wild and rash, and not well weighed afore we set about it.  You should have counted the cost first, and not advised it.  If you break down, and we are all discovered living so queer and unnatural, right in the heart of the aristocracy, we should be the laughing-stock of the country: it would kill me, and ruin us all—utterly ruin us!’

‘O mother, I know all that so well!’ exclaimed Ethelberta, tears of anguish filling her eyes.  ‘Don’t depress me more than I depress myself by such fears, or you will bring about the very thing we strive to avoid!  My only chance is in keeping in good spirits, and why don’t you try to help me a little by taking a brighter view of things?’

‘I know I ought to, my dear girl, but I cannot.  I do so wish that I never let you tempt me and the children away from the Lodge.  I cannot think why I allowed myself to be so persuaded—cannot think!  You are not to blame—it is I.  I am much older than you, and ought to have known better than listen to such a scheme.  This undertaking seems too big—the bills frighten me.  I have never been used to such wild adventure, and I can’t sleep at night for fear that your tale-telling will go wrong, and we shall all be exposed and shamed.  A story-teller seems such an impossible castle-in-the-air sort of a trade for getting a living by—I cannot think how ever you came to dream of such an unheard-of thing.’

‘But it is not a castle in the air, and it does get a living!’ said Ethelberta, her lip quivering.

‘Well, yes, while it is just a new thing; but I am afraid it cannot last—that’s what I fear.  People will find you out as one of a family of servants, and their pride will be stung at having gone to hear your romancing; then they will go no more, and what will happen to us and the poor little ones?’

‘We must all scatter again!’

‘If we could get as we were once, I wouldn’t mind that.  But we shall have lost our character as simple country folk who know nothing, which are the only class of poor people that squires will give any help to; and I much doubt if the girls would get places after such a discovery—it would be so awkward and unheard-of.’

‘Well, all I can say is,’ replied Ethelberta, ‘that I will do my best.  All that I have is theirs and yours as much as mine, and these arrangements are simply on their account.  I don’t like my relations being my servants; but if they did not work for me, they would have to work for others, and my service is much lighter and pleasanter than any other lady’s would be for them, so the advantages are worth the risk.  If I stood alone, I would go and hide my head in any hole, and care no more about the world and its ways.  I wish I was well out of it, and at the bottom of a quiet grave—anybody might have the world for me then!  But don’t let me disturb you longer; it is getting late.’

Ethelberta then wished her mother good-night, and went away.  To attempt confidences on such an ethereal matter as love was now absurd; her hermit spirit was doomed to dwell apart as usual; and she applied herself to deep thinking without aid and alone.  Not only was there Picotee’s misery to disperse; it became imperative to consider how best to overpass a more general catastrophe.

24. ETHELBERTA’S HOUSE (continued)—THE BRITISH MUSEUM

Mrs. Chickerel, in deploring the risks of their present speculative mode of life, was far from imagining that signs of the foul future so much dreaded were actually apparent to Ethelberta at the time the lament was spoken.  Hence the daughter’s uncommon sensitiveness to prophecy.  It was as if a dead-reckoner poring over his chart should predict breakers ahead to one who already beheld them.

That her story-telling would prove so attractive Ethelberta had not ventured to expect for a moment; that having once proved attractive there should be any falling-off until such time had elapsed as would enable her to harvest some solid fruit was equally a surprise.  Future expectations are often based without hesitation upon one happy accident, when the only similar condition remaining to subsequent sets of circumstances is that the same person forms the centre of them.  Her situation was so peculiar, and so unlike that of most public people, that there was hardly an argument explaining this triumphant opening which could be used in forecasting the close; unless, indeed, more strategy were employed in the conduct of the campaign than Ethelberta seemed to show at present.

There was no denying that she commanded less attention than at first: the audience had lessened, and, judging by appearances, might soon be expected to be decidedly thin.  In excessive lowness of spirit, Ethelberta translated these signs with the bias that a lingering echo of her mother’s dismal words naturally induced, reading them as conclusive evidence that her adventure had been chimerical in its birth.  Yet it was very far less conclusive than she supposed.  Public interest might without doubt have been renewed after a due interval, some of the falling-off being only an accident of the season.  Her novelties had been hailed with pleasure, the rather that their freshness tickled than that their intrinsic merit was appreciated; and, like many inexperienced dispensers of a unique charm, Ethelberta, by bestowing too liberally and too frequently, was destroying the very element upon which its popularity depended.  Her entertainment had been good in its conception, and partly good in its execution; yet her success had but little to do with that goodness.  Indeed, what might be called its badness in a histrionic sense—that is, her look sometimes of being out of place, the sight of a beautiful woman on a platform, revealing tender airs of domesticity which showed her to belong by character to a quiet drawing-room—had been primarily an attractive feature.  But alas, custom was staling this by improving her up to the mark of an utter impersonator, thereby eradicating the pretty abashments of a poetess out of her sphere; and more than one well-wisher who observed Ethelberta from afar feared that it might some day come to be said of her that she had

‘Enfeoffed herself to popularity:
That, being daily swallowed by men’s eyes,
They surfeited with honey, and began
To loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof a little
More than a little is by much too much.’

But this in its extremity was not quite yet.

We discover her one day, a little after this time, sitting before a table strewed with accounts and bills from different tradesmen of the neighbourhood, which she examined with a pale face, collecting their totals on a blank sheet.  Picotee came into the room, but Ethelberta took no notice whatever of her.  The younger sister, who subsisted on scraps of notice and favour, like a dependent animal, even if these were only an occasional glance of the eye, could not help saying at last, ‘Berta, how silent you are.  I don’t think you know I am in the room.’

‘I did not observe you,’ said Ethelberta.  ‘I am very much engaged: these bills have to be paid.’

‘What, and cannot we pay them?’ said Picotee, in vague alarm.

‘O yes, I can pay them.  The question is, how long shall I be able to do it?’

‘That is sad; and we are going on so nicely, too.  It is not true that you have really decided to leave off story-telling now the people don’t crowd to hear it as they did?’

‘I think I shall leave off.’

‘And begin again next year?’

‘That is very doubtful.’

‘I’ll tell you what you might do,’ said Picotee, her face kindling with a sense of great originality.  ‘You might travel about to country towns and tell your story splendidly.’

‘A man in my position might perhaps do it with impunity; but I could not without losing ground in other domains.  A woman may drive to Mayfair from her house in Exonbury Crescent, and speak from a platform there, and be supposed to do it as an original way of amusing herself; but when it comes to starring in the provinces she establishes herself as a woman of a different breed and habit.  I wish I were a man!  I would give up this house, advertise it to be let furnished, and sally forth with confidence.  But I am driven to think of other ways to manage than that.’

Picotee fell into a conjectural look, but could not guess.

‘The way of marriage,’ said Ethelberta.  ‘Otherwise perhaps the poetess may live to become what Dryden called himself when he got old and poor—a rent-charge on Providence. . . . .  Yes, I must try that way,’ she continued, with a sarcasm towards people out of hearing.  I must buy a “Peerage” for one thing, and a “Baronetage,” and a “House of Commons,” and a “Landed Gentry,” and learn what people are about me.  ‘I must go to Doctors’ Commons and read up wills of the parents of any likely gudgeons I may know.  I must get a Herald to invent an escutcheon of my family, and throw a genealogical tree into the bargain in consideration of my taking a few second-hand heirlooms of a pawnbroking friend of his.  I must get up sham ancestors, and find out some notorious name to start my pedigree from.  It does not matter what his character was; either villain or martyr will do, provided that he lived five hundred years ago.  It would be considered far more creditable to make good my descent from Satan in the age when he went to and fro on the earth than from a ministering angel under Victoria.’

‘But, Berta, you are not going to marry any stranger who may turn up?’ said Picotee, who had creeping sensations of dread when Ethelberta talked like this.

‘I had no such intention.  But, having once put my hand to the plough, how shall I turn back?’

‘You might marry Mr. Ladywell,’ said Picotee, who preferred to look at things in the concrete.

‘Yes, marry him villainously; in cold blood, without a moment to prepare himself.’

‘Ah, you won’t!’

‘I am not so sure about that.  I have brought mother and the children to town against her judgment and against my father’s; they gave way to my opinion as to one who from superior education has larger knowledge of the world than they.  I must prove my promises, even if Heaven should fall upon me for it, or what a miserable future will theirs be!  We must not be poor in London.  Poverty in the country is a sadness, but poverty in town is a horror.  There is something not without grandeur in the thought of starvation on an open mountain or in a wide wood, and your bones lying there to bleach in the pure sun and rain; but a back garret in a rookery, and the other starvers in the room insisting on keeping the window shut—anything to deliver us from that!’

‘How gloomy you can be, Berta!  It will never be so dreadful.  Why, I can take in plain sewing, and you can do translations, and mother can knit stockings, and so on.  How much longer will this house be yours?’

‘Two years.  If I keep it longer than that I shall have to pay rent at the rate of three hundred a year.  The Petherwin estate provides me with it till then, which will be the end of Lady Petherwin’s term.’

‘I see it; and you ought to marry before the house is gone, if you mean to marry high,’ murmured Picotee, in an inadequate voice, as one confronted by a world so tragic that any hope of her assisting therein was out of the question.

It was not long after this exposition of the family affairs that Christopher called upon them; but Picotee was not present, having gone to think of superhuman work on the spur of Ethelberta’s awakening talk.  There was something new in the way in which Ethelberta received the announcement of his name; passion had to do with it, so had circumspection; the latter most, for the first time since their reunion.

‘I am going to leave this part of England,’ said Christopher, after a few gentle preliminaries.  ‘I was one of the applicants for the post of assistant-organist at Melchester Cathedral when it became vacant, and I find I am likely to be chosen, through the interest of one of my father’s friends.’

‘I congratulate you.’

‘No, Ethelberta, it is not worth that.  I did not originally mean to follow this course at all; but events seemed to point to it in the absence of a better.’

‘I too am compelled to follow a course I did not originally mean to take.’  After saying no more for a few moments, she added, in a tone of sudden openness, a richer tincture creeping up her cheek, ‘I want to put a question to you boldly—not exactly a question—a thought.  Have you considered whether the relations between us which have lately prevailed are—are the best for you—and for me?’

‘I know what you mean,’ said Christopher, hastily anticipating all that she might be going to say; ‘and I am glad you have given me the opportunity of speaking upon that subject.  It has been very good and considerate in you to allow me to share your society so frequently as you have done since I have been in town, and to think of you as an object to exist for and strive for.  But I ought to have remembered that, since you have nobody at your side to look after your interests, it behoved me to be doubly careful.  In short, Ethelberta, I am not in a position to marry, nor can I discern when I shall be, and I feel it would be an injustice to ask you to be bound in any way to one lower and less talented than you.  You cannot, from what you say, think it desirable that the engagement should continue.  I have no right to ask you to be my betrothed, without having a near prospect of making you my wife.  I don’t mind saying this straight out—I have no fear that you will doubt my love; thank Heaven, you know what that is well enough!  However, as things are, I wish you to know that I cannot conscientiously put in a claim upon your attention.’

A second meaning was written in Christopher’s look, though he scarcely uttered it.  A woman so delicately poised upon the social globe could not in honour be asked to wait for a lover who was unable to set bounds to the waiting period.  Yet he had privily dreamed of an approach to that position—an unreserved, ideally perfect declaration from Ethelberta that time and practical issues were nothing to her; that she would stand as fast without material hopes as with them; that love was to be an end with her henceforth, having utterly ceased to be a means.  Therefore this surreptitious hope of his, founded on no reasonable expectation, was like a guilty thing surprised when Ethelberta answered, with a predominance of judgment over passion still greater than before:

‘It is unspeakably generous in you to put it all before me so nicely, Christopher.  I think infinitely more of you for being so unreserved, especially since I too have been thinking much on the indefiniteness of the days to come.  We are not numbered among the blest few who can afford to trifle with the time.  Yet to agree to anything like a positive parting will be quite unnecessary.  You did not mean that, did you? for it is harsh if you did.’  Ethelberta smiled kindly as she said this, as much as to say that she was far from really upbraiding him.  ‘Let it be only that we will see each other less.  We will bear one another in mind as deeply attached friends if not as definite lovers, and keep up friendly remembrances of a sort which, come what may, will never have to be ended by any painful process termed breaking off.  Different persons, different natures; and it may be that marriage would not be the most favourable atmosphere for our old affection to prolong itself in.  When do you leave London?’

The disconnected query seemed to be subjoined to disperse the crude effect of what had gone before.

‘I hardly know,’ murmured Christopher.  ‘I suppose I shall not call here again.’

Whilst they were silent somebody entered the room softly, and they turned to discover Picotee.

‘Come here, Picotee,’ said Ethelberta.

Picotee came with an abashed bearing to where the other two were standing, and looked down steadfastly.

‘Mr. Julian is going away,’ she continued, with determined firmness.  ‘He will not see us again for a long time.’  And Ethelberta added, in a lower tone, though still in the unflinching manner of one who had set herself to say a thing, and would say it—‘He is not to be definitely engaged to me any longer.  We are not thinking of marrying, you know, Picotee.  It is best that we should not.’

‘Perhaps it is,’ said Christopher hurriedly, taking up his hat.  ‘Let me now wish you good-bye; and, of course, you will always know where I am, and how to find me.’

It was a tender time.  He inclined forward that Ethelberta might give him her hand, which she did; whereupon their eyes met.  Mastered by an impelling instinct she had not reckoned with, Ethelberta presented her cheek.  Christopher kissed it faintly.  Tears were in Ethelberta’s eyes now, and she was heartfull of many emotions.  Placing her arm round Picotee’s waist, who had never lifted her eyes from the carpet, she drew the slight girl forward, and whispered quickly to him—‘Kiss her, too.  She is my sister, and I am yours.’

It seemed all right and natural to their respective moods and the tone of the moment that free old Wessex manners should prevail, and Christopher stooped and dropped upon Picotee’s cheek likewise such a farewell kiss as he had imprinted upon Ethelberta’s.

‘Care for us both equally!’ said Ethelberta.

‘I will,’ said Christopher, scarcely knowing what he said.

When he had reached the door of the room, he looked back and saw the two sisters standing as he had left them, and equally tearful.  Ethelberta at once said, in a last futile struggle against letting him go altogether, and with thoughts of her sister’s heart:

‘I think that Picotee might correspond with Faith; don’t you, Mr. Julian?’

‘My sister would much like to do so,’ said he.

‘And you would like it too, would you not, Picotee?’

‘O yes,’ she replied.  ‘And I can tell them all about you.’

‘Then it shall be so, if Miss Julian will.’  She spoke in a settled way, as if something intended had been set in train; and Christopher having promised for his sister, he went out of the house with a parting smile of misgiving.

He could scarcely believe as he walked along that those late words, yet hanging in his ears, had really been spoken, that still visible scene enacted.  He could not even recollect for a minute or two how the final result had been produced.  Did he himself first enter upon the long-looming theme, or did she?  Christopher had been so nervously alive to the urgency of setting before the hard-striving woman a clear outline of himself, his surroundings and his fears, that he fancied the main impulse to this consummation had been his, notwithstanding that a faint initiative had come from Ethelberta.  All had completed itself quickly, unceremoniously, and easily.  Ethelberta had let him go a second time; yet on foregoing mornings and evenings, when contemplating the necessity of some such explanation, it had seemed that nothing less than Atlantean force could overpower their mutual gravitation towards each other.

On his reaching home Faith was not in the house, and, in the restless state which demands something to talk at, the musician went off to find her, well knowing her haunt at this time of the day.  He entered the spiked and gilded gateway of the Museum hard by, turned to the wing devoted to sculptures, and descended to a particular basement room, which was lined with bas-reliefs from Nineveh.  The place was cool, silent, and soothing; it was empty, save of a little figure in black, that was standing with its face to the wall in an innermost nook.  This spot was Faith’s own temple; here, among these deserted antiques, Faith was always happy.  Christopher looked on at her for some time before she noticed him, and dimly perceived how vastly differed her homely suit and unstudied contour—painfully unstudied to fastidious eyes—from Ethelberta’s well-arranged draperies, even from Picotee’s clever bits of ribbon, by which she made herself look pretty out of nothing at all.  Yet this negligence was his sister’s essence; without it she would have been a spoilt product.  She had no outer world, and her rusty black was as appropriate to Faith’s unseen courses as were Ethelberta’s correct lights and shades to her more prominent career.

‘Look, Kit,’ said Faith, as soon as she knew who was approaching.  ‘This is a thing I never learnt before; this person is really Sennacherib, sitting on his throne; and these with fluted beards and hair like plough-furrows, and fingers with no bones in them, are his warriors—really carved at the time, you know.  Only just think that this is not imagined of Assyria, but done in Assyrian times by Assyrian hands.  Don’t you feel as if you were actually in Nineveh; that as we now walk between these slabs, so walked Ninevites between them once?’

‘Yes. . . .  Faith, it is all over.  Ethelberta and I have parted.’

‘Indeed.  And so my plan is to think of verses in the Bible about Sennacherib and his doings, which resemble these; this verse, for instance, I remember: “Now in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah did Sennacherib, King of Assyria, come up against all the fenced cities of Judah and took them.  And Hezekiah, King of Judah, sent to the King of Assyria to Lachish,” and so on.  Well, there it actually is, you see.  There’s Sennacherib, and there’s Lachish.  Is it not glorious to think that this is a picture done at the time of those very events?’

‘Yes.  We did not quarrel this time, Ethelberta and I.  If I may so put it, it is worse than quarrelling.  We felt it was no use going on any longer, and so—Come, Faith, hear what I say, or else tell me that you won’t hear, and that I may as well save my breath!’

‘Yes, I will really listen,’ she said, fluttering her eyelids in her concern at having been so abstracted, and excluding Sennacherib there and then from Christopher’s affairs by the first settlement of her features to a present-day aspect, and her eyes upon his face.  ‘You said you had seen Ethelberta.  Yes, and what did she say?’

‘Was there ever anybody so provoking!  Why, I have just told you!’

‘Yes, yes; I remember now.  You have parted.  The subject is too large for me to know all at once what I think of it, and you must give me time, Kit.  Speaking of Ethelberta reminds me of what I have done.  I just looked into the Academy this morning—I thought I would surprise you by telling you about it.  And what do you think I saw?  Ethelberta—in the picture painted by Mr. Ladywell.’

‘It is never hung?’ said he, feeling that they were at one as to a topic at last.

‘Yes.  And the subject is an Elizabethan knight parting from a lady of the same period—the words explaining the picture being—

“Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,
And like enough thou know’st thy estimate.”

The lady is Ethelberta, to the shade of a hair—her living face; and the knight is—’

‘Not Ladywell?’

‘I think so; I am not sure.’

‘No wonder I am dismissed!  And yet she hates him.  Well, come along, Faith.  Women allow strange liberties in these days.’

25. THE ROYAL ACADEMY—THE FARNFIELD ESTATE

Ethelberta was a firm believer in the kindly effects of artistic education upon the masses.  She held that defilement of mind often arose from ignorance of eye; and her philanthropy being, by the simple force of her situation, of that sort which lingers in the neighbourhood of home, she concentrated her efforts in this kind upon Sol and Dan.  Accordingly, the Academy exhibition having now just opened, she ordered the brothers to appear in their best clothes at the entrance to Burlington House just after noontide on the Saturday of the first week, this being the only day and hour at which they could attend without ‘losing a half’ and therefore it was necessary to put up with the inconvenience of arriving at a crowded and enervating time.

When Ethelberta was set down in the quadrangle she perceived the faithful pair, big as the Zamzummims of old time, standing like sentinels in the particular corner that she had named to them: for Sol and Dan would as soon have attempted petty larceny as broken faith with their admired lady-sister Ethelberta.  They welcomed her with a painfully lavish exhibition of large new gloves, and chests covered with broad triangular areas of padded blue silk, occupying the position that the shirt-front had occupied in earlier days, and supposed to be lineally descended from the tie of a neckerchief.

The dress of their sister for to-day was exactly that of a respectable workman’s relative who had no particular ambition in the matter of fashion—a black stuff gown, a plain bonnet to match.  A veil she wore for obvious reasons: her face was getting well known in London, and it had already appeared at the private view in an uncovered state, when it was scrutinized more than the paintings around.  But now homely and useful labour was her purpose.

Catalogue in hand she took the two brothers through the galleries, teaching them in whispers as they walked, and occasionally correcting them—first, for too reverential a bearing towards the well-dressed crowd, among whom they persisted in walking with their hats in their hands and with the contrite bearing of meek people in church; and, secondly, for a tendency which they too often showed towards straying from the contemplation of the pictures as art to indulge in curious speculations on the intrinsic nature of the delineated subject, the gilding of the frames, the construction of the skylights overhead, or admiration for the bracelets, lockets, and lofty eloquence of persons around them.

‘Now,’ said Ethelberta, in a warning whisper, ‘we are coming near the picture which was partly painted from myself.  And, Dan, when you see it, don’t you exclaim “Hullo!” or “That’s Berta to a T,” or anything at all.  It would not matter were it not dangerous for me to be noticed here to-day.  I see several people who would recognize me on the least provocation.’

‘Not a word,’ said Dan.  ‘Don’t you be afeard about that.  I feel that I baint upon my own ground to-day; and wouldn’t do anything to cause an upset, drown me if I would.  Would you, Sol?’

In this temper they all pressed forward, and Ethelberta could not but be gratified at the reception of Ladywell’s picture, though it was accorded by critics not very profound.  It was an operation of some minutes to get exactly opposite, and when side by side the three stood there they overheard the immediate reason of the pressure.  ‘Farewell, thou art too dear for my possessing’ had been lengthily discoursed upon that morning by the Coryphaeus of popular opinion; and the spirit having once been poured out sons and daughters could prophesy.  But, in truth, Ladywell’s work, if not emphatically original, was happily centred on a middle stratum of taste, and apart from this adventitious help commanded, and deserved to command, a wide area of appreciation.

While they were standing here in the very heart of the throng Ethelberta’s ears were arrested by two male voices behind her, whose words formed a novel contrast to those of the other speakers around.

‘Some men, you see, with extravagant expectations of themselves, coolly get them gratified, while others hope rationally and are disappointed.  Luck, that’s what it is.  And the more easily a man takes life the more persistently does luck follow him.’

‘Of course; because, if he’s industrious he does not want luck’s assistance.  Natural laws will help him instead.’

‘Well, if it is true that Ladywell has painted a good picture he has done it by an exhaustive process.  He has painted every possible bad one till nothing more of that sort is left for him.  You know what lady’s face served as the original to this, I suppose?’

‘Mrs. Petherwin’s, I hear.’

‘Yes, Mrs. Alfred Neigh that’s to be.’

‘What, that elusive fellow caught at last?’

‘So it appears; but she herself is hardly so well secured as yet, it seems, though he takes the uncertainty as coolly as possible.  I knew nothing about it till he introduced the subject as we were standing here on Monday, and said, in an off-hand way, “I mean to marry that lady.”  I asked him how.  “Easily,” he said; “I will have her if there are a hundred at her heels.”  You will understand that this was quite in confidence.’

‘Of course, of course.’  Then there was a slight laugh, and the companions proceeded to other gossip.

Ethelberta, calm and compressed in manner, sidled along to extricate herself, not daring to turn round, and Dan and Sol followed, till they were all clear of the spot.  The brothers, who had heard the words equally well with Ethelberta, made no remark to her upon them, assuming that they referred to some peculiar system of courtship adopted in high life, with which they had rightly no concern.

Ethelberta ostensibly continued her business of tutoring the young workmen just as before, though every emotion in her had been put on the alert by this discovery.  She had known that Neigh admired her; yet his presumption in uttering such a remark as he was reported to have uttered, confidentially or otherwise, nearly took away her breath.  Perhaps it was not altogether disagreeable to have her breath so taken away.

‘I mean to marry that lady.’  She whispered the words to herself twenty times in the course of the afternoon.  Sol and Dan were left considerably longer to their private perceptions of the false and true in art than they had been earlier in the day.

When she reached home Ethelberta was still far removed in her reflections; and it was noticed afterwards that about this time in her career her openness of manner entirely deserted her.  She mostly was silent as to her thoughts, and she wore an air of unusual stillness.  It was the silence and stillness of a starry sky, where all is force and motion.  This deep undecipherable habit sometimes suggested, though it did not reveal, Ethelberta’s busy brain to her sisters, and they said to one another, ‘I cannot think what’s coming to Berta: she is not so nice as she used to be.’

The evening under notice was passed desultorily enough after the discovery of Neigh’s self-assured statement.  Among other things that she did after dark, while still musingly examining the probabilities of the report turning out true, was to wander to the large attic where the children slept, a frequent habit of hers at night, to learn if they were snug and comfortable.  They were talking now from bed to bed, the person under discussion being herself.  Herself seemed everywhere to-day.

‘I know that she is a fairy,’ Myrtle was insisting, ‘because she must be, to have such pretty things in her house, and wear silk dresses such as mother and we and Picotee haven’t got, and have money to give us whenever we want it.’

‘Emmeline says perhaps she knows the fairy’s godmother, and is not a fairy herself, because Berta is too tall for a real fairy.’

‘She must be one; for when there was a notch burnt in the hem of my pretty blue frock she said it should be gone in the morning if I would go to bed and not cry; and in the morning it was gone, and all nice and straight as new.’

Ethelberta was recalling to mind how she had sat up and repaired the damage alluded to by cutting off half an inch of the skirt all round and hemming it anew, when the breathing of the children became regular, and they fell asleep.  Here were bright little minds ready for a training, which without money and influence she could never give them.  The wisdom which knowledge brings, and the power which wisdom may bring, she had always assumed would be theirs in her dreams for their social elevation.  By what means were these things to be ensured to them if her skill in bread-winning should fail her?  Would not a well-contrived marriage be of service?  She covered and tucked in one more closely, lifted another upon the pillow and straightened the soft limbs to an easy position; then sat down by the window and looked out at the flashing stars.  Thoughts of Neigh’s audacious statement returned again upon Ethelberta.  He had said that he meant to marry her.  Of what standing was the man who had uttered such an intention respecting one to whom a politic marriage had become almost a necessity of existence?

She had often heard Neigh speak indefinitely of some estate—‘my little place’ he had called it—which he had purchased no very long time ago.  All she knew was that its name was Farnfield, that it lay thirty or forty miles out of London in a south-westerly direction, a railway station in the district bearing the same name, so that there was probably a village or small town adjoining.  Whether the dignity of this landed property was that of domain, farmstead, allotment, or garden-plot, Ethelberta had not the slightest conception.  She was almost certain that Neigh never lived there, but that might signify nothing.  The exact size and value of the estate would, she mused, be curious, interesting, and almost necessary information to her who must become mistress of it were she to allow him to carry out his singularly cool and crude, if tender, intention.  Moreover, its importance would afford a very good random sample of his worldly substance throughout, from which alone, after all, could the true spirit and worth and seriousness of his words be apprehended.  Impecuniosity may revel in unqualified vows and brim over with confessions as blithely as a bird of May, but such careless pleasures are not for the solvent, whose very dreams are negotiable, and are expressed with due care accordingly.

That Neigh had used the words she had far more than primâ-facie appearances for believing.  Neigh’s own conduct towards her, though peculiar rather than devoted, found in these words alone a reasonable key.  But, supposing the estate to be such a verbal hallucination as, for instance, hers had been at Arrowthorne, when her poor, unprogressive, hopelessly impracticable Christopher came there to visit her, and was so wonderfully undeceived about her social standing: what a fiasco, and what a cuckoo-cry would his utterances about marriage seem then.  Christopher had often told her of his expectations from ‘Arrowthorne Lodge,’ and of the blunders that had resulted in consequence.  Had not Ethelberta’s affection for Christopher partaken less of lover’s passion than of old-established tutelary tenderness she might have been reminded by this reflection of the transcendent fidelity he had shown under that trial—as severe a trial, considering the abnormal, almost morbid, development of the passion for position in present-day society, as can be prepared for men who move in the ordinary, unheroic channels of life.

By the following evening the consideration of this possibility, that Neigh’s position might furnish scope for such a disillusive discovery by herself as hers had afforded to Christopher, decoyed Ethelberta into a curious little scheme.  She was piqued into a practical undertaking by the man who could say to his friend with such sangfroid, ‘I mean to marry that lady.’

Merely telling Picotee to prepare for an evening excursion, of which she was to talk to no one, Ethelberta made ready likewise, and they left the house in a cab about half-an-hour before sunset, and drove to the Waterloo Station.

With the decline and departure of the sun a fog gathered itself out of the low meadow-land that bordered the railway as they went along towards the west, stretching over it like a placid lake, till at the end of the journey, the mist became generally pervasive, though not dense.  Avoiding observation as much as they conveniently could, the two sisters walked from the long wooden shed which formed the station here, into the rheumy air and along the road to the open country.  Picotee occasionally questioned Ethelberta on the object of the strange journey: she did not question closely, being satisfied that in such sure hands as Ethelberta’s she was safe.

Deeming it unwise to make any inquiry just yet beyond the simple one of the way to Farnfield, Ethelberta led her companion along a newly-fenced road across a heath.  In due time they came to an ornamental gate with a curved sweep of wall on each side, signifying the entrance to some enclosed property or other.  Ethelberta, being quite free from any digested plan for encouraging Neigh in his resolve to wive, was startled to find a hope in her that this very respectable beginning before their eyes was the entrance to the Farnfield property: that she hoped it was nevertheless unquestionable.  Just beyond lay a turnpike-house, where was dimly visible a woman in the act of putting up a shutter to the front window.

Compelled by this time to come to special questions, Ethelberta instructed Picotee to ask of this person if the place they had just passed was the entrance to Farnfield Park.  The woman replied that it was.  Directly she had gone indoors Ethelberta turned back again towards the park gate.

‘What have we come for, Berta?’ said Picotee, as she turned also.

‘I’ll tell you some day,’ replied her sister.

It was now much past eight o’clock, and, from the nature of the evening, dusk.  The last stopping up-train was about ten, so that half-an-hour could well be afforded for looking round.  Ethelberta went to the gate, which was found to be fastened by a chain and padlock.

‘Ah, the London season,’ she murmured.

There was a wicket at the side, and they entered.  An avenue of young fir trees three or four feet in height extended from the gate into the mist, and down this they walked.  The drive was not in very good order, and the two women were frequently obliged to walk on the grass to avoid the rough stones in the carriage-way.  The double line of young firs now abruptly terminated, and the road swept lower, bending to the right, immediately in front being a large lake, calm and silent as a second sky.  They could hear from somewhere on the margin the purl of a weir, and around were clumps of shrubs, araucarias and deodars being the commonest.

Ethelberta could not resist being charmed with the repose of the spot, and hastened on with curiosity to reach the other side of the pool, where, by every law of manorial topography, the mansion would be situate.  The fog concealed all objects beyond a distance of twenty yards or thereabouts, but it was nearly full moon, and though the orb was hidden, a pale diffused light enabled them to see objects in the foreground.  Reaching the other side of the lake the drive enlarged itself most legitimately to a large oval, as for a sweep before a door, a pile of rockwork standing in the midst.

But where should have been the front door of a mansion was simply a rough rail fence, about four feet high.  They drew near and looked over.

In the enclosure, and on the site of the imaginary house, was an extraordinary group.  It consisted of numerous horses in the last stage of decrepitude, the animals being such mere skeletons that at first Ethelberta hardly recognized them to be horses at all; they seemed rather to be specimens of some attenuated heraldic animal, scarcely thick enough through the body to throw a shadow: or enlarged castings of the fire-dog of past times.  These poor creatures were endeavouring to make a meal from herbage so trodden and thin that scarcely a wholesome blade remained; the little that there was consisted of the sourer sorts common on such sandy soils, mingled with tufts of heather and sprouting ferns.

‘Why have we come here, dear Berta?’ said Picotee, shuddering.

‘I hardly know,’ said Ethelberta.

Adjoining this enclosure was another and smaller one, formed of high boarding, within which appeared to be some sheds and outhouses.  Ethelberta looked through the crevices, and saw that in the midst of the yard stood trunks of trees as if they were growing, with branches also extending, but these were sawn off at the points where they began to be flexible, no twigs or boughs remaining.  Each torso was not unlike a huge hat-stand, and suspended to the pegs and prongs were lumps of some substance which at first she did not recognize; they proved to be a chronological sequel to the previous scene.  Horses’ skulls, ribs, quarters, legs, and other joints were hung thereon, the whole forming a huge open-air larder emitting not too sweet a smell.

But what Stygian sound was this?  There had arisen at the moment upon the mute and sleepy air a varied howling from a hundred tongues.  It had burst from a spot close at hand—a low wooden building by a stream which fed the lake—and reverberated for miles.  No further explanation was required.

‘We are close to a kennel of hounds,’ said Ethelberta, as Picotee held tightly to her arm.  ‘They cannot get out, so you need not fear.  They have a horrid way of suddenly beginning thus at different hours of the night, for no apparent reason: though perhaps they hear us.  These poor horses are waiting to be killed for their food.’

The experience altogether, from its intense melancholy, was very depressing, almost appalling to the two lone young women, and they quickly retraced their footsteps.  The pleasant lake, the purl of the weir, the rudimentary lawns, shrubberies, and avenue, had changed their character quite.  Ethelberta fancied at that moment that she could not have married Neigh, even had she loved him, so horrid did his belongings appear to be.  But for many other reasons she had been gradually feeling within this hour that she would not go out of her way at a beck from a man whose interest was so unimpassioned.

Thinking no more of him as a possible husband she ceased to be afraid to make inquiries about the peculiarities of his possessions.  In the high-road they came on a local man, resting from wheeling a wheelbarrow, and Ethelberta asked him, with the air of a countrywoman, who owned the estate across the road.

‘The man owning that is one of the name of Neigh,’ said the native, wiping his face.  ‘’Tis a family that have made a very large fortune by the knacker business and tanning, though they be only sleeping partners in it now, and live like lords.  Mr. Neigh was going to pull down the old huts here, and improve the place and build a mansion—in short, he went so far as to have the grounds planted, and the roads marked out, and the fish-pond made, and the place christened Farnfield Park; but he did no more.  “I shall never have a wife,” he said, “so why should I want a house to put her in?”  He’s a terrible hater of women, I hear, particularly the lower class.’

‘Indeed!’

‘Yes, and since then he has let half the land to the Honourable Mr. Mountclere, a brother of Lord Mountclere’s.  Mr. Mountclere wanted the spot for a kennel, and as the land is too poor and sandy for cropping, Mr. Neigh let him have it.  ’Tis his hounds that you hear howling.’

They passed on.  ‘Berta, why did we come down here?’ said Picotee.

‘To see the nakedness of the land.  It was a whim only, and as it will end in nothing, it is not worth while for me to make further explanation.’

It was with a curious sense of renunciation that Ethelberta went homeward.  Neigh was handsome, grim-natured, rather wicked, and an indifferentist; and these attractions interested her as a woman.  But the news of this evening suggested to Ethelberta that herself and Neigh were too nearly cattle of one colour for a confession on the matter of lineage to be well received by him; and without confidence of every sort on the nature of her situation, she was determined to contract no union at all.  The sympathy of unlikeness might lead the scion of some family, hollow and fungous with antiquity, and as yet unmarked by a mesalliance, to be won over by her story; but the antipathy of resemblance would be ineradicable.

26. ETHELBERTA’S DRAWING-ROOM

While Ethelberta during the next few days was dismissing that evening journey from her consideration, as an incident altogether foreign to the organized course of her existence, the hidden fruit thereof was rounding to maturity in a species unforeseen.

Inferences unassailable as processes, are, nevertheless, to be suspected, from the almost certain deficiency of particulars on some side or other.  The truth in relation to Neigh’s supposed frigidity was brought before her at the end of the following week, when Dan and Sol had taken Picotee, Cornelia, and the young children to Kew for the afternoon.

Early that morning, hours before it was necessary, there had been such a chatter of preparation in the house as was seldom heard there.  Sunday hats and bonnets had been retrimmed with such cunning that it would have taken a milliner’s apprentice at least to discover that any thread in them was not quite new.  There was an anxious peep through the blind at the sky at daybreak by Georgina and Myrtle, and the perplexity of these rural children was great at the weather-signs of the town, where atmospheric effects had nothing to do with clouds, and fair days and foul came apparently quite by chance.  Punctually at the hour appointed two friendly human shadows descended across the kitchen window, followed by Sol and Dan, much to the relief of the children’s apprehensions that they might forget the day.

The brothers were by this time acquiring something of the airs and manners of London workmen; they were less spontaneous and more comparative; less genial, but smarter; in obedience to the usual law by which the emotion that takes the form of humour in country workmen becomes transmuted to irony among the same order in town.  But the fixed and dogged fidelity to one another under apparent coolness, by which this family was distinguished, remained unshaken in these members as in all the rest, leading them to select the children as companions in their holiday in preference to casual acquaintance.  At last they were ready, and departed, and Ethelberta, after chatting with her mother awhile, proceeded to her personal duties.

The house was very silent that day, Gwendoline and Joey being the only ones left below stairs.  Ethelberta was wishing that she had thrown off her state and gone to Kew to have an hour of childhood over again in a romp with the others, when she was startled by the announcement of a male visitor—none other than Mr. Neigh.

Ethelberta’s attitude on receipt of this information sufficiently expressed a revived sense that the incidence of Mr. Neigh on her path might have a meaning after all.  Neigh had certainly said he was going to marry her, and now here he was come to her house—just as if he meant to do it forthwith.  She had mentally discarded him; yet she felt a shock which was scarcely painful, and a dread which was almost exhilarating.  Her flying visit to Farnfield she thought little of at this moment.  From the fact that the mind prefers imaginings to recapitulation, conjecture to history, Ethelberta had dwelt more upon Neigh’s possible plans and anticipations than upon the incidents of her evening journey; and the former assumed a more distinct shape in her mind’s eye than anything on the visible side of the curtain.

Neigh was perhaps not quite so placidly nonchalant as in ordinary; still, he was by far the most trying visitor that Ethelberta had lately faced, and she could not get above the stage—not a very high one for the mistress of a house—of feeling her personality to be inconveniently in the way of his eyes.  He had somewhat the bearing of a man who was going to do without any fuss what gushing people would call a philanthropic action.

‘I have been intending to write a line to you,’ said Neigh; ‘but I felt that I could not be sure of writing my meaning in a way which might please you.  I am not bright at a letter—never was.  The question I mean is one that I hope you will be disposed to answer favourably, even though I may show the awkwardness of a fellow-person who has never put such a question before.  Will you give me a word of encouragement—just a hope that I may not be unacceptable as a husband to you?  Your talents are very great; and of course I know that I have nothing at all in that way.  Still people are happy together sometimes in spite of such things.  Will you say “Yes,” and settle it now?’

‘I was not expecting you had come upon such an errand as this,’ said she, looking up a little, but mostly looking down.  ‘I cannot say what you wish, Mr. Neigh.

‘Perhaps I have been too sudden and presumptuous.  Yes, I know I have been that.  However, directly I saw you I felt that nobody ever came so near my idea of what is desirable in a lady, and it occurred to me that only one obstacle should stand in the way of the natural results, which obstacle would be your refusal.  In common kindness consider.  I daresay I am judged to be a man of inattentive habits—I know that’s what you think of me; but under your influence I should be very different; so pray do not let your dislike to little matters influence you.’

‘I would not indeed.  But believe me there can be no discussion of marriage between us,’ said Ethelberta decisively.

‘If that’s the case I may as well say no more.  To burden you with my regrets would be out of place, I suppose,’ said Neigh, looking calmly out of the window.

‘Apart from personal feeling, there are considerations which would prevent what you contemplated,’ she murmured.  ‘My affairs are too lengthy, intricate, and unpleasant for me to explain to anybody at present.  And that would be a necessary first step.’

‘Not at all.  I cannot think that preliminary to be necessary at all.  I would put my lawyer in communication with yours, and we would leave the rest to them: I believe that is the proper way.  You could say anything in confidence to your family-man; and you could inquire through him anything you might wish to know about my—about me.  All you would need to say to myself are just the two little words—“I will,” in the church here at the end of the Crescent.’

‘I am sorry to pain you, Mr. Neigh—so sorry,’ said Ethelberta.  ‘But I cannot say them.’  She was rather distressed that, despite her discouraging words, he still went on with his purpose, as if he imagined what she so distinctly said to be no bar, but rather a stimulant, usual under the circumstances.

‘It does not matter about paining me,’ said Neigh.  ‘Don’t take that into consideration at all.  But I did not expect you to leave me so entirely without help—to refuse me absolutely as far as words go—after what you did.  If it had not been for that I should never have ventured to call.  I might otherwise have supposed your interest to be fixed in another quarter; but your acting in that manner encouraged me to think you could listen to a word.’

‘What do you allude to?’ said Ethelberta.  ‘How have I acted?’

Neigh appeared reluctant to go any further; but the allusion soon became sufficiently clear.  ‘I wish my little place at Farnfield had been worthier of you,’ he said brusquely.  ‘However, that’s a matter of time only.  It is useless to build a house there yet.  I wish I had known that you would be looking over it at that time of the evening.  A single word, when we were talking about it the other day, that you were going to be in the neighbourhood, would have been sufficient.  Nothing could have given me so much delight as to have driven you round.’

He knew that she had been to Farnfield: that knowledge was what had inspired him to call upon her to-day!  Ethelberta breathed a sort of exclamation, not right out, but stealthily, like a parson’s damn.  Her face did not change, since a face must be said not to change while it preserves the same pleasant lines in the mobile parts as before; but anybody who has preserved his pleasant lines under the half-minute’s peer of the invidious camera, and found what a wizened, starched kind of thing they stiffen to towards the end of the time, will understand the tendency of Ethelberta’s lovely features now.

‘Yes; I walked round,’ said Ethelberta faintly.

Neigh was decidedly master of the position at last; but he spoke as if he did not value that.  His knowledge had furnished him with grounds for calling upon her, and he hastened to undeceive her from supposing that he could think ill of any motive of hers which gave him those desirable grounds.

‘I supposed you, by that, to give some little thought to me occasionally,’ he resumed, in the same slow and orderly tone.  ‘How could I help thinking so?  It was your doing that which encouraged me.  Now, was it not natural—I put it to you?’

Ethelberta was almost exasperated at perceiving the awful extent to which she had compromised herself with this man by her impulsive visit.  Lightly and philosophically as he seemed to take it—as a thing, in short, which every woman would do by nature unless hindered by difficulties—it was no trifle to her as long as he was ignorant of her justification; and this she determined that he should know at once, at all hazards.

‘It was through you in the first place that I did look into your grounds!’ she said excitedly.  ‘It was your presumption that caused me to go there.  I should not have thought of such a thing else.  If you had not said what you did say I never should have thought of you or Farnfield either—Farnfield might have been in Kamtschatka for all I cared.’

‘I hope sincerely that I never said anything to disturb you?’

‘Yes, you did—not to me, but to somebody,’ said Ethelberta, with her eyes over-full of retained tears.

‘What have I said to somebody that can be in the least objectionable to you?’ inquired Neigh, with much concern.

‘You said—you said, you meant to marry me—just as if I had no voice in the matter!  And that annoyed me, and made me go there out of curiosity.’

Neigh changed colour a little.  ‘Well, I did say it: I own that I said it,’ he replied at last.  Probably he knew enough of her nature not to feel long disconcerted by her disclosure, however she might have become possessed of the information.  The explanation was certainly a great excuse to her curiosity; but if Ethelberta had tried she could not have given him a better ground for making light of her objections to his suit.  ‘I felt that I must marry you, that we were predestined to marry ages ago, and I feel it still!’ he continued, with listless ardour.  ‘You seem to regret your interest in Farnfield; but to me it is a charm, and has been ever since I heard of it.’

‘If you only knew all!’ she said helplessly, showing, without perceiving it, an unnecessary humility in the remark, since there was no more reason just then that she should go into details about her life than that he should about his.  But melancholy and mistaken thoughts of herself as a counterfeit had brought her to this.

‘I do not wish to know more,’ said Neigh.

‘And would you marry any woman off-hand, without being thoroughly acquainted with her circumstances?’ she said, looking at him curiously, and with a little admiration, for his unconscionably phlegmatic treatment of her motives in going to Farnfield had a not unbecoming daring about it in Ethelberta’s eye.

‘I would marry a woman off-hand when that woman is you.  I would make you mine this moment did I dare; or, to speak with absolute accuracy, within twenty-four hours.  Do assent to it, dear Mrs. Petherwin, and let me be sure of you for ever.  I’ll drive to Doctors’ Commons this minute, and meet you to-morrow morning at nine in the church just below.  It is a simple impulse, but I would adhere to it in the coolest moment.  Shall it be arranged in that way, instead of our waiting through the ordinary routine of preparation?  I am not a youth now, but I can see the bliss of such an act as that, and the contemptible nature of methodical proceedings beside it!’

He had taken her hand.  Ethelberta gave it a subtle movement backwards to imply that he was not to retain the prize, and said, ‘One whose inner life is almost unknown to you, and whom you have scarcely seen except at other people’s houses!’

‘We know each other far better than we may think at first,’ said Neigh.  ‘We are not people to love in a hurry, and I have not done so in this case.  As for worldly circumstances, the most important items in a marriage contract are the persons themselves, and, as far as I am concerned, if I get a lady fair and wise I care for nothing further.  I know you are beautiful, for all London owns it; I know you are talented, for I have read your poetry and heard your romances; and I know you are politic and discreet—’

‘For I have examined your property,’ said she, with a weak smile.

Neigh bowed.  ‘And what more can I wish to know?  Come, shall it be?’

‘Certainly not to-morrow.’

‘I would be entirely in your hands in that matter.  I will not urge you to be precipitate—I could not expect you to be ready yet.  My suddenness perhaps offended you; but, having thought deeply of this bright possibility, I was apt to forget the forbearance that one ought to show at first in mentioning it.  If I have done wrong forgive me.’

‘I will think of that,’ said Ethelberta, with a cooler manner.  ‘But seriously, all these words are nothing to the purpose.  I must remark that I prize your friendship, but it is not for me to marry now.  You have convinced me of your goodness of heart and freedom from unworthy suspicions; let that be enough.  The best way in which I in my turn can convince you of my goodness of heart is by asking you to see me in private no more.’

‘And do you refuse to think of me as ---.  Why do you treat me like that, after all?’ said Neigh, surprised at this want of harmony with his principle that one convert to matrimony could always find a second ready-made.

‘I cannot explain, I cannot explain,’ said she, impatiently.  ‘I would and I would not—explain I mean, not marry.  I don’t love anybody, and I have no heart left for beginning.  It is only honest in me to tell you that I am interested in watching another man’s career, though that is not to the point either, for no close relationship with him is contemplated.  But I do not wish to speak of this any more.  Do not press me to it.’

‘Certainly I will not,’ said Neigh, seeing that she was distressed and sorrowful.  ‘But do consider me and my wishes; I have a right to ask it for it is only asking a continuance of what you have already begun to do.  To-morrow I believe I shall have the happiness of seeing you again.’

She did not say no, and long after the door had closed upon him she remained fixed in thought.  ‘How can he be blamed for his manner,’ she said, ‘after knowing what I did!’

Ethelberta as she sat felt herself much less a Petherwin than a Chickerel, much less a poetess richly freighted with fancy than an adventuress with a nebulous prospect.  Neigh was one of the few men whose presence seemed to attenuate her dignity in some mysterious way to its very least proportions; and that act of espial, which had so quickly and inexplicably come to his knowledge, helped his influence still more.  She knew little of the nature of the town bachelor; there were opaque depths in him which her thoughts had never definitely plumbed.  Notwithstanding her exaltation to the atmosphere of the Petherwin family, Ethelberta was very far from having the thoroughbred London woman’s knowledge of sets, grades, coteries, cliques, forms, glosses, and niceties, particularly on the masculine side.  Setting the years from her infancy to her first look into town against those linking that epoch with the present, the former period covered not only the greater time, but contained the mass of her most vivid impressions of life and its ways.  But in recognizing her ignorance of the ratio between words to women and deeds to women in the ethical code of the bachelor of the club, she forgot that human nature in the gross differs little with situation, and that a gift which, if the germs were lacking, no amount of training in clubs and coteries could supply, was mother-wit like her own.

27. MRS. BELMAINE’S—CRIPPLEGATE CHURCH

Neigh’s remark that he believed he should see Ethelberta again the next day referred to a contemplated pilgrimage of an unusual sort which had been arranged for that day by Mrs. Belmaine upon the ground of an incidental suggestion of Ethelberta’s.  One afternoon in the week previous they had been chatting over tea at the house of the former lady, Neigh being present as a casual caller, when the conversation was directed upon Milton by somebody opening a volume of the poet’s works that lay on a table near.

‘Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee—’

said Mrs. Belmaine with the degree of flippancy which is considered correct for immortal verse, the Bible, God, etc., in these days.  And Ethelberta replied, lit up by a quick remembrance, ‘It is a good time to talk of Milton; for I have been much impressed by reading the “Life;” and I have decided to go and see his tomb.  Could we not all go?  We ought to quicken our memories of the great, and of where they lie, by such a visit occasionally.’

‘We ought,’ said Mrs.