'And, for the matter of that, you snub me. Still, you know what I mean-

there's none of that off-and-on humbug between us. If we grumble with

one another we are united just the same: if we don't write when we are

parted, we are just the same when we meet-there has been some rational

reason for silence; but as for lovers and sweethearts, there is nothing

worth a rush in what they feel!'

Faith said nothing in reply to this. The opinions she had formed upon

the wisdom of her brother's pursuit of Ethelberta would have come just

then with an ill grace. It must, however, have been evident to

Christopher, had he not been too preoccupied for observation, that

Faith's impressions of Ethelberta were not quite favourable as regarded

her womanhood, notwithstanding that she greatly admired her talents.

22. ETHELBERTA'S HOUSE

Ethelberta came indoors one day from the University boat-race, and sat

down, without speaking, beside Picotee, as if lost in thought.

'Did you enjoy the sight?' said Picotee.

'I scarcely know. We couldn't see at all from Mrs. Belmaine's carriage,

so two of us-very rashly-agreed to get out and be rowed across to the

other side where the people were quite few. But when the boatman had us

in the middle of the river he declared he couldn't land us on the other

side because of the barges, so there we were in a dreadful state-tossed

up and down like corks upon great waves made by steamers till I made up

my mind for a drowning. Well, at last we got back again, but couldn't

reach the carriage for the crowd; and I don't know what we should have

done if a gentleman hadn't come-sent by Mrs. Belmaine, who was in a

great fright about us; then he was introduced to me, and-I wonder how it

will end!'

'Was there anything so wonderful in the beginning, then?'

'Yes. One of the coolest and most practised men in London was ill-

mannered towards me from sheer absence of mind-and could there be higher

flattery? When a man of that sort does not give you the politeness you

deserve, it means that in his heart he is rebelling against another

feeling which his pride suggests that you do not deserve. O, I forgot to

say that he is a Mr. Neigh, a nephew of Mr. Doncastle's, who lives at

ease about Piccadilly and Pall Mall, and has a few acres somewhere-but I

don't know much of him. The worst of my position now is that I excite

this superficial interest in many people and a deep friendship in

nobody. If what all my supporters feel could be collected into the

hearts of two or three they would love me better than they love

themselves; but now it pervades all and operates in none.'

'But it must operate in this gentleman?'

'Well, yes-just for the present. But men in town have so many

contrivances for getting out of love that you can't calculate upon

keeping them in for two days together. However, it is all the same to

me. There's only-but let that be.'

'What is there only?' said Picotee coaxingly.

'Only one man,' murmured Ethelberta, in much lower tones. 'I mean, whose

wife I should care to be; and the very qualities I like in him will, I

fear, prevent his ever being in a position to ask me.'

'Is he the man you punished the week before last by forbidding him to

come?'

'Perhaps he is: but he does not want civility from me. Where there's

much feeling there's little ceremony.'

'It certainly seems that he does not want civility from you to make him

attentive to you,' said Picotee, stifling a sigh; 'for here is a letter

in his handwriting, I believe.'

'You might have given it to me at once,' said Ethelberta, opening the

envelope hastily. It contained very few sentences: they were to the

effect that Christopher had received her letter forbidding him to call;

that he had therefore at first resolved not to call or even see her

more, since he had become such a shadow in her path. Still, as it was

always best to do nothing hastily, he had on second thoughts decided to

ask her to grant him a last special favour, and see him again just once,

for a few minutes only that afternoon, in which he might at least say

Farewell. To avoid all possibility of compromising her in anybody's

eyes, he would call at half-past six, when other callers were likely to

be gone, knowing that from the peculiar constitution of the household

the hour would not interfere with her arrangements. There being no time

for an answer, he would assume that she would see him, and keep the

engagement; the request being one which could not rationally be objected

to.

'There-read it!' said Ethelberta, with glad displeasure. 'Did you ever

hear such audacity? Fixing a time so soon that I cannot reply, and thus

making capital out of a pretended necessity, when it is really an

arbitrary arrangement of his own. That's real rebellion-forcing himself

into my house when I said strictly he was not to come; and then, that it

cannot rationally be objected to-I don't like his "rationally."'

'Where there's much love there's little ceremony, didn't you say just

now?' observed innocent Picotee.

'And where there's little love, no ceremony at all. These manners of his

are dreadful, and I believe he will never improve.'

'It makes you care not a bit about him, does it not, Berta?' said

Picotee hopefully.

'I don't answer for that,' said Ethelberta. 'I feel, as many others do,

that a want of ceremony which is produced by abstraction of mind is no

defect in a poet or musician, fatal as it may be to an ordinary man.'

'Mighty me! You soon forgive him.'

'Picotee, don't you be so quick to speak. Before I have finished, how do

you know what I am going to say? I'll never tell you anything again, if

you take me up so. Of course I am going to punish him at once, and make

him remember that I am a lady, even if I do like him a little.'

'How do you mean to punish him?' said Picotee, with interest.

'By writing and telling him that on no account is he to come.'

'But there is not time for a letter-'

'That doesn't matter. It will show him that I did not mean him to come.'

At hearing the very merciful nature of the punishment, Picotee sighed

without replying; and Ethelberta despatched her note. The hour of

appointment drew near, and Ethelberta showed symptoms of unrest. Six

o'clock struck and passed. She walked here and there for nothing, and it

was plain that a dread was filling her: her letter might accidentally

have had, in addition to the moral effect which she had intended, the

practical effect which she did not intend, by arriving before, instead

of after, his purposed visit to her, thereby stopping him in spite of

all her care.

'How long are letters going to Bloomsbury?' she said suddenly.

'Two hours, Joey tells me,' replied Picotee, who had already inquired on

her own private account.

'There!' exclaimed Ethelberta petulantly. 'How I dislike a man to

misrepresent things! He said there was not time for a reply!'

'Perhaps he didn't know,' said Picotee, in angel tones; 'and so it

happens all right, and he has got it, and he will not come after all.'

They waited and waited, but Christopher did not appear that night; the

true case being that his declaration about insufficient time for a reply

was merely an ingenious suggestion to her not to be so cruel as to

forbid him. He was far from suspecting when the letter of denial did

reach him-about an hour before the time of appointment-that it was sent

by a refinement of art, of which the real intention was futility, and

that but for his own misstatement it would have been carefully delayed.

The next day another letter came from the musician, decidedly short and

to the point. The irate lover stated that he would not be made a fool of

any longer: under any circumstances he meant to come that self-same

afternoon, and should decidedly expect her to see him.

'I will not see him!' said Ethelberta. 'Why did he not call last night?'

'Because you told him not to,' said Picotee.

'Good gracious, as if a woman's words are to be translated as literally

as Homer! Surely he is aware that more often than not "No" is said to a

man's importunities because it is traditionally the correct modest

reply, and for nothing else in the world. If all men took words as

superficially as he does, we should die of decorum in shoals.'

'Ah, Berta! how could you write a letter that you did not mean should be

obeyed?'

'I did in a measure mean it, although I could have shown Christian

forgiveness if it had not been. Never mind; I will not see him. I'll

plague my heart for the credit of my sex.'

To ensure the fulfilment of this resolve, Ethelberta determined to give

way to a headache that she was beginning to be aware of, go to her room,

disorganize her dress, and ruin her hair by lying down; so putting it

out of her power to descend and meet Christopher on any momentary

impulse.

Picotee sat in the room with her, reading, or pretending to read, and

Ethelberta pretended to sleep. Christopher's knock came up the stairs,

and with it the end of the farce.

'I'll tell you what,' said Ethelberta in the prompt and broadly-awake

tone of one who had been concentrated on the expectation of that sound

for a length of time, 'it was a mistake in me to do this! Joey will be

sure to make a muddle of it.'

Joey was heard coming up the stairs. Picotee opened the door, and said,

with an anxiety transcending Ethelberta's, 'Well?'

'O, will you tell Mrs. Petherwin that Mr. Julian says he'll wait.'

'You were not to ask him to wait,' said Ethelberta, within.

'I know that,' said Joey, 'and I didn't. He's doing that out of his own

head.'

'Then let Mr. Julian wait, by all means,' said Ethelberta. 'Allow him to

wait if he likes, but tell him it is uncertain if I shall be able to

come down.'

Joey then retired, and the two sisters remained in silence.

'I wonder if he's gone,' Ethelberta said, at the end of a long time.

'I thought you were asleep,' said Picotee. 'Shall we ask Joey? I have

not heard the door close.'

Joey was summoned, and after a leisurely ascent, interspersed by various

gymnastic performances over the handrail here and there, appeared again.

'He's there jest the same: he don't seem to be in no hurry at all,' said

Joey.

'What is he doing?' inquired Picotee solicitously.

'O, only looking at his watch sometimes, and humming tunes, and playing

rat-a-tat-tat upon the table. He says he don't mind waiting a bit.'

'You must have made a mistake in the message,' said Ethelberta, within.

'Well, no. I am correct as a jineral thing. I jest said perhaps you

would be engaged all the evening, and perhaps you wouldn't.'

When Joey had again retired, and they had waited another ten minutes,

Ethelberta said, 'Picotee, do you go down and speak a few words to him.

I am determined he shall not see me. You know him a little; you remember

when he came to the Lodge?'

'What must I say to him?'

Ethelberta paused before replying. 'Try to find out if-if he is much

grieved at not seeing me, and say-give him to understand that I will

forgive him, Picotee.'

'Very well.'

'And Picotee-'

'Yes.'

'If he says he must see me-I think I will get up. But only if he says

must: you remember that.'

Picotee departed on her errand. She paused on the staircase trembling,

and thinking between the thrills how very far would have been the

conduct of her poor slighted self from proud recalcitration had Mr.

Julian's gentle request been addressed to her instead of to Ethelberta;

and she went some way in the painful discovery of how much more

tantalizing it was to watch an envied situation that was held by another

than to be out of sight of it altogether. Here was Christopher waiting

to bestow love, and Ethelberta not going down to receive it: a commodity

unequalled in value by any other in the whole wide world was being

wantonly wasted within that very house. If she could only have stood to-

night as the beloved Ethelberta, and not as the despised Picotee, how

different would be this going down! Thus she went along, red and pale

moving in her cheeks as in the Northern Lights at their strongest time.

Meanwhile Christopher had sat waiting minute by minute till the evening

shades grew browner, and the fire sank low. Joey, finding himself not

particularly wanted upon the premises after the second inquiry, had

slipped out to witness a nigger performance round the corner, and Julian

began to think himself forgotten by all the household. The perception

gradually cooled his emotions and enabled him to hold his hat quite

steadily.

When Picotee gently thrust open the door she was surprised to find the

room in darkness, the fire gone completely out, and the form of

Christopher only visible by a faint patch of light, which, coming from a

lamp on the opposite side of the way and falling upon the mirror, was

thrown as a pale nebulosity upon his shoulder. Picotee was too flurried

at sight of the familiar outline to know what to do, and, instead of

going or calling for a light, she mechanically advanced into the room.

Christopher did not turn or move in any way, and then she perceived that

he had begun to doze in his chair.

Instantly, with the precipitancy of the timorous, she said, 'Mr.

Julian!' and touched him on the shoulder-murmuring then, 'O, I beg

pardon, I-I will get a light.'

Christopher's consciousness returned, and his first act, before rising,

was to exclaim, in a confused manner, 'Ah-you have come-thank you,

Berta!' then impulsively to seize her hand, as it hung beside his head,

and kiss it passionately. He stood up, still holding her fingers.

Picotee gasped out something, but was completely deprived of articulate

utterance, and in another moment being unable to control herself at this

sort of first meeting with the man she had gone through fire and water

to be near, and more particularly by the overpowering kiss upon her

hand, burst into hysterical sobbing. Julian, in his inability to imagine

so much emotion-or at least the exhibition of it-in Ethelberta, gently

drew Picotee further forward by the hand he held, and utilized the

solitary spot of light from the mirror by making it fall upon her face.

Recognizing the childish features, he at once, with an exclamation,

dropped her hand and started back. Being in point of fact a complete

bundle of nerves and nothing else, his thin figure shook like a harp-

string in painful excitement at a contretemps which would scarcely have

quickened the pulse of an ordinary man.

Poor Picotee, feeling herself in the wind of a civil d�-, started back

also, sobbing more than ever. It was a little too much that the first

result of his discovery of the mistake should be absolute repulse. She

leant against the mantelpiece, when Julian, much bewildered at her

superfluity of emotion, assisted her to a seat in sheer humanity. But

Christopher was by no means pleased when he again thought round the

circle of circumstances.

'How could you allow such an absurd thing to happen?' he said, in a

stern, though trembling voice. 'You knew I might mistake. I had no idea

you were in the house: I thought you were miles away, at Sandbourne or

somewhere! But I see: it is just done for a joke, ha-ha!'

This made Picotee rather worse still. 'O-O-O-O!' she replied, in the

tone of pouring from a bottle. 'What shall I do-o-o-o! It is-not done

for a-joke at all-l-l-l!'

'Not done for a joke? Then never mind-don't cry, Picotee. What was it

done for, I wonder?'

Picotee, mistaking the purport of his inquiry, imagined him to refer to

her arrival in the house, quite forgetting, in her guilty sense of

having come on his account, that he would have no right or thought of

asking questions about a natural visit to a sister, and she said: 'When

you-went away from-Sandbourne, I-I-I didn't know what to do, and then I

ran away, and came here, and then Ethelberta-was angry with me; but she

says I may stay; but she doesn't know that I know you, and how we used

to meet along the road every morning-and I am afraid to tell her-O, what

shall I do!'

'Never mind it,' said Christopher, a sense of the true state of her case

dawning upon him with unpleasant distinctness, and bringing some

irritation at his awkward position; though it was impossible to be long

angry with a girl who had not reasoning foresight enough to perceive

that doubtful pleasure and certain pain must be the result of any

meeting whilst hearts were at cross purposes in this way.

'Where is your sister?' he asked.

'She wouldn't come down, unless she MUST,' said Picotee. 'You have vexed

her, and she has a headache besides that, and I came instead.'

'So that I mightn't be wasted altogether. Well, it's a strange business

between the three of us. I have heard of one-sided love, and reciprocal

love, and all sorts, but this is my first experience of a concatenated

affection. You follow me, I follow Ethelberta, and she follows-Heaven

knows who!'

'Mr. Ladywell!' said the mortified Picotee.

'Good God, if I didn't think so!' said Christopher, feeling to the soles

of his feet like a man in a legitimate drama.

'No, no, no!' said the frightened girl hastily. 'I am not sure it is Mr.

Ladywell. That's altogether a mistake of mine!'

'Ah, yes, you want to screen her,' said Christopher, with a withering

smile at the spot of light. 'Very sisterly, doubtless; but none of that

will do for me. I am too old a bird by far-by very far! Now are you sure

she does not love Ladywell?'

'Yes!'

'Well, perhaps I blame her wrongly. She may have some little good faith-

a woman has, here and there. How do you know she does not love

Ladywell?'

'Because she would prefer Mr. Neigh to him, any day.'

'Ha!'

'No, no-you mistake, sir-she doesn't love either at all-Ethelberta

doesn't. I meant that she cannot love Mr. Ladywell because he stands

lower in her opinion than Mr. 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 prim�-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 HANDlinking 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. Belmaine.

'And why shouldn't we?' continued Ethelberta, with interest.

'To Westminster Abbey?' said Mr. Belmaine, a common man of thirty,

younger than his wife, who had lately come into the room.

'No; to where he lies comparatively alone-Cripplegate Church.'

'I always thought that Milton was buried in Poet's Corner,' said Mr.

Belmaine.

'So did I,' said Neigh; 'but I have such an indifferent head for places

that my thinking goes for nothing.'

'Well, it would be a pretty thing to do,' said Mrs. Belmaine, 'and

instructive to all of us. If Mrs. Petherwin would like to go, I should.

We can take you in the carriage and call round for Mrs. Doncastle on our

way, and set you both down again coming back.'

'That would be excellent,' said Ethelberta. 'There is nowhere I like

going to so much as the depths of the city. The absurd narrowness of

world-renowned streets is so surprising-so crooked and shady as they are

too, and full of the quaint smells of old cupboards and cellars. Walking

through one of them reminds me of being at the bottom of some crevasse

or gorge, the proper surface of the globe being the tops of the houses.'

'You will come to take care of us, John? And you, Mr. Neigh, would like

to come? We will tell Mr. Ladywell that he may join us if he cares to,'

said Mrs. Belmaine.

'O yes,' said her husband quietly; and Neigh said he should like nothing

better, after a faint aspect of apprehension at the remoteness of the

idea from the daily track of his thoughts. Mr. Belmaine observing this,

and mistaking it for an indication that Neigh had been dragged into the

party against his will by his over-hasty wife, arranged that Neigh

should go independently and meet them there at the hour named if he

chose to do so, to give him an opportunity of staying away. Ethelberta

also was by this time doubting if she had not been too eager with her

proposal. To go on such a sentimental errand might be thought by her

friends to be simply troublesome, their adherence having been given only

in the regular course of complaisance. She was still comparatively an

outsider here, her life with Lady Petherwin having been passed chiefly

in alternations between English watering-places and continental towns.

However, it was too late now to muse on this, and it may be added that

from first to last Ethelberta never discovered from the Belmaines

whether her proposal had been an infliction or a charm, so perfectly

were they practised in sustaining that complete divorce between thinking

and saying which is the hall-mark of high civilization.

But, however she might doubt the Belmaines, she had no doubt as to

Neigh's true sentiments: the time had come when he, notwithstanding his

air of being oppressed by almost every lively invention of town and

country for charming griefs to rest, would not be at all oppressed by a

quiet visit to the purlieus of St Giles's, Cripplegate, since she was

the originator, and was going herself.

It was a bright hope-inspiring afternoon in this mid-May time when the

carriage containing Mr. and Mrs. Belmaine, Mrs. Doncastle, and

Ethelberta, crept along the encumbered streets towards Barbican; till

turning out of that thoroughfare into Redcross Street they beheld the

bold shape of the old tower they sought, clothed in every neutral shade,

standing clear against the sky, dusky and grim in its upper stage, and

hoary grey below, where every corner of every stone was completely

rounded off by the waves of wind and storm.

All people were busy here: our visitors seemed to be the only idle

persons the city contained; and there was no dissonance-there never is-

between antiquity and such beehive industry; for pure industry, in

failing to observe its own existence and aspect, partakes of the

unobtrusive nature of material things. This intra-mural stir was a

flywheel transparent by excessive motion, through which Milton and his

day could be seen as if nothing intervened. Had there been ostensibly

harmonious accessories, a crowd of observing people in search of the

poetical, conscious of the place and the scene, what a discord would

have arisen there! But everybody passed by Milton's grave except

Ethelberta and her friends, and for the moment the city's less invidious

conduct appeared to her more respectful as a practice than her own.

But she was brought out of this rumination by the halt at the church

door, and completely reminded of the present by finding the church open,

and Neigh-the, till yesterday, unimpassioned Neigh-waiting in the

vestibule to receive them, just as if he lived there. Ladywell had not

arrived. It was a long time before Ethelberta could get back to Milton

again, for Neigh was continuing to impend over her future more and more

visibly. The objects along the journey had distracted her mind from him;

but the moment now was as a direct renewal and prolongation of the

declaration-time yesterday, and as if in furtherance of the conclusion

of the episode.

They all alighted and went in, the coachman being told to take the

carriage to a quiet nook further on, and return in half-an-hour. Mrs.

Belmaine and her carriage some years before had accidentally got jammed

crosswise in Cheapside through the clumsiness of the man in turning up a

side street, blocking that great artery of the civilized world for the

space of a minute and a half, when they were pounced upon by half-a-

dozen policemen and forced to back ignominiously up a little slit

between the houses where they did not mean to go, amid the shouts of the

hindered drivers; and it was her nervous recollection of that event

which caused Mrs. Belmaine to be so precise in her directions now.

By the time that they were grouped around the tomb the visit had assumed

a much more solemn complexion than any one among them had anticipated.

Ashamed of the influence that she discovered Neigh to be exercising over

her, and opposing it steadily, Ethelberta drew from her pocket a small

edition of Milton, and proposed that she should read a few lines from

'Paradise Lost.' The responsibility of producing a successful afternoon

was upon her shoulders; she was, moreover, the only one present who

could properly manage blank verse, and this was sufficient to justify

the proposal.

She stood with her head against the marble slab just below the bust, and

began a selected piece, Neigh standing a few yards off on her right

looking into his hat in order to listen accurately, Mr. and Mrs.

Belmaine and Mrs. Doncastle seating themselves in a pew directly facing

the monument. The ripe warm colours of afternoon came in upon them from

the west, upon the sallow piers and arches, and the infinitely deep

brown pews beneath, the aisle over Ethelberta's head being in misty

shade through which glowed a lurid light from a dark-stained window

behind. The sentences fell from her lips in a rhythmical cadence one by

one, and she could be fancied a priestess of him before whose image she

stood, when with a vivid suggestiveness she delivered here, not many

yards from the central money-mill of the world, yet out from the very

tomb of their author, the passage containing the words:

'Mammon led them on; Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell From

heaven.'

When she finished reading Ethelberta left the monument, and then each

one present strayed independently about the building, Ethelberta turning

to the left along the passage to the south door. Neigh-from whose

usually apathetic face and eyes there had proceeded a secret smouldering

light as he listened and regarded her-followed in the same direction and

vanished at her heels into the churchyard, whither she had now gone. Mr.

and Mrs. Belmaine exchanged glances, and instead of following the pair

they went with Mrs. Doncastle into the vestry to inquire of the person

in charge for the register of the marriage of Oliver Cromwell, which was

solemnized here. The church was now quite empty, and its stillness was

as a vacuum into which an occasional noise from the street overflowed

and became rarefied away to nothing.

Something like five minutes had passed when a hansom stopped outside the

door, and Ladywell entered the porch. He stood still, and, looking

inquiringly round for a minute or two, sat down in one of the high pews,

as if under the impression that the others had not yet arrived.

While he sat here Neigh reappeared at the south door opposite, and came

slowly in. Ladywell, in rising to go to him, saw that Neigh's attention

was engrossed by something he held in his hand. It was his pocket-book,

and Neigh was looking at a few loose flower-petals which had been placed

between the pages. When Ladywell came forward Neigh looked up, started,

and closed the book quickly, so that some of the petals fluttered to the

ground between the two men. They were striped, red and white, and

appeared to be leaves of the Harlequin rose.

'Ah! here you are, Ladywell,' he said, recovering himself. 'We had given

you up: my aunt said that you would not care to come. They are all in

the vestry.' How it came to pass that Neigh designated those in the

vestry as 'all,' when there was one in the churchyard, was a thing that

he himself could hardly have explained, so much more had it to do with

instinct than with calculation.

'Never mind them-don't interrupt them,' said Ladywell. 'The plain truth

is that I have been very greatly disturbed in mind; and I could not

appear earlier by reason of it. I had some doubt about coming at all.'

'I am sorry to hear that.'

'Neigh-I may as well tell you and have done with it. I have found that a

lady of my acquaintance has two strings to her bow, or I am very much in

error.'

'What-Mrs. Petherwin?' said Neigh uneasily. 'But I thought that-that

fancy was over with you long ago. Even your acquaintance with her was at

an end, I thought.'

'In a measure it is at an end. But let me tell you that what you call a

fancy has been anything but a fancy with me, to be over like a spring

shower. To speak plainly, Neigh, I consider myself badly used by that

woman; damn badly used.'

'Badly used?' said Neigh mechanically, and wondering all the time if

Ladywell had been informed that Ethelberta was to be one of the party

to-day.

'Well, I ought not to talk like that,' said Ladywell, adopting a lighter

tone. 'All is fair in courtship, I suppose, now as ever. Indeed, I mean

to put a good face upon it: if I am beaten, I am. But it is very

provoking, after supposing matters to be going on smoothly, to find out

that you are quite mistaken.'

'I told you you were quite mistaken in supposing she cared for you.'

'That is just the point I was not mistaken in,' said Ladywell warmly.

'She did care for me, and I stood as well with her as any man could

stand until this fellow came, whoever he is. I sometimes feel so

disturbed about it that I have a good mind to call upon her and ask his

name. Wouldn't you, Neigh? Will you accompany me?'

'I would in a moment, but, but- I strongly advise you not to go,' said

Neigh earnestly. 'It would be rash, you know, and rather unmannerly; and

would only hurt your feelings.'

'Well, I am always ready to yield to a friend's arguments. . . . A

sneaking scamp, that's what he is. Why does he not show himself?'

'Don't you really know who he is?' said Neigh, in a pronounced and

exceptional tone, on purpose to give Ladywell a chance of suspecting,

for the position was getting awkward. But Ladywell was blind as

Bartimeus in that direction, so well had indifference to Ethelberta's

charms been feigned by Neigh until he thought seriously of marrying her.

Yet, unfortunately for the interests of calmness, Ladywell was less

blind with his outward eye. In his reflections his glance had lingered

again upon the pocket-book which Neigh still held in his hand, and upon

the two or three rose-leaves on the floor, until he said idly,

superimposing humorousness upon misery, as men in love can:

'Rose-leaves, Neigh? I thought you did not care for flowers. What makes

you amuse yourself with such sentimental objects as those, only fit for

women, or painters like me? If I had not observed you with my own eyes I

should have said that you were about the last man in the world to care

for things of that sort. Whatever makes you keep rose-leaves in your

pocket-book?'

'The best reason on earth,' said Neigh. 'A woman gave them to me.'

'That proves nothing unless she is a great deal to you,' said Ladywell,

with the experienced air of a man who, whatever his inferiority in years

to Neigh, was far beyond him in knowledge of that sort, by virtue of his

recent trials.

'She is a great deal to me.'

'If I did not know you to be such a confirmed misogynist I should say

that this is a serious matter.'

'It is serious,' said Neigh quietly. 'The probability is that I shall

marry the woman who gave me these. Anyhow I have asked her the question,

and she has not altogether said no.'

'I am glad to hear it, Neigh,' said Ladywell heartily. 'I am glad to

hear that your star is higher than mine.'

Before Neigh could make further reply Ladywell was attracted by the glow

of green sunlight reflected through the south door by the grass of the

churchyard, now in all its spring freshness and luxuriance. He bent his

steps thither, followed anxiously by Neigh.

'I had no idea there was such a lovely green spot in the city,' Ladywell

continued, passing out. 'Trees too, planted in the manner of an orchard.

What a charming place!'

The place was truly charming just at that date. The untainted leaves of

the lime and plane trees and the newly-sprung grass had in the sun a

brilliancy of beauty that was brought into extraordinary prominence by

the sable soil showing here and there, and the charcoaled stems and

trunks out of which the leaves budded: they seemed an importation, not a

produce, and their delicacy such as would perish in a day.

'What is this round tower?' Ladywell said again, walking towards the

iron-grey bastion, partly covered with ivy and Virginia creeper, which

stood obtruding into the enclosure.

'O, didn't you know that was here? That's a piece of the old city wall,'

said Neigh, looking furtively around at the same time. Behind the

bastion the churchyard ran into a long narrow strip, grassed like the

other part, but completely hidden from it by the cylinder of ragged

masonry. On rounding this projection, Ladywell beheld within a few feet

of him a lady whom he knew too well.

'Mrs. Petherwin here!' exclaimed he, proving how ignorant he had been of

the composition of the party he was to meet, and accounting at the same

time for his laxity in attending it.

'I forgot to tell you,' said Neigh awkwardly, behind him, 'that Mrs.

Petherwin was to come with us.'

Ethelberta's look was somewhat blushful and agitated, as if from some

late transaction: she appeared to have been secluding herself there till

she should have recovered her equanimity. However, she came up to him

and said, 'I did not see you before this moment: we had been thinking

you would not come.'

While these words were being prettily spoken, Ladywell's face became

pale as death. On Ethelberta's bosom were the stem and green calyx of a

rose, almost all its flower having disappeared. It had been a Harlequin

rose, for two or three of its striped leaves remained to tell the tale.

She could not help noticing his fixed gaze, and she said quickly, 'Yes,

I have lost my pretty rose: this may as well go now,' and she plucked

the stem from its fastening in her dress and flung it away.

Poor Ladywell turned round to meet Mr. and Mrs. Belmaine, whose voices

were beginning to be heard just within the church door, leaving Neigh

and Ethelberta together. It was a graceful act of young Ladywell's that,

in the midst of his own pain at the strange tale the rose-leaves

suggested-Neigh's rivalry, Ethelberta's mutability, his own defeat-he

was not regardless of the intense embarrassment which might have been

caused had he remained.

The two were silent at first, and it was evident that Ethelberta's mood

was one of anger at something that had gone before. She turned aside

from him to follow the others, when Neigh spoke in a tone somewhat

bitter and somewhat stern.

'What-going like that! After being compromised together, why don't you

close with me? Ladywell knows all: I had already told him that the rose-

leaves were given me by my intended wife. We seem to him to be

practising deceptions all of a piece, and what folly it is to play off

so! As to what I did, that I ask your forgiveness for.'

Ethelberta looked upon the ground and maintained a compressed lip. Neigh

resumed: 'If I showed more feeling than you care for, I insist that it

was not more than was natural under the circumstances, if not quite

proper. Opinions may differ, but my experience goes to prove that

conventional squeamishness at such times as these is more talked and

written about than practised. Plain behaviour must be expected when

marriage is the question. Nevertheless, I do say-and I cannot say more-

that I am sincerely sorry to have offended you by exceeding my

privileges. I will never do so again.'

'Don't say privileges. You have none.'

'I am sorry that I thought otherwise, and that others will think so too.

Ladywell is, at any rate, bent on thinking so. . . . It might have been

made known to him in a gentle way-but God disposes.'

'There is nothing to make known-I don't understand,' said Ethelberta,

going from him.

By this time Ladywell had walked round the gravel walks with the two

other ladies and Mr. Belmaine, and they were all turning to come back

again. The young painter had deputed his voice to reply to their

remarks, but his understanding continued poring upon other things. When

he came up to Ethelberta, his agitation had left him: she too was free

from constraint; while Neigh was some distance off, carefully examining

nothing in particular in an old fragment of wall.

The little party was now united again as to its persons; though in

spirit far otherwise. They went through the church in general talk,

Ladywell sad but serene, and Ethelberta keeping far-removed both from

him and from Neigh. She had at this juncture entered upon that Sphinx-

like stage of existence in which, contrary to her earlier manner, she

signified to no one of her ways, plans, or sensations, and spoke little

on any subject at all. There were occasional smiles now which came only

from the face, and speeches from the lips merely.

The journey home was performed as they had come, Ladywell not accepting

the seat in Neigh's cab which was phlegmatically offered him. Mrs.

Doncastle's acquaintance with Ethelberta had been slight until this day;

but the afternoon's proceeding had much impressed the matron with her

younger friend. Before they parted she said, with the sort of affability

which is meant to signify the beginning of permanent friendship: 'A

friend of my husband's, Lord Mountclere, has been anxious for some time

to meet you. He is a great admirer of the poems, and more still of the

story-telling invention, and your power in it. He has been present many

times at the Mayfair Hall to hear you. When will you dine with us to

meet him? I know you will like him. Will Thursday be convenient?'

Ethelberta stood for a moment reflecting, and reflecting hoped that Mrs.

Doncastle had not noticed her momentary perplexity. Crises were becoming

as common with her as blackberries; and she had foreseen this one a long

time. It was not that she was to meet Lord Mountclere, for he was only a

name and a distant profile to her: it was that her father would

necessarily be present at the meeting, in the most anomalous position

that human nature could endure.

However, having often proved in her disjointed experience that the

shortest way out of a difficulty lies straight through it, Ethelberta

decided to dine at the Doncastles', and, as she murmured that she should

have great pleasure in meeting any friend of theirs, set about

contriving how the encounter with her dearest relative might be made

safe and unsuspected. She bade them adieu blithely; but the thoughts

engendered by the invitation stood before her as sorrowful and rayless

ghosts which could not be laid. Often at such conjunctures as these,

when the futility of her great undertaking was more than usually

manifest, did Ethelberta long like a tired child for the conclusion of

the whole matter; when her work should be over, and the evening come;

when she might draw her boat upon the shore, and in some thymy nook

await eternal night with a placid mind.

28. ETHELBERTA'S-MR. CHICKEREL'S ROOM

The question of Neigh or no Neigh had reached a pitch of insistence

which no longer permitted of dallying, even by a popular beauty. His

character was becoming defined to Ethelberta as something very

differently composed from that of her first imagining. She had set him

down to be a man whose external in excitability owed nothing to self-

repression, but stood as the natural surface of the mass within. Neigh's

urban torpor, she said, might have been in the first instance produced

by art, but, were it thus, it had gone so far as to permeate him. This

had been disproved, first surprisingly, by his reported statement;

wondrously, in the second place, by his call upon her and sudden

proposal; thirdly, to a degree simply astounding, by what had occurred

in the city that day. For Neigh, before the fervour had subsided which

was produced in him by her look and general power while reading

'Paradise Lost,' found himself alone with her in a nook outside the

church, and there had almost demanded her promise to be his wife. She

had replied by asking for time, and idly offering him the petals of her

rose, that had shed themselves in her hand. Neigh, in taking them,

pressed her fingers more warmly than she thought she had given him

warrant for, which offended her. It was certainly a very momentary

affair, and when it was over seemed to surprise himself almost as much

as it had vexed her; but it had reminded her of one truth which she was

in danger of forgetting. The town gentleman was not half so far removed

from Sol and Dan, and the hard-handed order in general, in his passions

as in his philosophy. He still continued to be the male of his species,

and when the heart was hot with a dream Pall Mall had much the same

aspect as Wessex.

Well, she had not accepted him yet; indeed, for the moment they were in

a pet with one another. Yet that might soon be cleared off, and then

recurred the perpetual question, would the advantage that might accrue

to her people by her marriage be worth the sacrifice? One palliative

feature must be remembered when we survey the matrimonial ponderings of

the poetess and romancer. What she contemplated was not meanly to

ensnare a husband just to provide incomes for her and her family, but to

find some man she might respect, who would maintain her in such a stage

of comfort as should, by setting her mind free from temporal anxiety,

enable her to further organize her talent, and provide incomes for them

herself. Plenty of saleable originality was left in her as yet, but it

was getting crushed under the rubbish of her necessities.

She was not sure that Neigh would stand the test of her revelations. It

would be possible to lead him to marry her without revealing anything-

the events of the last few days had shown her that-yet Ethelberta's

honesty shrank from the safe course of holding her tongue. It might be

pleasant to many a modern gentleman to find himself allied with a lady,

none of whose ancestors had ever pandered to a court, lost an army,

taken a bribe, oppressed a community, or broken a bank; but the added

disclosure that, in avoiding these stains, her kindred had worked and

continued to work with their hands for bread, might lead such an one to

consider that the novelty was dearly purchased.

Ethelberta was, upon the whole, dissatisfied with her progress thus far.

She had planned many things and fulfilled few. Had her father been by

this time provided for and made independent of the world, as she had

thought he might be, not only would her course with regard to Neigh be

quite clear, but the impending awkwardness of dining with her father

behind her chair could not have occurred. True, that was a small matter

beside her regret for his own sake that he was still in harness; and a

mere change of occupation would be but a tribute to a fastidiousness

which he did not himself share. She had frequently tried to think of a

vocation for him that would have a more dignified sound, and be less

dangerously close to her own path: the post of care-taker at some

provincial library, country stationer, registrar of births and deaths,

and many others had been discussed and dismissed in face of the

unmanageable fact that her father was serenely happy and comfortable as

a butler, looking with dread at any hint of change short of perfect

retirement. Since, then, she could not offer him this retirement, what

right had she to interfere with his mode of life at all? In no other

social groove on earth would he thrive as he throve in his present one,

to which he had been accustomed from boyhood, and where the remuneration

was actually greater than in professions ten times as stately in name.

For the rest, too, Ethelberta had indulged in hopes, the high education

of the younger ones being the chief of these darling wishes. Picotee

wanted looking to badly enough. Sol and Dan required no material help;

they had quickly obtained good places of work under a Pimlico builder;

for though the brothers scarcely showed as yet the light-fingered

deftness of London artizans, the want was in a measure compensated by

their painstaking, and employers are far from despising country hands

who bring with them strength, industry, and a desire to please. But

their sister had other lines laid down for them than those of level

progress; to start them some day as masters instead of men was a long-

cherished wish of Ethelberta's.

Thus she had quite enough machinery in her hands to keep decently going,

even were she to marry a man who would take a kindly view of her

peculiar situation, and afford her opportunities of strengthening her

powers for her kindred's good. But what would be the result if, eighteen

months hence-the date at which her occupation of the house in Exonbury

Crescent came to an end-she were still a widow, with no accumulated

capital, her platform talents grown homely and stunted through narrow

living, and her tender vein of poesy completely dispersed by it? To

calmly relinquish the struggle at that point would have been the act of

a stoic, but not of a woman, particularly when she considered the

children, the hopes of her mother for them, and her own condition-though

this was least-under the ironical cheers which would greet a slip back

into the mire.

It here becomes necessary to turn for a moment to Master Joey Chickerel,

Ethelberta's troublesome page and brother. The face of this juvenile was

that of a Graeco-Roman satyr to the furthest degree of completeness.

Viewed in front, the outer line of his upper lip rose in a double arch

nearly to his little round nostrils, giving an expression of a jollity

so delicious to himself as to compel a perpetual drawing in of his

breath. During half-laughs his lips parted in the middle, and remained

closed at the corners, which were small round pits like his nostrils,

the same form being repeated as dimples a little further back upon his

cheek. The opening for each eye formed a sparkling crescent, both upper

and under lid having the convexity upwards.

But during some few days preceding the dinner-party at the Doncastles'

all this changed. The luxuriant curves departed, a compressed lineality

was to be observed everywhere, the pupils of his eyes seemed flattened,

and the carriage of his head was limp and sideways. This was a feature

so remarkable and new in him that Picotee noticed it, and was lifted

from the melancholy current of her own affairs in contemplating his.

'Well, what's the matter?' said Picotee.

'O-nothing,' said Joey.

'Nothing? How can you say so?'

'The world's a holler mockery-that's what I say.'

'Yes, so it is, to some; but not to you,' said Picotee, sighing.

'Don't talk argument, Picotee. I only hope you'll never feel what I feel

now. If it wasn't for my juties here I know what I'd do; I'd 'list,

that's what I'd do. But having my position to fill here as the only

responsible man-servant in the house, I can't leave.'

'Has anybody been beating you?'

'Beating! Do I look like a person who gets beatings? No, it is a

madness,' said Joey, putting his hand upon his chest. 'The case is, I am

in love.'

'O Joey, a boy no bigger than you are!' said Picotee reprovingly. Her

personal interest in the passion, however, provoked her to inquire, in

the next breath, 'Who is it? Do tell, Joey.'

'No bigger than I! What hev bigness to do with it? That's just like your

old-fashioned notions. Bigness is no more wanted in courting nowadays

than in soldiering or smoking or any other duty of man. Husbands is

rare; and a promising courter who means business will fetch his price in

these times, big or small, I assure ye. I might have been engaged a

dozen times over as far as the bigness goes. You should see what a

miserable little fellow my rival is afore you talk like that. Now you

know I've got a rival, perhaps you'll own there must be something in

it.'

'Yes, that seems like the real thing. But who is the young woman?'

'Well, I don't mind telling you, Picotee. It is Mrs. Doncastle's new

maid. I called to see father last night, and had supper there; and you

should have seen how lovely she were-eating sparrowgrass sideways, as if

she were born to it. But, of course, there's a rival-there always is-I

might have known that, and I will crush him!'

'But Mrs. Doncastle's new maid-if that was she I caught a glimpse of the

other day-is ever so much older than you-a dozen years.'

'What's that to a man in love? Pooh-I wish you would leave me, Picotee;

I wants to be alone.'

A short time after this Picotee was in the company of Ethelberta, and

she took occasion to mention Joey's attachment. Ethelberta grew

exceedingly angry directly she heard of it.

'What a fearful nuisance that boy is becoming,' she said. 'Does father

know anything of this?'

'I think not,' said Picotee. 'O no, he cannot; he would not allow any

such thing to go on; she is so much older than Joey.'

'I should think he wouldn't allow it! The fact is I must be more strict

about this growing friendliness between you all and the Doncastle

servants. There shall be absolutely no intimacy or visiting of any sort.

When father wants to see any of you he must come here, unless there is a

most serious reason for your calling upon him. Some disclosure or

reference to me otherwise than as your mistress, will certainly be made

else, and then I am ruined. I will speak to father myself about Joey's

absurd nonsense this evening. I am going to see him on another matter.'

And Ethelberta sighed. 'I am to dine there on Thursday,' she added.

'To dine there, Berta? Well, that is a strange thing! Why, father will

be close to you!'

'Yes,' said Ethelberta quietly.

'How I should like to see you sitting at a grand dinner-table, among

lordly dishes and shining people, and father about the room unnoticed!

Berta, I have never seen a dinner-party in my life, and father said that

I should some day; he promised me long ago.'

'How will he be able to carry out that, my dear child?' said Ethelberta,

drawing her sister gently to her side.

'Father says that for an hour and a half the guests are quite fixed in

the dining-room, and as unlikely to move as if they were trees planted

round the table. Do let me go and see you, Berta,' Picotee added

coaxingly. 'I would give anything to see how you look in the midst of

elegant people talking and laughing, and you my own sister all the time,

and me looking on like puss-in-the-corner.'

Ethelberta could hardly resist the entreaty, in spite of her recent

resolution.

'We will leave that to be considered when I come home to-night,' she

said. 'I must hear what father says.'

After dark the same evening a woman, dressed in plain black and wearing

a hood, went to the servants' entrance of Mr. Doncastle's house, and

inquired for Mr. Chickerel. Ethelberta found him in a room by himself,

and on entering she closed the door behind her, and unwrapped her face.

'Can you sit with me a few minutes, father?' she said.

'Yes, for a quarter of an hour or so,' said the butler. 'Has anything

happened? I thought it might be Picotee.'

'No. All's well yet. But I thought it best to see you upon one or two

matters which are harassing me a little just now. The first is, that

stupid boy Joey has got entangled in some way with the lady's-maid at

this house; a ridiculous affair it must be by all account, but it is too

serious for me to treat lightly. She will worm everything out of him,

and a pretty business it will be then.'

'God bless my soul! why, the woman is old enough to be his mother! I

have never heard a sound of it till now. What do you propose to do?'

'I have hardly thought: I cannot tell at all. But we will consider that

after I have done. The next thing is, I am to dine here Thursday-that

is, to-morrow.'

'You going to dine here, are you?' said her father in surprise. 'Dear

me, that's news. We have a dinner-party to-morrow, but I was not aware

that you knew our people.'

'I have accepted the invitation,' said Ethelberta. 'But if you think I

had better stay away, I will get out of it by some means. Heavens! what

does that mean-will anybody come in?' she added, rapidly pulling up her

hood and jumping from the seat as the loud tones of a bell clanged forth

in startling proximity.

'O no-it is all safe,' said her father. 'It is the area door-nothing to

do with me. About the dinner: I don't see why you may not come. Of

course you will take no notice of me, nor shall I of you. It is to be

rather a large party. Lord What's-his-name is coming, and several good

people.'

'Yes; he is coming to meet me, it appears. But, father,' she said more

softly and slowly, 'how wrong it will be for me to come so close to you,

and never recognize you! I don't like it. I wish you could have given up

service by this time; it would have been so much less painful for us all

round. I thought we might have been able to manage it somehow.'

'Nonsense, nonsense,' said Mr. Chickerel crossly. 'There is not the

least reason why I should give up. I want to save a little money first.

If you don't like me as I am, you must keep away from me. Don't be

uneasy about my comfort; I am right enough, thank God. I can mind myself

for many a year yet.'

Ethelberta looked at him with tears in her eyes, but she did not speak.

She never could help crying when she met her father here.

'I have been in service now for more than seven-and-thirty years,' her

father went on. 'It is an honourable calling; and why should you

maintain me because you can earn a few pounds by your gifts, and an old

woman left you her house and a few sticks of furniture? If she had left

you any money it would have been a different thing, but as you have to

work for every penny you get, I cannot think of it. Suppose I should

agree to come and live with you, and then you should be ill, or such

like, and I no longer able to help myself? O no, I'll stick where I am,

for here I am safe as to food and shelter at any rate. Surely,

Ethelberta, it is only right that I, who ought to keep you all, should

at least keep your mother and myself? As to our position, that we cannot

help; and I don't mind that you are unable to own me.'

'I wish I could own you-all of you.'

'Well, you chose your course, my dear; and you must abide by it. Having

put your hand to the plough, it will be foolish to turn back.'

'It would, I suppose. Yet I wish I could get a living by some simple

humble occupation, and drop the name of Petherwin, and be Berta

Chickerel again, and live in a green cottage as we used to do when I was

small. I am miserable to a pitiable degree sometimes, and sink into

regrets that I ever fell into such a groove as this. I don't like covert

deeds, such as coming here to-night, and many are necessary with me from

time to time. There is something without which splendid energies are a

drug; and that is a cold heart. There is another thing necessary to

energy, too-the power of distinguishing your visions from your

reasonable forecasts when looking into the future, so as to allow your

energy to lay hold of the forecasts only. I begin to have a fear that

mother is right when she implies that I undertook to carry out visions

and all. But ten of us are so many to cope with. If God Almighty had

only killed off three-quarters of us when we were little, a body might

have done something for the rest; but as we are it is hopeless!'

'There is no use in your going into high doctrine like that,' said

Chickerel. 'As I said before, you chose your course. You have begun to

fly high, and you had better keep there.'

'And to do that there is only one way-that is, to do it surely, so that

I have some groundwork to enable me to keep up to the mark in my

profession. That way is marriage.'

'Marriage? Who are you going to marry?'

'God knows. Perhaps Lord Mountclere. Stranger things have happened.'

'Yes, so they have; though not many wretcheder things. I would sooner

see you in your grave, Ethelberta, than Lord Mountclere's wife, or the

wife of anybody like him, great as the honour would be.'

'Of course that was only something to say; I don't know the man even.'

'I know his valet. However, marry who you may, I hope you'll be happy,

my dear girl. You would be still more divided from us in that event; but

when your mother and I are dead, it will make little difference.'

Ethelberta placed her hand upon his shoulder, and smiled cheerfully.

'Now, father, don't despond. All will be well, and we shall see no such

misfortune as that for many a year. Leave all to me. I am a rare hand at

contrivances.'

'You are indeed, Berta. It seems to me quite wonderful that we should be

living so near together and nobody suspect the relationship, because of

the precautions you have taken.'

'Yet the precautions were rather Lady Petherwin's than mine, as you

know. Consider how she kept me abroad. My marriage being so secret made

it easy to cut off all traces, unless anybody had made it a special

business to search for them. That people should suspect as yet would be

by far the more wonderful thing of the two. But we must, for one thing,

have no visiting between our girls and the servants here, or they soon

will suspect.'

Ethelberta then laid down a few laws on the subject, and, explaining the

other details of her visit, told her father soon that she must leave

him.

He took her along the passage and into the area. They were standing at

the bottom of the steps, saying a few parting words about Picotee's

visit to see the dinner, when a female figure appeared by the railing

above, slipped in at the gate, and flew down the steps past the father

and daughter. At the moment of passing she whispered breathlessly to

him, 'Is that you, Mr. Chickerel?'

'Yes,' said the butler.

She tossed into his arms a quantity of wearing apparel, and adding,

'Please take them upstairs for me-I am late,' rushed into the house.

'Good heavens, what does that mean?' said Ethelberta, holding her

father's arm in her uneasiness.

'That's the new lady's-maid, just come in from an evening walk-that

young scamp's sweetheart, if what you tell me is true. I don't yet know

what her character is, but she runs neck and neck with time closer than

any woman I ever met. She stays out at night like this till the last

moment, and often throws off her dashing courting-clothes in this way,

as she runs down the steps, to save a journey to the top of the house to

her room before going to Mrs. Doncastle's, who is in fact at this minute

waiting for her. Only look here.' Chickerel gathered up a hat decked

with feathers and flowers, a parasol, and a light muslin train-skirt,

out of the pocket of the latter tumbling some long golden tresses of

hair.

'What an extraordinary woman,' said Ethelberta. 'A perfect Cinderella.

The idea of Joey getting desperate about a woman like that; no doubt she

has just come in from meeting him.'

'No doubt-a blockhead. That's his taste, is it! I'll soon see if I can't

cure his taste if it inclines towards Mrs. Menlove.'

'Mrs. what?'

'Menlove; that's her name. She came about a fortnight ago.'

'And is that Menlove-what shall we do!' exclaimed Ethelberta. 'The idea

of the boy singling out her-why it is ruin to him, to me, and to us

all!'

She hastily explained to her father that Menlove had been Lady

Petherwin's maid and her own at some time before the death of her

mother-in-law, that she had only stayed with them through a three

months' tour because of her flightiness, and hence had learnt nothing of

Ethelberta's history, and probably had never thought at all about it.

But nevertheless they were as well acquainted as a lady and her maid

well could be in the time. 'Like all such doubtful characters,'

continued Ethelberta, 'she was one of the cleverest and lightest-handed

women we ever had about us. When she first came, my hair was getting

quite weak; but by brushing it every day in a peculiar manner, and

treating it as only she knew how, she brought it into splendid

condition.'

'Well, this is the devil to pay, upon my life!' said Mr. Chickerel, with

a miserable gaze at the bundle of clothes and the general situation at

the same time. 'Unfortunately for her friendship, I have snubbed her two

or three times already, for I don't care about her manner. You know she

has a way of trading on a man's sense of honour till it puts him into an

awkward position. She is perfectly well aware that, whatever scrape I

find her out in, I shall not have the conscience to report her, because

I am a man, and she is a defenceless woman; and so she takes advantage

of one's feeling by making me, or either of the menservants, her bottle-

holder, as you see she has done now.'

'This is all simply dreadful,' said Ethelberta. 'Joey is shrewd and

trustworthy; but in the hands of such a woman as that! I suppose she did

not recognize me.'

'There was no chance of that in the dark.'

'Well, I cannot do anything in it,' said she. 'I cannot manage Joey at

all.'

'I will see if I can,' said Mr. Chickerel. 'Courting at his age, indeed-

what shall we hear next!'

Chickerel then accompanied his daughter along the street till an empty

cab passed them, and putting her into it he returned to the house again.